North American First Class Reader: the Sixth Book of Tower's Seires for Common Schools, in Which the Higher Principles of Elocution Are Explained and Illustrated by Appropriate Exercises

North American First Class Reader: The Sixth Book Of Tower's Seires For Common Schools, In Which The Higher Principles Of Elocution Are Explained And Illustrated By Appropriate Exercises by David Bates Tower and Cornelius Walker. This book is a pedagogical manual and graded reader intended to teach elocution and reading in American schools. It presents a structured approach to voice, articulation, inflection, pitch, stress, pause, tempo, and transition, combining theoretical introductions with practical exercises. The volume includes a Preface outlining aims to elevate reading beyond mere taste, followed by sections on Principles of Elocution, Pitch, Monotone, Quantity, Rate, and Transition, as well as Reading Lessons and a study of prefixes and postfixes. It features a large corpus of selections—poems and prose—designed to exercise taste, intellect, and moral sensibility, alongside notes on how to teach, how selections should be chosen, and how students should engage with the material. As part of Tower’s school-book series, the work emphasizes moral refinement, language analysis, and the teacher-pupil dynamic in developing commanding reading and eloquence.