North and South women complained of the lack of educational advantages. Madame Schuyler deplored the scarcity of books and of facilities for womanly education, and spoke with irony of the literary tastes of the older ladies: "Shakespeare was a questionable author at the Flatts, where the plays were considered grossly familiar, and by no means to be compared to 'Cato' which Madame Schuyler greatly admired. The 'Essay on Man' was also in high esteem with this lady."[73] Many women of the day realized their lack of systematic training, and keenly regretted the absence of opportunity to obtain it. Abigail Adams, writing to her husband on the subject, says, "If you complain of education in sons what shall I say of daughters who every day experience the want of it? With regard to the education of my own children I feel myself soon out of my depth, destitute in every part of education. I most sincerely wish that some more liberal plan might be laid and executed for the benefit of the rising generation and that our new Constitution may be distinguished for encouraging learning and virtue. If we mean to have heroes, statesmen, and philosophers, we should have learned women. The world perhaps would laugh at me, but you, I know, have a mind too enlarged and liberal to disregard sentiment. If as much depends as is allowed upon the early education of youth and the first principles which are instilled take the deepest root great benefit must arise from the literary accomplishments in women."[74] And again, Hannah Adams' _Memoir_ of 1832 expresses in the following words the intellectual hunger of the Colonial woman: "I was very desirous of learning the rudiments of Latin, Greek, geography, and logic. Some gentlemen who boarded at my father's offered to instruct me in these branches of learning gratis, and I pursued these studies with indescribable pleasure and avidity. I still, however, sensibly felt the want of a more systematic education, and those advantages which females enjoy in the present day.... My reading was very desultory, and novels engaged too much of my attention."