The total number of scholars enrolled is only about 20,000. The schools are generally located in rented houses, there being no buildings erected expressly for school purposes. Their equipment is as a rule deficient. The teaching force is handicapped by lack of facilities and training. The salaries of the elementary teachers are very small, and while some municipalities are prompt in their payments, others lag far behind, and the Spanish saying "as hungry as a schoolmaster" has not lost all its meaning. If the amounts expended for education are not large, it is due to lack of money and not to lack of realization of the advantages of learning. The interest manifested in education and the eagerness of parents to furnish their children as much schooling as possible, are among the most hopeful signs for the future. In the towns and villages where the schools are located, most children learn at least to read and write, but out in the country illiteracy and ignorance reign supreme. In the absence of statistics it is not possible to determine the proportion of illiterates; there is no doubt, however, that it is very large, and I have heard it estimated at all the way from seventy to ninety per cent of the population over ten years of age. Some of the best schools are private institutions, one of the best known being the institute for girls and young ladies, founded by Santo Domingo's foremost woman poet, Salome Urena de Henriquez. It is the custom also for well-to-do families to send their children abroad for study and to travel themselves, and the Dominicans are not few who, besides their native Spanish, speak other languages, acquired abroad. Within the country, too, there is a predilection among the upper class for the study of foreign tongues, and many learn English and French in the family circle or by association with persons speaking these languages. As a result of the educational limitations, the population of the country may be divided into three groups: first, a number of persons, small in comparison with the whole number of inhabitants, who compare in culture, education and accomplishments with members of the best society in any country; second, a much larger group of persons who possess knowledge more or less rudimentary; and third, the great majority of the inhabitants, who are unlettered and unlearned.