The Dutch women of New York, famous for their skill in housekeeping, probably did not attend school, but received at home what little they knew of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Mrs. Grant, speaking of opportunities for female education in New Amsterdam in 1709, makes it clear that the training of a girl's brain troubled no Hollander's head. "It was at this time very difficult to procure the means of instruction in those inland districts; female education, of consequence, was conducted on a very limited scale; girls learned needlework (in which they were indeed both skilful and ingenious) from their mothers and aunts; they were taught too at that period to read, in Dutch, the Bible, and a few Calvinist tracts of the devotional kind. But in the infancy of the settlement few girls read English; when they did, they were thought accomplished; they generally spoke it, however imperfectly, and few were taught writing. This confined education precluded elegance; yet, though there was no polish, there was no vulgarity."[48] The words of the biographer of Catherine Schuyler might truthfully have been applied to almost any girl in or near the quaint Dutch city: "Meanwhile [about 1740] the girl [Catherine Schuyler] was perfecting herself in the arts of housekeeping so dear to the Dutch matron. The care of the dairy, the poultry, the spinning, the baking, the brewing, the immaculate cleanliness of the Dutch, were not so much duties as sacred household rites."[49] So much for womanly education in New Amsterdam. A thorough training in domestic science, enough arithmetic for keeping accurate accounts of expenses, and previous little reading--these were considered ample to set the young woman on the right path for her vocation as wife and mother. This high respect for arithmetic was by no means limited to New York. Ben Franklin, while in London, wrote thus to his daughter: "The more attentively dutiful and tender you are towards your good mama, the more you will recommend yourself to me.... Go constantly to church, whoever preaches. For the rest, I would only recommend to you in my absence, to acquire those useful accomplishments, arithmetic, and book-keeping. This you might do with ease, if you would resolve not to see company on the hours set apart for those studies."[50] In addition, however, Franklin seems not to have been averse to a girl's receiving some of those social accomplishments which might add to her graces; for in 1750 he wrote his mother the following message about this same child: "Sally grows a fine Girl, and is extreamly industrious with her Needle, and delights in her Book. She is of a most affectionate Temper, and perfectly dutiful and obliging to her Parents, and to all. Perhaps I flatter myself too much, but I have hopes that she will prove an ingenious, sensible, notable, and worthy Woman, like her Aunt Jenny. She goes now to the Dancing-School..."[51] _II. Woman's Education in the South_