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in one of her letters, it was fashionable to ridicule female learning.'"

This discrimination between the intellectual needs of the two sexes should not, perhaps, be matter of surprise, when we consider that the English system of public schools for boys, extending from the "Winchester School" to "Rugby," had been in existence for two centuries, and that of the six hundred who first landed on the coast of Massachusetts, one in thirty was a graduate from the English University of Cambridge, while both the men and the women were heirs to the prevailing sentiment of disrespect for womanly intelligence and education, which marked the demoralization of the reign of the Stuarts in England.

The time of Queen Elizabeth has passed, in which the noble Lady Jane Grey, being asked by Sir Roger Ascham why she lingered to read Plato in Greek while the lords and ladies of the Court were pleasuring in the park, replied, “I wist all their sport in the park is but a shadow to the pleasure I find in Plato. Alas! good folk, they never felt what true pleasure meaneth."

Lady Mary Wortley Montague truly portrayed the time, when she wrote, early in the eighteenth century: "We are permitted no books but such as tend to the weakening and effeminating our minds. We are taught to place all our art in--adorning our persons, while our minds are entirely neglected." It might have been expected that the religious zeal which brought these earnest New England pilgrims to a strange, wild country, would hold in check any tendency to undue display, especially when supplemented by the severe restrictions of their domestic life, which were relieved only by compulsory attendance on protracted services, held in unwarmed churches, to listen to metaphysical sermons on foreordination, reprobation, and infant damnation, and to prayers an hour long.

Yet it appears that while no provision was made for their instruction, they were sometimes arraigned for wearing “wide sleeves, lace tiffany, and such things," while "those given to scolding were condemned to sit publicly, with their tongues held in cleft sticks, or were thrice dipped from a duckingstool."

It would have been better, perhaps, that their tongues had been trained by instruction to becoming speech, or that they had been permitted to drink at the fountain of learning.

Sentiment in favor of the practical skill of women seems not to have been wanting. They cooked and washed, and the law

required them to spin and gather flax, and on one notable occasion women exhibited their skill at the spinning wheel, publicly, on Boston Common. As soon as they could get around to it they no doubt matched the skill of their English kindred whom Hollingshed described a half century earlier. He says, "The females knit or net the nets for sportsmen :

"Fine ferne stitch, finny stitch, new stitch, and chain stitch,
Brave broad stitch, fischer stitch, Irish stitch, and queen stitch,
The Spanish stitch, rosemary stitch and mowse stitch;

All these are good, and these we must allow,

And these are everywhere in practice now.'"

Aside from their belief in the primary importance of religious training, it may be conceded that the men of colonial times did not lack the sagacity which led Charlemagne in the eighth century to require that the children of those who were to participate in the government should be educated, " in order that intelligence might rule the Empire." The application of this principle in his limited empire opened education to the ruling class; in America it opened it to the ruling sex.

How small were the opportunities for instruction, outside the free schools, may be known from the fact that the committee for supervising them enjoined upon the selectmen to take care that no person should open a private school except upon their recommendation.

In 1656 a Mr. Jones having opened a private school was visited by the magistrates, who exacted a promise from him to give up the school at the close of the winter term. Apparently he was reluctant in so doing, for it is recorded that the next spring Mr. Jones was sent for by the selectmen "for keeping a Schoole, and required to perform his promise to the Towne in the Winter, to remove himselfe and familye in the Springe, and forbiden to keep Schoole any longer."

The first opportunities for girls in the colonies were in the "Dame-School," in which some woman was hired to gather the little children about her knee to teach them their letters from the New England Primer. They were required to commit to memory the shorter catechism, and sometimes were taught to read enough to decipher it for themselves, from the last pages of their only book, the famous Primer. Training in manners was made of prime importance.

In some cases, as is reported, old women who were a town charge were set to this useful employment. Sometimes these "dames were housewives, in which case two frequently alternated in caring for the children. In this way, according

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to the town records of Woburn, in 1635, " Joseph Wright's wife and Allen Converse's wife were able to divide between them £o. 10s. od., for a year's work. It is to be inferred that the acquirements of these mistresses were limited, as the next year, October, 1674, the town "agreed with Jonathan Tomson to tech bigger children and Allen Converse's wife to teach leser children."

In the old graveyard in Cambridge, opposite Harvard College, it is recorded that Mrs. Murray died 1707, aged sixty-two years. The title "Mrs." was honorary, as she was unmarried. This betokens the esteem in which she was held, as does the following inscription upon her tombstone:

"This good school dame

No longer school must keep,
Which gives us cause

For children's sake to weep."

