Girls in the other colonies fared no better than New England damsels. The instruction given to girls of Dutch and English parentage in New York was certainly very meagre. Mrs. Anne Grant wrote an interesting account of her childhood in Albany, New York, in a book called _Memoir of an American Lady_. The date was the first half of the eighteenth century. She said:-- "It was at that time very difficult to procure the means of instruction in those districts; female education was in consequence conducted on a very limited scale; girls learned needlework (in which they were indeed both skilful and ingenious), from their mothers and aunts; they were taught, too, at that period to read, in Dutch, the Bible, and a few Calvinistic tracts of the devotional kind. But in the infancy of the settlement few girls read English; when they did they were thought accomplished; they generally spoke it, however imperfectly, and a few were taught writing." William Smith wrote in 1756 that the schools in New York then were of the lowest order, the teachers ignorant, and women, especially, ill-educated. It was the same in Virginia. Mary Ball, the mother of George Washington, wrote from her Virginia home when fifteen years old:-- "We have not had a schoolmaster in our neighborhood till now in nearly four years. We have now a young minister living with us who was educated at Oxford, took orders and came over as assistant to Rev. Kemp. The parish is too poor to keep both, and he teaches school for his board. He teaches Sister Susie and me and Madam Carter's boy and two girls. I am now learning pretty fast." The _Catechism of Health_, an old-time child's book, thus summarily and definitely sets girls in their proper places:-- "_Query_: Ought female children to receive the same education as boys and have the same scope for play? "_Answer_: In their earlier years there should be no difference. But there are shades of discretion and regards to propriety which judicious and prudent guardians and teachers can discern and can adjust and apply."