clergyman who had some pretensions as a scholar, but bad been silenced as a preacher for incorrigible drunkenness, stood very prominent as a teacher. In the best towns it depended upon accident what kind of a teacher they had, but in the best neighborhoods teachers of the young were frequently immoral and incapable; teachers of the young were frequently immoral and incapable; and in the country generally there was a school of the worst character or none at all.”

In 1880 Hon. James H. Groves wrote:

Fifty years ago, that is, in 1830, there were not more than twenty school-houses in the State, and these were owned by pri vate individuals. Children were taught mostly in private houses. and none but the wealthier classes could afford, to any great extent. the expenses of tuition. The number of children of school age was about fifteen thousand in a population of fifty-eight thousand. The branches taught were very primary; the books were of the crudest kind and the furniture of the rudest material and structure. The teachers were themselves possessed of limited education, and candidates for college courses but rare.

The condition of schools during the first half of the present century was indeed deplorable. The school houses were, if possible, inferior to the schools. “Our churches, our clothes, everything but the school-house, manifest an age of improvement,” wrote Dr. A. H. Grimshaw in

The bleakest, noisiest, dustiest spot in the district, always on a public road, generally at the junction of two, was chosen after excited deliberation, and upon it a cabin of logs or unsmoothed timber was erected. Few school-houses had porches, and not one in fifty enjoyed the unpardonable luxury of a shoe-scraper, the only agent which could save the floor on stormy days from assuming the color and texture of the muddy road.

The houses were usually too small to accommodate the district pupils. and so they had to attend by turns; the girls and small children giving place, as winter came on, to the big boys. Even when the houses were large enough, comfort was out of the question, for the desks were either arranged around the walls, giving the teacher a fine view of the backs of the scholars, and turning their faces ta the rays of light, unbroken by curtains, or they were placed

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