is 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." [Footnote: Shelby MSS., letter of
Toulmin, January 7, 1794; Blount MSS., January 6, 1792, etc.] Where
possible the leading families sent their sons to some Eastern college,
Princeton being naturally the favorite institution of learning with
people who dwelt in communities where the Presbyterians t