CHAPTER XIII

THE SCHOOLS:  1810-1850

""What children are to be at a more advanced age depends on the character they
form in childhood. . . . Here, then, at this most interesting period of their existence,
. . . when the understanding is docile, the memory tenacious, the fancy vivid, the
sensibilities tender, and the character accessible by a thousand avenues which will be
closed in maturer age—are parents called on to decide the deterioration and degen¬
eracy or the improvement and progression of human society."—Gardiner Spring,
" Hints to Parents," pp. 44 /.

"Your children, which in that day had no knowledge between good and evil,
they shall go in thither, and unto them will I give [the landl, and they shall possess
it."—Deuteronomy 1 ; 39.

IT will be remembered that, when in 1809, the
Brick Church became a separate ecclesiastical
body, it retained, according to the terms of the
agreement, its one-half interest in the land and build¬
ing of the Presbyterian charity school on Nassau
Street, and a proportionate responsibility for its sup¬
port and management. Almost immediately, how¬
ever, there came an opportunity to sell the property
at an advantageous price, and thus dispose of the
joint control, which, had it long continued, could
not but have caused inconvenience. The sale, for
$6,500, was effected in the spring of 1810.

The trustees of the Brick Church, although now
without any school-building, did not intend that the
charity school should cease. They entered at once
into an arrangement with one Seabury Ely to take
such charity scholars as the Brick Church might
send to him, and to instruct them, in quarters pro-

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