Note 52 — THE PERIODICAL LITERATURE OF AMERICA.
Reading edition
It is hardly necessary to expatiate on the absurdity of this fallacy. Every man who reads any thing better than newspapers, finds frequent use for his classics in the way of explaining quotations, allusions &c., while nothing can be imagined more utterly useless in every-day life than Conic Sections and Differential Calculus, to any man not professionally scientific. But because arithmetic is the introductory branch of mathematics, and also the foundation of book-keeping, it is thought that working a boy at mathematics will make him a good man of business.