School Comforts

For our convenience when learning to write, puncheon planks were fastened to the four sides of the room, with stakes on the front edges to serve as legs in order to hold them in a sloping position, and at such desk-like contrivances we stood while using a pen, or working at arithmetic with strips of birch-bark in the stead of paper. The same benches which had been built when the room was our meeting-house, served as seats when we had need to rest our legs.

Master Lyford built for himself a desk in, the center of the room, where he could overlook us all, and so great was his desire for comfort, which was one of the complaints made against him by Governor Bradford, that he had fastened a short piece of puncheon plank to one side of the log which served as chair, so that he might lean his back against it when he was weary.