PREFACE. So many works on Arithmetic have been published, that the present treatise would appear superfluous, did it not exhibit a new and improved method of treating that important subject. The majority of our predecessors in the path we are now following, appear to have had in view the convenience of the master more than the improvement of the pupil. They have imagined it an easier task to make a boy learn a rule than to develop his mental powers. We differ entirely from such a doctrine, and wish the master to be the ruling spirit of the class, and not the book which is used; he must be at the helm, and not carried along like a common passenger. There is nothing empirical, nothing which has a tendency to "cram," in the plan we here introduce. Nature has been our guide. Profiting by the natural disposition which every child possesses of becoming interested about objects which his mind can grasp, we have, by a well graduated method, extended the field of his observation, and led him from the known to the unknown, from the easy |