designed to carry the lesson, especially to parents, that the best legacy children could receive was good schooling, without which wealth and property would quickly melt away.[1]
Apart, also, from such negative worldly advantages as we have named, one who had enjoyed good schooling might thereby hope to share in many special social privileges from which the unlettered were debarred. New England life on the religious side centered in the church, on the civic side in the town. Each of the two institutions required a full set of elective officers, ranked according to the importance of the offices filled, and all of these were chosen from the instructed portion of the community. To be a deacon in the church or a selectman on the town board might not be financially remunerative, but it imparted a dignity to the individual and a social status to the family which caused these offices to be highly prized. The older theory was that only good churchmen could fill either type of office. Gradually, the town offices, which paid something in cash and yielded considerable political power, came to be sought with increasing frequency by men who might have no interest in the church. "Jethro Bass" was typical, not unique, in his scheming to be chosen selectman, and the training offered by the district school was looked upon as a minimum basis for such preferment. Said the Farmer's Almanack for November, 1810: "Send your children to school. Every boy should have a chance to prepare himself to do common town business."
The great majority were satisfied with the elementary training afforded by the district schools, kept for a few months in winter. But the presence of learned men in every community and the existence of secondary schools and colleges tolled a good many on the way to advanced instruction who had no plans for professional careers. From
- ↑ An example is in Abram E. Brown, Legends of Old Bedford (Boston, 1892).
