THE ALDINE READERS A FOURTH READER By Frank E. Spaulding Superintendent of Schools, Newton, Mass. and Catherine T. Bryce Supervisor of Primary Schools, Newton, Mass. With Illustrations by NEW YORK NEWSON & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS PREFACE THIS book is a basal reader suitable for fourth and fifth grades. It is made up chiefly of selections from the writings of leading American and English authors. Every selection has been subject to careful critical study, not only of its literary merit, but especially of its power to interest and impress boys and girls of nine to twelve or fourteen years of age. The selections from the writings of Joel Chandler Harris, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Henry W. Longfellow are used by the kind permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, the authorized publishers of the works of these authors. We are grateful to publishers named below for kind permission to use selections indicated: to the BobbsMerrill Company, for The Pixy People, by James Whitcomb Riley; to Harper & Brothers, for The Troubles of a Lazy Little Boy, by R. K. Munkittrick, and The Sword of Hildebrand, by Sherwood Ryse; to Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Company, for The Three Copecks, from The Complete Poems of Paul Hamilton Hayne; to H. M. Caldwell Company, for A Strange Witness, from Neddy, the Autobiography of a Donkey; and to G. P. Putnam's Sons, for The Young Serf, from Boys of Other Countries, by Bayard Taylor. We would also express our obligations and gratitude to Mr. Robert E. Lee, for permission to include General Robert E. Lee's Letter to his Sons, and to Mrs. R. D. C. Robbins, for the use of The Soldier's Repriere. Nearly all the selections bearing no signature are the work of the editors of this book and are protected by copyright. NEWTON, MASS., |