=125. Schools in Olden Times; the Schoolmaster; Schoolhouses and how they were furnished.=--In most of the colonies the settlers were hardly located in their new homes before they began to provide schools for their children. In 1635 the town of Boston "voted to entreat brother Philemon Pormont to become schoolmaster," and, in 1647, the law was passed which is the foundation of the splendid educational system of Massachusetts. Only six years after Boston was founded, the sum of two thousand dollars was set apart to found "a seminary at Cambridge," which has now become Harvard University. For years afterwards, every family gave annually one peck of corn, or one shilling in money, to support the young college. Besides the usual branches, the early schools were required to teach religion and morals and the laws. They taught little enough of what we call school studies. The schoolhouses were rough and crude. They usually had but one room. Within the room, the door and the big fireplace were on one side, while against the other three walls was a long, rough shelf, in front of which was a seat made of a split log with legs driven beneath. The pupils faced the wall with their backs to the teacher. In front was another lower bench filled by the younger pupils. The teacher sat near the middle of the room, and there the classes stood to recite. The sessions were long, seven or eight hours a day. The boys had to furnish the firewood, and if any unlucky fellow failed to bring in his share, he had to sit in a cold corner for that day. When the fire was brisk, the scholars were almost roasted on one side and nearly frozen on the other. The teachers were often incompetent, either broken-down men or needy widows. The children brought each a few pennies a week for tuition. There were not many text-books, and the supplies were very scanty. The scholars often learned to write and "cast accounts" on pieces of white birchbark. =126. Newspapers, Traveling, and the Night Watchman.=--The first printing press was set up at Cambridge in 1639. It was used chiefly to print sermons and small pamphlets. The first newspaper published in America was the _Boston News-Letter_ in 1704. It was a weekly, a brown sheet hardly more than a foot square. News traveled slowly, for there was little communication between city and city. Travelers were few, and conveyances were slow. A stage-coach that made forty miles a day between New York and Philadelphia was called, on account of its great speed, the "flying machine."