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COPYRIGHT, 1883, by E. H. BUTLER & CO.

WESTCOTT & THOMSON,
Electrotypers and Stereotypers, Philada.

SHERMAN & Co.,
Printers, Phiiada.

PREFACE.

IN the preparation of the FIFTH READER, the object has been to complete the series in such a manner as to meet the requirements of the large majority of pupils who have neither time nor opportunity to enter into an extended study of English and American literature.

In order to accomplish this, selections have been taken from the best authors, beginning with those of the present day, and ranging back, in the order of their birth, to the days of Shakespeare and the English Bible. These selections are accompanied with biographical, critical, and explanatory notes, and definitions, making the book, to some extent, a compendium of English literature without impairing its efficiency as a Reader.

By this plan, the pupil is enabled to institute a comparison between the best efforts of earlier, and more recent authors, and to obtain a clearer view of the very gradual change that has taken place in the English language.

In arranging the materials, place has necessarily been given to many of those standard pieces whose merits have been recognized by previous compilers. It was to such extracts as these that the best of the old series of Readers owed their popularity, and no book of this grade would be complete without them.

The selections in this volume from Hawthorne, Holmes, Longfellow, Lowell, and Whittier are used by permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., who publish the works of these authors. The thanks of the publishers are also due to the Hon. George H. Boker, and to Messrs. D. Appleton & Co. and Messrs. J. B. Lippincott & Co. for permission to use selections from their publications.

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