Geography was an accomplishment rather than a necessary study, and was spoken of as a diversion for a winter's evening. Many objections were made that it took the scholar's attention away from "cyphering." It was not taught in the elementary schools till this century. _Morse's Geography_ was not written till after the Revolution. It had a mean little map of the United States, only a few inches square. On it all the land west of the Mississippi River was called Louisiana, and nearly all north of the Ohio River, the Northwestern Territory. Small as the book was, and meagre as was its information, many of its pages were devoted to short, stilted dialogues between a teacher and pupil, in which the scholar was made to say such priggish sentences:-- "I am very thankful, sir, for your entertaining instruction, and I shall never forget what you have been telling me. "I long, sir, for to-morrow to come that I may hear more of your information. "I am truly delighted, sir, with the account you have given me of my country. I wish, sir, it may be agreeable to you to give me a more particular description of the United States. "I hope, sir, I have a due sense of your goodness to me. I have, sir, very cheerfully, and I trust very profitably, attended your instructions." A rather amusing _Geographical Catechism_ was published in 1796, by Rev. Henry Pattillo, a Presbyterian minister of North Carolina, for the use of the university students. It is properly and Presbyterianly religious. It gives this explanation of comets:-- "Their uses are mere conjecture. Some judge them the seats of punishment where sinners suffer the extremes of heat and cold. Mr. Whiston says a comet approaching the sun brushed the earth with its tail and caused the deluge, and that another will cause the conflagration." Let us not be too eager to jeer at these ancient school-books. Pope wrote nearly two centuries ago: "Still is to-morrow wiser than to-day We think our fathers fools so wise we grow. Our wiser sons no doubt will think us so." Perhaps the series of text-books which have chased each other in and out of our nineteenth-century public schools under the successive boards of commissioners and school committees who have also flashed briefly on our educational horizon, may cut no better figure two centuries hence than do those of Lilly and Pike and Cocker. CHAPTER VII PENMANSHIP AND LETTERS _Ink alwais good store on right hand to stand Brown paper for great haste or else box of sand. Dip pen and shake pen and touch pen for haire Wax, quills and penknife see alwais ye beare._ --_A New Book of Hands, 1650 circa._