CHAPTER VI

SCHOOL-BOOKS

_The most worthless book of a bygone day is a record worthy of preservation. Like a telescopic star, its obscurity may render it unavailable for most purposes, but it serves in hands which know how to use it to determine the places of more important bodies._

--_A. de Morgan, 1847._

When any scholar could advance beyond hornbook and primer he was ready for grammar. This was not English grammar, but Latin, and the boy usually began to study it long before he had any book to con. A bulky and wretched grammar called Lilly's was most popular in England. Locke said the study of it was a religious observance without which no scholar was orthodox. It named twenty-five different kinds of nouns and devoted twenty-two pages of solid print to declensions of nouns; it gave seven genders, with fifteen pages of rules for genders and exceptions. Under such a régime we can sympathize with Nash's outburst, "Syntaxis and prosodia! you are tormentors of wit and good for nothing but to get schoolmasters twopence a week."

It was said of Ezekiel Cheever, the old Boston schoolmaster, who taught for over seventy years, "He taught us Lilly and he Gospel taught." But he also wrote a Latin grammar of his own, _Cheever's Accidence_, which had unvarying popularity for over a century. Cheever was a thorough grammarian. Cotton Mather thus eulogized him:--

"Were Grammar quite extinct, yet at his Brain The Candle might have well been Lit again."

There was brought forth at his death a broadside entitled _The Grammarian's Funeral_. A fac-simile of it is here given. Josiah Quincy, later in life the president of Harvard College, wrote an account of his dismal school life at Andover. He entered the school when he was six years old, and on the form by his side sat a man of thirty. Both began _Cheever's Accidence_, and committed to memory pages of a book which the younger child certainly could not understand, and no advance was permitted till the first book was conquered. He studied through the book twenty times before mastering it. The hours of study were long--eight hours a day--and this upon lessons absolutely meaningless. [Ilustration:

The Grammarians Funeral,

OR,

An ELEGY compo[f.]ed upon the Death of Mr. _John Woodmancy_, formerly a School-Ma[f.]ter in _Bo[f.]ton_: But now Publi[f.]hed upon the DEATH of the Venerable

Mr. Ezekiel Chevers,

The late and famous School-Ma[f.]ter of _Bo[f.]ton_ in _New-England_; Who Departed this Life the _Twenty-fir[f.]t_ of _Augu[f.]t_ 1708. Early in the Morning. In the Ninety-fourth Year of his Age.

Eight Parts of _Speech_ this Day wear _Mourning Gowns_ Declin'd _Verbs, Pronouns, Participles, Nouns_. And not declined, _Adverbs_ and _Conjunctions_, In _Lillies_ Porch they [f.]tand to do their functions. With _Prepo[f.]ition_; but the mo[f.]t affection Was [f.]till ob[f.]erved in the _Interjection_. The _Sub[f.]tantive_ [f.]eeming the limbed be[f.]t, Would [f.]et a hand to bear him to his Re[f.]t. The _Adjective_ with very grief did [f.]ay, Hold me by [f.]trength, or I [f.]hall faint away. The Clouds of Tears did over-ca[f.]t their faces, Yea all were in mo[f.]t lamentable _Ca[f.]es_. The five _Declen[f.]ions_ did the Work decline, And _Told_ the _Pronoun Tu_, The work is thine: But in this ca[f.]e tho[f.]e have no call to go That want the _Vocative_, and can't [f.]ay O! The _Pronouns_ [f.]aid that if the _Nouns_ were there, There was no need of them, they might them [f.]pare: But for the [f.]ake of _Empha[f.]is_ they would, In their Di[f.]cretion do what ere they could. Great honour was confer'd on _Conjugations_, They were to follow next to the _Relations_. _Amo_ did love him be[f.]t, and _Doceo_ might Alledge he was his Glory and Delight. But _Lego_ [f.]aid by me he got his skill, And therefore next the _Her[f.]e_ I follow will. _Audio_ [f.]aid little, hearing them [f.]o hot, Yet knew by him much Learning he had got.-- O _Verbs_ the _Active_ were, Or _Pa[f.][f]ive_ [f.]ure, _Sum_ to be _Neuter_ could not well endure: But this was common to them all to Moan Their load of grief they could not [f.]oon _Depone_. A doleful Day for _Verbs_, they look [f.]o _moody_, They drove Spectators to a Mournful Study. The _Verbs_ irregular, 'twas thought by [f.]ome, Would break no rule, if they were plea[f.]'d to come. _Gaudeo_ could not be found; fearing di[f.]grace He had with-drawn, [f.]ent _Mæreo_ in his Place. _Po[f.][f]um_ did to the utmo[f.]t he was able, And bore as Stout as if he'd been A _Table_. _Volo_ was willing, _Nolo_ [f.]ome-what [f.]tout, But _Malo_ rather cho[f.]e, not to [f.]tand out. _Po[f.][f]um_ and _Volo_ wi[f.]h'd all might afford Their help, but had not an _Imperative Word_. _Edo_ from Service would by no means Swerve, Rather than fail, he thought the _Cakes_ to Serve. _Fio_ was taken in a fit, and [f.]aid, By him a Mournful P O E M [f.]hould be made. _Fero_ was willing for to bear a part, Altho' he did it with an aking heart. _Feror_ excus'd, with grief he was [f.]o Torn, He could not bear, he needed to be born.

