The bibliography is added for two other classes of persons: those who desire to make a somewhat further and more minute study of type developments, and those who wish merely to read extensively or selectively in the works of fiction and history themselves. The list of books and authors is intended simply to be helpful, not exhaustive, and consequently contains, with but few exceptions, only those works that one might reasonably expect to find in a well-stocked college or city library.
I confess I hope that some amateur writer out of college or high school may chance upon the book and be encouraged by it to persevere. There are many delightful hours possible for one who enjoys composition, if he can but get a bit of a lift here and there or a new impulse to an occasionally flagging imagination. All but the very earliest literature has been produced thus--namely, by a conscious writing to a type, with an idea either of direct imitation, as in the case of Chaucer, who gloried in his "authorities;" or of variation and combination, as in the case of Walpole; or of equaling or surpassing in excellence, as in the case of James Fenimore Cooper; or of satire and supersedence, as in the case of Cervantes.
But to go back to the student themes here presented. They were written, with the exception of two, for regular class credit. These two were printed in a college paper as sophomore work. A number of the remaining came out in school publications after serving in the English theme box. All in all, they are the productions of actual students; from whom, it is hoped, other young writers may get some help and a good deal of entertainment. In each case the name of the author is affixed to his narrative, since he alone is responsible for the merits and faults of the piece.
In regard to the Filipino pupils no word is necessary: they speak for themselves. The work here given as theirs is theirs. I have not treated it in any way different from the way I treat all school themes, American or other. It is everyday work--criticized by the instructor, corrected by the pupil, and returned to the English office. The examples could be replaced from my present stock to the extent literally of some ten, some twenty, some two hundred fold. Naturally, of course, as is true of all persons using a foreign language, the Filipinos mistake idiom more often than anything else, and they write more fluently than they talk; but there is among them no dearth of material and no lack of thought. Indeed, the publishers have been embarrassed by the supply of interesting stories, especially in the earlier types. The temptation has been to add beyond the limits of the merely helpful and illustrative and to pass into the realm of the curious and entertaining. Regardless of literary quality, Filipino themes have today an historic value; many of them are the first written form of hitherto only oral tradition.