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��THE USE, MISUSE AND ABUSE OF TEXT BOOKS.
��near the North line of Pepperell, Mass., adjoining Mollis, a large part of his farm, (still the country seat of his descend- ants), being in Hollis. Both Capt. Dow and Lieut. Goss, of the Hollis company, lived in the South part of Hollis, and were the neighbors, and may well be supposed to have been the personal friends of Col. Prescott. Another rea- son that would naturally have much weight with the private soldiers of the company, was the fact that a very large part of the early settlers of Hollis were
��from Billerica, Chelmsford, Littleton, Groton and Pepperell, and other towns in Middlesex county, in which most of the companies in Col. Prescott's regi- ment were raised. It may be added to these motives that Col. John Hale, one of the leading and most active friends of the Revolution in Hollis, and at the time the Colonel of the regiment of militia to which the Hollis soldiers belonged, was brother-in-law of Col. Prescott, Abigail Hale, a sister of Col. H., having become the wife of Col. Prescott.
��THE USE, MISUSE AND ABUSE OF TEXT BOOKS.
��BY PROF. E. D. SANBORN.
��American literature is most prolific in newspapers and school books. The best minds in the country have labored in both these departments, for two potent rea- sons : such works are popular, and they pay well. Foreigners regard this condi- tion of things as proof of the general ed- ucation of the people and of the superfi- cial character of their knowledge. The many read ; the few think. There is a general desire for information, but no deep love of learning. Knowledge is more widely diffused, but scholarship is less profound than in the old world. What we gain in surface we lose in depth. The political press stimulates, fires and almost maddens the public mind; but it fails to elevate, expand and instruct. It tells wonderfully in molding public opinion, but it does not tell the truth. It requires months to sift a popu- lar rumor before it can be pronounced re- liable. It may be doubted whether, dur- ing the war, with all the aid of steam and electricity, the people of New England ascertained the exact results of a battle in the South so soon as our fathers did, in Revolutionary times, when a dispatch was carried from the commander-in- chief by a single courier on horseback. Unwelcome intelligence is always soften-
��ed or suppressed by a partisan press, and if our public journals were simply vehicles of political opinions they would scarcely deserve the patronage they re- ceive. Every newspaper contains much valuable matter of a literary, moral and religious character. Such compositions give to the press its power to please and instruct, and thus to educate the common mind. By such agencies the American people have become the best informed, though by no means the most learned, people in the world. In general informa- tion, in extemporaneous tact and practi- cal skill, the Yankee has no peer; but in thorough discipline, in exact knowledge and artistic culture, the French and Ger- mans surpass the New Englander.
But the present is emphatically an age of text-books. The press fills the land with the multitudinous products of busy minds, in the shape of grammars, arith- metics, readers, geographies, charts, maps, keys and interpretations to relieve weak minds of the il insupportable fa- tigue of thought," and make the arcana of science intelligible to the meanest and feeblest capacity. Well may we address most assemblies of teachers as Paul did the Corinthians who coveted novelties in religion: "How is it, brethren? when ye
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