An incident occurred in the school, in 1878, worthy of note. One of the
scholars in arithmetic found four examples which he could not do, and
after a time took them to his teacher, Mr. G. F. Boynton, for
assistance. After the teacher (who was a good scholar) had tried them to
his satisfaction, he found that there was a mistake about the answers in
the book and told the boy so, and then, in a half-joking way, said to
him: “You had better write Dr. Thomson and tell him about it.” The boy
did so, telling also who he was. In due time he received a reply from
Dr. Thomson, who said that two of the mistakes had been discovered and
corrected in later editions, but that the other two had not before been
found; and then he wondered how an Indian boy out in Washington
Territory should be able to correct his arithmetic. He invited the boy
to continue the correspondence, but I believe he never did.