study in themselves than by meeting them clothed in the beauty of fine
writing. In no way will he be led more quickly into a love for nature in
all her manifestations and into a keen desire to study nature than by
the hand of literature. Language takes on a new interest when it becomes
evident that it is a real and necessary help to writing as the great
writers do.

Accordingly when the selections were chosen for _Journeys_, a tabulation
of school subjects was made and under each head were placed the things
that would be most helpful in school work. It was not decided finally to
keep that arrangement in the books, for a different and a better system
of grading and classification was selected. Nevertheless the selections
are there, and the object of this and the few following chapters is to
show what those selections are, how they may be used in school and how
their use at home helps in the school work of every reader.

In the grades below the high school the following subjects are
considered most important, viz.: reading, language, arithmetic,
geography, history and nature study. At the first thought one would say
that a set of books such as _Journeys_ can be of no use in the
arithmetic class, and of course their usefulness in that direction would
not justify their existence. However, there are selections in _Journeys_
that have a decided arithmetical flavor, such as, for instance, _Three
Sundays in a Week_ (Volume VI, page 453) and _The Gold Bug_ (Volume IX,
page 232). Even among the nursery rhymes is one that is purely
arithmetical (Volume I, page 41). We may, however, disregard the
arithmetic in _Journeys_, but we must not lose sight of the fact that
the method of reading discussed under the title _Close Reading_ is
exactly the method of study that every person must pursue if he is to
make any success in mathematics. In no other branch is there a call for
such close reading, and only he who can get all the meaning out of the
statement of a problem can be certain of his solution. One of the
reasons that so many children have trouble with the problems in their
arithmetic classes is that they do not read intelligently. Many a good
teacher of mathematics will tell you that a large part of her success is
due to the fact that she has spent much of the time in the class in
teaching her pupils to read understandingly. Many another could make a
vast improvement in her methods of teaching if she would spend a part of
the ti