SCHOOL PROGRESS AND THE ACADEMY. 38 I 



precinct, and a cummittee of five was appointed to attend 

 to them. The school at the Center was ordered to be kept 

 until June 17 in the year 1765, and then after two months 

 and a half vacation was to be reopened September i. 



Thus for three years more the three schools sufficed ; 

 but in 1768 it was voted that four pounds of the school 

 money belonging to the " Center" should be "laid out in 

 three women s schools at such places as the school com- 

 mittee shall appoint." These "women schools " were sub- 

 stantially the same as the "dame schools" of earlier 

 days, in which smaller children were taught by a woman 

 somewhat as in primary schools and kindergartens nowa- 

 days. Little fingers were taught to sew, and especially 

 each little girl had to make a "sampler." This "sampler" 

 was a piece of coarse cloth into which the letters of the 

 alphabet and other designs were worked with silk or soft 

 woolen thread. Many of them can be seen nowadays 

 framed and hanging upon the walls in dwellings through- 

 out our town. 



The women schools were a popular move that year, so 

 the grant was doubled in 1769, and four of them were sup- 

 ported at the Center where children were plentiful. The 

 adoption of these dame schools by the town, instead of 

 leaving them to private enterprise, was a distinct step in 

 progress towards public responsibility for schools. 



The next year began our career as a town government, 

 and we started off with an appropriation of thirty pounds for 

 schools. This hundred and fifty dollars seems very small 

 compared with our thirteen thousand five hundred dollars 

 appropriated for schools the present year (1898) ; but the 

 beginning was right in principle, however meager. 



One peculiar custom of school support at the period 

 here reached was in the matter of supplying stove wood to 

 keep the schoolroom warm. The town voted, December 2C, 

 1770, not to take any money from the school appropriation 

 to spend for wood. Instead of that extravagance, they 



