PRESENT-DAY ESSAYS EDITED BY EDWIN VAN B. KNICKERBOCKER Chairman of the English Department Bndergraduate PS COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. Hudergrad Erie A-Walter newer to 8-5-80 11-17-19 PREFACE THIS volume is only one of several collections of modern essays that have been published recently, and the editor is not so presumptuous as to consider it better than the others. But he believes it to be particularly adapted to meet a real need for modern essays of considerable length. Nowadays the term essay is applied only to work that in some degree reflects its writer's personality. Other collections provide excellent essay material, but for the most part they present only the shorter forms. The short, highly personal essay is very valuable for the reason that an acquaintance with it is likely to inculcate a taste for genuinely personal writing. It is obvious that the very short essay can be more vividly personal than the longer one, for the high colors of whimsy and humor and subtile mood are essentially short lived. But certainly essays are needed for study which, while personal, shall prove more meaty than the very short ones. Compositions have an undeniable and important use that develop worth-while subjects so as to make a genuine demand upon a reader's powers of concentration and judgment. And such articles may well reflect the individuality of their writers in sufficient degree to exercise the charm that is always present when an author's qualities of mind and heart shine through his pages. For essay reading, then, teachers of English should not be content to supply merely delightful bits of vivid and easily grasped self-expression: it is their duty to provide for the development of those habits of active effort that must be developed if their students are to become able to grasp the salient points of what they read, and to appreciate the effective presentation of thought wholes of considerable length. To be sure, the older essays, such as those of Emerson, Thoreau, Arnold, Ruskin, Carlyle, Macaulay, De Quincey, Hazlitt, and Coleridge, afford this power-developing material. But in content, style, and spirit such classic pieces are too remote from the presentday reader to appeal strongly to him. They seem dull because they do not deal with what concerns or attracts him, and their style seems heavy. Then, too, some of the older compositions that have always been known as essays -Macaulay's "Johnson" for example-lack the personal element to such a degree as not to be essays in the modern sense of the term, but only treatises. In short, the older essays do not charm the reader of to-day as they must do to be considered truly literature for him. Feet must not lag on Literature's highways and byways: there should be some sturdy climbing along the way, but even it must be enjoyed. The articles in this volume treat of problems and phases of present-day living or of experiences of recent years, and they are all written in the easy, vivid style that marks the best writing of to-day. They are agreeably personal in tone, and present a wide variety of subject and type. The names of the writers are in themselves a warrant of quality. Following the essays, a minimum of explanatory matter will be found. Many notes are not desirable in such a collection as this. Close textual study of the essays is not called for, and dictionaries and encyclopedias are gen 1 erally available for such elucidation of the text as may be found necessary. Literary allusions and references to historical incidents are always best appreciated when understood through one's own efforts, and but slight help has been offered in the notes. The collection could not have been made without the generous permission of authors and publishers for the use of the articles of which it consists. The editor gratefully acknowledges his indebtedness to Messrs. Little, Brown and Company for Lafcadio Hearn's Fuji-no-Yama; to Miss Agnes Repplier and Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin Company for Woman Enthroned; to Mr. John Macy and Messrs. Doubleday, Page and Company for Mark Twain; to Mr. Charles S. Brooks and The Yale University Press for Journeys to Bagdad; to Mr. Truman J. Spencer for The Staging of Shakespeare; to Mr. Eugene Manlove Rhodes and The Order of Bookfellows for Say Now Shibboleth; to Mrs. Katharine Fullerton Gerould and The Atlantic Monthly Company for Movies; and to the George H. Doran Company for Private School and Holidays. He is equally indebted to Messrs. Henry Holt and Company for permitting his use of Mrs. Dorothy Canfield Fisher's Notes from a French Village in the War Zone, William James's On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings, Mr. William Beebe's Hammock Nights, Mr. Walter Lippmann's A Key to the Labor Movement, Mr. Simeon Strunsky's The Game, Miss Lillian D. Wald's Children and Play, Mr. Robert C. Benchley's From Nine to Five, and to Mrs. Fisher, the Estate of William James, Mr. Beebe, Mr. Lippmann, Mr. Strunsky, Miss Wald, and Mr. Benchley for adding their permission to that of the publishers. |