USA > Massachusetts > Hampshire County > Amherst > Around a village green; sketches of life in Amherst > Part 9
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9
After Joseph Neesima, the first Japanese to come to Amherst was Naibu Kanda. I remember seeing him, a boy of fourteen, as he arrived at Mrs. Davis's, where he was to make his home and be prepared to enter Amherst College. I was playing croquet at the time on our lawn, and it is not to be supposed that I remained unaware of the exotic visitor next door. He walked up the brick path, head erect, observant, eager to see Mrs. Davis and her daughter, Miss Hattie, who was to be his private tutor. President Seelye showed great foresight in putting young Kanda under the influence of these two fine women. From the first day they exerted a great and wholesome influence over him. Miss Hattie devoted herself to him, not only teaching him his lessons, but instructing him in all the finest things in American life.
Since we were close neighbors, Kanda and my brother James and I were soon playing together, and we remained good friends through the years. He loved the sweet flowering syringa and the purple lilacs
[ 87 ]
and the fragrant Baltimore Belle, a rose which bloomed on the piazza beneath his windows. He was interested in the many kinds of birds that frequented the neighborhood. He loved the call of the oriole which nested each season in the pear tree near his window, but the woodpeckers disturbed his quiet with their hammering.
We taught him to play croquet, which he greatly enjoyed. But we soon learned that we must always finish the game with him. If it grew too dark to see, we tied handkerchiefs on the wickets and even brought out the big lamps. What we had begun we must finish. This was a marked characteristic of Kanda in play as in work. Winter eve- nings there were spirited games around our library table in which Kanda took an eager interest. He took pleasure in "Snap," which demanded quick observation, and in " Authors " and "Anagrams." But he liked best of all to act charades, since this taught him many new English words and fixed them in his mind.
Kanda became a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity just at the time when it acquired our house. Thus the very house where as a boy he had played blind man's buff and pulled molasses candy and cracked nuts on the stone steps became his college home. Thirty years later this house and Mrs. Davis's were torn down to make way for the handsome new Psi Upsilon house, and in the process a tree that Kanda had planted in Mrs. Davis's yard the year he came to Amherst was inadvertently cut down by the landscape architect. There was senti- ment in the planting of that tree. Baron Kanda wrote :
I grieve to think the site of my old home is so changed, that tree which I saw grow so big gone, and that splendid button- wood tree gone too. Still, with good Mrs. Davis gone, the place had better be completely changed.
Kanda was very studious and essentially a thinker, even in boyhood days. The long hours spent under his student lamp with its green shade, in preparation of his lessons and in meditation, were pleasant hours to him. He was an embodiment of honor, scholarship, and per- fect courtesy. His days at the Amherst High School and Amherst College fitted him to be a great leader in the educational life of Japan after he returned there. His main work was the teaching of English, at Daigaku Yobimon, the College of Literature, the Tokyo Higher Commercial School, the Peers' School, and finally at the Tokyo Uni- versity of Commerce, where he ended his career as professor emeritus. As a baron and a man of great political influence, he held command of the whole field of English teaching in Japan. But he was quick to suggest improvements in other fields as well. He attributed his excel- lent health to the fine care Mrs. Davis took of him, and to the gym-
[ 88 ]
nastic exercises, especially with dumbbells, that he learned under Dr. Hitchcock in the Amherst College Gymnasium. These last he intro- duced wherever he taught. Again I quote from a letter :
I see from my windows as I write the students of the Foreign Language School going through the gymnastics as I used to do in the old Amherst days.
Baron Kanda's life has been fully treated in a volume entitled " The Memorials of Naibu Kanda," published by the Tokyo University of Commerce. From it I select this tribute written by President Calvin Coolidge in 1926:
He was one of the earliest of his great nation to come to the United States for the purpose of study. Going back to his native country forty-seven years ago, he labored there for many years, and in high positions, to advance the intellectual interests of the young people of Japan. He set them a high example of rectitude, faithfulness, and public spirit, and is I am sure held in affectionate remembrance by hosts of pupils to whom his intelligence, cour- tesy, and goodness must have made a profound appeal.
A few of the Chinese boys, out of the group of one hundred and twenty first sent to America, came to Amherst to be educated about the middle of the seventies. They joined our group of children, took great interest in baseball and in all out-of-door winter sports - sliding and skating and snow-balling and making snow men and snow forts. They were excellent students. One of them went later to Andover, but was recalled to China before he could enter college. He later became Sir Chen-tung Liang Cheng, knighted by Queen Victoria when he was under-secretary in the Chinese Legation in London, and later Chinese minister to this country.
