Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Studies in American History
Not only is there this dramatic advantage, as we may call it, in the use of the source, but it has the further advantage of giving historic training from the very start. In using the sources, the pupil must do his own feeling and thinking; no one tells him that Drake was a pirate, or that the last days of Columbus were pathetic and bitter with ingratitude; he has the chance to see these things for himself; his Opinions are formed, his sympathies aroused, by the nearest possible contact with the man and the deed.
In this way, the use Of the source has a vast advantage over the mere reading Of a narrative. The use of the source means the use of one's faculties upon it, and beside it the reading of a narrative is but passive work. In the latter case, the work is already done; the sources alone give one a chance to study history rather than to read it, and to interpret it according to the light of his own time. The narrative is like a painted curtain before the drama of life which you behold in the sources. But in that very drama we must train our children to play their part.
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