we find them practising the plan of a movable school and schoolmaster.  He would be stationed in the houses of particular persons, with whom the arrangement could be made, a month at a time, in the different quarters of the village, from Will’s Hill to Bass River.  Of course, there was a great lack of elementary education.  For a considerable time, it was reduced to a very low point; and there were heads of families,—­men who had good farms, and possessed the confidence and respect of their neighbors,—­who appear not to have been able to write.

It is difficult, however, to come to a definite estimate on this subject, as the singular fact is discovered, that some persons, who could write, occasionally preferred to “make their mark.”  Ann Putnam, in executing her will, made her mark; but her confession, with her own proper written signature, is spread out in the Church-book.  Francis Nurse very frequently used his peculiar mark, representing, perhaps, some implement of his original mechanical trade; but, on other occasions, he wrote out his name in a good, round hand.  The same was the case with Bray Wilkins.  We can hardly reach any decisive conclusions as to the intelligence or education of the people of that day from their handwriting, or construction of sentences, much less from their spelling.  Their forms of speech were very different from ours in many respects.  What, at first view, we might be apt to call errors of ignorance, were perhaps conformity to good usage at the time.  Their use of verbs is different from ours, particularly in the subjunctive mood, and in conjugation generally.  They did not follow our rule in reference to number.  When the nominative was a plural noun, or several nouns, they often employ the connected verb in the singular number, and vice versa.  They were inclined to make construction conform to the sense, rather than to the letter.  It is not certain that their usage, in this particular, is wholly indefensible.  Cicero, in his fifth oration against Verres, couples rem with futurum.  This was looked upon by some editors as an error, and they altered the text accordingly; but Aulus Gelius, in his “Attic Nights,” maintains that it is the true reading, and, in view of the sense of the passage, a legitimate and elegant use of language.  He cites instances, in Latin and Greek authors of the highest standard, of a similar usage.

Nothing, or scarcely any thing, can be inferred from spelling.  It was wholly unsettled among the best-educated men, and in the practice of the same person.  In Winthrop’s “Journal,” he spells the name of his distinguished friend—­the governor of both Massachusetts and Connecticut—­sometimes Haynes, and sometimes Haines.  The r is generally dropped from his own signature, or, if not intentionally dropped, is quite lost in one or the other of the contiguous letters.  It is a curious circumstance, that the name “Winthrop” is spelled differently by our governor, his wife,