The contagion of enthusiasm is one of the means by which children are most surely induced to put forth their best efforts to understand and to assimilate. If the teacher is genuinely enthusiastic in his love for a masterpiece, even if this be something that might seem to be over the heads of the children, he arouses them in a way impossible of attainment by any other means. A boy once said to me with that shrewdness which is characteristic of youth, "My teacher didn't like that book, and we all knew it by the way she praised it." Sham enthusiasm does not deceive children; but they are always impressed by the genuine, and no influence is more powerful. The most serious obstacle which teachers of literature to-day meet with, I am inclined to think, is the difficulty children have in seizing abstract ideas.[241:1] So long as study and instruction are confined to the concrete and the particular the pupil works with good will and intelligence. The moment the boundary is crossed into the region of the general, he becomes confused, baffled, and unable to follow. The algebra of life is too much for the brain which is accustomed to deal only with definite values. What is evidently needed all along the line is the cultivation of the reasoning powers in the ability to deal with abstract thought. Personally I believe that this could be best secured by the simplification of the work in the lower grades, and by the introduction of thorough courses in English grammar and the old-fashioned mental arithmetic. If some forty per cent. of the present curriculum could be suppressed altogether, and then ten per cent. of the time gained given to these two admirable branches, the results of training in the lower grades, I am convinced, would show an enormous improvement. I may be wrong in this, and in any case we must deal with things as they exist; and the teacher of literature must accept the fact that he has largely to train his class in breadth of thinking. He will be able to deal with generalizations only so far as he is assured that his students will grasp them, and this will generally mean so far as he is able to teach them to deal with this class of ideas. * * * * * This book has stretched beyond the limits which in the beginning were set for it, and in the end the one thing of which I am most conscious is of having accomplished the emphasizing of the difficulties of the branch of work with which it is concerned. If I have done nothing more than that, I have discouraged where I meant to help; and I can only hope that at least between the lines if not in the actual statements may be found by the earnest and hard-working teachers of the land—that class too little appreciated and worthy so much honor—hints which will make easier and more effective their dealing with this most important and most difficult requirement of the modern curriculum. FOOTNOTES: [240:1] See pages 68-70. [241:1] See page 112. INDEX