equest of Governor
Hopkins, but came to little in the seventeenth century. In 1674, one
Robert Bartlett left money for the setting up of a free school in New
London, for the teaching of Latin to poor children, but the hope was
richer than the fulfilment. In truth, of education for the laity at this
time in New England there was scarcely more than the rudiments of
reading, writing, and arithmetic. The frugal townspeople of New England
generally deemed education an unnecessary expense; the school laws were
evaded, and when complied with were more honored in the breach than in
the observance. Even when honestly carried out, they produced but
slender results. Probably most people could sign their names after a
fashion, though many extant wills and depositions bear only the marks of
their signers. Schoolmasters and town clerks had difficulties with
spelling and grammar, and the rural population were too much engrossed
by their farm labors to find much time for the improvement of the mind.
Except in the homes of the clergy and the leading men of the larger
towns there were few books, and those chiefly of a religious character.
The English Bible and Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_, printed in Boston
in 1681, were most frequently read, and in the houses of the farmers the
_British Almanac_ was occasionally found. There were no newspapers, and
printing had as yet made little progress.

The daily routine of clearing the soil, tilling the arable land, raising
corn, rye, wheat, oats, and flax, of gathering iron ore from bogs and
turpentine from pine trees, and in other ways of providing the means of
existence, rendered life essentially stationary and isolated, and the
mind was but slightly quickened by association with the larger world. A
little journeying was done on foot, on horseback, or by water, but the
trip from colony to colony was rarely undertaken; and even within the
colony itself but few went far beyond the borders of their own
townships, except those who sat as deputies in the assembly or engaged
in hunting, trading, fishing, or in wars with the Indians. A Connecticut
man could speak of "going abroad" to Rhode Island. Though in the larger
towns good houses were built, generally of wood and sometimes of brick,
in the remoter districts the buildings were crude, with rooms on one
floor and a ladder to the chamber above, where corn was frequently
stored. Along the Pawcatuck River, families lived in cellars along with
their pi