OLD-TIME SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL-BOOKS - online book

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

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	Fly-leaf Scribblings			161
	ians and log houses. The later books have houses of a more modern sort, and you find rude draw-
	ings of steamboats, houses, birds, flowers, faces, and the like. Often a penny or other coin was slipped under the fly-leaf and the surface of the paper covering the coin was rubbed with a piece of lead from the schoolboy's pocket, or with the blunt end of a pencil. Usually the boy was not satisfied till he got a print of both sides of the coin. Five characteristic school-book decorations are shown on pages 162 and 163. The first is a scroll that could be lengthened out clear
	across a fly-leaf or all down a text-page border. The second		A Soldier. Drawn in Webb's The Com­mon School Songster, 1843.
	is a flourish that frequently ap­peared beneath a signature. The third was made by drawing equidistant from one another sixteen dots
		and then pencilling a consecu­tive line that would gradually enclose them all with its loops. The fourth is a scheme of the same sort which was sometimes called "a basket of eggs." The last design was known as " a Spanish S." All these things were drawn on slates and
		blackboards as well as in the books.
	A Fly-leaf Rubbing from an Old Medal.
	M