Excerpt from A Beginner's History The material out of which the child pictures history lies all about him. When he learns to handle objects or observes men and other beings act, he is gathering material to form images for the stories you tell him, or those he reads. So supple and vigorous is the child's imagination that he can put this store of material to use in picturing a fairy story, a legend, or a myth. From this same source - his observation of the people and things about him - he gathers simple meanings and ideas of his own. He weaves these meanings and ideas, in part, into the stories he reads or is told. From the cradle to the grave he should exercise this habit of testing the men and institutions he studies by a comparison with those he has seen. The teacher should use the stories in this book to impress upon the pupil's mind the idea that life is a constant struggle against opposing difficulties. The pupil should be able to see that the great men of American history spent their lives in a ceaseless effort to conquer obstacles. For everywhere men find opponents. What a struggle Lincoln had against the twin difficulties of poverty and ignorance! What a bat tle Roosevelt waged with timidity and a sickly boyhood! And what a tremendously courageous and vigorous man he became! In the fight which men wage for noble or ignoble ends the pupil finds his greatest source of interest. Here he forms his ideas of right and wrong, and deals out praise and blame among the characters. Hence the need of presenting true Americans patriotic Americans - for his study. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.