This Mrs. Lyman kept a boarding school at Medford; eight girls slept in one room, the fare was meagre, and the education kept close company with the fare.
The Moravian schools at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, were widely popular. President John Adams wrote to his daughter of the girls' school that one hundred and twenty girls lived in one house and slept in one garret in single beds in two long rows. He says, "How should you like to live in such a nunnery?" Eliza Southgate Bowne wrote a pretty account of this school:—
"The first was merely a sewing school, little children and a pretty single sister about 30, with her white skirt, white short tight waistcoat, nice handkerchief pinned outside, a muslin apron and a close cap, of the most singular form you can imagine. I can't describe it. The hair is all put out of sight, turned back, and no border to the cap, very unbecoming and very singular, tied under the chin with a pink ribbon—blue for the married, white for the widows. Here was a Piano forte and another sister teaching a little girl music. We went thro' all the different school rooms, some misses of sixteen, their teachers were very agreeable and easy, and in every room was a Piano."
She also tells of the great dormitory; the beds of singular shape, high and covered; a single hanging-lamp lighted at night, with one sister walking patrol.
Though the education given to girls in these boarding schools was not very profound, they had at the close of the school year a grand opportunity of "showing-off" in a school exhibition. Mary Grafton Dulany wrote when thirteen years old to her father, from a Philadelphia school:—
"I went to Madame B.s exhibition. There were five Crowns, two principal for Eminence in Lessons, and Virtue. They were crowned in great style in the Assembly Rooms in the presence of 500 Spectators."
Mrs. Quincy wrote of a school which she attended in 1784, of what she termed "the breaking up":—
"A stage was erected at the end of the room, covered with a carpet, ornamented with evergreens and lighted by candles in gilt branches. Two window curtains were drawn aside from the centre before it and the audience were seated on the benches of the schoolroom. The 'Search after Happiness,' by Mrs. More, 'The Milliner,' and 'The Dove,' by Madame Genlis were performed. In the first I acted Euphelia, one of the court ladies, and also sung a song intended in the play for one of the daughters of Urania, but as I had the best voice it was given to me. My dress was a pink and green striped silk, feathers and flowers decorated my head; and with bracelets on my arms and paste buckles on my shoes I thought I made a splendid appearance. The only time I ever rode in a sedan chair was on this occasion, when after being dressed at home, I was conveyed in one to Miss Ledyard's residence. Hackney coaches were then unknown in New York. In the second piece I acted the milliner and by some strange notion of Miss Ledyard's or my own was dressed in a gown, cap, handkerchief and apron of my mother's, with a pair of spectacles to look like an elderly woman—a proof how little we understood the character of a French milliner. When the curtain was drawn, many of the audience declared it must be Mrs. Morton herself on the stage. How my mother with her strict notions and prejudices against the theatre ever consented to such proceedings is still a surprise to me."
All parents did not approve of those exhibitions. Major Dulany wrote with decision to his daughter that he lamented the boldness and over-assurance which accompanied any success in such performances, and which proceeded, he deemed, from callous feeling.
These plays were merely a revival of an old fashion when English school children took part in miracle plays or mysteries. In the seventeenth century schoolmasters took great pride in writing exhibition plays for their pupils. Dreary enough these acts or interludes are. One forced all the characters to act "anomalies of all the chiefest parts of grammar"—oh! the poor lads that therein played their parts!