latest form now in extensive
use is called The New McGuffey Readers.

Each of these revisions has constituted practically a new series
although the changes have never included the entire contents. In the
higher readers will be found today many selections which appeared in the
original books. The reason for retaining such selections is clear. No
one has been able to write in the English language selections that are
better for school use than some written by Shakespeare, Milton, Bacon,
and other early writers. The literature of the English language has not
all been written in the present decade nor in the last century.

As at first published, the lower books of the McGuffey Readers had no
trace of the modern methods now used in teaching the mastery of
words--even the alphabet was not given in orderly form; but the
alphabetic method of teaching the art of reading was then the only one
used. The pupil at first spelled each word by naming the letters and
then pronounced each syllable and then the word.

[First Editions]

The following stanza is copied from page 61 of the edition of 1844 to
illustrate the method of presenting words:

I like to see a lit-tle dog,
And pat him on the head;
So pret-ti-ly he wags his tail
When-ev-er he is fed.

The First Reader was mostly in words of one syllable. In this book we
find the story of the lame dog that, when cured, brought another lame
dog to be doctored: of the kind boy who freed his caged bird; of the
cruel boy who drowned the cat and pulled wings and legs from flies; of
Peter Pindar the story teller, and the "snow dog" of Mount St. Bernard;
of Mr. Post who adopted and reared Mary; of the boy who told a lie and
repented after he was found out; of the chimney sweep who was tempted to
steal a gold watch but put it back and was thereafter educated by its
owner; of the whisky boy; and of the mischievous boy who played ghost
and made another boy insane. Nearly every lesson has a moral clearly
stated in formal didactic words at its close.

In the Second Reader we find the story of the idle boy who talked with
the bees, dogs, and horses, and having found them all busy, reformed
himself; of the kind girl who shared her cake with a dog and an old man;
of the mischievous boys who tied the grass across the path and thus
upset not only the milk-maid but the messenger running for a doctor
to come to their father; of the wise lark who knew that the farmer's
grain would no