Unable to afford the $80 to $90 cost of the fall and winter term, Zebedee Kendall obtained another teaching position for Amos at a school in Dunstable, New Hampshire. Away from his father's control for an extended period of time, Kendall began to play cards, dance, and occasionally drink alcohol. With money in hand, he entered Dartmouth in March 1808. Kendall joined the Social Friends, a fraternal society, as well as a small, semisecret study and debating society known as the Gymnasion Adelphon. Through the college's and society's libraries, he had access to more than 4,000 books (a huge number by the standards of the day), many of which were by recent authors and in fields which he had been unable to study while under his father's strict moral supervision. Kendall later said that the informal education he received through reading and discussion outside the classroom was more productive than the formal classes he attended.