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THE

STANDARD

FOURTH READER

гов

PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SCHOOLS;

CONTAINING

A THOROUGH COURSE OF PRELIMINARY EXERCISES IN ARTICULATION,
PRONUNCIATION, ACCENT, &c.; NUMEROUS EXERCISES IN
READING; A NEW SYSTEM OF REFERENCES;

AND

A COPIOUS EXPLANATORY INDEX.

BY

EPES SARGENT,

AUTHOR OF "THE STANDARD SPEAKER," "THE FIRST-CLASS STANDARD READER

NINETIETH THOUSAND.

ETC.

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Now Ready.

SARGENT'S COMPLETE SERIES OF SCHOOL READERS.

The Standard Fifth, or FIRST CLASS READER

The Standard Fourth Reader.

The Standard Third Reader.

The Standard Second Reader. (Illustrated)
The Standard First Reader.

Also Ready:

(Illustrated).

Sargent's Six Primary School Charts.

These Charts are twenty-two inches by thirty in size; got up in a new and attractive style, with large type, for beginners in reading, &c.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year eighteen hundred and fifty-five by EPES SARGENT, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the District of Massachusetts.

Many of the single pieces in this collection are protected by the copyright

HARVARD
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

STEREOTYPED BY
HOBART & ROBBINS,
New England Type and Stereotypo Foundery.

BOSTON.

PRINTED BY B. M. EDWARDS.

PREFACE.

LITTLE space has been given in this volume to matter of a speculative character in regard to the art of reading. The best elocutionists are so much at variance as to the feasibility or value of rules for the government of the voice, that no system, based upon such rules, can have a claim to scientific precision, or be much more than a reflex of individual tastes and preferences. As such, a system may perhaps be entitled to consideration, but no teacher, who has himself given much attention to the subject of elocution, can receive it as authoritative, or can wish that it should be so received by his pupils.

Modes of delivery must inevitably vary with the susceptibility of the reader to imaginative impulses, and with the nature of his appreciation of what he reads. To prescribe rules for what, in the nature of things, must be governed by the answering emotion of the moment and by a sympathizing intelligence, may continue to be attempted, but no positive system is likely to be the result. Language cannot be so labelled and marked that its delivery can be taught by any scheme of notation. Emotional expression cannot be gauged and regulated by any elocutionary law; and, though there has been no lack of lawgivers, their jurisdiction has never extended far enough to make them an acknowledged tribunal in the republic of letters and art. Mr. Kean does

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