the suitable story-material which may be easily arranged for any part of the country, according to local geographical position and needs. This book is one of a series of Special Methods in the common school studies. The others of the series are The Special Methods in the Reading of Complete English Classics, in Primary Reading and Oral Work with Stories, in Geography and in Natural Science. The entire series of Special Methods is designed to work out and apply in the detail of each study the broad principles discussed in the General Method and in the Method of the Recitation. A complete Course of Study for the Grades of the Common School is in preparation, which will bring together in two volumes the comprehensive plans, outlines of courses, and full references for all the studies of the common school. This course of Study in History, while it establishes American history as the central body of historical material, also draws extensively from the history of England and of Europe, and, in connection with reading and literature, looks for a still wider extension of the child's horizon of thought. CHARLES A. MCMURRY. 1 PALATKA, FLORIDA, March 24, 1903. SPECIAL METHOD IN HISTORY CHAPTER I THE AIM OF HISTORY INSTRUCTION WITHOUT dropping a plummet to the depths of our subject at the moment of embarking, we may at least say that it is good for children to gain an intelligent interest in the families and persons of their neighborhood, in the health and comfort of the people of their own town, later in the personal history of well-known characters, such as Longfellow, Lincoln, John Winthrop, Charles Dickens, and John Quincy Adams, and in larger matters of public concern. This intelligent interest is awakened first of all by a lifelike picture of the personal fortunes of men like Daniel Boone, or David, or Alfred the Great. Such biographies open a highway into the struggles and dangers of communities and young nations. The life stories also of inventors and benefactors like Stephenson, Fulton, and Peter Cooper, of Florence Nightingale, John Eliot, and William Penn, kindle social sympathies of lasting worth. Children are already acquainted with persons, and have strong personal interests and affections, or, it may be, the opposite. With this early experience as a basis, they can more quickly interpret the lives of individuals. They tacitly compare themselves with such persons, and are stimulated to like feelings and actions. The lives of the world's chiefs are often called the very substance of history, as in Carlyle's "Heroes and Hero-worship," and in Emerson's "Representative Men." They serve as examples and ideals to arouse enthusiasms, and have an unestimated power in giving the initial impulses toward the formation of character in children. Such biographies disclose to a child the broad arena of possible action, and at the same time give an impulse to the full stretch of his own best powers. A suitable variety of select biographies must act in a directly personal way upon each child. The secret sources of strength in each boy or girl will thus be touched and made conscious. So far as biographies are typical or representative, they give insight into the common interests of society and are the natural introduction to public concerns. This intelligent interest may be awakened in the common life of the people, as in old-fashioned customs and modes of dress, in the style and peculiarity of their houses, furniture, and domestic arrangements, in their hardships and sufferings caused by war, pestilence, or drouth, in their toils in field, forest, or shop, on lakes and rivers, in their homes and family life, in their churches and religious ideas, in their games and |