The Royal Battledore
The sight of an old hornbook must always be of interest to any one of any power of imagination or of thoughtful mind, who can read between the irregular lines, the ill-shapen letters, its true significance as the emblem, the well-spring of English education and literature. This thought of the symbolism of the hornbook is expressed in quaint words on the back of a shabby battered specimen of questionable age in the British Museum:—
"What more could be wished for even by a literary Gourmand under the Tudors than to be able to Read and Spell; to repeat that holy Charm before which fled all unholy Ghosts, Goblins, or even the Old Gentleman himself, to the very bottom of the Red Sea; to say that immortal Prayer which seems Heaven to all who ex animo use it; and to have those mathematical powers by knowing units, from which spring countless myriads."
For a fuller account of the hornbook, readers should go to the History of the Hornbook, by Andrew W. Tuer, two splendid volumes forming one of the most interesting and exhaustive accounts of any special educational topic that has ever been written.
The printed cardboard battledore was a successor of the hornbook. This was often printed on a double fold of stiff card with a third fold or flap lapping over like an old pocket-book. These battledores were issued in such vast numbers that it is futile to attempt even to allude to the myriad of publishers. An affine of the hornbook is seen in the wooden "reading-boards" which were used a hundred years ago in Erasmus Hall, the famous old academy built in 1786 in Flatbush, Long Island. It is still standing and still used for educational purposes. These "reading-boards" are tablets of wood, fifteen inches long, covered on either side with time-yellowed paper printed in large letters with some simple reading-lesson. The old fashioned long s in the type proves their age. Through a pierced hole a loop of string suspended these boards before a class of little scholars, who doubtless all read in chorus. Similar ones bearing the alphabet are still used in Cornish Sunday-schools. They were certainly used in Dutch schools, two centuries ago, as the illustrations of old Dutch books prove.
