ing about. The
publishers of the "Newly Revised McGuffey Readers," therefore, sought
to replace the older edition wherever it was in use and to displace
competing books wherever possible. The edition of 1843 acquired large
sales over a very wide territory in the central West and South. It is
the edition generally known by the grandfathers of the school boys of
the present day.

It may be interesting to name some of the selections in this Rhetorical
Guide issued in 1844 since in modified form the work has been the
highest reader of the series.

[Selections of Value]

As a guide toward rhetorical reading the book contained a carefully
prepared collection of rules and directions with examples for practice
in Articulation. Inflection, Accent and Emphasis, Reading Verse, for the
Management of the Voice and Gesture. These pages were intended for drill
work, and in those days the teachers were not content with the dull
monotonous utterance of the words or with mere mastery of thought, to
be tested by multitudinous questioning. If the pupil obtained from the
printed page the very thought the author intended to convey, the pupil
was expected to read orally so as to express that thought to all
hearers. If the correct thought was thus heard, no questions were
needed. The test of reading orally is the communication of thought by
the reader to the intelligent and attentive hearer, and the words of the
author carry this message more accurately than can any other words the
pupil may select.

[Noted Selections]

The selections in the Rhetorical Guide were made, first of all, to teach
the art of reading. There was therefore great variety. Second, to
inculcate a love for literature. Therefore the selections were taken
from the great writers,--poets, orators, essayists, historians, and
preachers. The extracts are wonderfully complete in themselves,--one
does not need to read the whole of Byron's Don Juan to appreciate the
six stanzas that describe the thunder-storm on the Alps. Of the poetical
extracts all the users of this book will remember Southey's "Cataract
of Lodore" with its exacting drill on the ending,--"ing," Longfellow's
"Village Blacksmith" and the "Reaper and the Flowers;" Bryant's
"Thanatopsis" and "Song of the Stars;" Wolfe's "Burial of Sir John
Moore;" Gray's "Elegy;" Mrs. Hemans's "Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers;"
Cowper's "My Mother's Picture;" Jones's "What Constitutes a State;"
Scott's "Lochinvar;" Halleck's "Ma