224 MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY 



supposed an "extent of knowledge among teachers in 

 schools that seldom exists". Maury accordingly en- 

 tirely rewrote it for his series; as he says in the preface, 

 it was begun in England in 1866 and was the joint work 

 of him, his wife, and his daughters. This book also was 

 revised after Maury's death, and slightly abridged and 

 re-arranged, though the charm of the author's style was 

 retained. Later, it was revised and largely re-written 

 by Frederic William Simonds of the University of 

 Texas, for the American Book Company, in 1908, though 

 in doing so the attempt was made ''to preserve as far as 

 possible the plan of the older work — a plan that has met 

 the approval of a generation of teachers — and at the 

 same time to modernize the text thoroughly". 



In 1866, Maury began, under an agreement with his 

 publisher Richardson, another book, entitled "Practical 

 Astronomy for Schools", and this was practically finished 

 before he left England. But the work was never pub- 

 lished, though it reached the stage of galley proof, in 

 which condition it has been preserved among Maury's 

 papers. Its failure of publication was probably due to 

 financial embarrassment on the part of the University 

 Publishing Company, which became the firm name of 

 Richardson's company on January 1, 1869. For several 

 years this company had a hard struggle and more than 

 once was on the verge of bankruptcy. Maury experi- 

 enced difficulty in collecting money due him from the 

 company, and only the advice of his cousin Rutson kept 

 him from resorting to law to force payments. 



But all these financial matters were adjusted eventu- 

 ally in an amicable fashion, for the popularity of the 

 geographical series brought in a great deal of money to 

 all concerned. In 1871, Maury wrote that the geogra- 



