For a long time after summer schools were provided for girls, in many of the New England towns they were not supported, by a general tax, as were the winter schools for boys, but by tuition fees. Josiah Quincy, in his “Municipal History of Boston,” says “After the peace of 1783, a committee on schools ‘laments that so many children should be found in the streets, playing and gaming in school hours.’” There seems as yet to be no search for girls who are losing school advantages. In 1789 great educational advance was made in Boston. A system was adopted which provided “a ‘Latin School’ for fitting boys of ten years old and over, by a four years’ course, including Greek and Latin, for the University; also three reading and writing schools.” Boys had the right to attend these all the year round; girls from the twentieth of April to the twentieth of October. This was the first admission of girls to the “free schools.” Provision was made this year that “arithmetic, orthography, and the English language shall be taught, in addition to reading and writing.” It is to be hoped that this applied to the summer sessions, open to girls, as well as to the all-the-year-round sessions for boys. When, however, early in the nineteenth century, arithmetic and geography were generally added to the courses of studies in schools, it was only for the winter months, such knowledge being thought quite unnecessary for girls. “All a girl needs to know is enough to reckon how much she will have to spin to buy a peck of potatoes, in case she becomes a widow,” was the repulse of a too ambitious girl in the early part of this century. An old lady, sitting beside the present writer, well remembers that in her youth, having outreached the prescribed limits of the girl’s class in arithmetic, she grappled alone with the mysteries of “interest.” Meeting some difficulty she appealed to her older brother, who had been duly instructed. His scornful reply was, “I am ashamed of a girl who wants to study ‘interest’!” The need of more teachers led gradually to the employment of women in “those schools where, besides morals, the only requirements were reading, sewing, and writing if contracted for.” In the law of 1789 the expression “master and mistress” makes recognition of women as teachers for the first time. Hitherto women so employed could not legally collect their wages; the receipt of their dues depended upon the honor of their employers. This act of justice may have been the more appreciated as the wages of female teachers were evidently on a rising scale. Something less than a half century after Mistresses Wright and Converse had shared their year’s income of ten shillings, the following vote, passed in the town meeting of Lexington, shows an increased estimate of women’s services: