EN FRANCE ARRANGED AS A READER BY EDITH HEALY NEW YORK .:. CINCINNATI .:. CHICAGO PREFACE THIS reader is presented to the High Schools in the hope that it will arouse a desire for serious work in the boys and girls who are preparing for their college entrance examinations, and also that it will facilitate the study of the French classics. It is by no means intended, in this reader, to supply all that will be required at the college examination. The book is meant to be merely a help and stimulus to the pupils in the work which lies before them. haps an example will serve to illustrate my meaning. Per It was my good fortune to number among my friends a man of letters who for ten years before his death was a confirmed invalid. He could not read for any length of time, and he was compelled to dictate all his articles, not being able to hold a pen. His patience was a wonder to me, and I once said, "You must find that time sometimes weighs heavily upon you." His look of surprise abashed me, all the more so when he answered in a gentle voice: "I am never lonely, and certainly never bored. My memory is a storehouse full of the results of a lifetime of study. I call into existence, at will, any amount of company; heroes of all ages are my friends, and when the spirit moves me, I recite either aloud or to myself whole scenes of plays as familiar to me as to any actor, and these recitations are a joy to me." I then saw, as in a flash, this man sitting in a garden making hieroglyphics in the sand with his walking stick. I remembered his amused laughter as he quoted the lines of Molière's Médecin malgré lui. He spoke them with the same boyish delight which those scenes must have aroused in him when a child. |