I was not in possession of any good chronological synopsis for their benefit. With the systems of Mrs. Willard, that noble pioneer in female education, I was not acquainted. My only resource seemed, to make, from my own historical reading, a list of such dates as might be most important or interesting. As this was with me a favorite exercise, it soon swelled to about two hundred. Their copies of my manuscript catalogue while in the progress of arrangement were fragmentary, hastily traced on slips of paper, on corners of slates, and often on no scroll but memory. Yet, almost by magic, they possessed themselves of the chain that bound events together, from the Creation downward. When an unemployed interval of only a few minutes occurred, I was accustomed to ask them for a date, and, looking up with a bright smile, they would answer. Methought they took peculiar pride in that science. Perhaps because they knew I delighted in it, and I was striving, with the aid of crude materials, to impart it to them. The questions were varied, that the answers might combine sometimes the date, sometimes the explanation. For instance: "In what year of the world did the ark rest upon Mount Ararat? Who was called, 1921 years before the Christian era, to go forth alone from his people and his father's house? Who was Queen of Assyria, and who the Judge of Israel, when Troy was destroyed, 1184 years before Christ? When were the Jews carried into captivity by the Chaldeans?
