Children's Literature Part 178

Paine, Albert Bigelow, _Boy's Life of Mark Twain_.

Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur, _Roll Call of Honor_. [Bolivar, John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, Garibaldi, David Livingston, Florence Nightingale, Pasteur, Gordon, Father Damien.]

Richards, Laura E., _Florence Nightingale_.

Riis, Jacob, _Making of an American_.

Roosevelt, Theodore, and Lodge, Henry Cabot, _Hero Tales from American History_.

Scudder, Horace E., _George Was.h.i.+ngton_.

Shaw, Anna Howard, _The Story of a Pioneer_.

Tarbell, Ida M., _Life of Abraham Lincoln_.

Thwaites, Reuben G., _Daniel Boone_.

Was.h.i.+ngton, Booker T., _Up from Slavery_.

White, John S., _Boys' and Girls' Plutarch_. [Preserves parallel arrangement.]

Yonge, Charlotte M., _A Book of Golden Deeds_.

SECTION XI. BIOGRAPHY AND HERO STORIES

INTRODUCTORY

_Biography and its value._ The great charm of biography for both young and old is in its perfect concreteness. Nothing fascinates like the story of a real person at grips with realities. Nothing inspires like the story of a hard-won victory over difficulties. Here are instances of men and women, our own kindred, facing great crises in the physical or moral realm with the calm courage and the clear mind of which we have dreamed. Here are others who have fought the brave fight in opposition to the stupidities and long-entrenched prejudices of their fellows. Here are still others who have wrested from nature her innermost secrets, who have won for us immunity against lurking diseases and dangers, who have labored successfully against great odds to make life more safe, more comfortable, or more beautiful. All these records of real accomplishment appeal to the youthful spirit of emulation, and there can be no stronger inspiration in facing the unsolved problems of the future. "What men have done men can still do."

_The material and its presentation._ Most teachers will find the biographical or historical story easier to handle than the imaginative story, because there is a definite outline of fact from which to work.

Only those life stories with which the teacher is in sympathy can be handled satisfactorily. For that reason no definite list of suitable material is worth much, except as ill.u.s.trating the wide range of choice.

Keeping these limitations in mind, we may venture a few practical hints:

1. There is a large list of heroic figures hovering on the border line between reality and legend of whose stories children never tire. In such a list are the names of Leonidas, who held the pa.s.s at Thermopylae, William Tell and Arnold von Winkelried, favorite heroes of Switzerland, Robert Bruce of Scotland, and that pair of immortally faithful friends, Damon and Pythias.

2. With Marco Polo we may visit the wonderlands of the East, we may go with Captain Cook through the islands of the southern seas, with Stanley through darkest Africa, with the brave Scott in his tragic dash for the South Pole.

Best of all, perhaps, we may, with Columbus, discover another America.

3. How Elihu Burritt became the "learned blacksmith," how Hugh Miller brought himself to be an authority on the old red sandstone, are always inspiring stories to the ambitious student. And in any list of achievements by those bound in by untoward circ.u.mstance must be placed that of Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton as told by himself in _Up from Slavery_.

4. From our earlier history we may draw upon such lives as those of Franklin, Was.h.i.+ngton, and Patrick Henry. There are numberless stirring episodes from the careers of Francis Marion, Israel Putnam, Nathan Hale, and others that will occur to any reader of our history.

Lincoln's life history offers an almost inexhaustible treasure. Grant, grimly silent and persevering, and Lee, kindly gentleman and military genius, belong in any course that stresses our national achievements.

5. Stories of men who have mastered the secrets of the forces of nature never fail of interest.

Stephenson and the locomotive engine, Sir Humphry Davy and the safety lamp, Whitney and the cotton gin, Marconi and the wonders of wireless communication, the Wright brothers and the airplane, Edison and the incandescant light and the motion picture, Luther Burbank and his marvelous work with plants--these are only a few to place near the head of any list.

6. Especially interesting for work in the grades are the stories of the pioneer and plainsman days, of Kit Carson, Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, and Buffalo Bill.

7. We must not neglect stories of achievement by those who have been handicapped by great physical disability, such as are found in the careers of Henry Fawcett, the blind statesman of England, and of our own Helen Keller, whose _Story of My Life_ has become a cla.s.sic source of material.

8. The life of Joan of Arc has long been a supreme favorite for biographical story. Its simple directness, its fiery patriotism, its pathetic and tragic close, give it all the force of some great consciously designed masterpiece. The events of such a life can be arranged in a series or cycle of stories. Of very different type, but of almost equally strong appeal, is the story of the work of Florence Nightingale, whose efforts among the British soldiers in the terrible scenes of the Crimean War set in motion those humanitarian enterprises so splendidly exemplified in the work of the Red Cross organizations.

9. Finally, no teacher should fail to make use of many modern careers that impress upon children the devotion of lives spent in bettering the conditions under which people live. Among some of these may be mentioned Colonel George E. Waring, the sanitary engineer who really cleaned the streets of New York; General W. C. Gorgas, who led in the conquest of the great yellow fever plague; Dr. Wilfred Grenfell, still spending his life for the natives of bleak Labrador; and the famous French scientist, Louis Pasteur, who found out for us how to preserve milk and how to escape the dread hydrophobia. Such careers devoted to ameliorating the evils incident to civilization are of great value in stirring into active existence the latent spirit of service in every pupil.

