Full Title: The Young Woman’s Companion: or, Frugal Housewife. Containing the most approved methods of pickling, preserving, potting, collaring, confectionary, managing and colouring foreign wines and spirits, making English wines, compounds, &c. &c. Also the art of cookery, containing directions for dressing all kinds of butchers’ meat, poultry, game, fish, &c. &c. &c. with the complete art of carving, illustrated and made plain by engravings. Likewise instructions for marketing. With the theory of brewing a malt liquor. To which are added, directions for letter writing, drawing, painting, &c. and several valuable miscellaneous pieces. Written by “A Very Distinguished Lady.” Contains several recipes and notes pinned into the margins by the owners. Printed by Russell and Allen in Manchester, 1811.
RULES FOR READING,
And particularly of the Emphasis belonging to some special Word or Words, in a Sentence.
In order to read well, observe the following directions: 1. Take pains to acquire a perfect knowledge of the sounds of the letters in general. 2. Do not guess at a word at first sight, if you are not well acquainted with it, lest you get a habit of reading falsely. 3. Pronounce every word clear and distinctly. 4. Let the tone of your voice in reading be the same as in speaking. 5. Do not read in a hurry, for fear of learning to stammer. 6. Read so loud as to be heard by those about you, but not louder. 7. Observe your pauses well, and never make any, where the sense will admit of none. 8. Humour your voice a little according to the subject. 9. Attend to those who read well, and endeavour to imitate their pronunciation. 10. Read often before good judges, and be thankful when they correct you. 11. Consider well the place of the emphasis in a sentence, and pronounce it accordingly. By emphasis we mean the stress or force of voice that is laid on some particular word or words in a sentence, whereby the meaning and beauty of the whole may best appear; this, with respect to sentences, is the same as accent, with regard to syllables.
The emphasis is generally placed upon the accented syllable of a word; but if there be a particular opposition between two words in a sentence, whereby one differs from the other but in part, the accent is sometimes removed from its common place, as in the following instance: The sun shines upon the just and upon the unjust. Here the stress of the voice is laid upon the first syllable in unjust, because it is opposed to just in the same sentence but without such an opposition, the accent would lie on its usual place, that is on the last syllable; as We must not imitate the unjust practices of others.
The great and general rule how to know the emphatical word in a sentence, is, to consider the chief design of the whole; but particular directions cannot be easily given, except that when words are evidently opposed to one another in a sentence, they are emphatical, and so is oftentimes the word which asks a question, as, Who what, when &c. but not always; for the emphasis must be varied according to the principal meaning of the speaker.
Eighteenth-Century Reading Room 