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would give fair opportunity to dispose of old stock, and close that mode of the manufacture. Besides, the diminution in the expense of printing, and the natural rise of books in proportion to this diminished expense, would probably more than cancel all loss, even that in stereotype. plates.

4. "The old hard, dry, tiresome methods of primary learning, tend to discipline the mind and improve its facul ties, especially the memory." Answer: But the easy, pleasant, and interesting substituted learning, all profitable in itself, would surely do much more towards this very important object. This is the dictate of nature, reason, common sense, and experiene. Besides, the success of this project would doubtless produce a great and blessed revolution in the affairs of common early education, and cause the time, character, and abilities of children to be worth more at twelve years of age, than they usually have been at sixteen. There is, in truth, something more agreeable and useful for children to learn and to do than to be, for years of their precious time, toiling, and delving, and plodding in most distressing and ruinous confinement at the strange and dreadful old alphabet aud orthography, even if it were nothing but giving names to stones in the wall, or the trees in a grove, and committing them to memory! Now I should not think that any would again make this objection.

5. All readers and writers must relearn to read and write." Answer: The expense and inconvenience of change have, in this plan, been avoided as much as possible; and I have no doubt, and that from actual experiment, that good readers and writers in the old would learn to read and write in this, with proper assistance, though slowly at first, in less than six hours, Dexterity and speed would, of course, be acquired by use and habit. Let none, then, be greatly troubled any more on this score; for it is no great affair to learn the forms and uses of 17 new letters when the sounds are already familiar. I trust that this mighty objection will now no more be urged by people of sense and wisdom.

6. Children, by much help and stimulating, usually

get over, somehow, the chief difficulties in the old literature before they arrive at the proper age for criticising tbese matters, and soon forgetting, very much, their former toils and sufferings, their prejudices become strong in favor of the old written language." Answer: Apply this argument successfully to all subjects, and there is an end, at once, to all improvements. We have already been governed quite too long by the prepossessions, the early notions and whims of childhood, and the imperious and senseless customs and authority of the semi-benighted bygone ages. But full grown men of the present eventful and improving age, and of this free and enlightened country, should deliver themselves of childish and half-barbarian trammels, and dare to search, and think, and speak, and act also, for removing the immense evils that enwrap our precious, extending, and improving literature, and that deprive it of more than half its value.

During how many more years and generations must the enterprising posterity of the brave settlers of this country indeed our own dear children be unnecessarily subject, in their ductile and forming age, to the cruel labor, the tormenting vexation, and the tiresome, stupifying, and deleterious confinement, imposed on them, as it was on us, before days of maturity and independent inquiry; and all that too, by blind attachment to the awkward, clownish, cumbrous, hideous dress of our refined, powerful, harmonious, and delightful language? In the name and pride of our country, and of all the Englsh race, I do beg for our admirable language a dress suited to its character and merits. Do not, I entreat you, deem me sacrilegious and monstrously wicked, and deserving Heaven's vengeance, for denouncing and plaspheming that paltry, shapeless old idol, the coarse and bungling manufacture of partly-civilized people, long ago passed away and gone; although it did, at vast pains and expense, receive your obedient devotions some four or five years of your otherwise brilliant and promising childhood and youth.

Had a longer, a happier, and a more productive course of natural, plain, interesting, and useful oral instruction been generally used with children, and had they not been

put to artificial literature till able to investigate for themselves, this needed reformation would, long ago, have been accomplished, and that, too, easily and freely, without rub and tug and strife.

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Allow me here for a moment, like a true American, and a son of the old Bay State," the centre of New England energy, independence and glory, and with the intrepidity of a patriot, philanthropist and Christian, to attack some of our old educational customs, as our honored fathers did those of long-continued religious oppression, and civil tyranny. And we will rejoice that the conflict may be prosecuted and victory won, without shedding blood, and multiplying widows and orphans.

Quite too early in the life of our young, active, social, imitative fellow-beings, have we dropped, if we ever began, free and pleasing oral, model, and sample instruction, administered kindly,simply, and incidentally by affectionate parents, or assistant parents, aud shut them up in schools, and confined them to artificial literature. In this, truly, we have exactly reversed the just orders of things. We should have begun with nature and ended with art; or, in other words, we should, in the great concerns of education, have more obediently, faithfully, and entirely, followed nature's dictates, from the first dawn of physical, sensitive, intellectual, and moral existence. and should have continued thus to do, admitting art incipiently and occasionallyto assist nature in her wise, beneficent, and godlike operations.

Thoroughly reform our written language, and learning to read, spell, and write, would be so easy that formal schools and set lessons, in sore and ruinous confinement, would be totally useless. If the previous education be right, these valuable accomplishments would, in proper season, be sought after, and obtained incidentally, like other kinds of every-day business. You may, therefore, safely let artificial literature alone, till children shall have arrived at considerable age and maturity; and even then you need not hurry or press them forward in it, provided, however, that they, as much as possible, under the care of parents, or assistant parents, their natural guardians and teachers,

have their time properly divided between interesting, free, and safe recreations, proper manual labors, and a good system of oral, model, and sample instructions, advancing spontaneously and delightfully towards artificial literature, and into it, as they approach adult years. Let these be the natural tendencies, and these the sure results of any new or improved system of a general primary education, and then do what you please with the old comnon schools; only do not, at such vast expense, privation and suffering, allow them to stun, and stunt, and stupify, and stagnate, and stultify, our dear, affectionate, sprightly, and promising children.

I rejoice that the people ef this country, the cradle of civil, literary, educational, and religious light and liberty, are walking up, though slowly, to thi vastly important object, and beginning to discover their errors, and the natural and effectual remedies. This I trust, in its onward progress, will contribute much towards the general improvement and happiness of the rising generations, and much also towards the radical, thorough and timely reform of the external dress, and the ocular representation of our worthy and delightful language.

All herein contained is presented to excite attention and discussion, criticism and correction, as an essay towards preparing for future adoption all necessary improvements in the elements of our swiftly-spreading literature.

After all the expense, and long and severe toil, amidst many embarrassments,. devoted to this whole concern, and after bringing it as near to what it should be as I shall probably be able soon myself to do, I now freely offer it to my nation, and to her mother country; asking no greater reward than its efficiency in advancing their physical and moral, their mental and social improvement.-(See my reformed alphabet, and ten lessons printed in it, near the beginning of this book.)

Seven lessons on teaching the alphabet
How our 40 sounds have been represented

A reformed alphabet of 40 letters

Ten easy reading lessons in the new alphabet
Reading lessons in the old alphabet
Duties of parents and children

Wisdom. Bible extracts

The virtuous and excellent woman

The boy who never stole an apple

The Green Mountain boy

The noble school-boy of the Granite State

Some lessons of Scripture history

The author's thirtysix rules for living; 3d edition
Matters of Chronology to be learned

Numerals, and counting a thousand

Comfrey; a new kind of food

The chief things in civility and good manners
A complete system of morals

An improved education, and notes on teaching
A new system of education struck out
Table of abbreviations, &c. Punctuation
Five odes, by the author

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An English grammar, made easy for children
Anomalies in grammar, 114. Parsing
Use of capital letters

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Words the same in form, but not in sound

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Remarks on the old alphabet

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The author's memorial to Congress, on reforming the writing
of our language; abridged"

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144

N.B. It is hoped that the reader will pass over with forbear-
ance some errors in this book, which escaped seasonable notice.

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