Transcriber's Notes:
Variations in spelling and hyphenation have been retained asin the original.
Words listed in the 'Words to be Studied' sections are linked inthe text like this. Click on the word tosee the explanation.
A few typographical errors have been corrected. A complete list ofchanges follows the text.
STORIES FROM TAGORE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
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MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
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MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO
Stories from Tagore
New York
The Macmillan Company
1918
All rights reserved
Copyright 1916 and 1918
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published, October, 1918
PREFACE
Every experienced teacher must have noticed thedifficulty of instructing Indian children out of booksthat are specially intended for use in English schools.It is not merely that the subjects are unfamiliar, butalmost every phrase has English associations thatare strange to Indian ears. The environment inwhich they are written is unknown to the Indianschool boy and his mind becomes overburdened withits details which he fails to understand. He cannotgive his whole attention to the language and thusmaster it quickly.
The present Indian story-book avoids some at leastof these impediments. The surroundings describedin it are those of the students' everyday life; thesentiments and characters are familiar. The storiesare simply told, and the notes at the end will be sufficientto explain obscure passages. It should be possiblefor the Indian student to follow the pages ofthe book easily and intelligently. Those studentswho have read the stories in the original will havethe further advantage of knowing beforehand thewhole trend of the narrative and thus they will beable to concentrate their thoughts on the Englishlanguage itself.
It is proposed to publish together in a singlevolume the original stories whose English translationsare given in this Reader. Versions of the samestories in the different Indian vernaculars have alreadyappeared, and others are likely to follow.
Two of the longest stories in this book—"MasterMashai" and "The Son of Rashmani"—are reproducedin English for the first time. The rest ofthe stories have been taken, with slight revision, fromtwo English volumes entitled "The Hungry Stones"and "Mashi." A short paragraph has been addedfrom the original Bengali at the end of the storycalled "The Postmaster." This was unfortunatelyomitted in the first English edition.
The list of words to be studied has been chosenfrom each story in order to bring to notice differenttypes of English words. The lists are in no senseexhaustive. The end in view has been to endeavourto create an interest in Indian words and their history,which may lead