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In: Short Stories·Essays, Letters & Speeches·Teaching & Education
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #66831.
This volume is a practical guide that pairs short, modern essays with a selection of short stories, all aimed at helping students move beyond rote narration toward genuine self‑expression. The opening pages argue that schools teach the mechanics of essay writing while neglecting its more spontaneous, personal side, and they propose a collection of brief pieces on everyday subjects, Christmas crowds, church bells, walking, dogs, the wind, children, New York streets, and contemporary ideals, as models for imitation. Each essay is introduced with a concise overview, footnotes clarify any obscure references, and follow‑up questions and a list of over five hundred suggested topics give teachers ready‑made material for classroom use. The book also includes introductions to the short story form and carefully chosen stories that trace its development, each accompanied by the same instructional apparatus.
The tone is conversational yet instructional, reflecting a late‑nineteenth‑century pedagogical voice that values clarity, brevity, and the pleasure of writing for its own sake. It will appeal to teachers who want to enliven composition classes, as well as to students who enjoy reading brief, lively pieces that blend observation with personal reflection. Readers who appreciate essays that feel like friendly chat rather than formal argument, and who are curious about the evolution of the short story, will find the collection both useful and engaging.
The opening · free to read
In all schools pupils are expected to write “essays” but, curiously enough, essay-reading and essay-writing are taught but little. In spite of that neglect, the essay is so altogether natural and spontaneous in spirit, so intensely personal in expression, and so demanding of excellence of prose style, that it is the form, par excellence, for consideration in school if teachers are to show pupils much concerning the art of writing well. The essay is to prose what the lyric is to poetry--complete, genuine and beautiful self-expression, or better still, self-revelation.
Most of the writing done in schools is straightforward narration of events, without much, if any, attempt to show personal reactions on those events--mere diary-like accounts, at best; mechanical descriptions that aim to present exterior appearance without attempting to reveal inner meanings or to show awakened emotions; and stereotyped explanations and arguments drawn, for the most part, from books of reference or from slight observation.
Beyond all this mechanical work lies a field of throbbing personal life, of joyous reactions on all the myriads of interests that lie close at hand, of meditations on the wonders of plant and animal life, of humorous or philosophic comments on human nature, and of all manner of vague dreams and aspirations aroused by
“Such sights as youthful poets dream On summer eves by haunted stream.”
Without the slightest question, it is the duty of the school, and of the teacher in particular, to lead pupils to appreciate honesty and originality in unapplied, unpragmatic self-expression, and to show pupils how they themselves may gain the very real pleasure of putting down on paper permanent records of their own intimate thinking.
Joseph Addison's The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers and Washington Irving's Sketch Book have for many years made valiant but unsuccessful efforts to fill the places that should be filled by more modern representatives of the essay. Macaulay's Essay on Johnson is a biographical article for an encyclopedia; his essays on Clive and on Hastings are polemics; and Carlyle's Essay on Burns is a critical disquisition. With the exception of The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers, all these so-called essays are of considerable length and are unfitted to serve as the best examples of the essay form;--for the essay, like the lyric, demands brevity: it is, after all, only a quick flash of self-revelation,--not a sustained effort.
Then again, who would wish to learn to write like Addison, like Washington Irving, like Macaulay, or like Carlyle! Those great writers couched their thoughts in the language-fashions of their days, just as they clothed their bodies in the garments of their times. To imitate either their style of expression or their costumes would be to make one's self ridiculous, or to take part in a species of masquerade.
The extremely Latinized vocabulary of 1711, or the resonant periods and marked antitheses of 1850, are as old-fashioned to-day as are the once highly respected periwigs, great-coats and silver shoe buckles of the past.
The thoughts of yesterday are not the thoughts of to-day. There is, in serious reality, such a thing as “an old-fashioned point of view.” With all due reverence for the past, the best teachers of to-day believe that it is just as necessary for students to use present-day methods of expression and to cultivate present-day interests as it is to take advantage of the railroad, the telegraph, the telephone, the automobile, and the thousand other mechanical contrivances that aid life to-day, but which were unknown in 1711 or in 1850.
The type of essay that should be studied in school should concern modern interests; represent the modern point of view; discuss subjects in which young students are interested; be expressed in present-day language and, in general, should set forward an example that pupils may directly and successfully imitate.
In order to do all this to the best advantage the essays chosen for study should be exceedingly short. To a young student essays of any considerable length, unless the subject matter is of unusually intensive interest, present insuperable difficulties. Short essays, on the other hand, appear to him exactly what they are,--charmingly delightful expressions of personal opinion.
The essays in this book, instead of telling about coffee houses or stage coaches, Scotch peasants or literary circles in London or Edinburgh, tell about such subjects as Christmas crowds, church bells, walking, dogs, the wind, children, the streets of New York, school experiences, and various modern ideals in work, in literature, and in life. Most of the essays are exceedingly short, only one or two being more than a few pages in length.
