This book is bound with board sides and a muslin
back and a careful defense of this binding is made, claiming that the
muslin is "much more durable than the thin tender leather usually put
upon books of this class." This statement was unquestionably true. The
leather referred to was of sheepskin and of very little strength, but it
took very many years to convince the public of the untruth of the
saying, "There is nothing like leather."

[Dr. Pinneo, Editor]

It is said that Mr. Smith, in the early days of his career as a
publisher, himself made the changes and corrections which experience
showed were needed; but, about 1843, he employed Dr. Timothy Stone
Pinneo to act under his direction in literary matters.

[Dr. Pinneo's Work]

Dr. Pinneo was the eldest son of the Rev. Bezaleel Pinneo, an early
graduate of Dartmouth College, who was for more than half a century
pastor of the First Congregational Church in Milford, Conn. Dr. Pinneo
was born at Milford in February, 1804. His mother was a woman of
culture, Mary, only daughter of the Rev. Timothy Stone of Lebanon,
Conn., a graduate of Yale College. Dr. Pinneo graduated at Yale in the
class of 1824. A severe illness in the winter after his graduation made
it necessary for him to spend his winters in the South until his health
was sufficiently restored to enable him to pursue the study of medicine.
He taught for a time in the Charlotte Hall Institute, Maryland, and
then removed to Ohio. He acted one year as professor of Mathematics
and Natural Philosophy in Marietta College. He studied medicine in
Cincinnati and received the degree of Doctor of Medicine from the Ohio
Medical College in 1843. On June 1, 1848, he married Jeanette Linsley,
daughter of Rev. Dr. Joel H. Linsley, at one time president of Marietta
College. Dr. Pinneo was for eighteen years a resident in Cincinnati. In
1862 he went to Greenwich, Conn., where he was occupied in literary work
and in the conduct of a boys' boarding school. In 1885, after his wife's
death, he removed to Norwalk, Conn., where he died August 2, 1893. Two
daughters and a son survived him. Dr. Pinneo contributed materially to
the revisions of McGuffey's Readers made in 1843 and in 1853; but both
these revisions passed through the hands of Dr. McGuffey, then at the
University of Virginia, and were approved by him. It does not appear
that Dr. Pinneo exercised any personal authority over the readers. He
was employed, for moderate amounts