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This book is intended to take the place in our common schools, heretofore occupied by the English Reader, and other similar works. In adapting it to our own time and country, it has been thought proper to confine the selections exclusively to the works of American writers, for the double purpose of rendering the young reader familiar with the literature of his own land, and of placing before him topics of the most immediate interest. In accordance with the spirit of this plan, a large portion of the matter has been selected from Western writers, and treats of interesting subjects connected with this portion of the Union. It is a work of Western origin and manufacture; having been prepared in this city expressly for the use of our own schools, and published here by means of our own workmanship and materials.

Cincinnati, December, 1833.

THE

WESTERN READER.

LESSON 1.

Early Life of Washington.—MARSHALL. 1. GEORGE WASHINGTON, the third son of Augustine Washington, was born in Virginia, at Bridges Creek, in the county of Westmoreland, on the 22d February, 1732.

2. He was the great grandson of John Washington, a gentleman of a very respectable family in the North of England, who had emigrated about the year 1657, and settled on the place where young Mr. Washington was

born.

3. Very early in life, the cast of his genius disclosed itself. The war in which his country was then engaged against France and Spain, first kindled those latent sparks which afterwards blazed with equal splendor and advantage; and at the age of fifteen, he urged so pressingly to be permitted to enter the British Navy, that the place of a midshipman was obtained for him.

4. The interference of a timid and affectionate mother, suspended, for a time, the commencement of his military

course,

5. He lost his father at the age of ten years, and received what was denominated an English education, a term which excludes the acquisition of other languages than our

own.

6 As his patrimonial estate was by no means considerable, his youth was employed in useful industry; and in the practice of his profession as a surveyor, he had an opportunity of acquiring that information respecting vacant

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lands, and of forming these opinions concerning their future value, which afterwards greatly contributed to the increase of his private fortune..

LESSON II.

Gratitude to God.-JOHN E. Hall.

1. Ir is fit that we should acknowledge that we owe all to the government of Supreme Wisdom.

2. Shall man, dressed in a little brief authority, forget the power that sent him hither, and vaunt himself in the presence of Him who reigneth King over all the earth, who sits on the clouds, who causes seas to flow and storms to rage, who makes the winds and the waves, who speaks in thunder, and convulses the world with earthquakes?

3. He erects thrones and principalities, and preserves or destroys them according to his will.

4. All history, and every tradition attest this truth, that nations are exalted by virtue or destroyed by vice.

5. It is the God of nature that crowns the labors of the husbandman with plenty, that causes the seed of his furrows to vegetate, that brings him from the harvest field with joy, bearing his sheaves in his bosom. He it is that bids the vegetable tribes to expand their leaves at the proper season, and ripens their delicious fruits into maturity.

6. He preserves and supports the animal creation in all the variety of their different species, without extinction, mixture or confusion. For the beasts of the forest are his, and the cattle on a thousand hills, and he opens his liberal hand, and supplies the wants of every thing that lives.

7. The same Providence that snatched Moses from the brink of the river, and imbued him with all the learning of Egypt, that he might deliver a nation from bondage and become their ruler, prepared our Washington to achieve our independence, and establish the principles of our polity.

8. He gave him wisdom in council, intrepidity in action, untiring perseverance under the most discouraging circumstances; He bound his brows with a wreath of laurel more glorious than aught that Plutarch has described or Homer

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