DOMINES AND SCHOOL-TEACHERS     90
first-hand knowledge of nature and of the essential
industries provided a fair substitute for learning.
On the other side of the picture we must con-
sider what type of men would naturally be drawn
to cross the sea and settle in the new colony as
schoolmasters. Many of the clergymen came urged
by the same zeal for the conversion of the savages
which fired John Eliot in New England and the
Jesuit Fathers in the Canadian missions. For the
schoolmasters there was not this incentive, and
they naturally looked upon the question of emi-
gration as a business enterprise or a chance of
professional advancement. As a first considera-
tion they must have realized that they were
leaving a country where education and educators
were held in high respect. "There was hardly a
Netherlander," says Motley, "man, woman or
child, that could not read and write. The school
was the common property of the people, paid for
among the municipal expenses in the cities as well
as in the rural districts. There were not only
common schools but classical schools. In the
burgher families it was rare to find boys who had
not been taught Latin or girls unacquainted with
French/' From this atmosphere of scholastic en-
thusiasm, from the opportunities of the libraries