Child's Garden of Verses

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. The greatest task which confronts the little Child is the mastering of the mother tongue in its three phases Speech, reading, and writing. In the accomplishment Of this task, nothing is so helpful as the hearing and reading Of large quantities of suitable poetry. This fact was well known to the people of antiquity. Before the age Of writ ing, the laws and traditions Of each tribe were handed down through the medium of verse. Verse was Chosen rather than prose, because its form facilitated memorizing and furnished a guarantee of accuracy. When the law or tradition had been once thrown into the poetic form it was difficult to Change its meaning without destroying its form and this would at once furnish a test of correctness.