KD 32877 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts. HARVARD 047*172 NOTE. Ir we would adequately supply the Freedmen with religious truth, we must connect it with their early efforts in reading. This is the ground on which we have proceeded in publishing our series of Christian Readers. This Third Reader is believed to be adapted to the wants of the Freedmen in the following particulars :· 1. It contains elementary instruction in respect to the history and government of our country. 2. It contains interesting biographies of colored persons. 3. It presents to the Freedmen the life and words of ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 4. It is thoroughly Christian, containing numerous selections from able and interesting writers on religious subjects, and from the Word of God. The introductory instructions are made as brief as possible, for the reason that a few rules, understood and used, are better than many neglected. GEO. C. RAND & AVERY, CONTENTS. 1.-The Creation.-Light and Air........11 37.-Declaration of Independence Clouds and Seas......13 38.-The Quaker Heroine................. 73 Living Things........17 42.-A Psalm of Life......... Adam and Eve.......18 43.-Toussaint L'Ouverture.-Part First.. 81 30.- 66 How it was Settled.........59 66.-Prayer......... .134/108.-The Schoolmaster is Abroad... .136 109.-State Governments.................202 ..139 110.-The Discoverer of the Mississippi...203 75.-Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers.....141 111.-Duties of Children to Parents .......205 78.-Inauguration.. 79.-Not all for one.. 80-President Lincoln's last Inaugural..151 116.-Asia ..... ....... 87.-Humility.. 88.-Choosing Jesus.... 96.-The African Ox.. 100.-The Holy Spirit... 103.-"Somebody's Child " 106.-Turning the Grindstone 107.-"What's the Use ?". 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. 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 one vowel. Read the following sentence, and count the vowels and consonants in each word: "O kind friends! right thoughts are good strength." Sometimes two or three of 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? 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' |