Page:Historical and biographical sketches.djvu/98

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HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.

the treatise was completed on the 8th of August, 1750. He only consented, however, upon the condition that it should not be printed during his lifetime. For nineteen years afterward the manuscript lay unused. In the meantime the elder Saur had died, and the business had passed into the hands of his son, Christopher Saur the second. Finally in 1769 some “friends of the common good,” getting wearied with the long delay, succeeded in overcoming the scruples of Dock, and secured his consent to having it printed. It met with further vicissitudes. Having read the MS., Saur mislaid it, and after a careful search concluded that it must have been sold along with some waste paper. He offered a reward for its return through his newspaper. People began to report that he had found something in it he did not like, and had put it away purposely. The satisfied author sent a messenger to him to say “that I should not trouble myself about the loss of the writing. It had never been his opinion that it ought to be printed in his lifetime, and so he was very well pleased that it had been lost.” At length, after it had been lost for more than a year, it was found in a place through which he and his people had thoroughly searched. It was at once published in a large octavo pamphlet of fifty-four pages. The full title is: “Eine Einfaeltige und gruendlich abgefasste Schul-ordnung darinnen deutlich vorgestellt wird, auf welche weisse die Kinder nicht nur in denen in Schulen gewoehnlichen Lehren bestens angebracht sondern auch in der Lehre Gottseligkeit wohl unterrichtet werden moegen aus Liebe zu dem menschlichen Geschlecht aufgesetzt durch den wohlerfarnen und lang geuebten Schulmeister Christoph Dock: und durch einige Freunde des gemeinen Bestens dem Druck uebergeben. Germantown, Gedruckt und zu finden bey Christoph Saur, 1770.”