readers were prepared at the solicitation of the publishers and on such a general plan as to number and size as was desired by the publishers. Dr. McGuffey was selected by them as the most competent teacher known to them for the preparation of successful books. He did not prepare the manuscripts and search for a publisher.

On April 28, 1836, he made a contract with Truman & Smith, publishers of Cincinnati, for the preparation and publication of a graded series of readers to consist of four books. The First and Second readers were then in manuscript, the Third and Fourth readers were to be completed within eighteen months. They were both issued in 1837. Dr. Benjamin Chidlaw, then a student in college, aided the author by copying the indicated selections and preparing them for the printer. He received for this work five dollars and thought himself well paid.

These four books constituted the original series of the Eclectic Readers by W.H. McGuffey which in all the subsequent revisions have borne his name and retained the impress of his mind.

The First Reader made a thin 18mo book of seventy-two pages, having green paper covered sides; the Second Reader contained one hundred and sixty-four pages of the same size. The Third Reader had a larger page and was printed as a duodecimo of one hundred and sixty-five pages. The fourth Reader ranked in size with the Third and contained three hundred and twenty-four printed pages. Each was printed from the type, which was distributed when the required number for the edition came from the press.

By the terms of the contract the publishers paid a royalty of ten per cent on all copies sold until the copyright should reach the sum of one thousand dollars, after which the Readers became the absolute property of the publishers. It must be remembered that in those days this sum of money seemed much larger than it would at the present time, and it may be questioned whether this newly organized firm of publishers commanded as much as a thousand dollars in their entire business. At any rate the contract was mutually satisfactory and remained so to the end of the author's life. Right here it seems proper to remark that although the McGuffey readers became the property of the publishers when the royalties reached one thousand dollars. Dr. McGuffey was employed by the publishers in connection with important revisions so long as he lived and the contracts specify a "satisfactory consideration" in each case.

When, after the Civil War, these readers attained a sale which became very profitable to the firm then owning the copyrights, the partners, without suggestion or solicitation, fixed upon an annuity which was paid Dr. McGuffey each year so long as he lived. This was a voluntary recognition of their esteem for the man and of the continued value of his work.

Before Dr. McGuffey completed the manuscripts of the Third and Fourth readers he left Oxford and went to Cincinnati. Here he found himself in close touch with a community fully alive to the claims of education. Cincinnati, in 1837, was the largest city in the West excepting New Orleans and was the great educational center of the West. The early settlers of Cincinnati were generally well educated men and they had a keen sense of the value of learning. The public schools of Cincinnati were then more highly developed than those of any other city in the West. Woodward High School had been endowed and Dr. Joseph Ray, the author of the well known arithmetics, was the professor of mathematics there. The Cincinnati College was then bright with the promise of future usefulness. Lane Seminary was founded and Dr. Lyman Beecher was inducted professor of Theology on December 26, 1832, and became the first president. He went to Cincinnati with his brilliant family. His eldest daughter, Catherine, had already won a high reputation as a teacher, acting as principal of the Hartford (Conn.) Female Institute. His younger daughter, Harriet, married, in January, 1836, Calvin E. Stowe, then one of the professors in Lane Seminary. It was while in Cincinnati that she gathered material and formed opinions which she later embodied in "Uncle Tom's Cabin." In 1834 Henry Ward Beecher graduated at Amherst College. He and his brother, Charles, then went to Cincinnati to study theology under their father. While pursuing his studies Henry Ward Beecher devoted his surplus energies to editorial work on the Cincinnati Daily Journal. These were some of the people of Cincinnati interested in the problem of education who took part with Dr. McGuffey in the discussions of the College of Teachers and labored zealously for the promotion of education in every department. While president of Lane Seminary. Dr. Beecher was also the pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati where W.B. Smith was an attendant.

Dr. McGuffey left Cincinnati in 1839, and when the publisher, Mr. Winthrop B. Smith, found it necessary to add to the four McGuffey's Readers another more advanced book, he employed for its preparation, Mr. Alexander H. McGuffey, a younger brother of Dr. McGuffey. Mr. Alexander H. McGuffey had, in 1837, prepared for Messrs. Truman & Smith the manuscript of McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book, and although the nature of this task was very different from the preparation of a reader for the highest grades in the elementary schools, the result showed that the publishers judged wisely in selecting a man competent to prepare a selection from English literature.