Anne De Benneville Mears
Published: 2013-09
Total Pages: 60
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1890 edition. Excerpt: ... English poetry, and had them learn selected passages by heart, as a regular school exercise. It was, doubtless, to her influence that Lucretia Mott owed her familiarity with Cowper and Young. In her old age she would repeat page after page of the "Task," as the family sat together on the porch at "Roadside," in the dusky summer evenings. The course of studies was hardly what could be called wide in its scope, but it was all that the Quakerism of that day demanded, and the instruction was thorough as far as it went. As in other schools of the time, this included the "use of the globes," but no map of any kind was used until Captain Coffin, in 1708, presented one of the United States. This was the first map Lucretia ever saw. The teachers were paid small salaries, only about $1oo a year, in addition to their board. Nevertheless when Lucretia, at the age of fifteen, was made assistant teacher, the appointment was very gratifying to her, particularly when, at the end of the first year, she was promoted to the position of regular teacher. During this last year, the teachers, James Mott and Lucretia Coffin among them, formed a French class, and took lessons for six weeks. In this and other ways they showed a desire for wider culture than that afforded by the somewhat meagre plan of Friendly education. It was at this time, to quote her own words again, "that the unequal condition of woman impressed my mind. Learning that the charge for the tuition of girls was the same as that for boys, and that when they became teachers women received only half as much as men for their services, the injustice of this distinction was so apparent that I resolved to claim for myself all that an impartial Creator had bestowed." Her father removed to Philadelphia...