It is said that Mr. Smith went early one morning to their humble shop on
the second floor of No. 150 Main street, and made two piles of sample
books. In one he put all the miscellaneous publications of the firm, big
and little--the Child's Bible and Sacred Harp among them--and on top of
the pile placed all the cash the firm possessed; in the other, were half
a dozen small text books, including the four McGuffey Readers. When
Mr. Truman arrived, Mr. Smith expressed the desire to dissolve the
partnership, showed the two piles and offered Mr. Truman his choice.
He pounced on the cash and the larger pile and left the insignificant
schoolbooks for Mr. Smith, who thereupon became the sole owner of
McGuffey's Readers.

This separation of the partnership took place in 1841 and although there
is no documentary evidence of the exact method in which it was brought
about, the division of assets was in accord with the spirit of the
incident as handed down by tradition.

[A Lesson in Copyright Law]

Mr. Truman's apparent disgust with the schoolbook business may have
come in part from a lawsuit in which his firm was made a defendant.
Sooner or later, publishers are quite likely to obtain some elementary
instructions as to the meaning and intent of the copyright law through
action taken in court. Messrs. Truman & Smith took a lesson in 1838.

On October 1st of that year Benjamin F. Copeland and Samuel Worcester
brought suit in the court of the United States against Truman & Smith
and William H. McGuffey for infringement of copyright, alleging that
material had been copied from Worcester's Second, Third, and Fourth