Page:The Life and Works of Christopher Dock.djvu/23

Rh He wrote to Dock's warm friend, Dielman Kolb, a prominent Mennonite minister, urging the importance of his request and submitting a series of questions on school administration which he desired Dock to answer. Through the influence of Kolb the modest teacher was led to make reply to these questions. The manuscript of the Schul-ordnung resulted.

Dock completed the Schul-ordnung August 8, 1750. The manuscript was given to Saur with the stipulation that it was not to be published during the lifetime of the author. For nearly a score of years the manuscript lay unused. In 1758, the elder Saur died, and his son, Dock's pupil, succeeded to the large publishing interests of his father.

Finally, in 1769, some “friends of the common good” succeeded in overcoming the author's scruplesand secured his consent to its publication. This was, no doubt, an easier task after Saur had published in the Geistliches Magazien a number of articles written by Dock. But alas! the manuscript, so long unused, was nowhere to be found. Saur feared it had been sold along with some waste paper. People began to intimate that Saur really did not wish to publish it and had purposely put it away. Saur advertised its loss in his newspaper and offered a reward for its return. Dock, with characteristic modesty, sent a messenger to Saur to say “that I should not trouble myself about the writing, it had never been my opinion that it ought to be printed in my lifetime, and so I am very well pleased that it has been lost.” After more than a year had elapsed,