very well"—a case analogous to the typical girl who exclaimed to her teacher, "I
can do and understand this perfectly if you only won't explain it." That is why
examinations in English, if not impossible, as Goldwin Smith and Oxford hold,
are very liable to be harmful, and recitations and critical notes an impertinence,
and always in danger of causing arrest of this exquisite romantic function in
which literature comes in the closest relation to life, keeping the heart warm,
reënforcing all its good motives, preforming choices, and universalizing its
sympathies.
R. W. Bullock[14] classified and tabulated 2,000 returns from school-children
from the third to the twelfth grade, both inclusive, concerning their reading.
From this it appeared that the average boy of the third grade "read 4.9 books in
six months; that the average falls to 3.6 in the fourth and fifth grades and rises to
a maximum of 6.5 at the seventh grade, then drops quite regularly to 3 in the
twelfth grade at the end of the high school course." The independent tabulation
of returns from other cities showed little variation. "Grade for grade, the girls
read more than the boys, and as a rule they reach their maximum a year sooner,
and from a general maximum of 5.9 books there is a drop to 3.3 at the end of the
course." The age of reading may be postponed or accelerated perhaps nearly a
year by the absence or presence of library facilities. Tabulating the short stories
read per week, it was found that these averaged 2.1 in the third grade, rose to 7.7
per week in the seventh grade, and in the twelfth had fallen to 2.3, showing the
same general tendency.
The percentage tables for boys' preference for eight classes of stories are here
only suggestive. "War stories seem popular with third grade boys, and that liking
seems well marked through the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. Stories of
adventure are popular all through the heroic period, reaching their maximum in
the eighth and ninth grades. The liking for biography and travel or exploration
grows gradually to a climax in the ninth grade, and remains well up through the
course. The tender sentiment has little charm for the average grade boy, and only
in the high school course does he acknowledge any considerable use of love
stories. In the sixth grade he is fond of detective stories, but they lose their
charm for him as he grows older." For girls, "stories of adventure are popular in
the sixth grade, and stories of travel are always enjoyed. The girl likes
biography, but in the high school, true to her sex, she prefers stories of great
women rather than great men, but because she can not get them reads those of
men. Pity it is that the biographies of so few of the world's many great women