USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Andover > History of Andover theological seminary, 1933 > Part 4
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"These exertions are made with the pleasing expectation, that the Honorable and Reverend Trustees of Phillips Acad- emy will extend the wing of their protection over an institu- tion, devoted to the relief of their indigent, sick, and helpless pupils."
The health of the students was a matter of frequent concern. As early as 1812 the Faculty recommended to the Trustees the building of a wood-house, for the storing of the students' supply and as a means of exercise for the students, who could not swing an axe in the cellar of the hall, because the ceiling was so low. Before long the professors thought it possible that some exercise might be devised which would be beneficial to the student and advantageous to the Seminary at the same time, and they proposed the erection of a workshop and the enlargement of the garden of the Commons, and the employ- ment of a gardener to teach the students agriculture. They advised that "a garden, abounding in all the succulent roots
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and plants which are healthful, would diminish rather than increase the expenses of living."
Whether the Trustees thought that the Faculty should not be encouraged to make suggestions, or that the students ought to understand gardening without special instruction, they con- tented themselves with suggesting to the Faculty that they require manual labor from the students for one or two hours a day on the land of the Seminary. After twelve years had passed the committee of exigencies was authorized to provide a workshop. This was a rude, stone structure, equipped with tools and benches built at the north end of the Commons, and there the students fashioned coffins, wheelbarrows, and other useful articles.
The Mechanical Association was organized, which rented the building from the Trustees, but the students were not per- mitted to have a fire because it would be "unsafe and inex- pedient." Making coffins in an unheated room did not prove popular, though the children of the professors created an occasional diversion when they played among the shavings. "Hammered in," says the annalist, "were the Greek and He- brew, homiletics and ecclesiastical history, election, free grace, natural depravity, and justification by faith-hammered down tight and the nail clinched on the other side."
The business experiment of the students was not successful financially. The Association became bankrupt with a debt of nearly one thousand dollars, and the students who were re- sponsible for it were scattered. The Trustees refused to assume any responsibility in the matter, though the Faculty suggested that the credit of the school was involved. The work- shop stood vacant until it was remodeled for the home of Pro- fessor Calvin E. Stowe. There his wife, Harriet Beecher Stowe, wrote "Dred" and "The Minister's Wooing." The building was used later as a boarding house, and after the Mansion House was burned in 1887 it became the Phillips Inn. The Mansion House had an interesting history. It had been built on Main Street in 1782 when Judge Phillips wished to leave his earlier residence on the Abbot estate, where the Academy had been born and where later Professor Woods
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lived, to the principal of the Academy. The new house was the most pretentious dwelling in town, and, like numerous other New England houses, was visited at one time by George Washington. After enjoying its elegance for twenty years Judge Phillips died, and the Trustees purchased the property, which from that time was called the Mansion House, and dur- ing a large part of the century was the hotel of the village. It was proud of such visitors as Webster, Jackson, and Lafayette.
For exercise the students blasted and cleared away rocks from the Missionary Field back of the buildings, worked on the campus grounds, and rambled about the vicinity. Two students, one of whom became a well-known college professor, used to race each other around a three-mile triangle on winter mornings before sunrise to give tone to breakfast and the day's work. Professor Park, when a student at Andover, arose at 4.30 and walked with another student over Indian Ridge or through Carlton's Woods, practising elocutionary exercises in order to develop his oratorical powers. The professors were so concerned with the health of the students that in 1830 they proposed that triennially a course of lectures on "Hygeia," or "the art of preserving health," should be given by a "sober- minded and eminent physician."
