Explore "The Schoolmaster and the Doctor" by Frank R. Stockton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
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.