"The New England Primer Improved For the more easy attaining the true Reading of English To which is added, The Assembly of Divines, and Mr. Cotton's Catechism Boston: Printed and Sold by S. Adams, in Queen-street. 1762. Have you got one?" The little boy shook his head. "You ought to have," was Doby's dogmatic decision, "because for ever so many years it has been _the_ most important lesson-book for schools and families. A million boys have studied it and another million grown folks have bought it, and there have been another million besides those." The little boy was much impressed by these large numbers which Doby knew were true. "It says: "Thy life to mend This Book attend; and An idle Fool Is whipt at school; and My Book and Heart Shall never part. "If I had a fresh-cut pine slab, I could show you how some of it is printed. A slab is a nice slate to scratch verses on--" The little boy interrupted with this discovery of his own: "Our big wooden shovel is thick. I write on it with a burnt stick. When it is all covered with words, I whittle the writing off in thin shavings. Then I write on the clean wood again." "That's a bright idea," praised Doby. "I'll try it some time." He carved on the beech: Zaccheus he did climb the Tree, his Lord to see. The little boy examined it, doubtfully. "Is that poetry?" he asked. "Yes, indeed," affirmed Doby, pointing out the rhymes. "And that bunch of wavy lines at the bottom are the sycamore-tree that he climbed--in the Bible story, you know." The little boy _did_ know the Bible story. He showed plainly that he was a friend and acquaintance of the famous Zaccheus. But his eyes traveled from Doby's copy of the primer's illustration to a living sycamore down by the brook and the doubt in them deepened. Doby hastened to explain: "That's what they call art. I have noticed that poetry and art are sometimes different from the way we might expect them to be. We can't always understand them." Oh, boys of long ago! Oh, queer old rhymes and drawings! If Doby could have rolled over giggling on the log and tried to sing Riley's song of the "Raggedy Man and 'Lisabuth Ann," or if the little Kentuckian could have stuck up his hair in pretended fright, made his eyes round and scary, and begun to recite, An' gobble'uns'll git you Ef you Don't Watch Out-- how easily they might have understood such poetry and what fun they might have had!