The students do not seem to have been miserable, perhaps because they were seldom idle. It was the duty of the Faculty to keep them busy, and they did their duty, for they were con- scientious men and themselves busy withal. A student at An- dover in 1819, writing to a lady friend, describes his daily routine. "We are at present in very small business, that is, reviewing the Greek grammar. Besides this we have the He- brew alphabet to learn. But I have quartos around me enough to frighten a very timid man out of his senses. Our living is quite as good as I expected. ... That you may know how much a slave a man may be at Andover, if he will follow the rules adopted by the majority, I will give the order of the day. By rising at the six o'clock bell he will hardly find time to set his room in order, and attend to his private devotions, before the bell at seven calls him to prayer in the chapel. From the chapel he must go immediately to the hall and by the time
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breakfast is ended, it is eight o'clock, when study hours com- mence and continue till twelve. Study hours again from half past one to three. Then recitation, prayer, and supper, makes it six in the afternoon. Study hours again from seven to nine leave just time enough for evening devotion before sleep. Now, my dear Seraph, if you can tell me if this is consistent with those means to preserve health, which have been said to be so abundantly used here, I will confess that your discern- ment far exceeds mine. For my own part I expect to become an outlaw; for I will not be so much confined. Few means are wanting to enable us to become great men; but the oppor- tunity to kill oneself with study is rather too good."
Yet life went on then in far more leisurely fashion than it does now, and there was time for voluntary association among the students for various purposes. In the absence of organized athletics they formed their associations along the lines of their professional or religious interests. They recognized that their relation was that of brothers in a common cause. It was nat- ural, therefore, that they should give the name Brethren to their association, a name which had belonged to the secret association of missionary students at Williams, originating in 1808-and should resolve to call one another "brethren" in all public remarks in chapel and the dining hall. About the same time they resolved that it was improper and unbecoming for any brother, a member of the institution, to sell pamphlets or books of any kind for the purpose of making money. Yet they gave an agent of the student body a commission on the purchase of books, and charged the students assessments for the running expenses of the association.
The Brethren in that same year asked the authorities for fire-fenders in their rooms; when none were forthcoming they provided their own at the suggestion of Squire Farrar. They voted to procure pails for carrying ashes to the cellars, and a week later they showed their versatility and good will by voting to print ninety catalogues "at the expense of the College," for distribution to the professors and other gentle- men, and for use at the next Anniversary. The students voted to adopt certain study hours when order and silence should
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be observed. These were to be from eight to twelve in the fore- noon, from two to four in the afternoon, and from seven to nine in the evening. Detailed rules were made regarding con- duct, forbidding noise, laughter, and loud talking and such indoor sports as walking about for exercise or amusement, battledore, and jumping a rope. They insisted that students who injured property should pay the costs, and if the persons were unknown that the costs should be met from the treasury of the association.
On one occasion three members were appointed a committee of furniture, whether to repair damages or appraise values or replace with new furniture is not recorded. Presumably axes were for chopping wood, but one would like to know what prompted the vote to auction all the axes belonging to the school and deposit the proceeds in the treasury. Was it be- cause they were worn out, dull, or rusted? Was it because some other means of splitting wood had been invented, or were the axes dangerous to furniture or to life? Unfortu- nately it was not one of the duties of the recorder to explain motives. An annual committee was appointed "to regulate the wood." Apparently there was danger that an absent-minded individual might act contrary to the common good. That the Brethren were publicly minded is clear from a vote to spend money for warming the chapel, and another to clear away stones from a place intended for a garden.
It seemed good to the members to appoint a recorder to pre- serve a proper record of the actions taken by the association ; some of the records are unconsciously humorous. Among the first items recorded was a vote to establish a post office in the institution, to provide a letter-box "of convenient dimensions" for letters and packages destined for the mails, and to keep the key in one after another of the students' rooms, as an indi- vidual was responsible for carrying the mail. A little later it was voted to open a correspondence with theological students at Yale, and two years afterward with similar students at Union College.
