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He himself did not know just where that idea came from; he certainly had never seen such a case. The magical dreams of his childhood had been responsible for a whole class of ideas, which were nourished by the anecdotes of poor boys in the reading-books. He was confronted by the impossible, and quite simply he reached out after the impossible. Peter had no reading-books at his back.
"That," he proceeded, using that curiously formal and elaborate English which he must have learned from reading-books, "that was the scene of the tragedy which made me an artist. I have told you that my father was a schoolmaster. He was the kindest of men, but he had moods of frightful severity moods which subsided as quickly as they arose.
Little question-books, with the answers supplied, and reading-books, mostly about angelic boys and girls who died of early piety, furnished the staple of our reading, while but little of the Scriptures was taught, or thought about.
No text-book, no one reading-book or series of reading-books, will do it. If the teacher is only the text-book orally delivered, the teacher is an uninspired machine. We must revise our notions of the function of the teacher for the beginners. The teacher is to present evidence of truth, beauty, art. Where will he or she find it?
He descended safely, and made the incident an object lesson, as Mr. Mann repeated the ode to the American eagle, found at that time in many reading-books. While Mr. Mann was doing so, and had reached the line "Bird of Columbia, well art thou," etc., one of the eagles swept down to the nest and seized the banner in his talons.
My boy had an ideal of a pony, conceived from pictures in his reading-books at school, that held its head high and arched its neck, and he strove by means of checks and martingales to make this real pony conform to the illustrations.
The buildings in which the parish schools were conducted were not exactly stables, but yet entirely destitute of the light, air, fittings, and furniture requisite for school-work. The only reading-books were a French Bible and Italian acts of parliament. So much, then, for the primary schools. The condition of the secondary or grammar schools was not much more encouraging.
The reading-books, especially Scott's Lessons, contained extracts from good writers and speakers, with selections from the best of English poets, and these extracts and selections, I had read and had heard read so often that I could repeat many of them at full length. Worcester's Geography, and Whelpley's Compend of History were among the books used in the schools.
From the reading-books as first published were expunged such verses as Campbell's "Downfall of Roland" and Scott's "Breathes There a Man with a Soul so Dead," owing to their tendency, one must suppose, to suggest emotions other than those which it was deemed fitting to inculcate, and in their place was inserted a verse from the Archbishop's own pen which is familiar to most Irishmen, but which is, I find, unknown to most Englishmen:
Henri turned away; dissatisfaction was plainly evinced in her face, and a smile, slight and brief, but bitter, distrustful, and, I thought, scornful, curled her lip as she took her place in the class; it was a secret, involuntary smile, which lasted but a second; an air of depression succeeded, chased away presently by one of attention and interest, when I gave the word for all the pupils to take their reading-books.
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