From The Malte Brun School Geography, 1842.

Peter Parley's National Geography, 1845, was the earliest, I believe, to take the large, flat quarto

atlas; and in a few years the 12mos had been entirely abandoned. The chapters of the National Geography were enlivened with poetical introductions, and there were occasional other verses. The following selection, the last I have to make from the geographies of our forefathers, is this jingle description of "a general custom of moving, in the city of New York, on the first of May."

Bustle, bustle! Clear the way!

He moves, they move, we move, to-day;
Pulling, hauling, fathers calling,
Mothers brawling, children squalling,
Coaxing, teasing, whimpering, prattling;
Pots and pans and kettles rattling;
Tumbling bedsteads, flying bedspreads,
Broken chairs, and hollow wares,
Strew the streets - 'Tis moving day!

XIV

GRAMMARS, HISTORIES, AND MINOR TEXT-BOOKS

T

THE two most successful makers of text-books in the period immediately following the Revolution were Noah Webster and Caleb Bingham. The former's spelling-book outstripped the latter's Child's Companion, but none of Bingham's books were failures, and his American Preceptor and the Columbian Orator were more widely used than Webster's readers or any others.

Caleb Bingham was born in what was then the new town of Salisbury in the northwestern corner of Connecticut in 1757. Many Indians still dwelt in the vicinity, and they were of such doubtful character that the people had always to be on their guard against a treacherous assault. Sundays the pioneers went to church armed; and the log structure used for a meeting-house had portholes, and a sentinel was stationed at the door. These frontier conditions gave little chance for education, but tradition says. Caleb studied with the minister and thus prepared for college. He entered Dartmouth in 1779, and as soon as he graduated began to teach.

He came to Boston in 1784, and established a school for girls, but presently gave this up and taught in the public schools of the city. Still later he became a bookseller and publisher. He was an old-fashioned man, and almost to the time of his

death, in 1817, went about attired in a cocked hat and small clothes, white vest and stock, and black silk stockings. In summer he wore shoes with silver buckles, and in winter white-topped boots.

Next to his reading-books, Bingham's most famous publication was "The Young Lady's Accidence: or a fhort and easy Introduction to English Grammar. Defigned principally for the use of young Learners, more especially those of the FAIR SEX, though proper for either." The title-page also contained this couplet:

Delightful tafk! to rear the tender thought,
To teach the young idea how to shoot.

The date of the first edition was 1799. The book treats the subject with admirable simplicity and clearness, the type is good, and the little volume is a very pleasing contrast to the dull, crowded pages of nearly all the other grammars of the time. A hundred thousand copies are said to have been sold. It was the first English grammar used in the Boston schools, and was one of the earliest grammars ever prepared by an American author, its only predecessor of importance being Part II of Webster's Grammatical Institute. Both these books gave place to the grammar by Lindley Murray, which in its numerous abridgments was used for several decades almost to the exclusion of every other work dealing with the subject. Murray was born in Pennsylvania in 1745, and as a young man acquired considerable reputation and wealth as a lawyer in New York City. But in 1784 he went to England to reside, and it

was there he wrote his grammar, published in 1795, and his several other school-books brought out within the next few years. Mr. Murray is described as modest in manner, humane and generous, and, in spite of bad health, unfailingly cheerful. His books were all works of solid merit, though not very palatable to children. The grammar looks dreary to the last degree now, and it must have had something of the same aspect even in the heyday of its popularity. There is a tradition that a friend of the author's once said to him, "Of all contrivances invented for puzzling the brains of the young your grammar is the worst,' and this anecdote is quite believable. Murray, however, introduced system into the treatment of the subject, and is known not unjustly as "the father of English Grammar.

A man has stolen a bundle, and he is running away
with it.

Here he and it are pronouns, because they stand for nouns, and save the trouble of repeating them. If it were not for the pronouns, we should have to say, a man has stolen a bundle, and the man is running away with the bundle; but the pronouns save the necessity of repeating the words man and bundle.

From Murray's Grammar, adapted to the present mode of Instruction by Enoch Pond,