To show that a fetich was made of spelling seventy-five years ago, I give this extract from a Danbury school notice:-- "The advantages that small children obtain at this school may be easily imagined when the public are informed that those who spell go through the whole of Webster's spelling book twice a fortnight." The teaching of spelling in many schools was peculiar. The master gave out the word, with a blow of his strap on the desk as a signal for all to start together, and the whole class spelled out the word in syllables in chorus. The teacher's ear was so trained and acute that he at once detected any misspelling. If this happened, he demanded the name of the scholar who made the mistake. If there was any hesitancy or refusal in acknowledgment, he kept the whole class until, by repeated trials of long words, accuracy was obtained. The roar of the many voices of the large school, all pitched in different keys, could be heard on summer days for a long distance. In many country schools the scholars not only spelled aloud but studied all their lessons aloud, as children in Oriental countries do to-day: and the teacher was quick to detect any lowering of the volume of sound and would reprove any child who was studying silently. Sometimes the combined roar of voices became offensive to the neighbors of the school, and restraining votes were passed at town-meetings. The colonial school and schoolmaster took a firm stand on "cyphering." "The Bible and figgers is all I want my boys to know," said an old farmer. Arithmetic was usually taught without text-books. Teachers had manuscript "sum-books," from which they gave out rules and problems in arithmetic to their scholars. Abraham Lincoln learned arithmetic from a "sum-book" of which he made a neat copy. A page from this sum-book is here given in reduced size. Too often these sums were copied by the pupil without any explanation of the process being offered or rendered by the master. The artist Trumbull recalled that he spent three weeks, unaided in any way, over a single sum in long division. [Illustration: Page from Abraham Lincoln's Sum Book]