THE HEART OF OAK BOOKS A COLLECTION OF TRADITIONAL RHYMES AND STORIES FOR CHILDREN, AND OF MASTERPIECES OF POETRY AND PROSE FOR USE AT HOME AND AT SCHOOL, CHOSEN WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION AND THE En Sir Volumes VOLUME I THE HEART OF OAK BOOKS EDITED BY CHARLES ELIOT NORTON First Book RHYMES AND JINGLES BOSTON, U.S.A. D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS 1899 NOTE. THE First Book of the Heart of Oak series is intended for children beginning to learn to read. It is for the nursery as well as for the school. It is for reading to the child as well as for reading by him. The selections are such as may well become part of the stores of the child's memory, being mostly from the traditional stock of rhymes and jingles which have been sung or said by mothers or nurses time out of mind. In schools the little book is to take the place of a primer, and it may be used with or without an independent spellingbook, according to the skill or the judgment of the teacher. The usual apparatus of a lesson-book has been discarded, and no attempt at what is technically known as "grading" has been made. The system of grading adopted in most books for beginning in reading is largely artificial and mechanical, and is hurtful rather than helpful to progress. It does not conform to the natural method by which language is acquired, either by the ear or by the eye. The teaching of children to read by means of pieces which have been specially prepared for them, by the omission of all hard words and of all expressions supposed to be beyond their comprehension, is a thoroughly objectionable practice. Words of varying degrees of difficulty, as well in spelling as in meaning, are learned by the ear, and should be learned by the eye, at the same time. The talk of a child when he begins to learn to read does not consist |