The early signs of promise, which he gave, were the means of opening for him the path to scientific culture. His uncle, being made deacon at Wesen, left Wildhaus in 1487, and took the boy with him. By his help and that of the teacher at Wesen, he was prepared in his tenth year to enter the Theodore School at Little Basel, whither he now went, again supported and recommended, as is probable, by his uncle. It may not be amiss to introduce some notice of the educational system of that age. Lowest in rank appear the German schools. Here and there teachers were provided for them by the parish-officers, but in other places the supply was left to accident. Older students, under the name of _lehrmeister_, traveled around, oftentimes with wives, practising their vocation and hiring themselves out for longer or shorter periods. Two well-painted placards of these strolling masters are preserved in the library at Basel. They exhibit the interior of a school-room. On one the children are sitting and kneeling on the floor with their books, whilst the master, rod in hand is teaching a boy at his desk and his wife a girl in the opposite corner; the other represents a chamber in which older scholars are receiving instruction. The following advertisement is written beneath both: "Whoever wishes to learn to write and read German in the very quickest way ever found out, though he does not know a single letter of the alphabet, can in a short time get enough here to cast up his own accounts and read; and if any one be too stupid to learn, as I have taught him nothing so will I charge him nothing, be he who he may, burgher or apprentice, woman or girl; whoever comes in, he will be faithfully taught for a small sum, but the young boys and girls after the Ember weeks, as the custom is. 1516." To all, who were unable to obtain the necessary elementary instruction at home, or even perhaps in the monasteries, these schools were open. Children and adults frequently sat on the same bench. Of course, there was nothing like thorough knowledge among the masters, nothing like a division into classes, or a comprehensive plan of instruction. Just as the natural talent of the teacher was greater or less, were the results better or worse. And yet such was the only education of a large majority of the burghers. Indeed thousands were destitute even of this. Boys, designed for a higher training, sons of the wealthy, or of the poor, who were so fortunate as to meet with encouragement to a noble effort, passed over into the Latin schools, into one of which we now see Zwingli enter.