I have incidentally referred to the academies. Their waxing and waning form a curious phase of our educational development. In the eighteenth century the growth of the scattered villages, and the division of the towns into school districts, was attended by a gradual discontinuance of the grammar schools. Indeed, the law requiring grammar schools was relaxed, until we find in Massachusetts only seven towns where they were obligatory in 1824. The people preferred to spend all the money raised for education on the district schools; but some channel of more advanced instruction was a necessity, and there began to come into being many private schools and incorporated academies. The first of the latter was established in 1780 at Andover; others soon followed, and by 1840 the state had nearly one hundred of them. The purpose of the founders was primarily to provide a means by which young men could be fitted for college. They were imperatively needed. For instance, when Leicester Academy began its work, there was not in all Worcester County an educational institution higher than the district schools. The few boys who were determined to attend college conned their Latin and Greek by their own firesides, and recited to the parish ministers.

The standard studies in the academies were English, Latin, Greek, and French; writing, arithmetic, and geography; the art of speaking, logic, geometry, and philosophy. Some of the academies were little more than day schools for town pupils; others drew from a wide constituency, not alone in their

own state, but from other states throughout the Union. They did excellent service in broadening the scope of education, but they fostered the idea of private schools. As a consequence there was a marked inclination among the well-to-do to withdraw their children from the common schools, which were thus left for the poorer families, the indifferent and careless, to get from them what little they could.

A typical academy was that at Deerfield, Massachusetts, formally opened in 1799. It had 269 pupils

the first year. The building was of brick, sixty by eighty feet, two stories high, and surmounted by a cupola. Ten years of prosperity encouraged the trustees to add another story and a wing, and a bell was bought and put in the cupola. Twelve rooms were fitted up for boarders, and rented at a weekly charge of from seventy-five cents to one dollar and a half. The latter sum was the standard price for board. It was ordered that "the preceptors and

ushers, besides teaching the arts and sciences, should instil into the minds of the pupils moral and Christian principles, and form in them habits of virtue and the love of piety." The study of natural history, natural philosophy, and logic was encouraged, and "no person was suffered to attend to painting, embroidery, or any other of the ornamental branches to the neglect of the essential and fundamental facts. of education."

For the regulation of the pupils' conduct there was a code of by-laws of thirty-six articles. Among other things, these provided that pupils of different sexes should not meet on the grounds or within the walls of the academy except at meals and prayers, nor walk or ride or visit together, under a penalty of one dollar. They were fined a dollar if they were absent from meeting Sunday, Fast Day, or Thanksgiving Day, and the same if they walked in the streets and fields or visited Saturday night or Sunday. They must forfeit a dollar if detected playing cards, backgammon, or checkers in the building. Ball and similar games near the academy were prohibited under a penalty of six cents, and a like sum was exacted from students found out of their rooms during study hours. The morning prayers were at five o'clock, or as soon as it was light enough to read; fine for absence, four cents- for being tardy, two The appointed time for beginning to study was an hour later. Fines were imposed for damage to library books, or books belonging to fellowstudents, at the rate of six cents for a blot, and six cents for each drop of tallow; while for every leaf

torn, six cents an inch must be paid, and for every mark or scratch two cents. Separate schoolrooms were provided for the boys and girls, and separate entrances to the building, and the yard was divided by a high board fence to keep the sexes apart while at play.

The decay of the academies dates from about the middle of the nineteenth century, when Horace Mann began to urge the necessity of free high schools. These were rapidly established, and as they and the academies derived their students from the same source, the academies weakened. Most of them, after dragging out a lingering existence for a longer or a shorter time, finally succumbed. A few of the stronger ones adjusted themselves to the altered conditions and survived, but their students now came chiefly from the homes of the wealthy, and they were no longer the resort of the awkward rural youths and maids, to whom a short period in the academy was often their only opportunity for a glimpse of the broader world of culture and books.

C bling,

VI

FLY-LEAF SCRIBBLINGS

HILDREN have always been prone to scribbling, and the pupils in the old district schools. were no exception to the rule. They did not by any means confine their chirography to their copybooks. A fair surface of paper, no matter where found, was a temptation to some of them, and all had moments of mental ennui when the employment of the fingers in aimless, or at least unnecessary, whittling and writing was as natural as breathing. Instances can be found where there was a genuine ferment of literary or artistic inspiration, but mostly the children produced only copies of what they had seen their schoolmates do. Probably the young folks of two or three generations ago scribbled less in their school-books than their descendants; for the majority of the old books that have survived the wear and tear of use and the casualties of the passing years are comparatively free from markings. Books were rarer and far more valued in the early days than later, and were treated with more respect, though it must be admitted the comparative immaculateness of such copies as are now extant is in part due to the fact that the books most decorated were the soonest to go to pieces, and they no longer exist.

But