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Updated: June 5, 2025
"The objection that making the Bible a common school-book would detract from its sacredness in the eyes of the children, and thus blunt rather than quicken their moral susceptibilities, is plausible; but it will not, I am confident, bear the test of examination and experience. What were the Scriptures given us for, if not to be read by the old and the young, the high and the low?
For me to object to having the Bible read as a common school-book on account of any doctrine which those who differ from me suppose it to teach, would be virtually to confess that I had not full confidence in my own creed, and was afraid it would not bear a scriptural test.
The story of the rough handling to which the poor king was subjected is a somewhat hackneyed school-book anecdote, but some interesting details have been handed down by one Captain Marsh, by James's natural son the Duke of Berwick, and by the Earl of Ailesbury.
There were so many sides to the question the last fellow you met always had a better argument than anyone you had heard before! You sympathized with Belgium and France, of course; but could you help hating the British ruling classes? They were your hereditary enemies your school-book enemies, so to speak.
Epes has done mighty well with his red-edged school-book, which is a very creditable-looking volume, to say the least. It would be hard to tell how much you are missed among us. I really do not know who would make a greater blank if he were abstracted.
"Now if the primary qualities of a good school-book are to teach the art of reading, and to communicate instruction upon the most interesting and important subjects, I have no hesitation in saying that the Bible stands pre-eminently above every other.
In any case the fact remains, that while in an American school-book the war of 1776 is given first place, correctly enough, as marking the establishment of American nationality, it figures in the English school-book, with equal correctness, as a single regrettable incident in England's long and variegated Colonial history. It is well to bear these two points of view in mind.
I listened to many speeches and explanations of the prejudice that existed in the mind of the dyed-in-the-wool American against England, and the reason most frequently given was the "school-book" reason; our histories kept the feeling alive.
Nevertheless, one evening, when we were reading in our school-book that "Kate had a smile for everybody," and I saw that this was stated in praise of Kate, I had a disagreeable vision of a little girl going around the streets and grinning upon everybody she met I abhorred the teacher for his girlish looks and affectations, but his twang and "th" made me literally pant with hatred.
"Poor little Nonpareil!" murmured Abbott wistfully. "And often when the show was being unloaded, I'd be stretched out in our sleeper, with a school-book pressed close to the cinder-specked window, catching the first light.
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