"I would have wrote now but to tell ye Truth I do not know what to write for I have not had a letter from you since Capt. Beale, and I am very sorry I can't write to you but I thought it my Duty to write these few lines to you to acquaint you of my welfare, and what proficiency I have made in Learning since my Last to you. My Master is very kind to me. I am now in the Second Form, am Learning Castalio and Ovid's Metamorphosis & I hope I shall be fit to go to College in two Years time which I am resolved to do, God willing and by your leave, I shant detain you any longer but only to give my Duty to your good self & Mother & love to my Brothers & Sisters. Please to give my Duty to my God father and to my Uncle & Aunt Adamson & love to Cozen Henry, "Your dutifull Son, "RICHARD HALL." Soon another letter goes to the father:-- "Richard wears out nigh 12 paire of shoes a year. He brought 12 hankers with him and they have all been lost long ago; and I have bought him 3 or 4 more at a time. His way is to tie knottys at one end & beat ye Boys with them and then to lose them & he cares not a bit what I will say to him." Mothers and guardians of the present day who have sent boys off to the boarding school with ample store of neatly marked underclothing, stockings, and handkerchiefs, and had them return at the holidays nearly bereft of underwear, bearing stockings with feet existing only in outlines, and possessing but two or three handkerchiefs, these in dingy wads at the bottom of coat-pockets and usually marked with some other scholar's name--such can sympathize with poor, thrifty old lady Coleman, when naughty Richard tied his good new handkerchiefs in knots, beat his companions, and recklessly threw the knotted strings away. CHAPTER IV WOMEN TEACHERS AND GIRL SCHOLARS _A godly young Woman of special parts, who was fallen into a sad infirmity, the loss of her understanding and reason, which had been growing upon her divers years by occasion of giving herself wholly to reading and writing and had written many books. Her husbande was loath to grieve hir; but he saw his error when it was too late. For if she had attended to her household affairs, and such things as belong to women, and not gone out of hir way and calling to meddle in such things as are proper for men whose minds are stronger, she had kept hir Wits, and might have improved them usefully and honorably._ --History of New England. Governor John Winthrop, 1640.