CHRISTOPHER DOCK.
The student of American literature, should he search
through histories, bibliographies, and catalogues of libraries
for traces of Christopher Dock or his works, would
follow a vain quest. The attrition of the great sea of
human affairs during the course of a century and a half
has left of the pious schoolmaster, as the early Germans
of Pennsylvania were wont to call him, only a name, and
of his reputation, nothing, Watson, the annalist, says,
that in 1740 Christopher Dock taught school in the old
Mennonite log church, in Germantown; the catalogue of
the American Antiquarian Society contains the title of
his “Schul-ordnung” under the wrong year; and these
meagre statements are the only references to him I have
ever been able to find in any English book. There may
be men still living who have heard from their grandfathers
of his kindly temper and his gentle sway, but memory is
uncertain, and they are rapidly disappearing. Between
the leaves of old Bibles and in out-of-the-way places in
country garrets, perhaps, are still preserved some of the
Schrifften, and birds and flowers which he used to write
and paint as rewards for his dutiful scholars, but whose
was the hand that made them has long been forgotten.
The good which he did has been interred with his bones,
and all that he did was good. The details of his life that
can now be ascertained are very few, but such as they
are it is a fitting task to gather them together. The eye
will sometimes leave the canvas on which are depicted the
gaudy robes of a Catharine Cornaro, or the fierce passions
