Samuel Kirkham
English Grammar in familiar Lectures, accompanied by a Compendium, embracing a new systematic order of Parsing, a new system of Punctuation, exercises in false Syntax, and a System of Philosophical Grammar in notes: to which are added an Appendix, and a Key to the Exercises: designed for the use of Schools and Private Learners. By Samuel Kirkham. Eleventh Edition, enlarged and improved.' In conformity to the act of Congress of the United States, entitled 'an act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the time therein mentioned.' And also to an act entitled 'an act supplementary to an act entitled an act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned, and extending the benefits thereof to the arts of designing, engraving, and etching historical and other prints. This work is mainly designed as a Reading-Book for Schools. In the first part of it, the principles of reading are developed and explained in a scientific and practical manner, and so familiarly illustrated in their application to practical examples as to enable even the juvenile mind very readily to comprehend their nature and character, their design and use, and thus to acquire that high degree of excellence, both, in reading and speaking, which all desire, but to which few attain. The last part of the work, contains Selections from the greatest master?pieces of rhetorical and poetical composition, both ancient and modern. Many of these selections are taken from the most elegant and classical American authors, writers whose noble productions have already shed an unfading lustre, and stamped immortality upon the literature of our country. In the select part of the work, rhetorical marks are also employed to point out the application of the principles laid down in the first part. The very favorable reception of the work by the public, and its astonishingly rapid introduction into schools, since its first publication in 1833, excites in the author the most sanguine hopes in regard to its future success.
