Next to correctness the most important feature in a book for the young is clarity. To achieve this one must not treat more subjects than can be handled with sufficient fullness for comprehension. Attempts to write a little about everything are fatal to lucidity. The writer for the young finds all his skill taxed to be clear and to be interesting, and the two things lie close together. One of the highest benefits that a good textbook in the hands of a good teacher can confer is to leave the pupil with a relish for historical reading.

The order in which the various topics are treated has much to do both with the clearness and the interest of a history. In the strictly chronological history the reader skips from theme to theme, resuming under several dates the broken thread of now this and now that story. The relation of cause and effect is almost entirely lost, and history becomes a succession of events with little logical connection. The understanding is benumbed, the attention is but feebly roused, imagination slumbers, and memory gets small hold on occurrences that are presented like beads unstrung. The rigid grouping of a history by epochs is fatal to a truly logical arrangement. One of the most important of the novel features of the present history is its arrangement. Discoveries, settlements, Indians and Indian wars, colonial life, the French wars, government in colonial time and the rise of the Revolution, and other kindred topics, are severally grouped together, so that, for instance, the pupil learns about the nature of Indian life, the chief Indian wars, and the means of attack and defense used by white men and Indians in successive chapters, pursuing this general subject until it is finished. Cause and effect are thus clearly set before his mind, and history becomes a reasonable science.

The reviews are not placed at regular intervals, according to a stiff mechanical rule, but these also follow in the main the same rule of grouping as the chapters. When a chief topic is completed, there is a review, whether the chapters be many or few.

The "proper knowledge of mankind is man," and the real importance of history lies in the light that it throws upon humanity. For this reason liberal attention has been here given to the domestic and social life of the people, their dress, their food, their modes of thought and feeling, and their ways of making a livelihood. The succession of events in minor wars would only weary the attention, but the modes of attack and defense and the character of the arms of the various belligerents are essential facts in the history of man in this New World. And the story of the progress of civilization, as marked by the introduction of new inventions and by changes in modes of living, is of primary importance in any history written in the modern spirit.

This is from first to last a schoolbook. No other aim has been in view in its preparation than that of making the best possible teaching book of American history. The length and arrangement of the chapters, the questions, topical and geographical studies, and skeleton outlines, as well as the reviews, are all arranged with reference to the needs of teacher and pupil. An effort has here been made to apply to history in a thorough and practical way the great Pestalozzian principle of teaching through the eye. The suggestions for blackboard illustrations, the diagrams, the abounding illustrations, and the little maps scattered through the pages, are all part of a plan to make the facts of history visible, and by that means to render the study easily comprehensible and therefore delightful.

Instead of a few large maps in various colors and confused with many names, among which the pupil must grope painfully for the places that pertain to the events under consideration, there are in this history more maps than chapters, and every one of the smaller maps is arranged to bear upon one fact, or at most upon two or three in close relation. Only so many names are put upon each map as are necessary to make clear the event under consideration. Not only is the pupil saved from much needless toil by this plan, but maps thus arranged serve the double purpose of elucidating the narrative and impressing it on the memory at the same time, by giving it form to the eye. Each little map becomes a local diagram of some historical fact, and the form of the map will remain in the memory inseparably associated with the event to which it belongs—a geographical body to an historical soul. Educational writers have said much about the importance of teaching geography and history together. There is not, perhaps, any better device for teaching the two branches in unison than these simple and perspicuous maps, each immediately associated on the page with the single event to which it pertains.

Though the illustrations are by some of the best artists and engravers of the time, and are many of them of high artistic merit, and though they are far more abundant than is usual in books of this kind, there has been no thought of making this a mere picture book. The illustrations are part and parcel of the teaching apparatus; their primary use, like that of the maps, diagrams, and blackboard exercises, is to make the history visible. A very considerable body of historical knowledge of the most important kind might be acquired from these cuts alone. Illustrations of costumes, manners, implements, arms, jewels, vehicles, and inventions are valuable in proportion to their truthfulness. Those here given have been made under the author’s personal supervision, and they have cost quite as much labor and study as the text itself. Many are founded on rare prints, others are from ancient original drawings not before printed, and a few have been carefully drawn from descriptions of contemporary writers. The device of placing many of the smaller cuts in the margin serves to make the page more pleasing to the eye, while it has rendered it possible to illustrate abundantly without unduly increasing the size and cost of the book. The author cannot forbear expressing his appreciation of the liberality with which the publishers have availed themselves of so many of the resources of the modern art of illustration to enhance the value of this history. The illustrations have been made under the artistic supervision of Mr. John A. Fraser.

In English as She is Taught; a definition is cited from a schoolboy’s exercise book to the effect that "the Constitution of the United States is that part at the back of the book which nobody reads" Since no schoolboy or schoolgirl ever does read it, and since it is not a document meant to be construed by children, it seemed better to utilize the space for other things than to reprint the Constitution for mere claptrap. The same remark applies to the Declaration of Independence. But I have, instead, explained the purport of the Declaration of Independence in its place, and I am sure the pupil will get far more from the account given in this work of the various departments of our government, their origin, and their operation under the Constitution, than from reading the letter of the Constitution itself.

One of the main difficulties the writer of a school history has to meet is in the treatment of recent history, many particulars of which are still matters for difference of opinion. Real historic judgment on these things must be deferred to a generation that had no part in them. Manifestly a schoolbook, since it is frequently prescribed by public authority, should be free from partisanship. I have tried, however, to state admitted facts frankly, without offensive terms or a premature judgment on disputed points.

By omitting the numbers usually placed at the beginning of paragraphs, the book has been relieved of stiffness; by printing the subject of each paragraph in the margin, a means of reference far more convenient is provided. This feature is part of the general design of the book, which aims to keep before the minds of teacher and pupils the salient features of the topic under discussion, and thus to discourage mere rote study.