Education > Complete treatise on practical arithmetic and book-keeping

PREFACE.
.To adapt this work to the easy use of Preceptors, I
have every where delivered the definitions and rules in
as brief a manner as possible, to make them, at the same
time, general, and free from the absurdity and nonsense
i which commonly attend definitions in works of this kind*
' and have added such notes after them, as describe some
particulars not essential to the general rules themselves,
but tending either to explain them, or to facilitate the
operations ; also, to each rule there is annexed a great va¬
riety of the best examples, with their answers; and where
the common method of setting down the operations did
not please me, I have there inserted the work of an ex¬
ample, at large, in the method which I think most con¬
venient.
The operations of Addition, Subtraction, Multiplica¬
tion, and Division, are delivered, first in simple numbers,
and afterwards in compound; thinking that the propereat
order in which they can be taught. But I would not be
understood to mean, that it is always necessary to have
these, or any other of the rules, copied into the Pupil’s
book in the very order in which they are inserted; for
they are all delivered in such a manner as to have little or
no dependence on each other, that they may be taught in
what order every master chooses: Nor that it is ever ne¬
cessary to copy out the first simple rules; but if any Master
choose to do it, I would advise him to make his Scholars
run over these first upon their slate or waste paper; then
begin them again, and write them, with an example or
two to each, in their book: And thus he may with ease