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loose, props up at the blinds to keep them in place, stoves without doors, leaky roofs, patches of plastering missing and the rest of the plastering much marred and begrimed; crevices in the floor admitted. any quantity of cold air, while the woodwork of the desks and walls was cut and marked "with all sorts of images, some of which would make heathens blush.'

The required studies now were reading, spelling, writing, arithmetic, geography, and grammar. Algebra and even Latin and French were attempted in an occasional school if the teacher was equal to them. Yet with all this broadening in studies and all the advances in school-books, and in spite of the correct English the books were supposed to impart, the scholars in their daily conversation continued to use the vernacular. Had they been reproved for so doing, they would have felt affronted.

One handicap to effective teaching was the fact that it might happen no two pupils were equally advanced in their studies-possibly did not have the same text-books. The books were often much worn and defaced, for they were family heirlooms and continued in use as long as they held together. One scholar would bring a volume used by some member of the family of the preceding generation; another a book procured many years before for an elder brother or sister, and a third would appear with a copy just bought.

Some one has said, "It seems to me that we may learn everything when we know the letters of the alphabet;" and it is unquestionably true that the

capable and aspiring youth can make a very slender educational foundation serve to give an opportunity for great development. In most of the old district schools little was imparted beyond a few bare rudiments, the teachers were often ignorant, and sometimes brutal, the methods mechanical and dreary. Notable men have come from "the little red schoolhouses," but this was because of their own native energy and thrifty acquisitiveness, and was not due to any superlative virtues of the schools themselves.

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SUMMER SCHOOLS AND ACADEMIES

HE old-time summer schools were nearly always kept by women. A man would have been considered out of place - would have had an unnatural appearance presiding over a school at that season. The women teachers were usually young, ambitious girls, eager to earn enough to

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A Summer School as pictured in Bolles's Spelling Book, 1831.

allow them to attend an academy for a term or two. Most of them married later; but others lived on as schoolmarms, "sometimes sweetening as they ripened, sometimes quite the contrary.

The law ordered that the teachers should have good moral character and competence to teach the

required branches. What furnished a woman, however, the surest passport to employment was to be related to some prudential committeeman. He was all-powerful in his district, and while his daughters or sisters, of course, had first chance, if none among these closer relatives had anxiety for the place, there was opportunity for the more remotely con

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The End of Recess.

respect was proverbial, and no little friction resulted from the family arrange

ments he was wont to make. Occasionally the discus

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