10. Wide-awake teachers will constantly find in the periodicals of the day many episodes of achievement by men and women working in various fields of helpfulness. Such present-day accomplishments should be emphasized. We live in the present, and the duties and opportunities of the present are to furnish the inspirations and indicate the fields of possible achievement for us.

SUGGESTIONS FOR READING

For a very practical discussion of biographical stories see Lyman, _Story Telling_, chap. v.

The great cla.s.sic sources of inspiration on the subject are Carlyle, _Heroes and Hero Wors.h.i.+p_, and Emerson, _Representative Men_. Of special value is the opening chapter in the latter book, "Uses of Great Men."

415

Elbridge S. Brooks (1846-1902) was a well-known American writer of juvenile books on history, government, and biography. His _True Story of Christopher Columbus_, from which the following selection was taken, is a well-written book that pupils in the fifth and sixth grades read with pleasure. _The Century Book for Young Americans_ is a story of our government. Other books by the same author are _The True Story of George Was.h.i.+ngton_, _The True Story of Lafayette_, and _The True Story of U. S.

Grant_. ("How Columbus Got His s.h.i.+ps" is used here by permission of the publishers, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co., Boston.)

HOW COLUMBUS GOT HIS s.h.i.+PS

ELBRIDGE S. BROOKS

When Columbus was at school he had studied about a certain man named Pythagoras, who had lived in Greece thousands of years before he was born, and who had said that the earth was round "like a ball or an orange." As Columbus grew older and made maps and studied the sea, and read books and listened to what other people said, he began to believe that this man named Pythagoras might be right, and that the earth was round, though everybody declared it was flat. "If it is round," he said to himself, "what is the use of trying to sail around Africa to get to Cathay? Why not just sail west from Italy or Spain and keep going right around the world until you strike Cathay? I believe it could be done,"

said Columbus.

By this time Columbus was a man. He was thirty years old and was a great sailor. He had been captain of a number of vessels; he had sailed north and south and east; he knew all about a s.h.i.+p and all about the sea. But, though he was a good sailor, when he said that he believed the earth was round, everybody laughed at him and said that he was crazy. "Why, how can the earth be round?" they cried. "The water would all spill out if it were, and the men who live on the other side would all be standing on their heads with their feet waving in the air." And then they laughed all the harder.

But Columbus did not think it was anything to laugh at. He believed it so strongly and felt so sure that he was right, that he set to work to find some king or prince or great lord to let him have s.h.i.+ps and sailors and money enough to try to find a way to Cathay by sailing out into the West and across the Atlantic Ocean.

Now this Atlantic Ocean, the western waves of which break upon our rocks and beaches, was thought in Columbus's day to be a dreadful place.

People called it the Sea of Darkness, because they did not know what was on the other side of it, or what dangers lay beyond that distant blue rim where the sky and water seem to meet, and which we call the horizon.

They thought the ocean stretched to the end of a flat world, straight away to a sort of "jumping-off place," and that in this jumping-off place were giants and goblins and dragons and monsters and all sorts of terrible things that would catch the s.h.i.+ps and destroy them and the sailors.

So when Columbus said that he wanted to sail away toward this dreadful jumping-off place, the people said that he was worse than crazy. They said he was a wicked man and ought to be punished.

But they could not frighten Columbus. He kept on trying. He went from place to place trying to get the s.h.i.+ps and sailors he wanted and was bound to have. As you will see later, he tried to get help wherever he thought it could be had. He asked the people of his own home, the city of Genoa, where he had lived and played when a boy; he asked the people of the beautiful city that is built in the sea--Venice; he tried the king of Portugal, the king of England, the king of France, the king and queen of Spain. But for a long time n.o.body cared to listen to such a wild and foolish and dangerous plan--to go to Cathay by the way of the Sea of Darkness and the jumping-off place. "You would never get there alive," they said.

And so Columbus waited. And his hair grew white while he waited, though he was not yet an old man. He had thought and worked and hoped so much that he began to look like an old man when he was forty years old. But still he would never say that perhaps he was wrong, after all. He said he knew he was right, and that some day he should find the Indies and sail to Cathay.

I do not wish you to think that Columbus was the first man to say that the earth was round, or the first to sail to the West over the Atlantic Ocean. He was not. Other men had said that they believed the earth was round; other men had sailed out into the Atlantic Ocean. But no sailor who believed the earth was round had ever tried to prove that it was by crossing the Atlantic. So, you see, Columbus was really the first man to say, I believe the earth is round and I will show you that it is by sailing to the lands that are on the other side of the earth.

He even figured out how far it was around the world. Your geography, you know, tells you now that what is called the circ.u.mference of the earth--that is, a straight line drawn right around it--is nearly twenty-five thousand miles. Columbus had figured it up pretty carefully and he thought it was about twenty thousand miles. "If I could start from Genoa," he said, "and walk straight ahead until I got back to Genoa again, I should walk about twenty thousand miles." Cathay, he thought, would take up so much land on the other side of the world that, if he went west instead of east, he would only need to sail about twenty-five hundred or three thousand miles.