Colonial days in old New York

								

museum at Antwerp, printed by H. Walpot, of Dordrecht, Netherlands, in
1640; and a beautiful silver-backed Dutch horn-book in the collection
of an English clergyman at Coombe Place, England; and a few others in
public libraries that are probably Dutch. Dutch artists show, by their
frequent representations of horn-books in paintings of children, that
the little a-b-boordje was well known. In the “Christ blessing Little
Children,” by Rembrandt, the presentment of a child has a horn-book
hanging at his side. In several pictures by Jan Steen, 1626-79,
horn-books may be noted; in one a child has hung his horn-book on a
parrot’s perch while he plays. In 1753 English children used horn-books
in New York as in the other provinces, for they were advertised with
Bibles and primers in the New York newspapers at that time.
Printed arithmetics were rarely used or seen. Schoolmasters carried
with them carefully executed “sum-books” in manuscript, from which
scholars copied the sums and rules into small blank-books of their own.
One, of a Gravesend scholar in 1754, has evidently served to prove the
pupil’s skill both in arithmetic and penmanship. The book is prefaced
by instructive aphorisms, such as “Carefully mind to mend in every
line;” “Game not in school when you should write.” The wording of the
rules is somewhat curious. One reads:--


“Rule of Bartar, which is for exchanging of ware, One Commodity for
another. This Rule shows the Merchants how they may Proportion their
Goods so that neither of them may sustain loss. Sum. Two Merchants
A. and B. bartar. A. hath 320 Dozen of Candles @ ⁴⁄₆ per Dozen; for
which B. giveth him £30 in Cash and y^e Rest in Cotton @ 8d per lb. I
demand: how much Cotton B. must give A. more than the £30 in Cash.”
As commerce increased and many young men sought a seafaring life,
navigation was taught, and advanced mathematics. In 1749 the notice
of a Brooklyn “Philomath” on Nassau Island shows that he could teach
“Arithmetick vulgar and decimal; Geometry plain and Spherical;
Surveying, Navigation in 3 kinds, viz: Plain Mercator and Great
Circle Sailing, Astronomy, and Dialling.” Thus did this Philomath
meet the demand of the day. In 1773 the Flatbush Grammar School was
taught by John Copp, who also took scholar-boarders, who “have the
advantage of being taught geography in the winter evenings, with many
other useful particulars that frequently occur to the teacher,” which
seems to present a rather melancholy picture when we reflect on the
other particulars of good coasting and skating that then were around
Flatbush, on the Steenbakkery for instance, which, doubtless, would
frequently occur on winter evenings to the scholar-boarder.

                              CHAPTER III



                          WOOING AND WEDDING

The domestic life of the Dutch settlers flowed on in a smooth-running