find "The Dog," "The Stag," and "The Squirrel" described, a paragraph to each. Then there was a half-page disquisition about time. The read

ing otherwise consisted of short disconnected sentences containing as a rule wise advice, or statements of interesting facts. Nearly every page had

some of these sentences, and they numbered over a thousand in all. Below are selections from them, beginning with the shortest and simplest :

an ox

is it so

I am to go in

He has got a new tub

The man can put on his wig

I love the young lady that shows me how to read.
Vipers are bad snakes, and they bite men.

I saw a rill run down the hill.

Visitors should not make their visits too long.
Style not in verse is called prose.

The birds fly from branch to branch on the trees and clinch their claws fast to the limbs.

Wolves howl in the woods, in the night.

Never pester the little boys.

The lark will soar up in the sky to look at the sun.

Forks have two or three tines.

Shut the gate, and keep the hogs out of the yard.

The dysentery is a painful disease.

Our blood is often chilled at the recital of acts of cruelty. When large hailstones fall on the house they make a great racket.

Pompions are commonly called pumpkins.

The chewing of tobacco is a useless custom.

Many kings have been thrown down from their thrones. The rainbow is a token that the world will not be drowned again.

Christ is a mediator between an offended God and offending man.

A piece of cloth, if good, is worth what it will bring.
Friday is just as lucky a day as any other.

It is a mean act to deface the figures on a mile stone.
The ladies adorn their heads and necks with tresses.
Fiction is a creature of the imagination.

It is every man's duty to bequeath to his children a rich inheritance of pious precepts.

The love of whiskey has brought many a stout fellow to the whipping-post.

Large bushy whiskers require a good deal of nursing and training.

The little sentences make a curious medley, and are not at all childlike; yet they have a certain lively straightforwardness and are often picturesque and entertaining. They inculcate thrift, sobriety, and the other virtues, and considerable instruction is conveyed by them, though some of it is rather indigestible. All the editions of Webster's book from first to last have about them a certain crudity and primitiveness, but the book was suited to the times and regions when and where it most flourished. It did its work well, and it would have made Noah Webster's fame secure, had he produced nothing else. Its sway weakened first in New England, but its use continued to increase in the South and West until the Civil War began. Since then the sales have dwindled, yet there are schools where it is studied even at present, and "The Old Blueback" stands unrivalled among American books in circulation and length of life.

VIII

OTHER SPELLERS

OHN LOCKE, in 1690, said of elementary school education in England, "The method

JR

is to adhere to the ordinary road of the Hornbook, Primer, Psalter, Testament, and Bible; these are the only books used to engage the liking. of children and tempt them to read.' "The ordinary road" was the same here. There were three reading classes in the schools-"The Psalter Class for beginners, next "The Testament Class," and thirdly "The Bible Class," which went through about two chapters at each school session and was expected to spell the words in the portions read. For a long time spelling-books were lacking, and they did not become common much before 1750; but after that time for fully three-quarters of a century the spelling-book was almost the sole resource of the school children for elementary instruction. Advanced readers were in the market in the early years of the republic, but readers for the beginners seem to have been thought unnecessary. Thus the spellers of the forefathers did double duty as spelling-books and primers, and were a much more important institution than they have ever been since.

During the years immediately preceding the Revolution, Dilworth's speller was accepted almost universally, but Noah Webster's book presently supplanted it. The next American speller to take the field was The Child's Companion, a small, thin volume compiled by Caleb Bingham. As compared with most of the early text-books, The Child's Companion was bright and attractive. Like all the

re-ply fet-tee tranf-late un-wife
re-port fe-vere tranf-grefs u-nite
re-prieve fhal-loon tranf-plant un-feen

TABLE VI.

Eafy Leffons, confifting of Monofyllables, ta
be read without fpelling.

LESSON I.

My child, love God with all thy heart.

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Let it be thy joy to do his will.

O do not go in the way of fin!

Turn thy feet from the road to death.

From Bingham's The Child's Companion.

older spellers, it contained fragments of rudimentary prose and verse, and every few pages the "Eafy Leffons" for reading made a pause in the column of spelling words. The "Eafy Leffons" consisted very largely of moral advice and reflections selected from the Bible, but in the latter part of the book were a number of fables and stories. Two of the stories follow: