USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Popular history of Boston > Part 13
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He saw the boats of the savages approaching and noted the warlike attitude of the natives.
" Put up the war screens," he said, " and defend yourselves as well as you can, but do not let us use our weapons against them."
When the battle was over he said, -
" Is any one wounded ?"
" No," was the answer.
" I," said the gentle navigator, " have received a wound. It is under my arm. It will be my death wound."
What a truly heroic soul Thorvald must have had ! He deserves a monument as much as Leif.
.
"SOCIETY needs the well-trained, enlarged, and cultivated intellect of the scholar, in its midst ; needs it, and welcomes it, and gives it a place, or, by its own capacity, it will take a place of honor, influence, and power. The youthful scholar has no occasion to deplore the fate that is soon to tear him from his studies, and cast him into the swelling tide of life and action. None of his disciplinary and enriching culture will be lost, or useless, even there. Every hour of study, every truth he has reached, and the toilsome process by which he reached it ; the heightened grace or vigor of thought or speech he has acquired, - ali shall tell fully, nobly, if he will give heed to the conditions. And one condition, the prime one, is, that he be a true man, and recognize the obligation of a man, and go forth with heart, and will, and every gift and acquirement dedi- cated lovingly and resolutely to the true and the right. These are the terms ; and apart from these there is no success, no influence to be had, which an in- genuous mind can desire, or which a sound and far-seeing mind would dare to seek."
GEORGE PUTNAM.
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CHAPTER XX.
THE OLD BOSTON SCHOOLS.
WE recently called upon that hale but venerable Bos- tonian, General H. K. Oliver, well known as an educator, an honored State officer during the late war, and the writer of " Federal St." and other musical compositions, for the purpose of asking information concerning the old Boston schools. The General for an hour or more related to us amusing anecdotes of his old school-days, and gave us one of his published addresses, entitled " How I was Educated," which presents a clear view of a schoolboy's life in Boston nearly seventy years ago.
" A short distance above Milk Street and a less distance above the old Province House, on Marlborough Street, now called Washington," says General Oliver in this address, " stood my father's house, to and from the barn of which I daily drove my father's cow from Boston Common through Brom- field's Lane.
"In 1805 I was placed under the educational influence of one Mr. Hayslop, who kept school on the corner of Franklin and Washington Streets. Well do I recall the look of the building, the old time-stained walls of wood, its old door, its old stairway, up which our little feet bore us to the old school-room, on the second floor, where ruled and feruled the good old master."
General Oliver describes the pedagogue's dress as unique in the extreme, from foot to head, "with its square-toed
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shoes and ponderous buckles, gray stockings, tabby-velvet breeches, and knee-buckles, vest of exaggerated length, ruffled shirt, seedy coat, with pockets vast and deep, ironed stock, and powdered wig." The General, speaking of his primary training, says it took him six weeks to learn the alphabet, though he found out correctly the names of all the scholars and his master's family in less than a week, - a good testi- mony certainly to the happy influence of object teaching.
We should judge from the following anecdote that boys then as now sought to improve all their opportunities.
" I well. recall," says General Oliver, " one instance of severity at my first teacher's hands ; like many other calamities it proved a blessing in dis- guise. For some THE OLD PEDAGOGUE. roguery of mine, the good man shut me up in a closet ' black as Erebus and deepest night : ' -
"' No sun, no moon ; all dark, amid the blaze of noon.'
Quivering with fright, I tried to penetrate the murky gloom. Blessed with keen nasal powers, I thought, as I became more calm, that I smelt some odorous savors sweet, and I soon found, greatly to my relief and comfort, that I was incarcer- ated in a store-closet wherein were boxes of sugar and tooth- some things in general. I turned my attention to these sources
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of relief. When the door was opened, I made a straight line for home, considerably worse for gorging, and forgiving Master Hayslop in my heart.
" From this school," says the General, " I was removed to Madam Tileston's in Hanover Street. I was a restless lad, and Madam Tileston's customary punishment was sundry smart taps on my head, with the middle finger of her right hand, which was armed with a rough steel thimble. She once pinned me fast to a cushion of her chair, and following her example I also pinned her, when she was not looking, to the same seat. Shortly after, she arose to perform some duty. It was a triplicate transit, when the threefold firm of Tileston, Cushion, and Oliver changed base." EAR PINCERS.
From Mrs. Diaz, who has published some popular articles on the subject in the Youth's Companion, we also collect some comical pict- ures of old-time primary schools.
" One of my teachers," says Mrs. Diaz, " was Marm Leon- ard. She used to wear a ruffled vandyke and a necklace of large blue beads, and a row of reddish false curls on each side of her forehead.
" Marm Leonard had a faculty for contriving punishments suitable to the nature of the offence. For example, when little Sethy Cushing tied his comforter around a kitten, and
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hung it on the clothes-line, she tied the comforter around little Sethy Cushing, and hung him on the crane in her great kitchen fireplace. Of course, the fireplace was not at that time in use. -
"Scholars who told lies had mustard put on their tongues. When a little girl stole a vial of boxberry cordial from one of the other children, Marm Leonard held that little girl's fingers over the redhot coals.
