to the next day. In many cases, the understanding was, that the larger boys must cut the wood as it was wanted. It always lay in the snow, and sometimes the boys were sent to dig it out in school-time, and bring it in, all wet and green as it was, to keep us from freezing. That was the fuel to make fires with in the morning, when the thermometer was below zero, and how the little children cried with the cold, when they came almost frozen, and found no fire burning; nothing but one or two boys blowing and keeping themselves warm as well as they could, by exercise, in trying to kindle it, Such were our schoolhouses and their disaccommodations.

Branches Taught.

"Go to your

They were reading, spelling, and writing, besides the A B C's to children scarcely four years old, who ought to have been at home with their mothers. They were called up twice a day by the master pointing with his penknife, "What's that?" "A." "What's that?" "D." "No, it's B." "What's that?" "N," "No, you careless boy, it's C;" and so down to ezand. seat; you will never learn your lesson in the world, at this rate." Our schoolbooks were the Bible, "Webster's Spelling Book," and "Third Part," mainly. One or two others were found in some schools for the reading classes. Grammar was hardly taught at all in any of them, and that little was confined almost entirely to committing and reciting the rules. Parsing was one of the occult sciences in my day. We had some few lessons in geography, by questions and answers, but no maps, no globes; and as for blackboards, such a thing was never thought of till long after. Children's reading and picture-books, we had none; the fables in Webster's Spelling Book came nearest to it. Arithmetic was hardly taught at all in the day schools. As a substitute, there were some evening schools in most of the districts. Spelling was one of the leading daily exercises in all the classes, and it was better, a good deal, I think, than it is now. The winter schools were commonly kept about three months; in some favored districts four, but rarely as long. As none of what are now called the higher branches were taught beyond the merest elements, parents generally thought that three or four months was enough. There were no winter select schools for the young above the age of sixteen or seventeen, as I remember, till after I retired from the profession, such as it then was. There may have been here and there an academy, in some parts of the State; but not one within the range of

my acquaintance.

At the close of the winter schools we had what we used to call our Quarterdays, when the schools came together in the meeting-house, with a large congregation of parents and friends. The public exercises were reading, spelling, and speaking single pieces and dialogues. Some of the dialogues we wrote ourselves, for our own schools. Most of them were certainly very flat; but they brought down the house, and answered the purpose as well as any we could pick up. We thought then, as I think now, that those quarter-days were of great advantage to the schools. The anticipation of them kept up an inte rest all winter, and stimulated both teachers and scholars to do their best in the way of preparation. As the time approached, we had evening schools for reading and rehearsing the dialogues, so as to be sure not to fall behind in the ex

hibitions: None of our college commencements are now looked forward to with greater interest than were those vernal anniversaries.le

Another thing that helped us a good deal was the occasional afternoon visits of the parents and other friends of the schools. They came in by invitation, or whenever they chose, and their visits always did us good."

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1.Still another practice we found to be quite stimulating and useful. We had a mutual understanding that, without giving any notice, any teacher might dismiss his own school for an afternoon, and, taking along with him some of the older boys, call in to see how his brother teacher got along in the next or some other district. The arrangement worked well. We made speeches, complimented one another as politely as circumstances would allow, and went home resolved not to fall behind the best of them.

In the school, we made up our minds to be masters, in fact as well as in name. Though of late years I have not had very good advantages for making the comparison, I believe the schools were quite as well governed sixty years ago as they are now. Among other things which we did to maintain our authority, was to go out now and then and have a snowball skirmish with the boys, and though we commonly got beat, nothing we could do was more effectual.

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Corporal punishments, I believe, were sparingly resorted to in most of our schools. Though I myself believed in Solomon fully, I never flogged but one scholar in my life, though I shook the mischief out of a great many. I think Sam was of the opinion, in the premises, that the rod was laid on rather smartly, for I understood he promised, some day, to pay me in kind, which, however, I suppose he never found it quite convenient to undertake.

We schoolmasters within convenient distances used to meet in the winter evenings for mutual improvement, which, to own the truth, we needed a good deal. Our regular exercises were reading for criticisms, reporting how we were getting along, and conversing upon the best method of managing our schools. This was very profitable, as we thought, to us all.

In those ancient times, it was an almost universal custom in the rural towns of Connecticut, for the teachers to board round, and upon the whole I liked it. It was a good school for us. By going into all the families we learned a great deal. We were looked upon as having more in our heads than we could fairly claim, and they always kept us on the best they had. It is true, the cooking was not always the best, nor sheets always so clean as to guard against infection; and if, perchance, it sometimes broke out, we knew how to cure it.

Our wages were generally screwed down to the lowest notch by the school committees, under the instruction of the districts. For my first campaign I received seven dollars a month and board; for the next, nine; for the third, ten; and I think I never went above thirteen till quite the last of my teaching before I went to college. As I had some reputation in that line, I suppose I was as well paid as my brethren.

With regard to the summer schools of that period, I have very little to say." They were kept by females upon very low wages, about as much a week as they could earn in families by spiuning or weaving. They took good care of the little children, and taught them as well as they could.

As we had no grammar schools in which the languages were taught, we most

of us fitted for college with our ministers, who, though not very fresh from their classics, did what they could to help us.

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Finally, you ask me whether there were any schools for young ladies in those old times? There may possibly have been in two or three of the largest towns, but the only one of which I had any knowledge was in Litchfield, kept by Miss Pierce, and I am not quite sure that her school was established as early as your question contemplates.

These, dear sir, are some of my old remembrances, which you may make such use of as you please.

Respectfully yours,

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CAMBRIDGE, December 10th, 1860. HENRY BARNARD, ESQ. My Dear Sir-I cheerfully comply with your re quest to give you some account of the schools and the educational books that were in use about the close of the last century. I never had the privilege of attending any higher institution of learning than the common district schools. of Connecticut, in the town of Windham; but I have no doubt that those of that town were a fair type of many others, probably most of them, except such as were kept in the larger towns or thickly populated villages.

According to the best of my remembrance, my school-days began in the spring of 1783. The school to which I was admitted was kept by a lady, and, like most of the district schools, was kept only for the younger pupils, and was open for two months during the summer season, The upper class in the school was formed entirely of females-such as could read in the Bible. The lower classes read in spelling books and the New England Primer. The spelling books, of which there were not, probably, more than three or four in the school, I believe were all by Dilworth, and were much worn and defaced, having been a sort of heir-loom in the families of the pupils. The teacher of this school was the daughter of the minister of the parish. She kept a rod hanging on the wall behind her chair and a ferule on the table by her side; but I do not recollect that she used either of them. The girls who constituted the first class were required, every Monday morning, to repeat the text or texts of the preceding day's discourse, stating the book, chapter, and verse whence it was taken. The next summer, 1784, the same lady, or one of her sisters, kept school in the same district. The same books were in use, and there was the same routine of exercises. It was kept on the first floor of the steeple. The lower end of the bell-rope lay in a coil in the center of the floor. The discipline was so strict, that no one, however mischievously disposed, I believe, ever thought of taking hold of it, though it was something of an incumbrance. I was then four years and a half old, and had learned by heart nearly all the reading lessons in the Primer, and much of the Westminster Catechism, which was taught as the closing exercise every Saturday. But justice to one of the best of mothers requires that I should say that much the greater part of the improvement I had made was acquired from her careful instruction.

In December, 1784, the month in which I was five years old, I attended, for a few days, the school kept by a master-I do not remember his name. When asked up for examination, he asked me if I could read without spelling? I said

