The Standard First[-fifth] Reader ...

of the more difficult words in the volume, is not offered as a substitute for that indispensable auxiliary in the schoolroom, a Dictionary, but is presented and referred to for the very purpose of developing and stimulating a taste for consulting the Dictionary, and for inquiring into the derivation and pronunciation of doubtful words.

The practice of appending a string of questions to every reading exercise is regarded as superfluous or impertinent by so many judicious teachers, that the feature has been not reluctantly omitted from this work. Some one has truly remarked that teachers of even ordinary skill require no printed set of questions for their guidance; they are able to construct a thousand varied questions out of every lesson that passes through their hands, and they have only to guard against the error of allowing their zeal to carry them away to subjects irrelevant to the lessons before them.

The most scrupulous care has been observed in admitting nothing of a questionable character, in either a moral or literary respect, into this volume. The "Standard Fourth Reader" is submitted with the assurance that should it not be found to meet the wants of teachers, it will not be through the failure on the part of the author of a very thorough inquiry into those wants, or of a patient examination of all the works, throwing light upon his labors, which both the Old World and the New have produced.

CONTENTS.

The names of authors and subjects, alphabetically arranged, will be found
embraced in the Explanatory Index at the end of the volume. For an explanation
of the marks of reference in Parts I. and II., see pages 76, 77.

Where the names of authors are Italicized in the following Table, or at the end

of pieces in Part II., it is intended to indicate that all such pieces have been trans-

lated, abridged or altered, expressly for this work.