HARVARD Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1852, by DAVID B. TOWER AND CORNELIUS WALKER, La the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts PREFACE. THE extensive and increasing use of the Gradual Reader, so well received, and the often-urged request of teachers for another book of a similar character to precede the North American Second Class Reader, have resulted in the preparation of the "Sequel," adapted to the capacities of the children in the middle classes of our common schools. Many of the reading lessons have been entirely rewritten, and the others, for the most part, so altered from the original, that it is deemed inexpedient to give the authors' names. Suffice it to say, the selections are generally from the best writers of our country, northern and southern, and of England. The pieces, with two or three exceptions, have the merit of being new, and it is hoped such as will interest as well as instruct the young reader. To cultivate a taste for the pure, the beautiful, and the true, is the surest safeguard against the demoralizing influence of the mawkish sentimentalism and gilded vice which are sown broadcast over the land, creating and ministering to a depraved appetite. Consequently, the pure and the elevating in moral sentiment, the beautiful and the sublime KD33029 PREFACE. in nature, the simple and the truthful in actual life, have been sought for by us, as the only healthy food for the growing mind. With these views, we have tried to exclude the flat, unprofitable pieces, too generally selected for the class of readers for whom this book is designed; as if a reading lesson, to be simple and easy, must necessarily be unmeaning and silly. How far we have accomplished these desirable ends, must be left to the discernment of school committees and teachers to decide. Grammatically, much labor has been expended in trying to remove all obscurity arising from looseness of expression, and the many inaccuracies that too often abound in writings intended for the young. A few lessons are given in articulation, to aid teachers in removing the more prominent faults of those pupils who have never been regularly trained to distinctness of utterance by the Exercises in the Gradual Reader. The simple explanations, with tables and illustrative ex amples, of inflection, emphasis, &c., are commended to the notice of teachers, not for their instruction, but that they may have at hand suitable exercises for drilling pupils on any one of those points, should their deficiency render it necessary. PARK STREET, Boston, |