A LESSON ABOUT DRUNKARDS IN THE 1879 EDITION OF MCGUFFEY'S FIFTH ECLECTIC READER

[摘要] Many have hailed the McGuffey Eclectic Readers as major influences not only in American education but in American morals and culture as well. It is estimated that 122,000,000 copies were sold between 1836 and 1920.A recurrent lesson in these Readers is the evils of drink. In the 1879 edition of the Fifth Reader, McGuffey chose this piece by John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) to show the young reader the wretched effects of alcohol.. . . One fine morning, not long ago, I strolled down the Merrimac, on the Tewksbury shore. . . . The path winds, green and flower-skirted, among beeches and oaks, through whose boughs you catch glimpses of waters sparkling and dashing below.. . . Half fatigued with my walk, I threw myself down upon a rocky slope of the bank, where the panorama of earth, sky, and water lay clear and distinct about me. . . . Over all a warm but softened sunshine melted down from a slumberous autumnal sky.My revery was disagreeably broken. A low, grunting sound, half bestial, half human attracted my attention. I was not alone. Close beside me, half hidden by a tuft of bushes, lay a human being, stretched out at full length, with his face literally rooted into the gravel. A little boy, five or six years of age, clean and healthful, with his fair brown locks and blue eyes, stood on the bank above, gazing down upon him with an expression of childhood's simple and unaffected pity.

[学科分类] 儿科学