date. Children must have suffered sadly with the cold in this age of cotton. Girls' dresses were half low-necked, and were filled in with a thin tucker; separate sleeves were tied in at the arm size, and often long-armed mitts of nankeen or linen took the place of the sleeves.

A family of Cary children had several charming portraits painted in London. Two of them are given opposite pages 240 and 246. They note the transitions of costume which came at the approach of the close of the century. The portrait of the boy is interesting in a special point of costume; it shows the abandonment of the cocked hat and adoption of the simpler modern form of head-covering. The little girl, Margaret, has a most roguish expression, which is suggestive of Sir Joshua Reynolds' Girl with the Mouse Trap. The resemblance is even more marked in the portrait of the same child at the age of six, wherein the eyes and half-smile are charmingly engaging; unfortunately the photograph from that portrait is not clear enough for satisfactory reproduction.

A demure little brother and sister were the children of General Stephen Rowe Bradley of Westminster, Vermont, whose portraits face pages 356 and 378. These were painted soon after the Revolution, and show the definite changes in dress which

set

At

set in with other Republican institutions. this date there began to be worn a special dress for both boys and girls. boy put on breeches he father-in miniature.

Until then, as soon as a dressed precisely like his By tradition Marie Antoi

nette was the first who had a special dress made for her young son. And sadly was she reviled for dressing her poor little Dauphin in jacket and trousers instead of flapped

coat, waistcoat, and

knee-breeches.

CHAPTER III

SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL LIFE

NR

First mark whereof scholes were erected,
And what the founders did intend.
And then doe thou thy study directe
For to obtain unto that end.

Doubtless this was all their meaning,
To have their countrie founded
With all poyntes of honest lernynge
Whereof the public weal had nede.

-The Last Trumpet. R. Crowley, 1550.

greater contrast of conditions could exist than between the school life of what we

love to call the "good old times," and that of the far better times of to-day. Poor, small, and uncomfortable schoolhouses, scant furnishings, few and uninteresting books, tiresome and indifferent methods of teaching, great severity of discipline, were the accompaniments of school days until this century. Yet with all these disadvantages children. obtained an education, for an education was warmly desired; no difficulties could chill that deep-lying longing

63

longing for learning. Child," said one noble New England mother of the olden days, "if God make thee a good Christian and a good scholar, 'tis all thy mother ever asked for thee."

Not only did parents strive for the education of their children, but the colonies assisted by commanding the building and maintaining of a school in each town where there was a sufficient number of families and scholars. Rhode Island was the only New England colony that did not compel the building of schoolhouses and the education of children.

So determined was Massachusetts to have schools that in 1636, only six years after the settlement of Boston, the General Court, which was composed of representatives from every settlement in the Bay Colony, and which was the same as our House of Representatives to-day, gave over half the annual income of the entire colony, to establish the school which two years later became Harvard College. This event should be remembered; it is distinguished in history as the first time any body of people in any country ever gave through its representatives its own money to found a place of education.

In Virginia schoolhouses were few for over a century. Governor Berkeley, an obstinate and narrowminded Englishman, wrote home to England in 1670,

"I thank God there are in Virginia no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have, for learning hath brought disobedience and heresy into the world." Some Virginia gentlemen did not agree with him, however, and gave money to try to establish free schools for poor children. A far greater hindrance to the establishment of schools than the governor's stupid opposition, was the fact that there was no town or village life in Virginia; the houses and plantations were scattered; previous to the year 1700 Jamestown was the only Virginia town, and it was but a petty settlement. Williamsburg was not even laid out; a few seaports had been planned, but had not been built. Hence the children of wealthy planters were taught by private tutors at home, or were sent to school in England.

Occasionally, as years passed on, there might be found in Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, what was called an old-field school, the uniting of a few neighbors to hire a teacher, too often a poor one, like the "hedge-teachers" of Europe, for a short term of teaching, in a shabby building placed on an old exhausted tobacco field.

In one of these old-field schools kept by Hobbysexton, pedagogue, and "the most conceited man in three parishes"-George Washington obtained most of his education. A daily ride on horseback for a

year