The well-known librarian, Melvil Dewey, a graduate of Amherst in 1874, was a frequent caller at our house after his return in 1876 to take charge of the college library. His friend and assistant, who was usually seen with him on the street, was Walter Stanley Biscoe. As Mr. Dewey sat by our open fire, he would talk about his great dream - simplified spelling for the benefit of the masses. This was his theme. We have twenty-six letters and forty sounds; he wanted one character with a fixed value to represent each sound. Then spell- ing would become a simple matter of phonetics. Mr. Dewey's high flights of imagination were like fairy tales to us children. He said I had spelled coffee correctly at school one day when I wrote it koughphy, but I lost out on the argument with the teacher. When in later years I chanced to read Mr. Dewey's Lake Placid Club menus in the Adirondacks and in Florida, my elementary school spelling, of
[ 89 ]
which he approved, helped me out in giving an order for supper. It was in Amherst that Mr. Dewey evolved his system of book classifi- cation known as the Dewey Decimal System, which has been widely used all over the world. After leaving Amherst he organized the first Library School at Columbia, and later became State Librarian at Albany.
Unknown to Melvil Dewey, simplified spelling was already in use in Amherst when he lived there. Almost under the eaves of the house of the President of Amherst College, and not far from the house where Noah Webster wrote a part of his dictionary, lived a very humble couple. The wife did washing for the students, while the husband made himself generally useful in the community. I have made a few extracts from letters written by this untutored couple so that you may see just how they spelled the English language :
I Ben yused up With my head. I have A ulsiated tuth.
Mr. Crowell give me thik Over Coat 2 pars Stockens 2 pars draws. a pars of thik Boots all new 12 tun of Coal a chickin and fickins Red Lastics.
Mrs. Weder Tomas is just home.
I Ben trying to Cum to sea you but I hav the Cramp.
The letters in my possession were signed by both husband and wife, using their Christian names only. The wife said that her husband was " adapted to drink," that he had cramp at " interviews " during the day, and that Professor Goodell, afterwards President of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, was a perfect "epicure " on shirt bosoms. This language could hardly be improved upon. What person in public life has failed to have cramp at " interviews " during the day ?
The same faultlessly attired Professor Goodell - he was the Beau Brummel of the faculty - had the heart of Lewis Carroll within him. He came dancing through our big front door one evening in 1871, crying, " I have the most wonderful story that you ever read," and he took from his coat pocket a book bound in coral color with a gilt medallion of a little girl on the cover. It was " Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." I sat by him enchanted while he read, and though I did not understand any of the grown-up philosophy he was chuckling over, I was fascinated by the story. I learned " How doth the little crocodile " by heart and recited it before the class in the Amity Street school. When I was asked many years later to define " Homeric laughter," I exclaimed instantly, " It was Professor Goodell as he read ' Alice in Wonderland'." My college professor in Greek knew
[ 90 ]
Professor Goodell's capacity for merriment and accepted the answer. The little book he gave me is still on my shelves.
One day a colored man who had traveled by easy stages from the South appeared at our door and asked for work. We gave him various tasks and he performed them with assiduous care. He washed the windows so that they shone as never before, and put our woodshed in apple-pie order. After that he came regularly. One Saturday morning he said he must leave early because he had a sermon to write. My grandmother exclaimed, " A sermon!" "Yes," he said, "I am to preach in Zion's Chapel tomorrow. I am an ordained minister." We accepted his invitation to attend the service. I had a new blue-silk dress, bought in New York and made by Mmes. Ferry and Dickin- son of Northampton. I wished to wear it. My mother said I would be overdressed for the congregation, but seeing that my heart was set upon it, she permitted me to wear the dress.
My grandmother and brother and I set out for Zion's Chapel, going by a short cut through our garden and Mrs. Davis's barn. As we approached the chapel, the minister came into view just turning the corner. He had on a black ministerial coat, a tall black beaver hat, and a black necktie. All ministers were supposed to wear black ties in those days. We entered the chapel and found a pew, the third from the back on the right hand side. Then we waited for others, but no one else came. All was silent, save for the churchly rustle of my grand- mother's silk dress. Finally the minister rose and said, " I do not know where the brethren are. They promised to be here today. We will not wait longer, but will begin at once. We will sing, ' Watchman, tell us of the night'." It was difficult to pitch the tune without the melodeon. So the minister said, "Let us try 'My soul, be on thy guard '." This was not a success either. My grandmother suggested that, since none of the congregation sang, we could omit the singing. Then the minister said that he had prepared a sermon on the prodigal son, and he was going to preach it. He did so - for one half hour. The empty church echoed, so that we caught scarcely a word. But he had fervor in his voice, thinking of all the brethren who were prodigal sons that day. At the end of the sermon he said, " We can certainly have one religious exercise in common. Let us take up the contribu- tion." The contribution boxes were of the corn-popper type, little mahogany boxes lined with red velvet and open at the top so that everyone saw what his neighbor gave. I put my tiny three-cent silver piece in the box and thought in a romantic mood, " Oh, if I had not worn my blue-silk dress, this might have been taken for the widow's mite."
