The curriculum at Harvard in olden times bore little resemblance to that of to-day. Sciences were unknown, and the requirements in mathematics were meagre. Still a boy needed even then to be clever to know enough Greek and Latin to enter at eleven. Paul Dudley did so in 1686. His father wrote to the president a quaint letter of introduction:-- "I have humbly to offer you a little, sober, and well-disposed son, who, tho' very young, if he may have the favour of admittance, I hope his learning may be tollerable: and for him I will promise that by your care and my care, his own Industry, and the blessing of God, this mother the University shall not be ashamed to allow him the place of a son--Appoint a time when he may be examined." There were still younger college students. In 1799 there was graduated from Rhode Island College (now Brown University) a boy named John Pitman, who was barely fourteen. There is no evidence that the early marriages, that is, marriages of children and very young lads and girls, which were far from rare in England during the first years of our colonial life, ever were permitted in the new world. Nor were they as common at that date in England as during the previous century, for there had been severe legislation against them, especially against the youthful marriages of poor folk. Many have known of the juvenile weddings of English princes and princesses and marriages by proxy for reasons of state; but few know of these unions being general among English people. An interesting and authoritative book on this subject was published in 1897 by the _Early English Text Society_. Dr. Furnivall made a careful study of the old court records of the town of Chester, England, and published this account of trials and law cases concerning child-marriages, divorces, ratifications, troth-plights, affiliations, clandestine marriages, and other kindred matters. It is, as the editor says, a "most light-giving" volume. It ranges over all classes, from people of wealth, the manor owners and squires, to ale-house keepers, farmers, cobblers, maids, and men. It tells of the marriages of little children in their nurses' arms, some but two or three years old, so young that their baby tongues could not speak the words of matrimony. Various arrangements, chiefly relating to lands and maintenance, led to these marriages, also a desire to evade the Crown's guardianship of orphans. In one case, a "bigge damsell" of twelve "intysed with two apples" a younger boy to marry her. "The woman tempted me and I did eat." One little bridegroom of three was held up in the arms of an English clergyman, who coaxed him to repeat the words of the service. Before it was finished the child said he would learn no more of his lesson that day. The parson answered, "You must speak a little more and then go play yon." The child-marriage of the Earl and Countess of Essex in 1606, resulting