Text copyrighted 1882. The author is credited with a Master of Arts and as Superintendent of Schools in Aurora, IL. Based on years of classroom experience training children to talk, this text aims to guide the young learner in the correct use of language at the time when he is acquiring a vocabulary and forming habits of speech. The preface states that exercises such as sentence building, filling a blank, parsing, analysis, and correcting errors are not very helpful in correcting habits of speech. Corrects habits are obtained by the exercise of expression wholly one's own. This text aims to teach the form taught through those former means through the practice of original expression. Exercises are meant to be practiced orally before being written. Numerous pictorial illustrations appear throughout, and illustrative excerpts from well known writers of poetry and prose and used as well. The Schultz Archive's copy ends on page 239. It is unclear if this is the last page of the text.