Such _Nouns_ and _Verbs_ as we defective find, No _Grammar_ Rule did their attendance bind. They were excepted, and exempted hence, But _Supines_, all did blame for negligence. _Verbs_ Offspring, _Participles_ hand-in-hand, Follow, and by the [f.]ame direction [f.]tand: The re[f.]t Promi[f.]cuou[f.]ly did croud and cumber, Such Multitudes of each, they wanted Number. Next to the Corps to make th' attendance even, _Jove, Mercury, Apollo_ came from heaven. And _Virgil, Cato_, gods, men, Rivers, Winds, With _Elegies_, Tears, Sighs, came in their kinds. _Ovid_ from _Pontus_ ha[f.]t's Apparell'd thus, In Exile-weeds bringing _De Tri[f.]tibus_: And _Homer_ [f.]ure had been among the Rout, But that the Stories [f.]ay his Eyes were out. _Queens, Cities, Countries, I[f.]lands_, Come All Trees, Birds, Fi[f.]hes, and each Word in _Um_.

What _Syntax_ here can you expect to find? Where each one bears [f.]uch di[f.]compo[f.]ed mind. Figures of Diction and Con[f.]truction, Do little: Yet [f.]tand [f.]adly looking on. That [f.]uch a Train may in their motion _chord_, _Pro[f.]odia_ gives the mea[f.]ure Word for Word.

_Sic Mæ[f.]tus Cecinit_,

Benj. Tomp[f.]on.] ]

The custom was in Boston--until this century--to study through the grammar three times before any application to parsing.

Far better wit than any found in an old-time jest book was the sub-title of a very turgid Latin grammar, "A delysious Syrupe newly Claryfied for Yonge Scholars yt thurste for the Swete Lycore of Latin Speche."

The first English Grammar used in Boston public schools and retained in use till this century, was _The Young Lady's Accidence, or a Short and Easy Introduction to English Grammar, design'd principally for the use of Young Learners, more especially for those of the Fair Sex, though Proper for Either_. It is said that a hundred thousand copies of it were sold. It was a very little grammar about four or five inches long and two or three wide, and had only fifty-seven pages, but it was a very good little grammar when compared with its fellows, being simple and clearly worded.

The fashion of the day was to set everything in rhyme as an aid to memory; and even so unpoetical a subject as English Grammar did not escape the rhyming writer. In the _Grammar of the English Tongue_, a large and formidable book in fine type, all the rules and lists of exceptions and definitions were in verse. A single specimen, the definition of a letter, will show the best style of composition, which, when it struggled with moods and tenses, was absolutely meaningless.

"A Letter is an uncompounded Sound Of which there no Division can be Found, Those Sounds to Certain Characters we fix, Which in the English Tongue are Twenty-Six."

The spelling of that day was wildly varied. _Dilworth's Speller_ was one of the earliest used, and the spelling in it differed much from that of the British Instructor. A third edition of _The Child's New Spelling Book_ was published in 1744. Famous English lesson-books known among common folk as "Readamadeasies," and book traders as "Reading Easies"--really Reading made easy--belied their name. Some had alphabets on two pages because "One Alphabet is commonly worn out before the Scholar is perfect in his Letters." It is interesting to find "Poor Richard's" sayings in these English books, but it is natural, too, when we consider Franklin's popularity abroad, and know that broadsides printed with his pithy and worldly-wise maxims were found hanging on the wall of many an English cottage.

