The printed cardboard battledore was a successor of the hornbook. This was often printed on a double fold of stiff card with a third fold or flap lapping over like an old pocket-book. These battledores were issued in such vast numbers that it is futile to attempt even to allude to the myriad of publishers. An affine of the hornbook is seen in the wooden "reading-boards" which were used a hundred years ago in Erasmus Hall, the famous old academy built in 1786 in Flatbush, Long Island. It is still standing and still used for educational purposes. These "reading-boards" are tablets of wood, fifteen inches long, covered on either side with time-yellowed paper printed in large letters with some simple reading-lesson. The old fashioned long s in the type proves their age. Through a pierced hole a loop of string suspended these boards before a class of little scholars, who doubtless all read in chorus. Similar ones bearing the alphabet are still used in Cornish Sunday-schools. They were certainly used in Dutch schools, two centuries ago, as the illustrations of old Dutch books prove. [Illustration: "My New Battledore"] A prymer or primer was specifically and ecclesiastically before and after the Reformation in England a book of private devotions. As authorized by the Church, and written or printed partially or wholly in the vernacular, it contained devotions for the hours, the Creed, Lord's Prayer, Ten Commandments, some psalms and certain instructions as to the elements of Christian knowledge. These little books often opened with the criss-cross row or alphabet arranged hornbook fashion, hence the term primer naturally came to be applied to all elementary books for children's use. A, B, C, the Middle-English name for the alphabet in the forms apsey, abce, absie, etc., was also given to what we now call a primer. Shakespeare called it absey-book. The list in _Dyves Pragmaticus_ runs:-- "I have inke, paper and pennes to lode with a barge, Primers and abces and books of small charge, What Lack you Scollers, come hither to me." [Illustration: Reading Board. Erasmus Hall] The book which succeeded the hornbook in general use was the _New England Primer_. It was the most universally studied school-book that has ever been used in America; for one hundred years it was _the_ school-book of America; for nearly another hundred years it was frequently printed and much used. More than three million copies of this _New England Primer_ were printed, so declares its historian, Paul Leicester Ford. These were studied by many more millions of school-children. All of us whose great-grandparents were American born may be sure that those great-grandparents, and their fathers and mothers and ancestors before them learned to read from one of these little books. It was so religious in all its teachings and suggestions that it has been fitly called the "Little Bible of New England."