Throughout their lives, Jacob Abbott and his brother John dedicated themselves to teaching. They introduced many (sometimes controversial) educational reforms in Massachusetts, and in 1828 opened the Mount Vernon School for Young Ladies in Boston. This reader, produced about 13 years after the opening of the school, presents the kinds of moral lessons the Abbotts taught their students, including the belief that young children should develop their own sense of ethics by grappling with adult language and the complexities of their surroundings. This particular passage, entitled “Be Kind to Your Sister,” follows an impulsive girl who pushes her sister one morning on the way to school. As her injured sister takes a week to recover, the guilty aggressor vows never again to act so irrationally.

Boston Public Library, Rare Books & Manuscripts