SUMMER

Summer succeeds.--The sun now darts his beams with greater force, and the days are at the longest. The flocks and herds not being able to endure the scorching heat of the sun, retire beneath the shade of some spreading tree, or the side of some cooling stream or river. The wanton youths betake themselves to the waters and swim with pleasure over the liquid surface. Early in the morning the careful mower walks forth with his scythe on his shoulder, and sometimes with a pipe in]

Not until the days of Noah Webster and his famous Spelling Book and Dictionary was there any decided uniformity of spelling. Professor Earle says the process of compelling a uniform spelling is a strife against nature. Certainly it took a long struggle against nature to make spelling uniform in America. In the same letter, men of high education would spell the same word several different ways. There was no better usage in England. The edition of Milton's _Paradise Lost_ printed in 1688 shows some very grotesque spelling. Therefore it is not strange to find a New York teacher advertising to teach "writeing and spilling."

To show that a fetich was made of spelling seventy-five years ago, I give this extract from a Danbury school notice:--

"The advantages that small children obtain at this school may be easily imagined when the public are informed that those who spell go through the whole of Webster's spelling book twice a fortnight."

The teaching of spelling in many schools was peculiar. The master gave out the word, with a blow of his strap on the desk as a signal for all to start together, and the whole class spelled out the word in syllables in chorus. The teacher's ear was so trained and acute that he at once detected any misspelling. If this happened, he demanded the name of the scholar who made the mistake. If there was any hesitancy or refusal in acknowledgment, he kept the whole class until, by repeated trials of long words, accuracy was obtained. The roar of the many voices of the large school, all pitched in different keys, could be heard on summer days for a long distance. In many country schools the scholars not only spelled aloud but studied all their lessons aloud, as children in Oriental countries do to-day: and the teacher was quick to detect any lowering of the volume of sound and would reprove any child who was studying silently. Sometimes the combined roar of voices became offensive to the neighbors of the school, and restraining votes were passed at town-meetings.

The colonial school and schoolmaster took a firm stand on "cyphering." "The Bible and figgers is all I want my boys to know," said an old farmer. Arithmetic was usually taught without text-books. Teachers had manuscript "sum-books," from which they gave out rules and problems in arithmetic to their scholars. Abraham Lincoln learned arithmetic from a "sum-book" of which he made a neat copy. A page from this sum-book is here given in reduced size. Too often these sums were copied by the pupil without any explanation of the process being offered or rendered by the master. The artist Trumbull recalled that he spent three weeks, unaided in any way, over a single sum in long division.

A manuscript sum-book in my possession is marked, "Sarah Keeler her Book, May ye 1st, A.D. 1773, Ridgbury." There are multiplication examples of fifteen figures multiplied by fifteen, and long division examples of a dividend of quintillions, chiefly in sevens and nines, divided by a mixed divisor of billions in eights and fives--a thing to make poor Sarah turn in her grave. There are Reductions Ascending and Reductions Descending and Reductions both Ascending and Descending at the same time, as complicated as the computations of the revolutions of the celestial spheres. There are miserable catch-examples about people's ages and others about collections of excises, with "Proofs," and still others about I know not what, for there are within their borders mysterious abbreviations and signs, like some black magic. Sainted Sarah Keeler! a melancholy sympathy settles on me as I regard this book and all the extended sums you knew, and think of the paths of pleasantness of the present pupils of kindergartens; and wonder what kind of a mathematical song or game or allegory could be invented to disguise these very "plain figures."

Sometimes a zealous teacher would write out tables of measures and a few blind rules for his scholars. This amateur arithmetic would be copied and recopied until it was punctuated with mistakes.

Many scholars never saw a printed arithmetic; and when the master had one for circulation it was scarcely more helpful than the sum-book. One of the most ancient arithmetics was written by the mathematician Record, who lived from the year 1500 to 1558. He is said to have invented the sign of equality =, but there is nothing in his book to indicate this fact. The terms "arsemetrick" and "augrime" are used in it, instead of arithmetic. Many curious and obsolete rules are given, among them, "The Golden Rule," "Rule of Falsehood," "The Redeeming of Pawnes of Geams," "The Backer Rule of Thirds." Here is a simple problem under the latter:--

"I did lend my friend 3/4 of a Porteguise 7 months upon promise that he should do as much for me again, and when I should borrow of him, he could lend me but 5/12 of a Porteguese, now I demand how long time I must keep his money in just Recompence of my loan, accounting 13 months in the year."

