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But the final real judge of the merits of a schoolbook is the boy or girl who uses it. If the book is truly pedagogical, adjusted in every part to the average mental development of the child, it becomes a valuable tool in the school room.
"What a grand thing it was to be the biggest fish in our small aquarium, to be sure!" answered The Terror. "He was six inches long, the monster, a little too big for bait to catch a pickerel with! What did you hand me that schoolbook for? Did you think I did n't know anything about the human body?"
That work is commonly considered as a schoolbook, very fit for children, because its style is easy and its morality blameless, but unworthy of the attention of statesmen and philosophers.
The value of these material things can easily be ascertained and compared; but unless the print carries the lessons that help to form a life the paper is wasted and the pupil's most valuable time is misspent. The teaching power of a schoolbook cannot be weighed in the grocer's scales nor measured with a pint cup.
"Do you remember how they used to tease you? You were nicknamed Herostratus because you burned a hole in a schoolbook with a cigarette, and I was nicknamed Ephialtes because I was fond of telling tales. Ho ho! . . . we were children! . . . Don't be shy, Nafanya. Go nearer to him. And this is my wife, her maiden name was Vantsenbach, of the Lutheran persuasion. . . ."
You remember, don't you, the schoolbook classic of the noble lad who by reason of his neat dress, and by his use in the most casual conversation of the sort of language which the late Mr.
The year's end is traditionally the season for moralizing and retrospect. Eheu! fugaces anni is a sigh that even the Latin primer teaches us; and though in schoolbook days calling the years fugacious seems absurd, we catch the meaning as they glide away. To schoolboys the man of fifty is immoderately old: thirty marks a milestone on the downhill of life.
He has just finished a little volume containing Explanations of Poetry for children: it explains "The Elegy in a Country Churchyard," "L'Allegro," "Il Penseroso," and "The Ode to Fear." It will be a very useful schoolbook. It goes over to-night to Johnson, but how long it will remain with him before you see it in print I cannot divine. Mrs. Edgeworth narrates: Belinda was published in 1801.
How would Descartes have rejoiced, he says, if he could have seen some poor treatise on physics or cosmography of our day, and what would we not give to catch a glimpse of such an elementary schoolbook of a hundred years hence. But that is not at any rate the experience of all the world, nor does it appear likely ever to be within the reach of all the world.
After a short time the children wearied of reading about bugs and beetles they had never seen and gladly welcomed the books that had a single aim. In the eyes of a publisher a good schoolbook is one that can be readily introduced and one that will stay when it is put in use. The officials who adopt a schoolbook are not the users of the book. They are adults long past the school age.
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