OLD-TIME SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL-BOOKS - online book

An Illustrated history & description Of Schools in the 18th & 19th Centurys.

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The District Schools
115
recited in turn until recess. The final hour was devoted to spelling once more with some minor instruction in abbreviations, currencies, weights, measures, etc. Then there was a roll-call, and the boy whose turn it was to make the fire next morn­ing was reminded of the fact. As the scholars pre­pared to leave, the mas­
ter gave positive orders for them to "go straight home and be civil to everybody they might meet."
An interesting de­scription of a school about the beginning of the last century is found in the autobiography of Samuel G. Goodrich, or "Peter Parley," as he preferred to call himself on the title-pages of his numerous
books. He was born

in 1793 in the little


" Peter Parley."
farming town of Ridge-field, Connecticut, and the school he attended was typical of those in all the older Northern states ; for the city population of the nation in 1800 was only three per cent of the whole. Hence, nearly all the young people received their educational training in the rural schools. Parley says that the immediate sur­roundings of the schoolhouse to which he went were
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