divided between painting to the letter and watching Billy Wadman, Dick Sorden, Bill Daniel Roe, Sally Price, et ai., it not infrequently happened that the urchin reciting was looking anywhere else than at the alphabetical forms pointed out and called in turn by the mas- ter himself. It required most of the winter for many of us to learn to distinguish these different signs of sound.

“As a general rule, scholars were not permitted to attempt read- ing until they had mastered the spelling book, even to the long words like ‘concatenation,’ hieroglyhpically,' etc.; and our next teacher invented a test word it was necessary for the pupil to master before he could take up the initial reading-lessons, about the wren, robin red-breast, and the lion; this test word was honorifiticabilitticabilitudcanditatibusque! When the pupil could repeat and spell this huge medley of nonsense, going back at each syllable, and pronouncing up to and including the last syllable spelled, in regular order, without a hitch or blunder, until he reached the towering conclusion, he was graduated to reading.”

The writer found appended to the proof the following interesting verification by the proof-reader of this paragraph: “J. N. Hall, eighty-three years of age, one of the readers in the Government Printing Office, distinctly remembers spelling a test word similar to that above mentioned, by syllables: in his younger days, thus: ho-no-ri-fi-ca-bi-li-tu-ni-te-tat-and-a-bus-que,’ repeating the pronunciation of each syllable to the completion of the word, and can do it to-day as readily and rapidly as in his youth.”

My own recollection is very distinct that a Mr. Whittlesy, a Vermont man, introduced and taught such a word in the school at Leesburg, Kr., in 1841; it was “trans-mag-ni-fy-can-ban-dan-du-al-i-ty," and now, in my sixtieth year, I can rattle it off almost as glibly as then.

“After mastering the few reading-lessons in the speller, the next book in order was the introduction to the ‘English Reader,’ and after that the English Reader.’ provided the pulpils could conveniently secure them. * * * * * * * It was absolutely impossible for the teacher to arrange his pupils in classes, and consequently each one must needs b& heard separately. The time being. limited, and the books generally of a grade too difficult for beginners. to facilitate matters, Master Marshall usually read along ahead of the scholars, sentence by sentence, or a few words at a time, the

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