Miss Dana's Spelling-Books Lecture
Horace Mann gave the lecture. Miss Dana received this printed pamphlet of the lecture: Lecture on the Best Mode of Preparing and Using Spelling-Books, Delivered Before the American Institute of Instruction, August 1841 , by Horace Mann, Secretary of the Board of Education (Massachusetts), was published by William D. Ticknor in Boston, 1841. Here is what I have deduced from the printed copy at hand (and a little Internet research): Sometime during the following year, 1842, Miss Joanna E. Dana was preparing to teach school in West Dedham, Massachusetts's. A friend or colleague sent her a printed copy of this lecture to help her with her spelling instruction. Miss Dana evidently read the lecture and, being the literary person and teacher that she was, corrected an error she found in Mr. Mann's discourse. On page 20, in the paragraph that contains " the knotted cords of the Mexicans ," Miss Dana crossed out " Mexic " and wrote next to it in th...