AN AMERICAN SELECTION, OF LESSONS IN READING AND SPEAKING. CALCULATED TO IMPROVE THE MINDS AND REFINE THE TO WHICH ARE PREFIXED Rules in Elocution, AND DIRECTIONS FOR EXPRESSING THE PRINCIPAL PASSIONS OF THE MIND. ADVERTISEMENT TO THE REVISED EDITION. THE American Selection, tho' well received and much used in schools, has been thought susceptible of improve, ment; the compiler has therefore made some alterations, omitting some pieces which were believed to be less adapted to interest young minds, and substituting others, which cannot fail to be as entertaining as useful. The pres ent edition comprehends a great variety of sentiment, morality, history, elocution, anecdote and description; and it is believed, will be found to contain as much interesting matter, as any compilation of the size and price. NEW HAVEN, SEPT. 1804. 356870 DISTRICT OF CONNECTICUT, 88. BE it remembered that on the thirtieth day of January in the twenty eighth year of the Independence of the United States of America, NOAH WEBSTER, JUN. of said District ESQ. hath deposited in this office the title of a book the right whereof he claims as author, in the words following, viz, "An American Selection of Lessons in Reading and Speaking, calculated to improve the minds and refine the taste of youth -To which are prefixed Rules in Elocution and directions for expressing the principal passions of the mind-By NoдH WEBSTER, JUN. Author of Dissertations on the English Language, Collection of Essays and Fugitive Writings, the Prompter, &c." In conformity to the act of the Congress of the United States, entitled an act for the encouragement of learning by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned. Connecticut, 88. CHARLES DENISON, Clerk of the District of Connecticut. District Clerk's Office, Jan. 30, 1804. CHARLES DENISON, Clerk, LIBRARY FUND DEELY 1940 +1 A RULES FOR READING AND SPEAKING. RULE I. Let your Articulation be clear and distinct. GOOD articulation consists in giving every letter and syllable its proper pronunciation of sound. Let each syllable, and the letters which compose it, be pronounced with a clear voice, without whining, drawling, lisping, stammering, mumbling in the throat, or speaking through the nose. Avoid equally a dull drawling habit, and too much rapidity of pronunciation: for each of these faults destroys a distinct articulation. RULE II. Observe the Stops, and mark the proper Pauses; but make no pause where the sense requires none. The characters we use as stops are extremely arbitrary, and do not always mark a suspension of the voice. On the contrary, they are often employed to separate the several members of a period, and shew the grammatical construction. Nor when they are designed to mark pauses, do they always determin the length of those pauses, for this depends much on the sense and the nature of the subject. A semicolon, for example, requires a longer pause in a grave discourse, than in lively and spirited declamation. However, as children are incapable of nice distinctions, it may be best to adopt, at first, some general rule with respect to the pauses, and teach them to pay the same attention to these characters as they do to the words.* They should be cautioned likewise against pausing in the midst -of a member of a sentence, where the sense requires the words to be closely connected in pronunciation. RULE III. Pay the strictest attention to accent, emphasis and cadence. Let the accented syllables be pronounced with a proper stress of voice; the unaccented, with little stress of voice, but distinctly. The important words of a sentence, which I call naturally emphatical, have a claim to a considerable force of voice; but particles, such as of, to, as, and, &c. require no force of utterance, unless they happen to be emphatical, which is rarely the case. No person can read or speak * See my American Spelling Book, in which the pauses of the comma, semicolon, colon, and period, are fixed at one, two, four, six. |