Vincent entered boarding school in Zevenbergen in October 1864.
Master Jan Provily (1800-1875) furnished a large mansion at 16 Stationsstraat as a boarding house and education for children from wealthy Dutch Reformed families. Here Vincent could receive a thorough education, but he found it hard to be torn away from the familiar surroundings of the parental home in Zundert. 'It was an autumn day and I was standing on the doorstep of Mr. Provily's school checking the carriage in which Pa and Moe drove home,' he recalls. 'That yellow cart was seen in the distance on the long road, wet after the rain, with thin trees on either side, running through the meadows. The gray sky above everything, reflected in the puddles. And about 14 days later I was standing in a corner of the playground one evening when they came to tell me that there was someone asking for me and I knew who it was and an instant later I fell around my Father's neck. What I felt wouldn't have been "Because you are children, God has sent forth the spirit of His Son into your hearts, who 'cries out in us 'Abba Father'". It was a moment in which we both felt that we have a Father in the heavens; for my Father also looked up, and in his heart was a greater voice than mine crying, "Abba Father."'
At boarding school, particular attention is paid to the French language. Although Provily enjoyed a good reputation, including as author of an 1837 textbook on the Principles of Measurement, Vincent looks back on an unsatisfactory apprenticeship. He writes about this to his sister Willemien: "while the rest of my life is absolutely as nonsensical as when I was at the age of 12 in a boarding school where I learned absolutely nothing.
In August 1866, Vincent left Zevenbergen to attend the Rijks-HBS in Tilburg.