{ 91 ]
All through the sermon we had noticed through the windows that looked out on Northampton Road wagons carrying coffins and many people walking along the road toward Northampton. It was in May, 1874, the time of the Mill River disaster. A dam had broken at Haydenville, flooding the valley above Northampton. Many lives were lost. That explained the absence of the prodigal brethren.
Our parents were deeply interested in our doing well at school. They not only saw to it that we studied, but that we learned the daily lessons. My report card when I was twelve years old shows how our teachers camouflaged us. I was said to be perfect in studies, perfect in deportment, for a term of ten weeks. My brother's card indicated the same degree of perfection. What would a parent say now if he received a card like that from school ?
I did receive a prize once for being the best-behaved girl in school. It happened this way. A young Englishman named Norman Gardiner had entered Amherst and was helping to pay his college expenses by teaching in the grammar school. I was among his pupils. We were a somewhat lively and unmanageable band. Thinking to improve our manners, an opulent student friend of Mr. Gardiner's offered a prize for the best behaved pupil. It was a lovely pearl-handled gold pen. Every day on the way to school I stopped to look at the pen in the window of Rawson's jewelry shop. The night before examination day Mr. Gardiner and his friend had a conference. Mr. Gardiner said he was in doubt whether to award the prize to Della Allen or to another girl. The donor interrupted him, " Give it to Della Allen. She can run like the devil." And so, in Puritan New England, I re- ceived a prize for good behavior because I could run like the devil, and the judge was a future professor of logic and one who was des- tined to become a well-known professor of philosophy at Smith College.
Even in New England, when I was a child, children were taught to play whist at an early age, not to play in public, but to know the etiquette of the game. It was considered an accomplishment to be able to join in a game of whist in a friend's house after supper. It was always customary in Amherst to escort a lady home, even in late afternoon before it was dusk. It did not matter how youthful the escort was. We had respect for elderly ladies, but there was one maiden lady who seemed to have a genius for interrupting our pranks. We cordially disliked her. Once when she had called on a neighbor and rose to go as dusk was falling, the neighbor said, " My young son will escort you home." But out in the front hall the boy rebelled. " Curiosity brought her here and curiosity may escort her home," he said. It did, but the young son was put to bed early that night. He
[ 92 ]
exlaimed next morning on awakening, " I wonder what mistake I will make today."
It was not thought a breach of politeness to keep a caller waiting some time in the parlor. There were always books on the parlor table that could be read to pass the time. One lady in Amherst said, after keeping a caller waiting for an hour, that she would not break a hair of her head to see any caller.
The Amherst High School was fortunate in having boys and girls from North Amherst, Sunderland, and South Amherst enrolled among its members. They came in large spring wagons with good horses, or in winter in sleighs piled high with buffalo robes. Happy friendships were formed between schoolmates from the village and from the out- lying regions. William George Dwight, Amherst '81, whose father Dr. William Dwight of North Amherst held an honorary degree from Amherst, walked back and forth daily from his home during his two years in the high school and his four years in college.
Mr. Dwight's mother was Helen Mary Clark, daughter of the Rev- erend Eber L. Clark of Richmond, Massachusetts, a graduate of Wil- liams. As a four year old girl she was taken to the inauguration of the first President of Amherst College. She was a very pretty child, and Noah Webster, who, as president of the Board of Trustees of Amherst Academy, inducted President Moore into office, took her on his knee and said to her, " Always remember at the first inaugura- tion at Amherst College you sat on Noah Webster's knee." After- wards this little Helen Mary was a member of the first class to enter Mount Holyoke Seminary, and so, as she delighted to recall, she had the rare experience of being present at the opening of Amherst Col- lege and of Mount Holyoke College.
Both town and college have changed greatly since we lived there. The stately house of the first President is gone, though portions of its woodwork have been incorporated in other Amherst buildings. Its corner stone, however, was used as the corner stone of the new Psi Upsilon house. The fireplace in President Humphrey's study came into the possession of a Psi U man, Professor Charles Burnett of Bow- doin College, and is now in his colonial house at Brunswick, Maine. And so not all the handiwork of the founders has vanished.
[ 93 ]
Five hundred copies of this book were printed for Mary Adèle Allen by the Kraushar Press, Northampton, Massachusetts, in October, 1939.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The chapters on "The First Presi- dent's House" and "The Boltwood House" originally appeared in the Amherst Graduates' Quarterly and are here reprinted with the kind per- mission of the editor.
[ 94 ]
*
-
AMHERST COACH On its last trip at Quarter Millennium of Old Hadley 1659-1909
144 Lincoln Street Holyolle. Mars 18 April 1940
bear Mr. Bolton: I am mading you to-day at Bus. Required. request a copy of Around A Village Green:" She lives hu That you are interested in early Amherst Package some Fine, as you and Mrs. Bolton drive to Ambert, you will come should find that me
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.