Page:Anne Bradstreet and her time.djvu/222

206 and fishing and bird's-nesting in this stolen time. There was always Saturday afternoon, and Anne Bradstreet was also, so far as her painful conscientiousness allowed, an indulgent mother, and gave her children such pleasure as the rigid life allowed.

Andover from the beginning had excellent schools, Mr. Dane and Mr. Woodbridge, the ministers, each keeping one, while "dame schools" also flourished, taking the place of the present Kindergarten, though the suppressed and dominated babies of three and four, who swung their unhappy feet far from the floor, and whose only reader was a catechism, could never in their wildest dreams have imagined anything so fascinating as the Kindergarten or primary school of to-day. Horn books were still in use and with reason, the often-flagellated little Puritans giving much time to tears, which would have utterly destroyed any thing less enduring than horn. Until 1647, the teaching of all younger children had been done chiefly at home, and Anne Bradstreet's older children learned their letters at her knee, and probably, like all the children of the day, owned their little Bibles, and by the time they were three or four years of age, followed the expounding at family prayers with only a glance now and then toward the kitten, or the family dog, stretched out before the fire, and watching for any look of interest and recognition.

After 1647, and the order of the General Court, "that every township in this jurisdiction, after the Lord hath increased them to fifty house-holders, shall then forthwith appoint one within their towns to teach all such children as shall resort to him, to read and write." The district school-house waited till