200 Old Days on the Farni, 



out, might have been preserved! I have in my 

 mind's eye only an imperfect reproduction of that 

 rude little log structure — the first school-house in 

 the section where I was born. It was falling to 

 decay when I first saw it, but I have pleasure in 

 recalling that one of Canada's great men imparted 

 knowledge within its walls. The late Hon. Thomas 

 Ballantyne, the founder of one of Canada's most 

 important branches of agriculture — the cheese in- 

 dustry — was a teacher there. The teachers of 

 those days had to depend largely on their stored- 

 up knowledge, for the text-books extant then, were 

 far, far different from those in use in these mod- 

 ern times. But those pioneer teachers left the 

 imprint of their personality upon the scholars in 

 a way that is now almost a lost art. 



AN OLD SCHOOL HEADER 



In reference to early text-books I have on my 

 bookshelf an old, musty, dog-eared, leather-cov- 

 ered Reader, that my father learned to read from 

 in a log cabin situated on the banks of Avon in 

 1835. The title-page reads, '*A collection of Eng- 

 lish prose and verse for the use of schools, selected 

 from different authors; to which are prefixed a 

 few short lessons for beginners with an exercise 

 on spelling, in four large tables containing all the 

 words of three syllables and above, a great many 

 of three and two and the proper names divided 

 and accented. Also an appendix containing prin- 



