to win each other's money and lose their own tempers at a card table.

These fashionable parties were generally confined to the higher classes, or noblesse; that is to say, such as kept their sown cows and drove their own wagons. The company commonly assembled at three o'clock and went away about six, unless it was winter time, when the fashionable hours were a little earlier, that the ladies might get home before dark. I do not find that they ever treated their company 10 to ice creams, jellies, or sillabubs, or regaled them with musty almonds, moldy raisins, or sour oranges, as is often done in the present age of refinement. Our ancestors were fond of more sturdy, substantial fare. crowned with a huge earthen dish, well stored with slices 15 of fat pork, fried brown, cut up into morsels, and swimming

in gravy.

The tea table was

The company, being seated around the genial board and each furnished with a fork, evinced their dexterity in launching at the fattest pieces of this mighty dish in much 20 the same manner as sailors harpoon porpoises at sea or our Indians spear salmon in the lakes. Sometimes the table was graced with immense apple pies or saucers full of preserved peaches and pears; but it was always sure to boast of an enormous dish of balls of sweetened dough 25 fried in hog's fat and called doughnuts; a delicious kind of cake, at present scarce known in this city except in genuine Dutch families.

The tea was served out of a majestic delft teapot ornamented with paintings of fat little Dutch shepherds and 30 shepherdesses tending pigs, with boats sailing in the air and houses built in the clouds, and sundry other ingenious Dutch fantasies. The beaux distinguished themselves by

their adroitness in replenishing this pot from a huge copper teakettle which would have made the pigmy macaronis of these degenerate days sweat merely to look at it. To sweeten the beverage, a lump of sugar was laid beside each cup, and the company alternately nibbled and sipped with s great decorum; until an improvement was introduced by a shrewd and economic old lady, which was to suspend a large lump directly over the tea table by a string from the ceiling, so that it could be swung from mouth to mouth - an ingenious expedient, which is still kept up by some 10 families in Albany, but which prevails without exception in Communipaw, Bergen, Flatbush, and all our uncontaminated Dutch villages.

At these primitive tea parties the utmost propriety and dignity of deportment prevailed. No flirting nor coquet-15 ting; no gambling of old ladies nor hoyden chattering and romping of young ones; no self-satisfied struttings of wealthy gentlemen with their brains in their pockets nor amusing conceits and monkey divertisements of smart young gentlemen with no brains at all.

The parties broke up without noise and without confusion. They were carried home by their own carriages; that is to say, by the vehicles nature had provided them, excepting such of the wealthy as could afford to keep a wagon.

- Knickerbocker's History of New York.

1. Read some passages in which Irving pokes fun at the Dutch customs; at the customs of his own times.

2. How was a tea party conducted in New Amsterdam?

3. Explain these words: incontestable, disapprobation, averse, delectable, orgies, whimsical, junto, dulcet, dowagers, macaronis, pigmy, hoyden, divertisements. Read your definition into the sentence where the word occurs.

20

A SCHOOL OF LONG AGO

BY EDWARD EGGLESTON

The following description of a pioneer school in Pennsylvania affords a fine opportunity to study the methods of teaching then in vogue. Many of them may appeal to us as being ludicrous; but undoubtedly Dock's teaching was in many ways far in advance of the times, when the usual and most-approved method of "imparting knowledge" consisted in beating ideas into pupils' heads with hickory switches.

A HUNDRED and fifty years ago there was a famous

teacher among the German settlers in Pennsylvania, who was known as "The Good Schoolmaster." His name was Christopher Dock, and he had two little country schools. 5 For three days he would teach at a little place called Skippack, and then for the next three days he would teach at Salford.

People said that the good schoolmaster never lost his temper. There was a man who thought he would try to 10 make him angry. He said many harsh and abusive words to the teacher, and even cursed him; but the only reply the teacher made was, "Friend, may the Lord have mercy on you."

Other schoolmasters used to beat their scholars severely Is with whips and long switches; but Schoolmaster Dock had found a better way. When a child came to school for the first time, the other scholars were made to give the new scholar a welcome by shaking hands with him one after another. Then the new boy or girl was told that

this was not a harsh school but a place for those who would behave. And if a scholar were lazy, disobedient, or stubborn, the master would in the presence of the whole school pronounce him not fit for this school but only for a school where children were flogged. The new scholar was asked s to promise to obey and to be diligent. When he had made this promise, he was shown to a seat.

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"Now," the good master would say, when this was done, "who will take this new scholar and help him to learn?" When the new boy or girl was clean and bright 1 looking, many would be willing to take charge of him or her; but there were few ready to teach a dirty, ragged little child. Sometimes no one would wish to do it. In such a case the master would offer to the one who would take such a child a reward of one of the beautiful texts of Scripture 15 which the schoolmasters of that time used to write and decorate for the children. Or he would give him one of the pictures of birds which he was accustomed to paint with his own hands.

Whenever one of the younger scholars succeeded in 20 learning his A, B, C, Christopher Dock would send word to the father of the child to give him a penny, and he would ask his mother to cook two eggs for him as a treat. were fine rewards for poor children in a new country.

These

There were no clocks or watches in the country. The 25 children came to school one after another, taking their places near the master, who sat writing. They spent their time reading until all were there; but everyone who succeeded in reading his passage without mistake stopped reading and came and sat at the writing table to write. 30 The poor fellow who remained last on the bench was called the Lazy Scholar.

Every Lazy Scholar had his name written on the blackboard. If a child at any time failed to read correctly, he was sent back to study his passage and called again after a while. If he failed a second or a third time, all the scholsars cried out, "Lazy!" Then his name was written on the blackboard, and all the poor Lazy Scholar's friends went to work to teach him to read his lesson correctly. And if his name should not be rubbed off the board before school was dismissed, all the scholars might write it down and 10 take it home with them. But if he could read well before school was out, the scholars, at the bidding of the master, called out, "Industrious!" and then his name was erased. The funniest of Dock's rewards was that which he gave to those who made no mistake in their lessons. He marked 15 a large O with chalk on the hand of the perfect scholar. Fancy what a time the boys and girls must have had, trying to go home without rubbing out this O!

If you had gone into this school some day, you might have seen a boy sitting on a punishment bench all alone. 20 This was a fellow who had told a lie or used bad language. He was put there as not fit to sit near anybody else. If he committed the offense often, a yoke would be put round his neck, as if he were a brute. Sometimes, however, the teacher would give the scholars their choice of a blow on 25 the hand or a seat on the punishment bench. They usually preferred the blow.

The old schoolmaster in Skippack wrote one hundred rules of good behavior for his scholars. This is perhaps the first book on good manners written in America. But rules 30 of behavior for people living in houses of one or two rooms, as they did in that day, were very different from those needed in our time. Here are some of the rules: