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Baby and Chickens.
NATURAL HISTORY SERIES—BOOK SECOND.
FRIENDS IN
FEATHERS AND FUR,
AND
OTHER NEIGHBORS,
FOR YOUNG FOLKS.
By JAMES JOHONNOT.
NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
1885.
Good-morning! good-morning! the birdies sing;
Good-by to the windy days of spring!
The sun is so bright, that we must be gay!
Good-morning! good-morning! this glad summer day.
Copyright, 1884,
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
THE AIM AND METHOD.
A machine, turned by a crank, has been made to speak words, butnothing below a human being has been able to get thought from awritten or printed page and convey it to others. To make the machinerequires a vast amount of labor expended upon matter; to get thethought requires the awakening of a human spirit. The work of themachine is done when the crank stops; the mental work, throughinternal volition, goes on to ever higher achievements.
In schools much labor has been spent in trying to produce humanspeaking-machines. Words are built up out of letters; short words aregrouped into inane sentences such as are never used; and sentences arearranged into unnatural and insipid discourse. To grasp the thin ghostof the thought, the little human spirit must reverse its instinct to[6]reach toward the higher, and, mole-like, burrow downward.
The amount of effort spent in this way, if given to awakening thought,would much more effectively secure the mechanical ends sought, and atthe same time would yield fruit in other fields of mental activity.
The matter s