The Daily Ardmoreite. [volume] (Ardmore, Okla.) 1893-current, 1919-08-24
4 O Th@ Editorial Page of The Daily Ardmoreit@ q
M'CUFFEY'S OLD FIFTH READER


to get back to the days when you went to the
butcher shop and ordered twenty cents worth
o. meat and fed large family thereon, for the
days when you were simply good and happy
and didn't know it, for the days Of real sport
when you traipsed along the banks of Big river
or Cedar creek and caught catfish and perch
and chigger bites and poison ivy and Dragged
about them all. Here is "small ad" appear
ing in Cappers Weekly, published at Topeka,
which is in Kansas:
tell me where to get an old time McGuf.
from any of my old sehoomates @ in Henry cot county, N.Y.
Laura Bel Atkeson-NIrs. L. b. Frazier Tribbey,
Okla.
We don't know just exactly where you can
get an oldtime McGuffey's, Laura Bell, but
we know right wheTe yoU can see one II you
will call around at our-all's house We also
belong to that vast tribe of middle-aged Md
die West folk who used the McGuffey reader
series, and when we were i'm the Filth Read
er at school we felt like college president, so
heavy with erudition had we become. The Sc
lections made by Mr.. McGuffey for that reader
gave many of us our first taste for literature
Both prose and poetry, those pieces were pabu-
lum for the elect and McGuffeys Fifth Reader
was a wellspring of wisdom and an anthology
of joyous gems of thought.
We didn't know-none of us. not Laura
Bell nor any of the rest-how much we loved
that old Fifth Reader until we got out into the
world and forgot nearly all about it-nearly,
but not qute-for some years. Then, when
we got to feeling sort Of lonesome-like and IN
clned to take the view that the great world
of active life was not altogether according to
the specifications advertised, we began to think
back into school days and up popped McGut-
fey's old Fifth Reader.
Present company was feeling that way
once upon a time when he was about a thou
sand miles away from home and mother in
city by the well known name of New York, and
had taken a room in a lodging house occupied
by several utter strangers and surrounded by
about four million other utter strangers. When
he opened dresser drawer to deposit his eX-
ira shirt he behed tattered tome which heI
was about to consign to the wastebasket How
ever, he glanced at the title. 1t was McGuf-
feys Eclectic Fifth Reader!
Oh, boy! The laundering city vanished,
the weary years withdrew, and Yours Truly
found himself back in old Mizzoury, where it
feels like home" There was the little old VII
lage schoohouse on the hillside, and the little
old family doctors house just up over the crest
of the hill, and the creek flowing under the
railroad culvert not far away, and the children
Including Laura Bell, no doubt-of the Fifth
Reader class gathered around Teacher" and
dronng or declaiming McGuffey in accents
loud or low, according to individual talent orr
Though in reality the Astor Ii
brary, with something like even million am
bilious books on its shelves, was just around
the corner, present company had right in hand
a complete and all-sufficient collection of
prose and poetry, wit and WISDOM contained
between the battered covers of McGuffey's old
Fifth Reader.
And So Laura Bell, as we have ntimated, |
YOU may find an oldtime McGuffeys Fifth
Reader if you care to call around at our-all's S
house, but we don't know just exactly where
you can get" one. We are sort of selfish about
hat copy Of McGuffey's, you know.