The Rudiments of Arithmetic in Questions and Answers

Comprising all the necessary rules to form and complete the man of business. The whole upon an improved plan. Not only adopted to School purposes, but also for the aid of private students and young tutors, having a number of the most complicated questions in Mahan's, Davies', and Gough's 'Arithmetics,' worked at full length, with the necessary rules to effect all others of a similar nature

Calf-backed boards, 32mo, 64pp. Fair to Good with loss to much of the blue paper, exposing the boards and wastepaper at the turn-ins; textblock with light toning, but crisp and square. 3 copies in OCLC (NYPL, UC Berkeley, Millersville).

A mathematical catechism designed for practical education, "particularly to such as are to receive but a small proportion of schooling. Its utility must be obvious to every one who considers that the opportunity for improvement with many is limited" (3). The arithmetic is followed with "Twelve Select Ideas, Designed to promote the love of Virtue and Patriotism," an appeal to implicit morality in education. The content is aimed at parents, as much as students, with maxims addressing the kind of rhetoric "that good education is an evil in the human family" and "at the root of rascality," that "all books are useless, and might as well be burned" (62). The book is a reminder of the resistance to common school mandates in rural communities. The latter section reinforces morality with lessons in temperance and against swearing, referencing religious content without necessarily instructing in it, which was considered the parents' domain in Amish and Mennonite communities that were prominent in Lancaster County, where the book was published. An uncommonly moving appeal slipped into an unsuspecting math textbook.