Outside of the cultural endeavors of the Sociedad little was done in Cuba for the cause of education. As the Countess de Merlin reported in her book on Havana, there was only one school in that city in the year 1791, that taught grammar and orthography, the instructor being the mulatto Melendez. The children of the monteros and guajiros in the country grew up in almost complete illiteracy. As was mentioned in a previous chapter Governor Las Casas devoted from eleven to twelve thousand pesos of his private fortune for primary instruction, but it is not clear whether this was to be extended throughout the island or limited to Havana. At any rate there were at the beginning of his administration thirty-nine schools in the city, seven of which were for males only, the others for children of both sexes. In many of these schools, which were in charge of mulattos or free negroes, only reading was taught; in the better schools arithmetic as far as fractions; thus prepared young men were expected to enter upon a university course. The smallest fee for primary instruction was four reales a month; for higher instruction two pesos. To two hundred white and colored children the P. P. de Belen (Fathers of Bethlehem) gave lessons free of cost; it is reported that their class surpassed in writing. Towards the end of the administration of Las Casas there were seventy schools, with about two thousand pupils. But they seemed to have a hard fight for their existence and the number is reported to have been later reduced to seven hundred and thirty-one pupils. The low intellectual standard of the average Havanese woman of that period is easily understood by a glance at these data. The education of girls even in the cities was considered of such minor importance, that as late as 1793 it was not deemed necessary for them to learn to read. The daughters of the Havanese patricians were taught accomplishments regarded as inseparable from an ideal of refined womanhood, such as embroidery and a little music. But as work of any kind was not on the program of their lives, serious occupation, even with household duties, was unheard of. The matronly senoras, who were frequently held up as models of womanhood and especially of motherhood, were woefully ignorant of the simplest cooking and other branches of what is today called home economics. The orphans and poor children admitted to the Casa de Beneficiencia were better prepared for life. They were all taught the alphabet, the girls sewing, embroidery and the making of artificial flowers, and the boys learned the cigar-makers' trade.