The Project Gutenberg EBook of Verse and Prose for Beginners in Reading
by Horace Elisha Scudder, editor

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Title: Verse and Prose for Beginners in Reading
Selected from English and American Literature

Author: Horace Elisha Scudder, editor

Release Date: November 26, 2003 [EBook #10294]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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VERSE AND PROSE

FOR

BEGINNERS IN READING

_SELECTED FROM ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE_

1893

PREFACE.

The attentive reader of this little book will be apt to notice very soon
that though its title is _Verse and Prose for Beginners in Reading_,
the verse occupies nine tenths, the prose being confined to about two
hundred proverbs and familiar sayings--some of them, indeed, in
rhyme--scattered in groups throughout the book. The reason for this will
be apparent as soon as one considers the end in view in the preparation
of this compilation.

The _Riverside Primer and Reader_, as stated in its Introduction, "is
designed to serve as the sole text-book in reading required by a pupil.
When he has mastered it he is ready to make the acquaintance of the
world's literature in the English tongue." In that book, therefore, the
pupil was led by easy exercises to an intelligent reading of pieces of
literature, both verse and prose, so that he might become in a slight
degree familiar with literature before he parted with his sole
text-book. But the largest space had, of necessity, to be given to
practice work, which led straight to literature, indeed, though to a
small quantity only. The verse offered in that book was drawn from
nursery rhymes and from a few of the great masters of poetical form; the
prose was furnished by a selection of proverbs, some of the simplest
folk stories, and two passages, closing the book, from the Old and New
Testaments.

The pupil, upon laying down his _Primer and Reader_ and proposing to
enter the promised land of literature, could find a volume of prose
consisting of _Fables and Folk Stories_, into the pleasures o