An early vote of the association was that "no brother carry a light into the cellar in the evening." Again, one is curious as
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to the motive. Was it wood or cider that he might be after, or was he fond of ways that were dark? Was it simply a pre- caution against fire ? An early misfortune was the burning of one of the buildings on the Hill, and after that the Faculty made stringent fire laws, forbidding students to carry fire from one stove or hearth to another ; to leave the room where there was an open fire for more than five minutes without "taking the fire down from the andirons and putting it in such a state that it cannot fall or roll out upon the hearth"; to carry out ashes at any time except in the morning and then to the proper re- ceptacle ; to read by the light of a candle in bed, or "set his candle when he retires to rest where the snuff can come in contact with any clothing or inflammable matter"; to "go into any part of the chapel or lecture rooms with a lighted cigar or smoke any tobacco in the same, nor shall he on any occasion smoke any tobacco abroad or near any of the buildings con- nected with the Seminary." A pail of water was to be kept in each room through the night. And a committee of safety was appointed to inspect the rooms at least three times a week. The students voted to make the Mechanical Association the fire department of the school.
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CHAPTER III STUDENTS AND FACULTY
S TUDENT activities in any school are divided between tasks prescribed by the Faculty and enterprises which they undertake for themselves. Certain common interests produce group organizations. In the absence at Andover of baseball and football, tennis and golf and track athletics, physi- cal exercise was taken individually, but musical, literary, and missionary societies were soon among the extra-curricula activities. Practice in music was not far removed from the cur- riculum, and after a few years the Faculty ruled that "every student, whose voice and health will permit, shall devote so much time to study and practice of sacred music, as will enable him with understanding and spirit to take an active part in sounding the high praises of God in seasons of public de- votion."
A voluntary musical association was organized in 1812, and reorganized five years later, to continue for decades as the Lockhart Society for Improvement in Sacred Music. "It is proper for those who are to preside in the assemblies of God's people," said the organizers of the Society, "to possess them- selves of so much skill and taste in this sublime art as at least to distinguish between those solemn movements which are congenial to pious minds, and those unhallowed, trifling med- ley pieces which chill devotion; it is expected that serious attention will be paid to the culture of a true taste for genuine church music in this Seminary."
The musical association stated that all students in the Semi- nary who had "tolerable voices" would be instructed in the theory and practice of "this celestial art," and it was expected that one of the professors, if it should be within the range of his abilities, would give the necessary instruction, or that a
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special instructor would be provided for that purpose. The Seminary actually paid the expenses of musical instruction at times, usually appointing the man who had been elected the president of the association. It seems rather unreasonable to have expected any of the professors of those years to have been sufficiently proficient to become a musical coach, but the drill of the singing school, so common at that period, lent a fair presumption to the expectation.
The association at first provided for open membership, but it was that provision which seems to have brought about reor- ganization, for then the principle of selective membership was substituted. Either too many voices were intolerable, or not all the members took the organization seriously enough. Even after the reorganization it was necessary occasionally to use discipline. It is recorded with all seriousness that a certain brother by the name of Smith was derelict in attendance on the meetings of the Society, for it was a rule that unless the student were ill or out of town he must attend, and when the brother absented himself without permission, and without giving any reason therefor and failed to mend his ways, he was summarily "dismembered" by vote of the Society.
The records of the treasurer are sprinkled plentifully with fines of six and a quarter and twelve and a half cents imposed for tardiness, and this at a time when pennies were so scarce among the students that the Faculty was recommending to the Trustees not to lay any library fines upon them. An assess- ment of seventy-five cents per member provided the necessary funds for the purchase of musical collections. In the winter of 1832 an attempt was made to get Dr. Lowell Mason of Boston to deliver an address before the Society at the end of the year, but he declined on the ground that his whole time was taken up with numerous engagements. Subsequently he showed his good will by submitting a copy of his Choir for review by the Society, modestly suggesting that a testimonial as to its excellence would be appreciated. The book was there- fore referred to the censors for their judgment, and after critical examination a resolution was sent to the composer with the cheerful recommendation of the Society to all lovers of
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music and those who esteem it a privilege to aid in so interest- ing a part of the worship of the sanctuary. "We are enabled to do this," they said, "not only from a confidence in ye author's good taste and his complete knowledge of ye science and art of music, but from our own acquaintance with ye work. Although its music does not partake of ye grandeur of many other of ye author's productions, its melody, a quality in music much overlooked and too often sacrificed to harmony, is of a high order and we think unequalled in any collection adapted to ye use of choirs in general." In due time Mason became an official instructor of music in the Seminary.
