slates--slates that were always falling on the floor with a rousing
clatter, so that almost always at least one corner was cracked. Some
mitigation of the noise was gained by binding the frame with strips of
red flannel, thus adding warmth and brightness to the color scheme. Just
as some fertile brain conceived the notion of applying a knob of rubber
to each corner, slates went out, and I suppose only doctors buy them
nowadays to hang on the doors of their offices. Maybe the teacher's
nerves were too highly strung to endure the squeaking of gritty pencils,
but I think the real reason for their banishment is, that slates invited
too strongly the game of noughts and crosses, or tit-tat-toe, three in
a row, the champion of indoor sports, and one entirely inimical to the
study of the joggerfy lesson. But if slates favored tit-tat-toe, they
also favored ciphering, and nothing but good can come from that. Paper
is now so cheap that you need not rub out mistakes, but paper and pencil
can never surely ground one in "the science of numbers and the art of
computing by them." What is written is written, and returns to plague
the memory, but if you made a mistake on the slate, you could spit on it
and rub it out with your sleeve and leave no trace of the error, either
on the writing surface or the tables of the memory. What does the hymn
say?

"Forget the steps already trod,
And onward urge thy way."

The girls used to keep a little sponge and some water in a discarded
patchouli bottle with a glass stopper, to wash their slates with; but it
always seemed to me that the human and whole-hearted way was otherwise.

Reading, writing, and arithmetic,--these three; and the greatest of
these three is arithmetic. Over against it stands grammar, which may be
said to be derived from reading and writing. Show me a man that, as
a boy at school, excelled in arithmetic and I will show you a useful
citizen, a boss in his own business, a leader of men; show me the boy
that preferred grammar, that read expressively, that wrote a
beautiful hand and curled his capital S's till their tails looked like
mainsprings, and I will show you a dreamer and a sentimentalist--a man
that works for other people. While I have breath in me, I will maintain
the supereminence of arithmetic. There is no room for disputation in
arithmetic, no exceptions to the rule. Twice two is four, and that's
all there is about it: but whether there be pronunciations,