All orphans and poor children in colonial Virginia were provided with public schools under the care of the vestries of the parishes--"litle houses," says Hugh Jones in 1722, "built on purpose where are taught English, writing, etc." Parents were compelled to send their children to these schools, and masters to whom children were bound were required to give them schooling until "ye years of twelfe or thereabout" without distinction of race or sex. For instance, in the vestry book of Petsworth Parish, in Gloucester County, is an indenture dated Oct. 30, 1716, of Ralph Bevis to give George Petsworth, "a molattoe boy of the age of 2 years, 3 years' schooling; and carefully to instruct him afterwards that he may read well any part of the Bible." Having mastered the Bible, all literary possibilities were open to the said George. The gentry, however, employed private tutors in their own families,--Scotchmen or Englishmen fresh from the universities, or young curates from Princeton or Fagg's Manor in Pennsylvania. Others secured teachers by indenture. "In Virginia," says the _London Magazine_, "a clever servant is often indentured to some master as a schoolmaster." John Carter of Lancaster directed in his will that his son Robert should have "a youth servant bought for him to teach him in his books in English or Latin." Early advertisements in the _Virginia Gazette_ assured all "single men capable of teaching children to Read English, write or Cypher or Greek Latin and Mathematicks--also all Dancing Masters," that they "would meet with good encouragement" in certain neighborhoods. But this was after Mary Ball's childhood. Days of silent listening to the talk of older people were probably her early school days. In Virginia there were books, true, but the large libraries of thirty years later had not yet been brought over. There was already a fine library at Stratford in Westmoreland. Colonel Byrd's library was considered vast when it attained to "3600 titles." Books were unfashionable at court in England. No power in heaven or earth has been yet found to keep the wise and witty from writing them, but in the first years of the eighteenth century it was very bad form to talk about them. Later, even, the first gentleman in England was always furious at the sight of books. Old ladies used to declare that "Books were not fit articles for drawing-rooms." "Books!" said Sarah Marlborough; "prithee, don't talk to me about books! The only books I know are men and cards."