The Republican journal., 1909-08-26

ITO whit! to whit to wheel
Will you listen to me;
Who stole four eggs l laid,
And the nice nest made?"
Mary Hewitt wrote pleasingly in those
days on many subjects, and in THE
Voice of Spring she says:
Il am coming, little maiden,
With the pleasant sunshine laden,
With the honey of the bee;
With the blossom for the tree
With the flower and the leaf;
I'LL come the time is brief
The same writer also wrote 1.-THE
Spider and the Fly" which every child
knew by heart, even as he or she knew
IT'S a lesson you should heed,
Try again;
if at first you don't succeed,
Try again.
In few years Mr.. Hillard issued a
new series of books, and made what he
called billiards Sixth Reader" to cor
respond to the First Class Reader" in
the former series-a book designed for
the most advanced classes This volume,
as well as billiards Fifth Reader, -
contained an Introductory treatise on
elocution by Prof. Mark Bailey, of Yale
college. Many of the selections were
taken from the old series, and several
from the Rev. Mr. Pierpont's "Ameri-
can First Glass Book" Mr.. Pierpont
wrote both prose and poetry, and of the
latter perhaps no selection was more
liked than 1.-The Pilgrim Fathers, which
appeared in Hillard's new Sixth Read
err He wrote this poem for the cele-
bration of the anniversary of the Pilgrim
Society of Plymouth, in December, 1924:
1.-The Pilgrim fathers!-where are they?
The waves that brought them Ger
Still roll in the bay and throw their spray,
AS they break along the shore;
Still roll in the bay, as they rolled that day,
When the Mayf1ower moored below,
When the around was black with storms
And white the shore with snow"
Another beautiful poem was Camp
BELLS:
''On Linden when the sun was low,
All bloodless lay the untrodden snow,
And dark winter was the flow
Of Iser, rolling rapidly
In the old days, ''Lochie's Warning, -
also by Campbell, was quite show
piece, and all those who could read well,
hoped that the first stanza would come
to them, so they could bring out, in true
dramatic style, the lines:
'Lochiel, Lochel beware of the day
array;
For field of the dead rushes red on my sight,
And the clans of Culloden are scattered in
fight"
In addition to the biographical sketches
in this series of Hillard's readers up to
the Sixth, there was given at the end of
each piece the pronunciation and defini-
ton of all the difficult words, and this
was greatly appreciated, for dictionaries
were not plentiful in the schoorooms
five and six decades ago. These volumes
also included Hillard's intermediate. -
In later years he published other readers.
but the theme of this article includes
only the first two SERIES
These books contained such reading as
Tennyson's Brook:
81 come from the haunts of coot and hern,
| make sudden sally,
And sparkle out among the fern
To bicker down a valley"
And now comes that most charming of
all Christmas ballads, "The Night before
Christmas, written by Clement Clark
Moore:
"'Twas the night before Christmas, when all
through the house
Not creature stirring, not even mouse
The stockings were hung in the chimney with
care,
In the hope that ST. Nicholas soon would be
there
Mr.. Hillard gives no sketch of DR..
Moore's life, but it may be interesting to
know that he was man of culture, and
published, in 1914, a book of excellent
poems, and yet this ballad seems to be the
only one of the collection which will be
long remembered. He was born in New
York in 1779, and died in 1863. He was
the son of Bishop Moore of Rhode Island
and was educated at Columbia College,
making the study of Hebrew specially.
Later he published Hebrew and Eng
! fish lexicon, which was the first book Of
that kind ever printed. In 1921 he was
made professor of Biblical learning in the
Protestant Episcopal theological semi.
nary of New York, where he remained
twenty whine years. The plot of land or
which this seminary stood was the gift Of
DR.. Moore.
Another poem, which is far to good tt
be an anonymous production, is 1.-THE
Picket Guard" the first stanza of which
is:
"'All quiet along the Potomac" they say;
Except, now and then, a stray picket
Is shot, as he walks on his beat to and fro
By rifieman hid in the thicket."
And the last reads:
'All quiet along the Potomac tonight
No sound save the rush of the river
While soft falls the dew on the face of tn,
dead
The picket's off duty forever"
''The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk, ,
by Cowper, is supposed to express hi
sentiments while on his solitary island:
81 am monarch of all l survey;
My rights there are none to dispute;
From the centre all round to the sea,
l am lord of the fowl and the brute''
Even in the little "Second Reader w.
find very attractive rhymes, such as
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How wonder what you are?"
"Mary had little lamb;
Its fleece was white as snow;''
"How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour;
and
Little drops of water,
Little grains of sand,
Make the mighty ocean
And the pleasant land'