The planting of schools increased. It was always a favorite branch of American husbandry. The schoolhouse was frequently the first seedling put in. Now more carefully fenced about, it became the _quercus giganteus Americanus_,—to our plantations what the British oak is on an English estate, the glorious spike that rivets it to the wave-rocked island. Birch-trees could hardly supply the colonial demand upon them. School-girls opened the slate-quarries for chewing-pencils, and stripped the spruce-trees for gum. Knowest thou not, O reader, what a close connection there is between pencil and gum chewing and female education? If not, thou hast not been blessed with sisters between the liquid ages of fourteen and seventeen, and must hasten to study female geology, which embeds between its slaty folds the beautiful ferns and flora of knowledge. Thou must betake thyself to the nearest seminary, and observe the sudden and deep openings down through slate-lined shafts into the mines of earthly learning. The treaty of Utrecht in 1713 closed and sealed Queen Anne’s war. There was a repose through the Colonies for thirty-one years. During this period the Colonies stretched themselves, took in new ideas, and let out the strait bandages which still swathed them. Delaware, dandled on the knee of Pennsylvania until 1708, having cut her first teeth, was set down to crow like a young cock among the blue hen’s chickens. Vermont, as we have before seen, undergoing pretty rugged nursing through her vigorous babyhood, was at last plumped upon the floor by New York, in 1724, with a smart cuff on the ears, and the ungracious and thankless advice, “Now go, if you must, and take care of yourself.” The youngster, who had found out for some time that she could not only run alone, but could even climb up to her own Saddle-Back, immediately started off, and was soon seen setting up education factories, saw-mills, meeting-houses, and nut-shellers, and running a variety of very transporting businesses between Lake Champlain and the Connecticut River. It was a long time before she got her lines with New York out of tangle and settled; but as Vermonters never felt any practical difficulty in crossing lines whenever they saw pleasanter ones in better places, this uncertainty as to the exact limits of her colonial cords rather facilitated than impeded her circulation and growth. New Hampshire—well out at length from the leading-strings of Massachusetts, in 1741—toddled slowly up into hardy strength. From her whitened hills she was obliged to keep a sharp lookout northwards upon the saucy French and tricky Indians, and, in spite of all her sentries and vigilant scouts, suffered more than her share from them both. The Indians took off many of her scalps; but, notwithstanding all their sharp knives, she kept her Profile safe and unscarred, and was even Keene enough to outlive the neighboring tomahawks and the more distant and swooping night-hawks from the St. Lawrence.