In a halting way schools in America followed the customs of English schools. The "potation-penny," or "the drinking," was collected in schools in the colonies. In England a considerable sum was often gathered for this treat at the end of the term; but the pennies were doled out more slowly in American schools. Young Joseph Lloyd (of the family of Lloyds Neck on Long Island), in the year 1693, paid out a shilling and sixpence "to the Mistris for feast and wine." A century later, in a school in New Hampshire, the children diligently saved the wood-ashes in the big fireplace and sold them to a neighboring potash works for their treat. They had ample funds to buy rum, raisins, and gingerbread for all who came to the treat, including the ministers and deacons. It was of this school, doubtless attended largely by Scotch-Irish children, that the teacher recorded that the boys, even the youngest, wore leather aprons, while many of the girls took snuff. Another old English custom, the barring-out, occasionally was known here, especially in Pennsylvania. The furnishing of the schoolrooms was meagre; there were no blackboards, no maps, seldom was there a pair of globes. Though Mr. MacMaster asserts that pencils were never used even in the early years of our Federal life, his statement is certainly a mistake. Faber's pencils were made as early as 1761. Peter Goelet advertised lead pencils for sale in New York in 1786, with india rubbers, and as early as 1740 they were offered among booksellers' wares in Boston for threepence apiece, both black and red lead. Judge Sewall had one; perhaps it was not our common lead pencil of to-day. In 1771 we find the patriot Henry Laurens writing thus to his daughter Martha, "his dearest Patsey," when she was about twelve years old. "... I have recollected your request for a pair of globes, therefore I have wrote to Mr. Grubb to ship a pair of the best 18 inch, with caps, and a book of directions, and to add a case of neat instruments, and one dozen Middleton's best pencils marked M. L. When you are measuring the surface of the globe remember you are to cut a part in it, and think of a plum pudding and other domestic duties. Your father, "HENRY LAURENS." Still lead pencils were not in common use even in city schools till this century. The manuscript arithmetics or "sum-books" which I have seen were always done in ink. Many a country boy grew to manhood without ever seeing a lead pencil. [Illustration: Samuel Pemberton, Twelve Years Old, 1736]