| TREATMENT OF THE TEXT |
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| The text of Rush's "Plan of Education for Dickinson
College" has been given in print as literally as conventional type will render it, though this is not a line-for-line transcription, and superscript letters have been brought down to the line. Punctuation, capitalization, and spelling all follow Rush's usage, and so does his (or the various committees') sometimes faulty syntax owing to hasty corrections. This was, after all, a rough working draft that the principal author and his colleagues expected, after all corrections, omissions, and additions had been made, would be copied fair in a final version and printed for as wide a circulation as desired. So far as we know, this was never done, and although this adds to the difficulty of presenting an intelligible text, it also adds to the interest of the document, for the reader can follow, up to a point, the thinking of all those who were involved in an action, or series of actions, they felt had great significance. |
| The reader is to assume that everything in the text was originally
written by Rush unless it is enclosed in square brackets ( [ ] ). The inserted, i.e. bracketed, matter is in probably more than one hand besides Rush's. One of these is no doubt John Montgomery's, but there is not enough inserted matter to make identification of the various writers certain. |
| Deletions in the manuscript text have been indicated by running
a line through the deleted words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs, as was done in the original. There are two or three exceptions, where the word "Expunged" follows matter not actually lined or crossed out. These are indicated in the footnotes to the text, which have been kept to an absolute minimum. |
| When part or all of a deleted passage cannot now be read at all
(and fortunately these are few), the phrase deleted and illegible has been editorially inserted. |
| From the facsimiles of the opening pages readers will see that
many of the deletions and corrections were made by Rush himself, often simply to improve his style. This is in general true throughout the Plan, but where deletions appear without any matter being substituted for them, it is not possible to tell by whom or at what stage of composition or later revision the deletions were made. |
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