come from that. Paper is now so cheap that you need not rub out
mistakes, but paper and pencil can never surely ground one in "the
science of numbers and the art of computing by them." What is
written is written, and returns to plague the memory, but if you
made a mistake on the slate, you could spit on it and rub it out
with your sleeve and leave no trace of the error, either on the
writing surface or the tables of the memory. What does the hymn
say?

"Forget the steps already trod,
And onward urge thy way."

The girls used to keep a little sponge and some water in a
discarded patchouli bottle with a glass stopper, to wash their
slates with; but it always seemed to me that the human and
whole-hearted way was otherwise.

Reading, writing, and arithmetic, - these three; and the greatest
of these three is arithmetic. Over against it stands grammar,
which may be said to be derived from reading and writing. Show me
a man that, as a boy at school, excelled in arithmetic and I will
show you a useful citizen, a boss in his own business, a leader of
men; show me the boy that preferred grammar, that read expressively,
that wrote a beautiful hand and curled his capital S's till their
tails looked like mainsprings, and I will show you a dreamer and a
sentimentalist - a man that works for other people. While I have
breath in me, I will maintain the supereminence of arithmetic.
There is no room for disputation in arithmetic, no exceptions to
the rule. Twice two is four, and that's all there is about it: but
whether there be pronunciations, they shall cease; whether there be