If we mistake not, three of the commonest questions anticipated and answered, or at least discussed, in the preface to a book like this are: First, why a new book at all? Second, where, or at what stage of the student’s course, may it be taken up most profitably? And third, how or with what method of instruction should it be used?

As to the first question, we offer no elaborate apology for this compilation, but simply say that we have thought the material worth editing. The title, Ährenlese or Gleanings, should not be taken to imply that we had a hard time in gathering what we offer, nor that we think we have left the field bare behind us, but rather that the ears and stalks, though somewhat trimmed by us before being bound together, are indigenous fruits of the good old German soil and not the product of our own cultivation.

The second question it would be presumptuous for us to attempt to answer ex cathedra, but we believe that, as far as the mere reading matter is concerned, this collection should prove neither too advanced for high school use nor too elementary for college use. Of this, however, every teacher can judge best for himself.

Even on the third question we go no farther than to say that we believe the frequent, though unforced, repetition of the vocabulary of this book and the thoroughly idiomatic exercises adapt it to ready use with any mode of instruction. Moreover, after many years’ experience in reading both Harvard and “Board” admission examinations, we are by no means inclined to make a shibboleth of any “Method.” We are, however, in hearty accord with the Direct Method, or for that matter with any other, as long as it encourages a thorough understanding of what is read and an intelligent application of linguistic principles to the actual and correct use of the foreign tongue.

These two ends we have aimed to further not only by questions and exercises based on the text, which do not differ essentially from the customary ones, but also by a vocabulary which does differ from most others in its fulness of detail, and which may therefore require a word of explanation.

Our reasons, then, for incorporating such extended lexicographical and grammatical comment in the vocabulary were these: First, the desire to dispense with a separate body of notes, which since the coming into use of questions and exercises has made the very handling of some Readers more difficult for the student than it ought to be. Second, the conviction that the beginner needs more explicit information than is usually offered regarding the inflection of the nouns, adjectives, and verbs that he is expected to learn in the course of his reading. And, third, the belief that although it is well for the student not to consult the vocabulary until he has exerted his own wits to the utmost in getting at the meaning of new words or phrases, lest he become a slave thereto, it is equally important that whenever he does resort to it he should find there, and just then, all the information which the full understanding of the text, the answering of the questions, and the reproduction of the text involved in the exercises can reasonably call for.

In conclusion we might add that it is just such immediate and intensive study of all common words, phrases, and constructions that constitutes one of the most valid claims of the Direct Method to its name and distinction. Too often, however, in our opinion, the rash adoption of this method as something new has resulted in the most indirect and expensive way of teaching, as well as of learning, that modicum of grammar and syntax without which all study of language is doomed sooner or later to end in disappointment.

H. C. BIERWIRTH A. H. HERRICK

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, December, 1917.