The pay of women teachers who taught the dame-schools was meagre in the extreme. The town of Woburn, Massachusetts, reached the lowest ebb of salary. In 1641 a highly respected widow, one Mrs. Walker, kept a school in a room of her own house. The town agreed to pay her ten shillings for the first year; but after deducting seven shillings for taxes, and various small amounts for produce, etc., she received finally from the town _one shilling and three pence_ for her pedagogical work. Elizabeth Wright was the first teacher in the town of Northfield, Massachusetts. She taught a class of young children at her own house for twenty-two weeks each summer; for this she received fourpence a week for each child. At this time she had four young children of her own. She took all the care of them and did all the work of her household, made shirts for the Indians for eight-pence each, and breeches for Englishmen for one shilling sixpence a pair, and wove much fine linen to order. For the summer school at Franklin, Connecticut, in 1798, "a qualified woman teacher" had but sixty-seven cents a week pay. Men teachers who taught both girls and boys usually had better pay; but Samuel Appleton, in later life the well-known Boston merchant and philanthropist, was my great-grandfather's teacher in the year 1786. His pay was his board, lodging, and washing, and sixty-seven cents per week, and it was deemed liberal and ample. [Illustration: Elizabeth Storer, Twelve Years Old, 1738] There were always in the large cities small classes where favored girls could be taught the rudiments of an education, and there were many private teachers who taught young misses. Boston gentlewomen from very early days had a mode of eking out a limited income by taking little girls and young ladies from country homes, especially from the southern colonies and the Barbadoes, to board while they attended these classes and recited to these teachers. Many honored New England names appear among the advertisements of those desiring boarders. Mrs. Deming wrote to her niece, Anna Green Winslow, telling her of two boarders she had:-- "Had I time and spirits I could acquaint you of an expedition the two sisters made to Dorchester, a walk begun at sunrise last Thursday morning--dress'd in their dammasks, padusoy, gauze, ribbins, flapetts, flowers, new white hats, white shades, and black leather shoes (Paddington's make) and finish'd, journey, garments, orniments and all quite finish'd on Saturday before noon (mud over shoes) never did I behold such destruction in so short a space--bottom of padusoy coat fring'd quite around, besides places worn entire to floss, and besides frays, dammask from shoulders to bottom not lightly soil'd, but as if every part had rub'd tables and chairs that had long been us'd to wax mingl'd with grease.