The practical system II. [antikvár]

PREFACEThis book seeks to give the student a pleasant introduction into the English literature by bringing together some of the better short stories by modem writers. At the same time it endeavours to present such stories as will be suitable for teaching second-year students both privately and in schools. The making of this selection has been a difficult task as it has meant the choosing of such stories as have a simpler language, are free from dialect and other undesirable qualities, and which offer the possibility of an abundance of questions being asked from the text. That those included here should fulfil all these requirements, it has been necessary to make abridgements in all of them except The Selfish Giant and The Happy Prince.By sparing the student ihe drudgery of looking up the new words in a dictionary, this book seeks to reduce to a minimum the labour involved in learning the language. Though the using of a dictionary has the advantage that when the student has found the desired word he has before him all its related forms, the work of finding the word and then selecting from the several meanings the one which applies in the case at hand, is for most pupils an irksome process claiming too much time.To guide the student in the avoidance of those words in his general conversation which would tend to make his speech appear unnatural or affected, such words are marked with a star, and the colloquial expression is usually indicated. It is perhaps not out of place to say here that the student would do well to bear in mind the statement of Lord Baldwin, former Prime Minister of Britain, "If people would only avoid long words and stick to monosyllables as much as they can, they would all get on much better". That beauty of language is best attained by the use of simple words, is well demonstrated in this book by the works of Oscar-Wilde and Erskine Caldwell.The Expressions contained in this Part are of similar grammatical content to those in Part I, and have been continued here only to afford the student the opportunity of further training himself in the use of the verbal and other formations.