After the year 1750, a few very short stories were added to its pages, and were probably all the children's stories that many of the scholars of that day ever saw. It is interesting to see that the little prayer so well known to-day, beginning "Now I lay me down to sleep," is usually found in the _New England Primer_ of dates later than the year 1737. The _Shorter Catechism_ was, perhaps, the most important part of this primer. It was so called in contrast to the catechism in use in England called _The Careful Father and Pious Child_, which had twelve hundred questions with answers. The _Shorter Catechism_ had but a hundred and seven questions, though some of the answers were long. Usually another catechism was found in the primer, called _Spiritual Milk for Babes_. It was written by the Boston minister, John Cotton, and it had but eighty-seven questions with short answers. Sometimes a _Dialogue between Christ, Youth, and the Devil_ was added. The _Shorter Catechism_ was the special delight of all New Englanders. Cotton Mather called it a "little watering pot" to shed good lessons. He begged writing masters to set sentences from it to be copied by their pupils; and he advised mothers to "continually drop something of the Catechism on their children, as Honey from the Rock." Learning the catechism was enforced by law in New England, and the deacons and ministers visited and examined families to see that the law was obeyed. Thus it may plainly be seen that this primer truly filled the requisites of what the Roxbury school trustees called "scholastical, theological, and moral discipline." CHAPTER VI SCHOOL-BOOKS _The most worthless book of a bygone day is a record worthy of preservation. Like a telescopic star, its obscurity may render it unavailable for most purposes, but it serves in hands which know how to use it to determine the places of more important bodies._ --_A. de Morgan, 1847._ When any scholar could advance beyond hornbook and primer he was ready for grammar. This was not English grammar, but Latin, and the boy usually began to study it long before he had any book to con. A bulky and wretched grammar called Lilly's was most popular in England. Locke said the study of it was a religious observance without which no scholar was orthodox. It named twenty-five different kinds of nouns and devoted twenty-two pages of solid print to declensions of nouns; it gave seven genders, with fifteen pages of rules for genders and exceptions. Under such a régime we can sympathize with Nash's outburst, "Syntaxis and prosodia! you are tormentors of wit and good for nothing but to get schoolmasters twopence a week."