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POETRY AND PROSE FOR SCHOOL-DAYS.

EDITED BY

BLANCHE WILDER BELLAMY

AND

MAUD WILDER GOODWIN.

Volume I.

ARRANGED FOR CHILDREN FROM FOUR TO
TWELVE YEARS OLD.

BOSTON, U.S.A.:

PUBLISHED BY GINN & COMPANY.
1890.

KE 4222

HARVARD
COLLEGE
LIBRARY

41*313

COPYRIGHT, 1889,

BY BLANCHE Wilder BELLAMY AND MAUD WILDER GOODWIN.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

TYPOGRAPHY BY J. S. CUSHING & Co., Boston, U.S.A

PRESSWORK BY GINN & Co., BOSTON, U.S.A.

PREFACE.

"OPEN SESAME!

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a collection of poetry and prose for school-days, has been prepared with the hope that it will encourage children, first, to learn by heart; secondly, to learn things worth learning; and thirdly, to learn these things because they like them.

In this volume will be found some of those simple words by which little people may come to know great authors, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Addison, Dryden, Swift, Gay, and Cowper; Byron, Scott, and Burns; Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Southey, Campbell, and Lamb; the Brownings, Thackeray, Dickens, Ruskin, and Charlotte Brontë; Tennyson and Swinburne ; Bryant, Longfellow, Emerson, and Lowell; Schiller, Victor Hugo, and many others. Here, too, are favorites, new and old, which, while of less famous authorship, have been stamped "classic" by the verdict of childhood. Some selections which appeal to children on the emotional rather than on the intellectual side have been admitted upon the theory that children may

thus be led on from things valuable in sentiment, and pleasing in expression, to those of the highest literary quality.

Certain poems, both fine and familiar, which would have a natural place in this volume, will be missed from it. The editors regret that, in spite of diligent effort, it has not been possible to secure their use.

The book is illustrated wholly by engravings from the old masters, in the belief that children will enjoy and profit by the best art as well as the best literature.

The hero of the "Arabian Nights'" tale found the words, "Open Sesame!" a charm which revealed a rich treasure, and his talisman has been borrowed as the title of these volumes, with the wish that they may prove an "Open Sesame!" to the treasure-house of

literature.

The editors extend their cordial thanks to the following publishers and authors, whose generous cooperation has made the collection possible, and whose contributions appear in this volume: —

To Messrs. Fords, Howard & Hurlbert, for selections from the writings of Henry Ward Beecher; to Messrs. Roberts Brothers, for poems by H. H.; and to Oliver Ditson & Co., for Christmas Carols from Rhymes and Tunes.

To Mr. Richard Watson Gilder, Mrs. Margaret E. Sangster, Mrs. Annie Douglass Robinson, Mr. Richard H. Stoddard, Mr. Charles Henry Webb, Mr. James Whitcomb Riley, Mr. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Mrs. Emily Huntington Miller; to Right Reverend Bishop Doane; and to the literary executors of Gen. J. W. Phelps, Mrs. Ethel Lynn Beers, Mrs. Elizabeth L. Prentiss, and Mr. William Cullen Bryant.

Selections from the writings of Longfellow, Whittier, Emerson, Lowell, Celia Thaxter, T. B. Aldrich, and Margaret Deland are published by business arrangement with Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

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