I could read in the Bible. He hesitated a moment, and then placed me on one of the benches, opened a Bible at the fifth chapter of Acts, and asked me to read. I read ten or a dozen verses-being the account of Ananias and his wife falling dead before Peter for telling a lie. Whether he had any suspicion that I had told a falsehood, and took this method to reprove me, I know not; but he dismissed me with approbation. He used his ferule on the hands of some of the elder boys; but the severest punishment that he inflicted for any violation of order, was compelling a boy who had brought into the school the breastbone of a chicken, (commonly called the wishing-bone,) and with which he had excited some noise among the pupils, to stand on one of the benches and wear the bone on his nose till the school was dismissed. I am strongly impressed with the belief that Webster's Spelling Book made its first appearance in the schools during this winter. The following summer I attended, but very irregu larly, a school kept as before in the steeple of the meeting-house,* and had a copy of Webster. Whether there were any other copies in the school or not I am not able to say. The next two winters, circumstances which I have no desire to recall, and which you would not care to be acquainted with, prevented my attending any school. In the summer of 1786, these same circumstances caused me to be removed to another district three miles distant from the central village. The farmer with whom I lived thought I could read well enough, and as the district school-house was a mile or more distant, he considered it unnecessary to send me that distance in the winter, merely to read; and consequently for two or three winters I went to school not more than eight or ten days in each. At length, in 1790 or 1791, it was thought I was old enough to learn to cipher, and accordingly was permitted to go to school more constantly. I told the master I wanted to learn to cipher. He set me a sum in simple addition-five columns of figures, and six figures in each column. All the instruction he gave me was-add the figures in the first column, carry one for every ten, and set the overplus down under the column. I supposed he meant by the first column the left hand column; but what he meant by carrying one for every ten was as much a mystery as Samson's riddle was to the Philistines. I worried my brains an hour or two, and showed the master the figures I had made. You may judge what the amount was, when the columns were added from left to right. The master frowned and repeated his former instruction-added up the column on the right, carry one for every ten, and set down the remainder. Two or three afternoons (I did not go to school in the morning) were spent in this way, when I begged to be excused from learning to cipher, and the old gentleman with whom I lived thought it was time wasted; and if I attended the school any further at that time, reading and spelling, and a little writing were all that was taught. The next winter there was a teacher more communicative and better fitted for his place, and under him some progress was made in arithmetic, and I made a tolerable acquisition in the first four rules, according to Dilworth's Schoolmaster's Assistant, of which the teacher and one of the eldest boys had each a copy. The two following winters, 1794 and 1795, I mastered all the rules and examples in the first part of Dilworth; that is, through the various chapters of Rule of Three, Practice, Fellowship, Interest, etc., etc., to Geometrical Progression and Permutation.

In our district, the books were of rather a miscellaneous character, such as

*This was the last time I went to a summer school.

had been in families perhaps half a century or more. My belief is that Webster's Spelling Book was not in general use before 1790 or 1791. The Bible was read by the first class in the morning, always, and generally in the afternoon before the closing exercise, which was always a lesson in spelling, and this was performed by all the pupils who were sufficiently advanced to pronounce distinctly words of more than one syllable. It was the custom for all such pupils to stand together as one class, and with one voice to read a column or two of the tables for spelling. The master gave the signal to begin, and all united to read, letter by letter, pronouncing each syllable by itself, and adding it to the preceding one till the word was complete. Thus, a-d ad, m-i mi, admi, r-a ra, admira, t-i-o-n shun, admiration. This mode of reading was exceedingly exciting, and, in my humble judgment, exceedingly useful; as it required and taught deliberate and distinct articulation, and inspired the youngest with a desire to equal the older ones. It is true the voices would not all be in perfect unison; but after a little practice they began to assimilate. I have heard a class of thirty or more read column after column in this manner, with scarcely a perceptible variation from the proper pitch of voice. When the lesson had been thus read, the books were closed, and the words given out for spelling. If one was misspelt, it passed on to the next, and the next pupil in order, and so on till it was spelt correctly. Then the pupil who had spelt correctly went up in the class above the one who had misspelt. It was also a practice, when one was absent from this exercise in spelling, that he should stand at the foot of the class when he returned. Another of our customs was to choose sides to spell once or twice a week. The words to be spelt went from side to side; and at the conclusion, the side which beat (spelt the most words) were permitted to leave the schoolroom, preceding the other side, who had to sweep the room and build the fires the next morning. These customs, prevalent sixty and seventy years ago, excited emulation, and emulation produced improvement. A revival of them, I have no doubt, would be advantageous in the common schools, especially where pupils are required to spell words given out indiscriminately from a reading book or dictionary. There was not, to my knowledge, any reading book proper, except the Bible, till Webster's Third Book, so called, came out about 1793 or 1794. A new edition of his Spelling Book furnished some new matter for reading-selections from the New Testament, a chapter of Proverbs, and set of Tables, etc.; but none of these operated to the exclusion of the Bible.

The

In the family in which I lived there were three or four old spelling books, which I presume had been used in schools before the period of my remembrance. One of these was a book of less than a hundred pages, printed in London, I think in 1690. The words were arranged in tables according to syllables. terminations tion, sion, cial, tial, etc., were all divided and printed as two distinet syllables. (And I believe this mode of printing is still continued in England. It was in the time of Lindley Murray, as may be seen in his spelling book, printed about forty years ago.) This spelling book contained a numeration table which, from a singular feature, early attracted my attention. Every figure was 9, and the whole formed a curious triangle. Thus: