A Sequel to the Gradual Reader

A Sequel To The Gradual Reader by David Bates Tower is a nineteenth-century educational collection created as a companion to the Gradual Reader. It gathers reading lessons, moral extracts, poetry selections, fables, dialogues, and essays intended to cultivate language, moral sensibility, and mental discipline in young readers. The volume includes prefatory notes on articulation and reading technique, examples of inflection and emphasis, and a broad suite of Reading Lessons, Moral and Select Sentences, Selections in Poetry, and Narrative Pieces such as The Garden of Peace, Jonathan’s Voyage to Amsterdam, The Envious Lobster, The Dove and the Toad, and The Alpine Adventures. Designed as a practical drill book for schools, it pairs literary selections with exercises in pronunciation, pauses, and clausal emphasis, as well as short didactic stories about virtue, industry, imagination, self-control, and kindness. The work reflects 19th-century American educational ideals emphasizing character formation through literature and rhetoric.