that they had the society for which they most cared. [Footnote:  Do., James Brown to Thomas Hart, Lexington, April 3, 1804.] In spite of their willingness to embark in commercial ventures and to build mills, rope-walks, and similar manufactures,—­for which they had the greatest difficulty in procuring skilled laborers, whether foreign or native, from the Northeastern States [Footnote:  Do., J. Brown to Thomas Hart, Philadelphia, February 11, 1797.  This letter was brought out to Hart by a workman, David Dodge, whom Brown had at last succeeded in engaging.  Dodge had been working in New York at a rope-walk, where he received $500 a year without board.  From Hart he bargained to receive $350 with board.  It proved impossible to engage other journeymen workers, Brown expressing his belief that any whom he chose would desert a week after they got to Kentucky, and Dodge saying that he would rather take raw hands and train them to the business than take out such hands as offered to go.]—­and in spite of their liking for the law, they retained the deep-settled belief that the cultivation of the earth was the best of all possible pursuits for men of every station, high or low. [Footnote Do., William Nelson to Col.  George Nicholas, Caroline, Va., December 29, 1794.]

    Virginia and Kentucky.

In many ways the life of the Kentuckians was most like that of the Virginia gentry, though it had peculiar features of its own.  Judged by Puritan standards, it seemed free enough; and it is rather curious to find Virginia fathers anxious to send their sons out to Kentucky so that they could get away from what they termed “the constant round of dissipation, the scenes of idleness, which boys are perpetually engaged in” in Virginia.  One Virginia gentleman of note, in writing to a prominent Kentuckian to whom he wished to send his son, dwelt upon his desire to get him away from a place where boys of his age spent most of the time galloping wherever they wished, mounted on blooded horses.  Kentucky hardly seemed a place to which a parent would send a son if he wished him to avoid the temptations of horse flesh; but this particular Virginian at least tried to provide against this, as he informed his correspondent that he should send his son out to Kentucky mounted on an “indifferent Nag,” which was to be used only as a means of locomotion for the journey, and was then immediately to be sold. [Footnote:  Do., William Nelson to Nicholas, November 9, 1792.]

    Education.

The gentry strove hard to secure a good education for their children, and in Kentucky, as in Tennessee, made every effort to bring about the building of academies where their boys and girls could be well taught.  If this was not possible, they strove to find some teacher capable of taking a class to which he could teach Latin and mathematics; a teacher who should also “prepare his pupils for becoming useful members of society and patriotic citizens.”