7.  If it is a school-book which you are wishing to introduce, consider well before you waste your time in preparing it, and your spirits in the vexatious work of getting it through the press; whether it is, for general use, so superior to those already published as to induce teachers to make a change in favor of yours.  I have italicized the words for general use, for no delusion is more common than for a teacher to suppose that because a text-book which he has prepared and uses in manuscript is better for him than any other work which he can obtain, it will therefore be better for general circulation.  Every man, if he has any originality of mind, has of course some peculiar method of his own, and he can of course prepare a text-book which will be better adapted to this method than those ordinarily in use.  The history of a vast number of text-books, Arithmetics, Geographies, and Grammars, is this:  A man of somewhat ingenious mind, adopts some peculiar mode of instruction in one of these branches, and is quite successful, not because the method has any very peculiar excellence, but simply because he takes a greater interest in it, both on account of its novelty and also from the fact that it is his own invention.  He conceives the plan of writing a text-book to develop and illustrate this method.  He hurries through the work.  By some means or other he gets it printed.  In due time it is regularly advertised.  The journals of education give notice of it; the author sends a few copies to his friends, and that is the end of it.  Perhaps a few schools may make a trial of it, and if, for any reason, the teachers who try it are interested in the work, probably in their hands it succeeds.  But it does not succeed so well as to attract general attention, and consequently does not get into general circulation.  The author loses his time and his patience.  The publisher, unless, unfortunately, it was published on the author’s account, loses his paper, and in a few months scarcely any body knows that such a book ever saw the light.

It is in this way that the great multitude of school-books which are now constantly issuing from the press take their origin.  Far be it from me to discourage the preparation of good school-books.  This department of our literature offers a fine field for the efforts of learning and genius.  What I contend against is the endless multiplicity of useless works, hastily conceived and carelessly executed, and which serve no purpose but to employ uselessly talents which, if properly applied, might greatly benefit both the community and the possessor.