Later, especially in the old seaport towns, the children's schools, for girls as well as for boys, were frequently in the hands of women of much refinement. Of such, Miss Hetty Higginson, of Salem, was famous as an instructor about 1782. The record says that, "being asked what she taught, she -laughingly replied, ethics,' yet to a superficial observer it might seem that she taught nothing. Her manners were courtly, and her conversation was replete with dignity, kind feeling, and sound sense."

Some improvement upon this state of education, or want of education rather, gradually crept in; whether because of the need of teachers for the boys, which had come to be felt, or because in the home there was much early association of the child with the mother, and so some education on her part might prove indirectly advantageous, or whether there was some dawning consideration of her own personal needs, it isimpossible to determine. Perhaps there was difficulty in withholding other books from the girl after she could read the catechism, or, later, in drawing a sharp line between the acquisition of the first and the second rule in arithmetic.

Suffice it that by the close of the eighteenth century, most towns in New England had made some slight provisions for educating girls; how slight, almost any early town history will show.

The rate of progress in a thriving Massachusetts town, Newburyport, is given in Smith's History, as follows: "

speaking of schools we must be understood as referring to

boys' schools only." So far as education of females by the town was concerned they were sadly deficient. As late as 1790, a proposition to provide schools for girls was put aside without action, by the town, and deferred for another year, and when they did set about the work it is curious to note of how little consequence they considered it as compared with the provision to be made for boys.

At first three or four schools were suggested for girls between five and nine years of age, which were "to be furnished with dames to learn them good manners and proper decency of behavior." These were the essentials, but in addition they were to be taught "spelling and reading sufficient to read the Bible, and, if the parents desired it, needlework and knitting." The sessions of the school were to be from April to October. .... But a later petition being presented to the town, that some arrangement might be made for the instruction of girls over nine years of age, the town graciously voted, March, 1792, that "during the summer months, when the boys in the school had diminished, the master shall receive girls for instruction in grammar and reading, after the dismission of the boys, for an hour and a half."

No per

Even to this poor privilege there were limitations. son paying a tax of over three hundred pounds was permitted to send his daughters to these supplementary schools. But the scheme for the larger girls did not work well for the boys, so the masters were directed "not to teach females again."

As late as 1804 we find the female children, over nine years of age, as great a burden on the hands of the school committee of the town as ever. In answer to another petition, of eleven persons, that this class of girls might be taught, by the town, arithmetic and writing, four girls' "schools were established, to be kept six months in the year, from six to eight o'clock in the morning, and on Thursday afternoons." So that, in addition to their other accomplishments, they were in a fair way of being taught early rising.

It was not until 1836 that the school committee decreed "that one female grammar school be kept through the year." This is probably the time of which it is recorded “that, when a school was started for girls in Newburyport, a taxpayer objected to it, and applied for an injunction, bringing out Judge Shaw's celebrated opinion on that point." (Cushing us. Newburyport.)

In 1788 the town of Northampton voted "not to be at any expense for schooling girls." Upon an appeal to the courts

the town was indicted and fined for its neglect. In 1792 it voted "to admit girls, between eight and fifteen, to the schools from May 1 to October 31.

Within the memory of a recent resident of Hatfield, an influential citizen, whose children were girls, appealed in townmeeting for the privilege of sending them to the public school, which he helped by his taxes to support. An indignant fellow townsman sprang to his feet and exclaimed, “Hatfield school shes? Never!"

The gentleman who narrated this fact lived to witness, also, the foundation and endowment of a college for girls at Northampton by Miss Smith of Hatfield, one of the sex, and probably one of the girls contemptuously forbidden a commonschool education.

For a long time after summer schools were provided for girls, in many of the New England towns they were not sup-ported, by a general tax, as were the winter schools for boys, but by tuition fees.

Josiah Quincy, in his "Municipal History of Boston," says "After the peace of 1783, a committee on schools 'laments. that so many children should be found in the streets, playing and gaming in school hours.'" There seems as yet to be no search for girls who are losing school advantages.

In 1789 great educational advance was made in Boston.. A system was adopted which provided "a Latin School' for fitting boys of ten years old and over, by a four years' course, including Greek and Latin, for the University; also three reading and writing schools.'

Boys had the right to attend these all the year round; girls from the twentieth of April to the twentieth of October. This was the first admission of girls to the "free schools."

Provision was made this year that "arithmetic, orthography, and the English language shall be taught, in addition to reading and writing." It is to be hoped that this applied to the summer sessions, open to girls, as well as to the all-the-yearround sessions for boys.

When, however, early in the nineteenth century, arithmetic and geography were generally added to the courses of studies in schools, it was only for the winter months, such knowledge being thought quite unnecessary for girls. "All a girl needs to know is enough to reckon how much she will have to spin to buy a peck of potatoes, in case she becomes a widow," was the repulse of a too ambitious girl in the early part of this century. An old lady, sitting beside the present writer, well remem

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