The question of musical instruments received prolonged attention. Instead of the saxophone, the flute was in vogue, and seems to have been in steady demand. One performer was excused from attending the meetings of the Society "in con- sequence of his inability to play the flute so much as a con- stant attendance would require." The time came when the students wished to own a double bass viol. They voted to circulate a subscription through the Seminary in order to raise money ; failing in this they asked for contributions from "the gentlemen on the hill," and with faith that they would have one they delegated a committee of two to get a box to keep the viol in; but at last they were compelled to resort to the treasurer of the institution, Samuel Farrar. The committee that was delegated for the purpose called upon the squire, but without much success, for it was recorded in the minutes that the committee "have for some time weekly reported progress as follows in a beautiful classical hemstitch-
'We called upon Samuel Farrar, Esquire,
We went where he was and he wasn't there!'"
Whereupon the said committee as often had leave granted them to sit again.
Not at all daunted by this frustration of their hopes, the musical brethren ambitiously resolved two years later to have an organ. They appointed an organ committee. This com- mittee interviewed the Faculty and obtained its permission. The next thing was to find the organ and the committee was instructed to "sit farther on this business," that the "organic
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affection" might be gratified. Squire Farrar of the Founders had failed them in the matter of a bass viol ; for the organ they went to William Bartlet of the Associate Founders. One of the organ committee presently reported that a conversation with Mr. Bartlet had encouraged them to hope for results. The Society then voted that the committee be instructed to bring the matter before Mr. Bartlet as often and in such man- ner as their sense of propriety should suggest. Whether or not the suggestion was made once too often is not clear, but the conclusion of the matter was that "the venerable donor in the plenitude of his liberality" stated that he should be pleased to see an organ in the chapel if we could procure one ("what a kind, generous wish!"), but he could not do everything. De- mands had recently been made upon him and he felt poor.
Though the musical ambitions of the students were thus balked, they were free to cultivate their literary talents with- out wind instruments. This they did through the Porter Rhe- torical Society. It was a time when oratory was esteemed highly in the pulpit as on the hustings and in the halls of Congress. A well-modulated voice, a classical diction, well- rounded periods, and an irresistible peroration, brought the preacher to his conclusion as grandly as a skilful sailor handles his yacht throughout its course and brings it to the dock at exactly the end of a graceful, sweeping arc.
In the earliest years of the school the students therefore felt the desirability of organizing a society for the cultivation of the literary and oratorical art. It was fitting that they should call it a rhetorical society, since the name of the homiletical department was that of sacred rhetoric, and it was equally appropriate that they should style it the Porter Rhetorical Society in honor of the occupant of that chair. The purpose of the Society as stated in the preamble to the Constitution was "to improve themselves in sacred eloquence for the pur- pose of being useful to mankind." The members believed that they could gain fluency and effectiveness in speech by engag- ing in debates and discussions of matters of Seminary interest, and they wrote and declaimed original orations for practice in expression and delivery. The Society was large enough to
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organize in three divisions, each with its own officers. Under- graduates were admitted to membership only by vote of the Society. Literary men of distinction could be elected honorary members by a three-fourths vote, and all undergraduate mem- bers became honorary members upon graduation. Each divi- sion of the Society met once a week on a mid-week evening, except on the monthly Thursday when a joint session of the divisions was held. The usual program of exercises included a fifteen-minute oration, two compositions not more than eight minutes each in length, with dialogues or debates when preferred, and extemporaneous discussion by four persons. The participants were designated by ballot and due notice was given of their appointments.
Some of the topics that were discussed reveal the subjects of interest that appealed to the student mind of 1823. "Ought there to be a new translation of the Scriptures?" If Professor Porter could have decided the question he might have agreed with Professor Stuart that the original Hebrew of the Old Testament, if not spoken in Paradise, was worthy of that honor. Why then have any translation? But if one were deemed necessary, let Professor Stuart supply the orthography and syntax and Professor Porter the rhetoric. One would like to know what conclusion was reached.
