In the French villages, common school education was neglected. Some of the priests and elderly females taught the children the elements of their religion, and to read their native language, but a large proportion of that class of people grew up to manhood with little knowledge of science and literature, and less learning. The first school ever taught among the American settlers in the Illinois country, was by Solomon Seely, in 1783. Francis Clark, an intemperate man, came next, and had a small school in Moore’s settlement near Bellefontaine, in 1785. He did quite as much harm as good. Next after him for two or three years was an insignificant Irishman by name of Halfpenny. He possessed very little learning and less skill in teaching. School books were scarce and more difficult of attainment than in Kentucky. Each pupil carried such a book from which to say his lessons, as could be found in his father’s log cabin. One little fellow, whose memory was not in the best order and his perceptive faculties slow of development, had the Bible for his book for “easy readings.” Master Halfpenny had no more schoolmaster sense than to give out his lessons from the book of Daniel, and third chapter. Partly by spelling out the words, and partly by the aid of a school-fellow, he had made tolerable progress in pronouncing the “hard words” and proper names through eleven verses. In the twelfth verse he met the formidable obstruction of the three Hebrew names, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, which he could not surmount. The master was petulant, surly, and uttered a series of strange sounds, in jabbering Irish, which the poor afflicted pupil could neither understand nor imitate. He did his very best to pronounce these names in the way the master ordered, and was dismissed with the formidable threat of a striped jacket the next day if he forgot them. Next day came, and the little fellow was in his seat, toiling at his lesson, for he really tried to learn. His turn came to “say his lesson,” and he stood beside the master in a tremor that shook his little frame and the perspiration streaming down his cheeks. His lesson commenced with the thirteenth verse. Nebuchadnezzar was one of those long words that had gone round the school on divers occasions, and little Tommy, as he was familiarly called in the family circle, had mastered that before the stupid master had put him into the book of Daniel. He read two lines distinctly with a tremulous voice, for the threat of a striped jacket had not escaped his memory, when he stopped suddenly. “Th’read on,” sounded in his ears like the crack of the hazle;--“why don’t ye th’read on, ye spalpeen,” came again with the expectation of the whip. The trembling pupil, unable to recollect or repeat any thing, burst into tears and sobs, and made an effort to explain his inability--“Why here are these three fellows again, and I don’t know them.” Master Halfpenny for once was disarmed.