a boy I ask among the boys, if a girl, among the girls, which among them all will receive this new school child and teach and instruct it. Accordingly as the child is strange or known, or is agreeable in appearance or otherwise, there are generally many or few who are ready to offer to instruct it. If there are none willing, then I ask, who, for a Script or a Bird,[1] will instruct the child for a certain time, and this rarely fails.
So much as to how I receive the children in school.
Further information concerning the Assembling of the Children at School.
The assembling takes place in this way:
Since some here in the country have a long way to come but others live near to the school, so that the scholars cannot be all together at a fixed time and at the stroke of the clock, as in those places where men live together in a city or village, the rule and arrangements are that all of those who come first who can read in the Testament sit down on a bench, the boys together on one bench and the girls on another by themselves. A chapter is then given them out of the Testament to read and, without having studied it, they read in turn. Meanwhile I am writing before them. Those who read their verse without mistakes sit down at the table and write, but those who fail must go down to the foot on the bench. In the meantime all who come in take their places at the foot on the bench. Those who are freed as above sit down at the
- ↑ I have one of these Birds, neatly drawn, and a Script written by him. In the Cassel collection are a number of the Scripts or Schrifften. They are generally Scripture texts and verses, with more or less ornamentation. Schrifften of a similar kind, and some of them very elaborate, were, a century ago, to be found in almost every German household.