A question of perennial interest was: "Is the practice of preaching written sermons better calculated to do good than extemporaneous ?" It required native gifts of oratory for the average student to do justice to this subject, but he knew that the unwritten discourse, other things being equal, was more acceptable. A more academic question was whether a profes- sor was justifiable in joining in a dance. Since theological pro- fessors were not accustomed to indulgence, the question might sound startling, but the phrase was clarified to read a "pro- fessor of religion," which removed the Faculty from the lime- light. It was more than an academic question, for in spite of their soberness of demeanor the students were human.
The members of the Society were treading on rather deli- cate ground when they asked : "Ought we to direct our efforts to increase the number of ministers in our country, or to raise
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the standard of ministerial qualifications ?" But it was under- stood that Andover stood for high standards. Two questions which went somewhat outside the field of Seminary concern, but were not unpractical, were : "Ought ministers to endeavor to exert a political influence ?" and "Is it the duty of ministers to become Free Masons?" Perhaps it was because of the pre- vailing interest in missions that they discussed: "Has the influence of the British government in India been beneficial to the latter?" That they were not oblivious to American affairs is plain, for they debated : "Whether on the supposi- tion that the allied powers interfere in relation to South America, it would be the best policy for this country to unite with England in opposition?" If they could have known how prominent a place the Monroe Doctrine would come to have in the foreign policy of the United States, they would have thrown the discussion open to the public.
Ten years later the temperance agitation had begun, and the Porter Rhetorical Society discussed practical methods of pro- moting sobriety under the topic : "Ought the use of fermented liquors as a drink to be prohibited by the temperance pledge ?" Not all promoters of temperance believed in the pledge method, or even in total abstinence, and a prohibitory amendment to the Constitution of the United States had not been thought of. The last meeting in 1832 brought out lively interest in the question whether the Union should coerce a state that was determined to secede from it, a subject of keen interest when South Carolina was threatening nullification of federal law. But the students must have entered with even more zest into the question whether it is expedient to settle ministers for life, and especially : "Is it expedient for a theological student to enter into matrimonial engagements previously to the com- mencement of his second year at a seminary, supposing him to spend three years getting his profession ?"
The usefulness of the Society was not limited to the presen- tation of solutions for these knotty problems. It maintained a library of hundreds of volumes for the use of its members, and it became an important adjunct of the Commencement exercises. An annual celebration of the Society occurred on
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the day preceding the Anniversaries, with an oration from an honorary member, a humbler declamation, and a poem not less than fifteen minutes in length by members of the Society. The participants were selected by ballot, and it was understood that all topics were to be of a religious nature. It came to be a regular feature of Anniversary week that the Porter and Lockhart Societies should give a joint exhibition, and the occasions brought out large audiences.
For the encouragement of literary appreciation the students organized the Review Association in 1818. Subsequently this was renamed the Bartlet Athenæum. It was considered at first to be an experiment, but it soon showed enough value to warrant its being made permanent. It was the hope of the members to cultivate literary taste and enjoyment, as well as to extend their information by subscribing for a few of the best periodicals of the time. The literature was kept as a nucleus of a library. According to the original constitution the number of members was limited to twelve, six to be from the junior class and three each from the middle and senior classes. A certain ratio of membership must be preserved from different colleges; there must be no academic cliques. The annual fee was set at two dollars and a half. As soon as it was possible to find a suitable reading-room it was desirable that more literature should be obtained, so that the number of members was enlarged and the annual fee was dropped to one dollar. Every member of the Association was expected to solicit donations of books or money, and the donor's name was placed in the books. After a few years the Association voted that if any person should be so generous as to give a present of fifty dollars to the Association it would change its name to the donor's Athenæum. When it found permanent quarters in Bartlet Chapel, it changed its name to the Bartlet Athenæum, another reminder of the Newburyport philan- thropist, even though there was no organ to sound his praises.
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