recited in turn until recess. The final hour was devoted to spelling once more with some minor instruction in abbreviations, currencies, weights, measures, etc. Then there was a roll-call, and the boy whose turn it was to make the fire next morning was reminded of the fact. As the scholars pre

pared to leave, the master gave positive orders for them to "go straight home and be civil to everybody they might

meet."

An interesting description of a school about the beginning of the last century is found in the autobiography of Samuel G. Goodrich, or "Peter Parley," as he preferred to call himself on the titlepages of his numerous books. He was born in 1793 in the little farming town of Ridgefield, Connecticut, and the school he attended was typical of those in all the older Northern states; for the city population of the nation in 1800 was only three per cent of the whole. Hence, nearly all the young people received their educational training in the rural schools. Parley says that the immediate surroundings of the schoolhouse to which he went were

bleak and desolate. Loose, squat stone walls, with innumerable breaches, inclosed the adjacent fields. A few tufts of elder, with here and there a patch of briers and pokeweed, flourished in the gravelly soil. Not a tree, however, remained, save an aged chestnut. This, certainly, had not been spared for shade or ornament, but probably because it would have cost too much labor to cut it down; for it was of ample girth.

The schoolhouse chimney was of stone, and the fireplace was six feet wide and four deep. The flue was so ample and so perpendicular that the rain, sleet, and snow fell directly to the hearth. In winter the battle for life with green fizzling fuel, which was brought in lengths and cut up by the scholars, was a stern one.

Not unfrequently the

School in Connecticut.

From The Malte-Brun School Geography, 1831.

wood, gushing with sap as it was, chanced to let the fire go out, and as there was no living without fire, the school was dismissed, whereat all the scholars rejoiced.

I was about six years old when I first went to school. My teacher was "Aunt Delight," a maiden lady of fifty, short and bent, of sallow complexion and solemn aspect.

We were all seated upon benches made of slabs — boards having the exterior or rounded part of the log on one side. As they were useless for other purposes, they were converted into school benches, the rounded part down. They had each four supports, consisting of straddling wooden legs set into auger holes.

The children were called up one by one to Aunt Delight, who sat on a low chair, and required each, as a preliminary, "to make his manners," which consisted of a small, sudden nod. She then placed the spelling-book before the pupil, and with a pen-knife pointed, one by one, to the letters of the alphabet, saying "What's that?"

I believe I achieved the alphabet that summer. Two years later I went to the winter school at the same place kept by Lewis Olmstead a man who made a business of ploughing, mowing, carting manure, etc., in the summer, and of teaching school in the winter. He was a celebrity in ciphering, and Squire Seymour declared that he was the greatestarithmeticker" in Fairfield County. There was not a grammar, a geography, or a history of any kind in the school. Reading, writing, and arithmetic were the only things taught, and these very indifferently- not wholly from the stupidity of the teacher, but because he had forty scholars, and the custom of the age required no more than he performed.

The voters decided in town-meeting how much. money should be expended for school purposes and how it should be distributed. Some towns apportioned it to the districts according to the number of families they contained; others according to the number of children of school age; or the money received in taxes was returned. The last two methods were very unfavorable to the poorer and more

thinly populated districts, and most towns distributed a part of the money in equal sums among the districts, and the rest according to valuation or number of school children. That there were great inequalities is shown by the fact that as late as 1844 several Massachusetts districts were reported to receive less than ten dollars with which to provide schooling. Each district aimed to get the most for its money, and quality was apt to be sacrificed for quantity. The cheaper the teacher, the more weeks of school.

In the larger towns school kept almost continuously, but as a rule the towns were content with a master's winter school of ten or twelve weeks attended by the older children, and a summer term of equal length taught by a woman, chiefly for the benefit of the little ones. The poorer communities had to get along with a single term of two or three months, or possibly of only a few weeks.

The winter term invariably began the Monday succeeding Thanksgiving Day, and preparations were made for it by giving the schoolroom a thorough cleaning, and getting fuel ready. The cleaning was done by the local women with the help of the older boys and girls. None of the scanty school money was spent for janitor's work. The big boys took turns during the term in opening and heating the schoolhouse, and the larger girls alternated in sweeping out. Attendance was irregular, there was much tardiness, and many scholars did not come for some time after the term began because they had to wait until shoes or other articles of clothing were ready.