Like the Plymouth colonists, the Puritans were threatened with starvation long before their ships could return. Winthrop then generously supplied the people's needs from his own store, and actually gave the last flour he had in his house to a poor man who came to beg. But the good governor did not suffer on account of his generosity, for that very day the returning ships sailed into port, bringing plenty of provisions for all. The colony now prospered greatly, and sent home such encouraging letters that more and more people ventured across the ocean. Winthrop sent for his wife, and a minister wrote to his friends that "a sup of New England air is better than a whole draught of Old England's Ale." During the next ten years, more than twenty thousand English-speaking persons came over to New England. There, in time, they formed fifty parishes, or villages, connected by roads and bridges. Some of these settlements were planted far inland, although the Puritans at first declared they would never need more land than what was inclosed in a circle drawn ten miles around Boston. A governor was elected to rule over the colony, and each town ruled itself. But the people also sent representatives to the General Court, or Assembly, where public matters were discussed and laws were made for the good of the whole colony. The government being in the hands of the people, and the Puritans wishing their children to be well educated, public schools were soon provided in every village, and in 1636 the General Court started the first college. It was located in a spot which was called Cam´bridge, in honor of the great university town in England. Two years later, a minister named Har´vard left his library of about two hundred and fifty books and some money to the new college, which since then has borne his name. XXXIII. STORIES OF TWO MINISTERS. At first, Harvard College had only a very few students, who were to be educated for the ministry. All the colonists contributed to the support of the institution, for those who were too poor to give twelvepence in money were told to bring a measure of corn or some fire wood. Four years after the college was founded, the first English printing press was set up there, and began to print books of psalms for the Puritan churches. While the new college was training missionaries for the Indians, the latter had found a good friend in John El´i-ot, who came over to America in 1631. While preaching in Boston and Rox´bur-y, Eliot learned the Massachusetts Indian language, and began to translate the Bible into that tongue. It took him nearly thirty years of patient work to do this, in the midst of all his preaching and teaching. But his Bible was the first printed in America, and many of his "praying Indians," as the converts were called, learned to read in it.