Rhyme is used in this book, in dialogues between the master and scholar. Copies of _Cocker's Arithmetick_ are said to be very rare in England, but I have seen several in America. An edition was published in Philadelphia in 1779. The frontispiece of English and American editions shows the picture of the mathematician surrounded by a wreath of laurel with the droll apostrophe:--

"Ingenious Cocker! Now to Rest thou 'rt Gone Noe Art can Show thee fully but thine Own Thy rare _Arithmetick_ alone can show What vast Sums of Thanks wee for Thy Labour owe."

"Ingenious Cocker," as one would say "Most noble Shakespeare!" It is hard indeed to idealize or write poetical tributes to one by the name of Cocker. It gives us a sense of pleasant familiarity with any one to know that he is "well acquaint" with one of our intimate friends, so I feel much drawn to ingenious Cocker by knowing that he was well known of Sam Pepys. He was a writing master, and did some mighty fine engraving for Pepys, who calls him ingenuous, not ingenious. It is rather a facer to learn from the notes in the Diary that Cocker had nothing whatever to do with his Arithmetic, which was a forgery by John Hawkins.

The age that would rhyme a grammar would rhyme an arithmetic, and Record's example was followed and enlarged upon. Thomas Hylles published one in 1620, _The Arte of Vulgar Arithmiteke_, written in dialogue, with the rules and theorems in verse. This is an example of his poesy:--

"THE PARTITION OF A SHILLING INTO HIS ALIQUOT PARTES.

"A farthing first finds forty-eight A Halfpeny hopes for twentiefoure Three farthings seeks out 16 streight A peny puls a dozen lower Dicke dandiprat drewe 8 out deade Twopence took 6 and went his way Tom trip a goe with 4 is fled But Goodman grote on 3 doth stay A testerne only 2 doth take Moe parts a Shilling cannot make."

In 1633 Nicholas Hunt added to his rules and tables an "Arithmetike-Rithmeticall or the Handmaid's Song of Numbers," which rhymes are simply unspeakable. These attempts did not end with the seventeenth century. In 1801 Richard Vyse had a _Tutor's Guide_ with problems in rhyme.

"When first the Marriage Knot was tied Between my Wife and Me My age did hers as far exceed As three times three does three. But when Ten years and half ten Years We man and wife had been Her age came up as near to mine As eight is to sixteen. Now tell me I pray What were our Ages on our Wedding Day?"

The earliest date of the old rhyme,--

"Thirtie daies hath September, Aprill, June and November, Februarie eight and twentie alone, all the rest thirtie and one."

is given by Halliwell as 1633. I have found it in an old arithmetic printed in London in 1596. The lines beginning "Multiplication is vexation," are not an outburst of modern students. They are found in a manuscript dated 1570 circa.

"Multiplication is mie vexation And Division quite as bad, The Golden rule is mie stumbling stule, And Practice makes me mad."

After the Revolution, in new and zealous Americanism, text-books by American authors outsold English books. The blue-backed spelling book of Noah Webster drove Perry and Dilworth from the field. Bingham and Webster took advantage of the need of suitable school-books and divided the field between them. Webster's Spelling Book outstripped Bingham's _Child's Companion_, but Bingham's Readers, such as _The American Preceptor_ and _The Columbian Orator_ held their ground against Webster's. Not one of Bingham's books proved a failure. _The Columbian Orator_ contained seven extracts from speeches of Pitt in opposition to the measures of George III., it had speeches by Fox and Sheridan, part of the address of President Carnot at the establishment of the French Republic, and the famous speech of Colonel Barré on the Stamp Act.

Nicholas Pike of Newburyport, Massachusetts, wrote an arithmetic that routed the English books of Cocker and Hodder. It was studied by many persons now living. It had three hundred and sixty-three barren rules, and not a single explanation of one of them. Many of them would now be wholly unintelligible to scholars, though no more antiquated than are the methods; for instance, this rule in Tare and Trett:--

"Deduct the Tare and Trett. Divide the Suttle by amount given; the Quotient will be the Cloff which subtract from the Suttle the Remainder will be the Neat."

The tables of measures were longer than ours to-day; in measuring liquids were used the terms anchors, tuns, butts, tierces, kilderkins, firkins, puncheons, etc. In dry measure were pottles, strikes, cooms, quarters, weys, lasts. Examples in currency were in pounds, shillings, and pence; and doubtless helped to retain the use of these terms in daily trade long after dollars had been coined in America. This labored book, aided by the flattering testimonials of Governor Bowdoin, of the Presidents of Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth Colleges, and of that idolized American, George Washington, gained wide acceptance.

