THE AUTONOMY OF A PRECINCT. 199 



teach the children to write and to cipher." Just how 

 much money could thus be used is not stated, but it was 

 not more than twenty pounds.* However, the "school 

 dames " were not expensive teachers. They were women 

 of natural aptitude for teaching, who eked out their living 

 by gathering the children of their neighborhood into a 

 kitchen or an attic, or some other convenient room, and 

 there teaching the little ones some simple ways of using 

 words and numbers. No certificate was needed, and few 

 were the women who could impart even that rudimentary 

 instruction. The letters of our alphabet were frequently 

 taught to the little ones at home by proud mothers or 

 fond brothers and sisters, to show off the parrot precocity 

 of their babies. 



The reading taught by school dames was from a small 

 primer that gave first the letters, then short words, then 

 short sentences, then rhymes ; but the sentiments were 

 the loftiest moral and religious ones, frequently at a hope- 

 less distance beyond the reach of the child mind. 



Two thirds of that first-mentioned money were devoted 

 to the arts " writing and ciphering." Little slabs of slate 

 with pencils of a softer slate were the implements of this 

 culture. 



The sharp rasping of pencil points upon their stone 

 tablets was a daily torture to nervous teachers, while the 

 children laboriously shaped our written words or juggled 

 with numbers in their baby arithmetic. But a more 

 advanced method of education was necessary to supple- 

 ment the "dame schools." 



-In Hingham there was yearly employed a man to teach 

 a so-called "grammar school"; and Cohasset, having to 

 pay towards his support, desired to get a part of his 

 instruction. 



Eight years after the precinct began its corporate life 



* March 13, 1721-22, Hingham voted " that Cohasset shall have the proportion 

 they pay of the ,^40 tax allowed them out of the town treasury to their treasurer." 