The essays here given represent various types, including not only the chatty, familiar essay but also informational essays, critical essays, biographical essays, story essays, and one or two examples of highly poetic prose.
An informal introduction, paving the way to a sympathetic understanding, precedes every essay. Notes below the pages of text explain immediately all the literary or historical allusions with which a young reader might not be familiar, their close position to the text making it unnecessary for a student to hunt for an explanation.
Suggestive questions given immediately after every essay make it possible for the teacher to assign lessons quickly; they also enable the student to study by himself and to feel assured that he will not miss any important point.
Twenty subjects, suitable as subjects for essays to be written by the student in direct imitation of the essay that immediately precedes them, follow every selection. In addition to this great number of appropriate modern subjects, more than 500 in number, on which young students can express their real selves, there are given, in connection with every list of subjects, directions for writing,--such as a teacher might give a class when assigning written work.
The subject-lists and the directions for writing give the teacher a remarkable opportunity to stimulate a class as never before; to awaken a spirit of genuine self-expression; and to teach English composition in a way that he can not possibly do through the medium of any of our present-day rhetorics.
For the advantage of those teachers who wish to combine the teaching of the essay and of the short story, and who may not have at hand any suitable collection of short stories, the book includes not only introductory material concerning the nature of the short story and the development of the short story form, but also a series of stories of unusual interest for young readers, so chosen and so arranged that they represent the development of the short story through the legendary tale, the historical story, and the romantic story of adventure, to the story of realism and of character. In every case the story chosen is one that any student will enjoy and will understand immediately, as well as one that he can imitate both with pleasure and with success.
Introductions, foot notes, suggestive questions, subjects for written imitation, and directions for writing, follow every story.
If the book is used both as a means of awakening literary appreciation and developing honesty, originality, and power in written self-expression it will give pleasure to teachers and students alike.
Why? Simply because they are happy; because they are healthy and vigorous, and at work; because they are doing something that interests them; because their hearty enjoyment in life must express itself in some other way than in work alone: in fact, they whistle and sing just for the doing of it,--not that they wish any other person to hear them, and not that they wish to teach anything to anyone. Their whistling and singing are spontaneous, and for the sake of expression alone.
Many of the best English essays were written just for the joy of self-expression. Serious workers in life, in their leisure moments, have let their pens move, as it were, automatically, in a sort of frank and full expression somewhat akin to the plowman's whistling and the milkmaid's singing.
Certainly in that joyous spirit Michel de Montaigne, in the sixteenth century, wrote the delightfully familiar essays that have charmed readers for over three hundred years, and that established the essay as a literary type. In a like vein, frankly and personally, Charles Lamb, who died in the first half of the nineteenth century, wrote intimate confessions of his thoughts,--his memories of schooldays and of early companionships and familiar places,--writing with all the warmth and color of affectionate regard. Happily, and because he was glad to be alive, Robert Louis Stevenson, almost in our own days, wrote of his love of the good outdoor world with its brooks and trees and stars, of his love of books and high thought, and his admiration of a manly attitude toward life.
For such people writing for the sake of expression was just as pure joy as the plowman's whistling and the milkmaid's singing.
Ordinary people write at least the beginnings of essays when they write letters,--not business letters in which they order yards of cloth, or complain that goods have not been delivered,--not letters that convey any of the business of life,--but rambling, gossipy, self-revealing letters, so illuminated with personality that they carry the very spirit of the writers.
Everyone, at times, talks or writes in a gossipy way of the things that interest him. He likes to escape from the world of daily tasks, of orders, directions, explanations and arguments, and to talk or write almost without purpose and just for the sake of saying something. In that sense everyone is a natural essayist.
The true essayist, like the pleasant conversationalist, expresses himself because it gives him pleasure. Out of his rich experience and wide observation he speaks wisely and kindly. He has no one story to tell and no one picture to present. He follows no rules and he aims at no very serious purpose. He does not desire to instruct nor to convince. Like the conversationalist, he is ready to leave some things half-said and to emphasize some subjects, not because it is logical to do so but because he happens to like them. He is ready at any moment to tell an anecdote, to introduce humor or pathos, or to describe a scene or a person--if so doing fits his mood. In general, the true essayist is like the musician who improvises: he
“Lets his fingers wander as they list, And builds a bridge from dreamland.”
Of all possible kinds of prose writing, the essay, therefore, gives the greatest freedom. The essayist may reveal himself completely and in any manner that he pleases. He may tell of his delight in wandering by mountain streams, or in mingling with the crowds in city streets; he may tell of his thoughts as he meditated by ancient buildings or in the solemn half-darkness of age-old churches; he may dream of a long-gone childhood or look ahead into a roseate future; he may talk of people whom he has known, of books that he has read, or of the ideals of life. Any subject is his, and any method of treatment is his,--just so long as his first thought is the frank and full expression of himself.
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