to-morrow; though undoubtedly it will take a long time to develop power machines which can make use of such forces. It took us several generations to develop effective steamengines. The devices that will be necessary to use atomic energy will, of course, be much more complex and much more difficult to develop.

One thing is certain: if we ever learn to harness atomic energy and to harness it in any effective way, the result will be a new world to live in. We have seen that the harnessing of metals and of steam and gas and electric power has made our world very different from that in which people lived before this harnessing occurred. These devices made it possible for us to use natural powers and thus to multiply our own powers. Now the natural powers that are concealed in the atom are much greater than the natural powers that we have yet harnessed. If this energy is harnessed and used wisely, it will mean enormous things for our living together well.

CLASS ACTIVITIES

1. Pick out the best question on your list and ask one of your classmates to answer it. Does it produce a good answer? If not, why? Will your questions bring out the most important points in the selection? Through class discussion agree on a list of the ten most valuable questions.

2. Read the selection a second time so that you may be able to answer each question on the class-list. Be able to tell where the answer to each question is found.

3. In this selection the author discusses in turn nine sources of power: coal, petroleum, natural gas, water power, tides, the sun, winds, plants, the atom. Why does he treat these sources of power in this order? Would it make any difference if he had taken them up in some other order? Explain.

4. Name the chief sources of power in the industries in your community. If the supply of these sources should be exhausted, on what would your local industries depend?

5. Read the passage in which the main difference between our supply of water power and our supply of coal is pointed out.

6. Of what paragraph in Slosson's "Three Stages in Human Progress" does this selection remind you most? Why?

7. What is most needed in order to use the atom as a source of power? Did a similar need appear in the past in the use of other sources of power? Explain with examples.

ADDITIONAL READINGS.

1. “Billions of Barrels of Oil Locked Up in Rocks," in National Geographic Magazine, 33:195–205. 2. "Hastening the Downfall of King Coal," in Literary Digest, 78:7-9. 3. 66 Gambling with Mother Earth," W. G. Shepherd, in Harper's Magazine, 143:245-252. 4. "The Nation's Undeveloped Resources," F. K. Lane, in National Geographic Magazine, 25:183-225. 5. "America in the Air," ibid., 40:339–352. 6. "When Our Country is Fifty Years Older," R. Zon, ibid., 20: 573-580.

3. THE GLORY OF TOIL

EDNA DEAN PROCTOR

Read this poem slowly, stopping to think with each line of examples of the work mentioned or of preceding selections suggested by the line.

Whether they delve in the buried coal, or plow the upland soil, Or man the seas, or measure the suns, hail to the men who toil!

It was stress and strain, in wood and cave, while the primal

ages ran,

That broadened the brow, and built the brain, and made of a brute, a man;

And better the lot of the sunless mine, the fisher's perilous

sea,

Than the slothful ease of him who sleeps in the shade of his bread-fruit tree;

For sloth is death and stress is life in all God's realms that are, And the joy of the limitless heavens is the whirl of star with star!

Still reigns the ancient order to sow, and reap, and spin; But oh, the spur of the doing! and oh, the goals to win, Where each, from the least to the greatest, must bravely bear

his part

Make straight the furrows, or shape the laws, or dare the crowded mart!

And he who lays firm the foundations, though strong right arm may tìre,

Is worthy as he who curves the arch and dreams the airy spire;

For both have reared the minster that shrines the sacred fire.

Floods drown the fairest valleys; fields droop in the August

blaze;

Yet rain and sun are God's angels that give us the harvest

days,

And toil is the world's salvation, though stern may be its

ways:

Far from the lair it has led us far from the gloom of the

Till lo, we are lords of Nature instead of her crouching slave!

And slowly it brings us nearer to the ultimate soul of things: We are weighing the atoms, and wedding the seas, and cleaving the air with wings;

And draining the tropic marshes where death had lain in wait,
And piercing the polar solitudes, for all their icy state;
And luring the subtle electric flame to set us free from the

O toiling Brothers, the earth around, we are working together with God!

With God, the infinite Toiler, who dwells with His humblest

ones,

And tints the dawn and the lily, and flies with the flying

suns,

And forever, through love and service, though days may be drear and dim,

Is guiding the whole creation up from the depths to Him!

CLASS ACTIVITIES

Give definite examples,

1. Tell what you brought to the poem. mentioning the lines to which you contributed.

2. Word study:

a. Make a list of the words which you cannot understand after you have done your best to grasp their meaning from the way they are used in the poem. Look up these words in the glossary.

b. Without consulting the glossary, write sentences containing the words which follow, in the sense in which they appear in the poem: delve, stress, primal, slothful, mart, minster, lair, ultimate, atoms, infinite. Give yourself ten points for each word you used correctly. Did you have the words you missed in the list you made in answer to a above?

3. Explain with illustrations these expressions: "man the seas"; "still reigns the ancient order"; "shape the laws"; "cleaving the air with wings"; "wedding the seas"; "draining the tropic marshes where death had lain in wait"; "piercing the polar solitudes."

4. Make a list of the selections of which any four lines in this poem Prepare your list as shown below.

remind you.

Line 1: "Whether they delve in the buried coal, or plow the upland soil."

This reminds me of these selections:

a. "Pioneers! O Pioneers!"

b. "The First Farmers."

c. "What the Earliest Men Did for Us."

d. "Three Stages in Human Progress."

e. "What of the Future?"

Be able to explain definitely how the chosen line suggests or reminds you of the various selections in your list.

For example, line 1, quoted above, suggests two passages in the last stanza of a. "Pioneers! O Pioneers!" namely:

a. "Vexing we and piercing deep the mines within," and

b. "We the virgin soil upheaving."

Before making your list talk over the other selections which are listed above as being suggested by line 1 and tell how this line suggests each of them.

5. Does this poem contradict the third paragraph from the end in Slosson's "Three Stages in Human Progress," p. 75? Explain. Does Slosson believe that "toil is the world's salvation"?

6. Make a list of five different occupations suggested in this poem; as, for example: miner, farmer.

7. How is toil glorious? Read the line, or lines, which best show its chief glory.

1. "Radium

CLASS-LIBRARY READINGS

CONQUESTS OF THE FUTURE

the Riddle of Science," Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia, 7: 2959–2961.

2. "Nature's Chief Tool and Its Amazing Powers," ibid., 9:36933697.

3. "The Wonderful Unseen Worker," Book of Knowledge, 17: 5471

5475.

GENERAL REVIEW

READING HABITS

(To be read together by teacher and pupils)

An author goes about his work in much the same way as a builder of houses or skyscrapers. Before an author begins to write, like a successful builder, he usually makes a plan; for he, too, is a builder, a builder of thought. Instead of using wood, stone, and concrete for materials, he employs words and sentences and paragraphs in which to express his ideas. In order that his thought may be clear, he must arrange his ideas in an orderly manner; he must follow a plan.

The plans followed by authors are of a few easily recognized types. In writing stories and narratives they usually follow the time order of the events described. The plan, or structure, of the selection in this case is very much like a chain, each of the important incidents or episodes forming a link in the chain. Such a plan may be represented like this:

In the story "Turkey Red," for example, the four main episodes, or links, which make up the story, or the chain, are: first, the ride across the plain; second, the struggle with the blizzard; third, the fight to save the baby; fourth, the promise of the railroad.

Another plan authors frequently follow is to begin with a general statement, or a general description, and then follow with a number of