Produced by Jacqueline Jeremy, Suzanne Lybarger and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) =The Ontario Readers.= THE HIGH SCHOOL READER. AUTHORIZED FOR USE IN THE PUBLIC AND HIGH SCHOOLS AND COLLEGIATE INSTITUTES OF ONTARIO BY THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION. Toronto: ROSE PUBLISHING COMPANY. 1886. _Entered according to Act of Parliament of Canada, in the year one thousand eight hundred and eighty-six, by the_ MINISTER OF EDUCATION _for Ontario, in the Office of the Minister of Agriculture._ PRINTED AND BOUND BY HUNTER, ROSE & CO., TORONTO. PREFACE. The selections in the HIGH SCHOOL READER have been chosen with the belief that to pupils of such advancement as is required for entrance into High Schools and Collegiate Institutes, oral reading should be taught from the best literature, inasmuch as it not only affords a wide range of thought and sentiment, but it also demands for its appropriate vocal interpretation such powers of sympathy and appreciation as are developed only by culture; and it is to impart culture that these institutions of higher learning have been established. Experience has shown that it is from their ordinary reading books that pupils obtain their chief practical acquaintance with literature, and the selections here presented have been made with this in remembrance. They have been taken from the writings of authors of acknowledged representative character; and they have been arranged for the most part chronologically, so that pupils may unconsciously obtain some little insight into the history of the development of the literary art. They have also been so chosen as to convey a somewhat fair idea of the relative value and productivity of authorship in the three great English-speaking communities of the world--the mother countries, our neighbours' country, and our own.