The following discussion will make plain the qualitative elements in these stories that fit them for use in the fourth and fifth grades rather than at other periods of the school course.

The pioneer stories constitute the first stages of an unbroken series of history studies, beginning in the fourth grade and extending beyond the limits of the common school. Taking up first the best early biographies of the home state, we advance to adjacent parts of the country, north, south, east, and west, until the main lines of pioneer life and its leading characters in the earlier history of the United States have been treated.

Children should begin history as soon as they take a strong and intelligent interest in its simpler phases. Till of late, American history was not taught below the grammar grades. But now there is a strong tendency to use biographical stories in intermediate grades. This, we believe, is a correct instinct. Some of the chief lessons of history can be better taught in the intermediate grades than anywhere else. The educative effect of heroic stories seems deeper at this point than at any other time of child life. There appears to be a peculiar fitness of early history stories to children's minds at the age of ten or eleven.

What portion of our history is best suited to beginners? We think that simple, thrilling biographies of early pioneer life are best calculated to awaken the interest of younger children. They are plain and

primitive, and withal so energetic and spirited that they correspond to a child's physical and mental moods. Their heroism brings out those marks of prowess and courage, which children so much admire. They are, in the main, free from the complexities and entanglements of great wars, and of later political and social institutions. The elements of personal character find for children a clear and full expression, and the simple experiences of pioneer struggle and danger make an indelible mark upon them.

In order to secure stories which are adapted to children of this age, certain limits in their selection must be observed. (First, they should be biographical stories, to secure simplicity and interest, and they should exhibit the lives of men of high character and purpose, such as impress the mind with generous thoughts. Secondly, the conditions of society should be simple and primitive, easily surveyed and comprehended. This condition excludes stories from the period of the Revolution and of the Civil War, unless they lie apart from the main struggle, and have a distinct pioneer character of their own. Not that stories taken from the midst of the Revolution or of the Civil War are less interesting and valuable, but they should come later to illustrate the spirit and temper of those times. The whole situation of a story, its geography, and historical setting, should be made transparent to the minds of children, and it is impossible for them to understand the complex move

ments of armies in a great national struggle, much less the state of government, legislation, and finance inseparably connected therewith.

In the main, therefore, these stories must be selected from the narrow field of exploration and first settlement, before society had assumed complex forms, while commerce, manner of living, and government were still in their simplest beginnings. In any given part of the country, as in Massachusetts or California, the period of exploration and pioneer life was brief, but in the history of the United States, and of North America as a whole, it has lasted from the time of Columbus down almost to the present. In all its stages it has been a period or hardship and danger, calling out the most adventurous spirits and putting men of large physical and moral calibre under the necessity of exhibiting, in bold relief, their individual traits. Such men were La Salle, Boone, Penn, Clark, and Lincoln.

No other country has had such a pioneer history, such a race of men as the early Friends, the Virginians, the Puritans, the French, the Scotch-Irish, pushing westward to subdue and civilize a continent. The early history of England, Germany, or Italy is hid in myth or savage warfare. The Spanish explorers and conquerors of the New World teach us mostly lessons of cruelty, rapine, and inordinate love of gold. They serve as warning rather than as example. But the best nations of Europe were sifted

by persecution in order to find seed fit for the planting of those colonies, from which the United States derive their traditions. There is scarcely one of our states whose early history is not connected with the stirring deeds of one or more of these noted pioneers. No matter in what part of the country a child may be born and reared, he may meet the best spirit of our history in the early biographies of his own state.

Fortunate is that land whose early history is so full of profitable lessons, for there is no part of its annals that is destined to have such a telling influence upon its growing children. If the Romans, by studying their ancestral and traditional history, could train up such men as Cincinnatus, Regulus, and the Scipios, how much more valuable to our children are the strong and sinewy examples of Washington, Robertson, Champlain, and Frémont. For moral-educative purposes, there is no history so valuable as the biographies of our sturdy pioneers.

We believe that this pioneer epoch is the delightful gateway through which the children of our common schools are to find entrance to the fields of American history. These stories not only interest, instruct, and strengthen the moral fibre of children, but they are an excellent vantage-ground from which to advance into history, geography, and natural science.

As representative men, the pioneers settled some important disputes and laid the groundwork for later growth. They gave unmistakable proof of

the quality and the strength of the materials that went into the first framework of our western states. There is scarcely a better way to begin history than with the simple rudiments from which our later social and political fabric has grown, especially when spirited, heroic biography is the medium through which these elements are brought home to the hearts and sympathies of children.

In departing so widely from usage as to make instruction in historical topics a regular part of the school work from the fourth grade on, we assume the value of historical studies as discussed in Chapter I on "The Aim of History Instruction," and in Chapter II of "General Method." But we now feel called upon to justify still further and to emphasize by repetition this choice of materials from our own history for fourth and fifth grades.

In the first case, does this part of our history furnish materials that are adapted to the understanding and interest of children of this grade? In accordance with our previous discussion, heroic biography occupies the favored place in the hearts of children of this age. It is not the lives of orators, scientists, or even of statesmen, but of simple heroes, of men who have shown power and skill and goodness in an age when men battled single-handed or in small numbers against surrounding dangers.

So far as the schools are concerned, the fact has been too much overlooked that we have in our own