BOSTON: THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY; INSTITUTED 1814, DEPOSITORIES, 28 CORNHILL, BOSTON; AND 13 BIBLE HOUSE, ASTOR PLACE, NEW YORK. 72.-Manufactures HYMNS, WITH MUSIC. 96.-The African Ox.. 103.-"Somebody's Child". INTRODUCTORY. The following sections are designed for reading-lessons. I. GENERAL RULES FOR READING. 1. Study the reading-lesson carefully before you try to read it aloud. You can not read well what you do not understand. 2. While reading, hold the book in your left hand, avoid stooping forward, keep the shoulders back, and the chest full and round. 3. Speak every word clearly. Remember that every word has a meaning. 4. Read as if you were speaking your own thoughts. 5. Speak loud enough to be heard easily in every part of the room, but do not shout. 6. Commit to memory parts of the lessons, and repeat them with the book shut. 7. Try to learn something useful from each lesson: this will make you interested in it. II. SYLLABLES. 1. When you read the word man, you speak it almost as easily as you would a single letter; yet it is made up of three letters. Letters so united as to be spoken together are called a syllable. 2. If this word were mpn, you could not speak or pronounce it. Try it and see. If it were men, min, mon, or mun, you could pronounce it easily. Every syllable, then, must have in it either a, e, i, o, or u; and these letters are called vowels. Sometimes two or three of these vowels are in one syllable. 3. All the other letters of the alphabet are called consonants; but w and y are sometimes vowels. Consonants and vowels, put together rightly, form syllables. A syllable sometimes has but one letter, and that is always a vowel. 4. Man is a word of one syllable, having one vowel and two consonants; but a syllable may have as many as seven consonants to oue vowel. Read the following sentence, and count the vowels and consonants in each word: "O kind friends! right thoughts are good strength.' 66 What is a syllable? Name the vowels. What other letters are sometimes vowels? What are all the other letters called? Can there be a syllable without a vowel? How many consonants may a syllable have? III. - ACCENT. 1. If you add another syllable to the word man, you form a word of two syllables. Man-ners is such a word. In reading it, you speak the first syllable more strongly than the second. You do not say man-ners, but man-ners; as, "This boy has good manners.” 2. Pronouncing one syllable of a word more strongly than another is called accent. The accented syllable is sometimes marked thus: ac'cent. 3. Some long words have two or three accents. E-man'ci-pa'tion has two, and un-con'sti-tu'tion-al'i-ty has three. No exact rules can be given for the place of the accent; but words of two syllables are more often accented on the first syllable than on the last. 4. The same word has sometimes different meanings according to the accent. Au'gust is the name of a month; august' means grand. Pres'ent means now; to present' is to give. Fre'quent means happening often; to frequent' is to visit often. What is accent? How many accents may a word have? Mention some words that have different meanings according to the accent. IV. - EMPHASIS. 1. The first sentence in Lesson XVI, on page 35, is this: "Do you know what a pilot is?" In reading it, which of the words do you speak most strongly, or with the most force of voice? 2. Is it the word a? "Do you know what a pilot is?” No, you would not read it so poorly as that: you make pilot the most important word. "Do you know what a pilot is?" 3. Speaking one or more words in a sentence more strongly than the rest is called emphasis. No one can read well without emphasizing the right words. 4. How can you learn to give correct emphasis? By understanding well the meaning of what you read. When people talk in earnest, they emphasize the important words. If John would rather play than read, he says, "I don't like to read, I want to play." Emphatic words are sometimes printed in Italics, like the words read and play in the foregoing sentence. What is emphasis? How can you learn to give it correctly? How are emphatic words sometimes printed V. SENTENCES AND PUNCTUATION. 1. A sentence is one or more words expressing a complete thought. When you say "Go!" as a command, you utter a sentence, although you speak but one word. 2. Again you may say: "I go;" or, "I will go to the city to-morrow;" or, "I would go if you would go with me;" or, "Will you go with me?" or, "How I wish |