Excerpt from Florence, the Parish Orphan: And a Sketch of the Village in the Last Century
The sehool-house of our village stood upon the meeting-house hill, to which a few scattered elms lent a partial but most welcome shade. It was a lowly, humble building, wearing, both within and without, the brown hue of unpainted boards. The desks and benches within, divided by an alley running up the middle, were pol ished bright with wear, and variegated with the sculptured names and other grotesque characters, the marks of the successive penknives of the youthful occupants. Children and young people of both sexes attended the village grammar school, which was often placed under the care of young men of very superior character and attainments. In the simple and frugal early times of New England, it was no disgrace to the very first in the land to pay their college expenses by teaching a village school, and the long Winter vacation furnished them with funds to meet the expenses of the remainder of the year. Among such are the illustrious names of Fisher Ames, Daniel Webster, and a host of others. Indeed, the difficulty would be in New Etigland to find a great man who had not been, at some short period of his life, a teacher of the village school.
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