The next movement was to make inquiry about books; and here no small difficulty and inconvenience appeared. Each pupil had brought such an article for the reading lessons as first came to hand. One had a mutilated copy of Dilworth’s “New Guide to the English Tongue;” another showed a volume of old sermons; a third had the “Romance of the Forest,” an old novel, and a specimen of the “yellow covered literature” of a former age. A fourth, fifth, and sixth, could show Testaments or pieces of Bibles, with the binding in tatters, and the print dim, and paper brown, such as were gotten up for sale to merchants in that day. Some came without books or any aid to learn the art and mystery of spelling and reading. The Psalter that had descended from some Virginia families whose ancestors belonged to the Colonial English Church, was presented by three or four more. The marvellous story of “Valentine and Orson,” answered for the whole stock of literature for a family of three children. What was now to be done? Mr. Clark neither scolded nor ridiculed his pupils for their deficiency in books. He knew they were not to blame, and he surmised their parents could not readily remedy the evil. There was not a book in the three little retail stores in Lincoln County, for sale, and it was between fifty and sixty miles to Lexington where purchases could be made. The world-renowned Noah Webster had commenced the great work of providing his young countrymen with the means of learning their mother tongue, about thirteen years previous. His “_First Part of a Grammatical Institute of the English Language_,” more popularly known as the “American Spelling-Book,” was published for the first time in 1783, but it had scarcely found its way into the wilderness of Kentucky. Father Clark had obtained a copy in Charleston; he liked every thing American, and Webster’s Spelling Book struck his fancy, above all others, from which he would like “To teach the young idea how to shoot.” None had been seen in Lincoln County. Transylvania Seminary had been in operation in Lexington, ten or twelve years, where some of the higher branches of literature and science were taught, and many of the young men who became distinguished in law, politics, and medicine, in that commonwealth, received their education in that Seminary. After Mr. Clark had left the State in 1798, a Grammar School was opened in Lebanon, near the Royal Spring, in Fayette County, where the elements of Latin, Greek, and the sciences, were taught by Messrs. Jones and Worley. The old books had to be used until Mr. Clark’s new method of teaching became known, and one of the employers visited Lexington on business. He returned with two dozen of Webster’s Spelling-Book, and more other school-books than ever before reached Lincoln County at one time. It was a real holiday for the boys and girls to look over these books.