After the Revolution, in new and zealous Americanism, text-books by American authors outsold English books. The blue-backed spelling book of Noah Webster drove Perry and Dilworth from the field. Bingham and Webster took advantage of the need of suitable school-books and divided the field between them. Webster's Spelling Book outstripped Bingham's _Child's Companion_, but Bingham's Readers, such as _The American Preceptor_ and _The Columbian Orator_ held their ground against Webster's. Not one of Bingham's books proved a failure. _The Columbian Orator_ contained seven extracts from speeches of Pitt in opposition to the measures of George III., it had speeches by Fox and Sheridan, part of the address of President Carnot at the establishment of the French Republic, and the famous speech of Colonel Barré on the Stamp Act. Nicholas Pike of Newburyport, Massachusetts, wrote an arithmetic that routed the English books of Cocker and Hodder. It was studied by many persons now living. It had three hundred and sixty-three barren rules, and not a single explanation of one of them. Many of them would now be wholly unintelligible to scholars, though no more antiquated than are the methods; for instance, this rule in Tare and Trett:-- "Deduct the Tare and Trett. Divide the Suttle by amount given; the Quotient will be the Cloff which subtract from the Suttle the Remainder will be the Neat." [Illustration: "The Little Reader's Assistant," by Noah Webster] The tables of measures were longer than ours to-day; in measuring liquids were used the terms anchors, tuns, butts, tierces, kilderkins, firkins, puncheons, etc. In dry measure were pottles, strikes, cooms, quarters, weys, lasts. Examples in currency were in pounds, shillings, and pence; and doubtless helped to retain the use of these terms in daily trade long after dollars had been coined in America. This labored book, aided by the flattering testimonials of Governor Bowdoin, of the Presidents of Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth Colleges, and of that idolized American, George Washington, gained wide acceptance. I have examined with care a _Wingate's Arithmetic_ printed in 1620, which was used for over a century in the Winslow family in Massachusetts. "Pythagoras his Table," is, of course, our multiplication table. Then comes, the "Rule of Three," the "double Golden Rule," the "Rule of Fellowship," the "Rule of False," etc., etc., ending with "Pastimes, a collection of pleasant and polite Questions to exercise all the parts of Vulgar Arithmetick." Here is one:--