A demure little brother and sister were the children of General Stephen Rowe Bradley of Westminster, Vermont, whose portraits face pages 356 and 378. These were painted soon after the Revolution, and show the definite changes in dress which set in with other Republican institutions. At this date there began to be worn a special dress for both boys and girls. Until then, as soon as a boy put on breeches he dressed precisely like his father--in miniature. By tradition Marie Antoinette was the first who had a special dress made for her young son. And sadly was she reviled for dressing her poor little Dauphin in jacket and trousers instead of flapped coat, waistcoat, and knee-breeches. CHAPTER III SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL LIFE _First mark whereof scholes were erected, And what the founders did intend. And then doe thou thy study directe For to obtain unto that end._ _Doubtless this was all their meaning, To have their countrie founded With all poyntes of honest lernynge Whereof the public weal had nede._ --_The Last Trumpet. R. Crowley, 1550._ No greater contrast of conditions could exist than between the school life of what we love to call the "good old times," and that of the far better times of to-day. Poor, small, and uncomfortable schoolhouses, scant furnishings, few and uninteresting books, tiresome and indifferent methods of teaching, great severity of discipline, were the accompaniments of school days until this century. Yet with all these disadvantages children obtained an education, for an education was warmly desired; no difficulties could chill that deep-lying longing for learning. "Child," said one noble New England mother of the olden days, "if God make thee a good Christian and a good scholar, 'tis all thy mother ever asked for thee." Not only did parents strive for the education of their children, but the colonies assisted by commanding the building and maintaining of a school in each town where there was a sufficient number of families and scholars. Rhode Island was the only New England colony that did not compel the building of schoolhouses and the education of children. So determined was Massachusetts to have schools that in 1636, only six years after the settlement of Boston, the General Court, which was composed of representatives from every settlement in the Bay Colony, and which was the same as our House of Representatives to-day, gave over half the annual income of the entire colony to establish the school which two years later became Harvard College. This event should be remembered; it is distinguished in history as the first time any body of people in any country ever gave through its representatives its own money to found a place of education. In Virginia schoolhouses were few for over a century. Governor Berkeley, an obstinate and narrow-minded Englishman, wrote home to England in 1670,