I have examined with care a _Wingate's Arithmetic_ printed in 1620, which was used for over a century in the Winslow family in Massachusetts. "Pythagoras his Table," is, of course, our multiplication table. Then comes, the "Rule of Three," the "double Golden Rule," the "Rule of Fellowship," the "Rule of False," etc., etc., ending with "Pastimes, a collection of pleasant and polite Questions to exercise all the parts of Vulgar Arithmetick." Here is one:--

"This Problem is usually propounded in this manner, viz. fifteen _Christians_ and fifteen _Turks_ being at Sea in one and the same Ship in a terrible Storm, & the Pilot declaring a necessity of casting the one half of those Persons into the Sea, that the rest might be saved; they all agreed that the persons to be cast away should be set out by lot after this manner, viz. the thirty persons should be placed in a round form like a _Ring_, and then beginning to count at one of the Passengers, and proceeding circularly, every ninth person should be cast into the Sea, until of the thirty persons there remained only fifteen. The question is, how those thirty persons ought to be placed, that the lot might infallibly fall upon the fifteen _Turks_ & not upon any of the fifteen _Christians_? For the more easie remembering of the rule to resolve this question shall presuppose the five vowels, a, e, i, o, u, to signifie five numbers to wit, (a) one, (e) two, (i) three, (o) four, and (u) five; then will the rule it self be briefly comprehended in these two following verses:--

From numbers, aid and art Never will fame depart.

In which verses you are principally to observe the vowels, with their correspondent numbers before assigned, and then beginning with the _Christians_ the vowel _o_ (in _from_) signifieth that four _Christians_ are to be placed together; next unto them, the vowel _u_ (in _num_) signifieth that five _Turks_ are to be placed. In like manner _e_ (in _bers_) denoteth 2 _Christians_, _a_ (in _aid_) 1 _Turk_, _i_ (in _aid_) 3 _Christians_, _a_ (in _and_) 1 _Turk_, _a_ (in _art_) 1 _Christian_, _e_ (in _ne_) 2 _Turks_, _e_ (in _ver_) 2 _Christians_, _i_ (in _will_) 3 _Turks_, _a_ (in _fame_) 1 _Christian_, _e_ (in _fame_) 2 _Turks_, _e_ (in _de_) 2 _Christians_, _a_ (in _part_) 1 _Turk_.

"The invention of the said Rule and such like, dependeth upon the subsequent demonstration, viz. if the number of persons be thirty, let thirty figures or cyphers be placed circularly or else in a right line as you see:--

ooooooooooooooo."

I trust the little Winslows and their neighbors understood this sum, and its explanation, and that the Christians were all saved, and the Turks were all drowned.

Geography was an accomplishment rather than a necessary study, and was spoken of as a diversion for a winter's evening. Many objections were made that it took the scholar's attention away from "cyphering." It was not taught in the elementary schools till this century. _Morse's Geography_ was not written till after the Revolution. It had a mean little map of the United States, only a few inches square. On it all the land west of the Mississippi River was called Louisiana, and nearly all north of the Ohio River, the Northwestern Territory. Small as the book was, and meagre as was its information, many of its pages were devoted to short, stilted dialogues between a teacher and pupil, in which the scholar was made to say such priggish sentences:--

"I am very thankful, sir, for your entertaining instruction, and I shall never forget what you have been telling me.

"I long, sir, for to-morrow to come that I may hear more of your information.

"I am truly delighted, sir, with the account you have given me of my country. I wish, sir, it may be agreeable to you to give me a more particular description of the United States.

"I hope, sir, I have a due sense of your goodness to me. I have, sir, very cheerfully, and I trust very profitably, attended your instructions."

A rather amusing _Geographical Catechism_ was published in 1796, by Rev. Henry Pattillo, a Presbyterian minister of North Carolina, for the use of the university students. It is properly and Presbyterianly religious. It gives this explanation of comets:--

"Their uses are mere conjecture. Some judge them the seats of punishment where sinners suffer the extremes of heat and cold. Mr. Whiston says a comet approaching the sun brushed the earth with its tail and caused the deluge, and that another will cause the conflagration."

Let us not be too eager to jeer at these ancient school-books. Pope wrote nearly two centuries ago:

"Still is to-morrow wiser than to-day We think our fathers fools so wise we grow. Our wiser sons no doubt will think us so."

Perhaps the series of text-books which have chased each other in and out of our nineteenth-century public schools under the successive boards of commissioners and school committees who have also flashed briefly on our educational horizon, may cut no better figure two centuries hence than do those of Lilly and Pike and Cocker.