THE SCHOOLMASTER AND THE DOCTOR.
Of course, it was not long after New Jersey began to be settled and cultivated, before there were a great many boys and girls who also needed to be cultivated. And if we are to judge their numbers by the families of Elizabeth, who started for the New World in a hogshead, and of Penelope, who began her life here in a hollow tree, there must have been an early opportunity for the establishment of flourishing schools; that is, so far as numbers of scholars make schools flourishing.
But in fact it does not appear that very early attention was given in this State to the education of the young. The first school of which we hear was established in 1664; but it is probable that the first settlers of New Jersey were not allowed to grow up to be over forty years old before they had any chance of going to school, and it is likely that there were small schools in various places of which no historical mention is made.
It is admitted, however, by the historians of these early days of New Jersey, that education was not attended to as it should have been; and we read that in 1693 an act was passed to "establish schoolmasters within the Province, 'for the cultivation of learning and good manners for the good and benefit of mankind, which hath hitherto been much neglected in the Province.'"
These early schools were not of a very high order; the books used by younger scholars being what were called hornbooks, which were made by pasting upon a board a piece of paper containing the alphabet and some lessons in spelling, and covering the whole with a very thin sheet of horn, which was fastened on the board as glass is fastened over a framed picture. Thus the children could see the letters and words under the horn, but were not able to deface or tear the paper. It was difficult to get books in those days, and a hornbook would last a long time.
We can get a pretty good idea of the character of the schools from an account given of the establishment of the first school in Newark, where the town authorities made a contract "with Mr. John Catlin to instruct their children and servants in as much English, reading, writing, and arithmetic, as he could teach."