From Lovell's The Young

Speaker, 1844.

The most interesting feature of Lovell's The Young Speaker, New Haven, 1844, was the numerous pictures. The book, as a whole, was planned for a school reader, but it was the purpose of the pictures to "inculcate the art of graceful and eloquent gesture." The first of the two engravings reproduced

presents the side view of a boy making his bow before an audience. With a

Making the Prelimi- gentle but assured step, he approaches to nary Bow to the near the front of the platform, a little on Audience. the right of the centre, then pausing for a moment, he casts his eyes with a diffident respect, over the audience; slides out his left foot on the toe, in a straight line; then supporting the body on that foot, he draws in the right foot until its heel comes into the middle or hollow of the left

foot; he then presses his legs together, and dropping his eyes modestly to the floor, brings his body into a slight and graceful curve, the arms hanging perfectly free. In this posture the body is kept for an instant; he then rises slowly to an erect attitude, and is ready to commence speaking.

The second cut indicates

how to express "painful observation, surprise, alarmed compassion, and the like."

An Expressive Attitude. From Lovell's The Young Speaker.

Μ Mosett

XI

ARITHMETIC

OST teachers, even in the days of the first settlers, gave some instruction in mathematics, but it was a long time before such instruction was made obligatory. In Massachusetts only reading and writing were required in the elementary schools until the enactment of a law in 1789, which said there must also be arithmetic, the English language, orthography, and decent behavior. Of these added requirements the first was generally felt to be of the most practical importance, and a reputation as an "arithmeticker" was to any teacher a valuable asset. Nothing was more likely to assist a man in getting a school than the ability to do any sum in arithmetic. To be "great in figures" was to be learned.

Books by native writers in all departments had begun to supersede those imported from England, and in place of Hodder's and Dilworth's Arithmetics, the famous treatise by Nicholas Pike of Newburyport, published in that town in 1788, gained wide acceptance—an acceptance aided, no doubt, by the flattering testimonials it received from George Washington and other dignitaries. It was a pretentious 8vo of 512 pages with a range almost encyclopædic, and it served to give tone to all the arithmetic study

of the early district-school period. Rules were omnipresent in it. There was indeed a rule for nearly every page, and many of them were calculated to tax the understanding of a pupil severely to grasp their meaning. Some of the problems, too, required for their mastery a great deal of genuine mathematical capacity.

A majority of the district-school pupils, including practically all the girls, ciphered only through the four fundamentals of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, with a short excursion into vulgar fractions. They won distinction among their mates if they penetrated into the mysteries of the Rule of Three; and to cipher through “Old Pike” was to be accounted a prodigy.

The manuscript of this first American arithmetic was ready in 1785, and after the manner of early school-book authors, both in this country and in England, "Nicholas Pike, Esq.," submitted it in that form to various worthies to get their opinions as to its merits. They responded with polite commendations, which, as was usual, were printed in the book. For many years after the volume was issued, it held the foremost place among text-books of its class. A preface in 1793 to an abridged edition, especially prepared for use in the public schools, speaks of the larger book as "That celebrated work, which is now ufed as a claffical book in all the Newengland Univerfities."

Here are a few items from the table of contents that will give some idea of the ground Pike attempted

to cover;

Extraction of the Biquadrate Root

Pensions in Arrears at Simple Interest

Barter

Alligation Medial

Of Pendulums

A Perpetual Almanac

To find the Time of the Moon's Southing

Table of the Dominical Letters according to the Cycle of the Sun

To find the Year of Indiction

Table to find Easter from the year 1753 to 4199
Plain Oblique Angular Trigonometry

To measure a Rhombus

To gauge a mash Tub

The Proportions and Tonnage of Noah's Ark.

Congress established "Federal money on the decimal plan in 1786; but twenty years elapsed before its use became at all general, and Pike treats it as something of a curiosity. English money was our standard. In that denomination accounts were kept, and until after the first decade of the nineteenth century, it continued to have prominent place in our arithmetics. Coins of many kinds were current during the early years of the republic, and the school children had to learn the comparative value of these moneys. Besides Federal money, there were four varying currencies issued by the individual states. Then there were English and Irish coins, and the Continental Johannes, Pistoles, Moidores, Doubloons, etc. The labor involved in the computation of ordinary business transactions at this period was appalling.

I have mentioned the Rule of Three. It was recognized as an arithmetical landmark and I give Pike's definition:

The Rule of Three teacheth, by having three numbers given, to find a fourth, that shall have the fame proportion to the third, as the fecond to the first.

This is sufficiently clear; but some of the book's explanations are quite unintelligible to the present generation, as for instance:

When tare, and tret and cloff are allowed.

Deduct the tare and tret, and divide the futtle by 168, and the quotient will be the cloff, which fubtract from the suttle, and the remainder will be the neat.

One fails to make any sense out of such a jumble until he reads the definitions appended to it.

Tare is an allowance, made to the buyer, for the weight of the box, barrel, or bag which contains the goods bought. Tret is an allowance of 4 b in every 104 lb for waste, duft, &c.

Cloff is an allowance of 2lb upon every 3 cwt. Suttle is, when part of the allowance is deducted. Neat weight is what remains after all allowances are made.

Another rule that has an equally unfamiliar sound to modern ears is this:

To find the Gregorian Epact.

Subtract II from the Julian Epact: If the subtraction. cannot be made, add 30 to the Julian Epact; then fubtract,