"She had also other ways of persuading us to avoid the evil and take to the good. She kept a thin, oval-shaped silver locket, marked 'Best Scholar,' for the best scholar to wear. She also had ribbon bows of blue, pink, light-green, and black. All the good scholars went home with bright bows pinned on their shoulders. The marm had but one black bow, and that was reserved to be pinned on the one who was unusually bad.
" I must not forget to mention the Catechism, -- or ' Cate- chise,' as it was usually called, - for in that Marm Leonard drilled us well. At the summons, 'All stand up and say your Catechise !' we all stood up in a straight line on a crack of the floor. She put out the questions in a high-pitched tone of voice, speaking very fast, and we answered with equal rapidity, running the words together and scampering along without stopping to breathe. In fact, we answered in one long word.
" The 'Catechise' contained one hundred and seven questions, their answers, the Lord's Prayer, the 'Ten Com- mandments,' and the Creed. Some of the scholars knew the book through, and the ' Primer ' besides.
" The Primer was a thin book, about five inches long and four wide, with blue covers and leather binding. It had a woodcut of John Hancock, and a number of very small woodcuts, one for every letter of the alphabet. These were placed up and down the pages, six in a page, at the left-hand
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An Old-Time School Committee.
side, each with its couplet at the right. Thus, for ' A ' there was the couplet,-
"' In Adam's Fall We sinned all.'
" In the picture there were two droll-looking human images, whose bond of union seemed to be an apple, which both of them were holding. They stood close to a tree. It looked like a cedar or a hemlock tree, but we knew it to be an apple- tree, because there were apples on it. We were sure they were apples, for we had heard the story again and again. Around the trunk was coiled a serpent of the size - so it seemed to us - of a small anaconda, for with only two coils , it reached from the ground to the branches.
"For 'O' there were three human images, two of them with crowns and sceptres, and the triplet, -
"' Young Obadias, David, Josias, All were pious.'
" Beside the pictures and rhymes, the Primer contained the alphabet, the 'abs,' a few pages of 'spelling words,' a variety of 'Lessons and Maxims for Children,' several . prayers, the whole of the Catechism, the Golden Rule, and a number of verses, texts, and so forth."
Mrs. Diaz in the same admirable papers thus gives a picture of an old-time school committee and one of their visits to the town school : -
" It was always a marked event when the 'committee ' visited the school. If the President and all his Cabinet were to walk into the room where I am writing, they would not seem half so stately and grand to me as did those four gentlemen who used to visit the school once or twice during the winter. They came up from town on horseback; a wheeled vehicle was rarely seen in those days. Their arrival
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was usually announced by some scholar who had peeped through a crack, or who had stood up and looked out of the window.
""'Committee 's come !' was the whisper which ran through the room.
" Its effect was magical. The schoolmaster, startled by the sudden silence, would throw a hurried glance at the window, and then try to put on a serene and lamb-like expression. We would listen as still as mice till we heard voices outside ; then came steps in the entry ; then a rap at the door. At the moment of their entrance the stillness was such that we hardly breathed.
" Oh, how majestic they looked with their nice broadcloth (our folks wore homespun ), their ruffled shirts, their heavy ' watch-seals, and their gold-headed canes ! Walking along the alley-way, they fairly lighted up that dingy, low-walled little building. With what an air they looked down upon us ! How could anything we might do seem good in their sight?
" They usually heard the classes read, looked at the writing- books, and gave out 'spellings.' Mr. Bixby was the most , pompous member of the committee. He felt himself the grandest. I remember his hanging cheeks, and his quick, puffy way of talking. I also recall what he once said when the other gentlemen were in favor of our taking up a new study.
""' Oh, it's of no consequence - no consequence at all ! They are not intended to grace a drawing-room.'
" The 'committee ' heard us all read and spell, turned over the leaves of the writing-books, talked in undertones with the schoolmaster and with each other, said 'a few words' to the scholars, - then they walked out, hats and canes in hand, and the whole school standing as they passed down the alley. When, at last, the closing door shut them out, it seemed as if the school-room had met with an eclipse.
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" We listened in silence while they trotted away, and then, as if just awakened from a dream, scholars resumed their mischief-making, the schoolmaster his natural expression of countenance, and flogging, hair-pulling, and ear-pulling went on as usual, accompanied by the whizzing of rulers."
THE BOSTON LATIN SCHOOL.
The Boston Public Latin School is older than Harvard College, and was the first educational institution of the coun- try. " Its first masters," says Henry F. Jenks in an article in the Harvard Register, " might have seen Shakspeare act in his own plays ; its second master preceded John Milton and John Harvard at Cambridge, England, by nearly a quarter of a century."
It was doubtless founded by John Cotton, "who brought to this country a knowledge of the High School which was founded by Philip and Mary in Boston, Lincolnshire, in 1554, in which Latin and Greek were taught." The Boston Latin School, we are informed, was established "on the 13th of the 2d moneth, 1635." No single school has prepared for the larger duties of life so many distinguished Americans. The names of its eminent graduates would fill pages. We give a few of them here : -
Patriots.
Benjamin Franklin.
Samuel Adams. R. T. Paine.
John Hancock.
Governors and Lieutenant-Governors.
Bowdoin.
Cushing.
Winthrop.
Eustis.
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Presidents of Harvard College.
Leverett. Langdon.
Everett.
Eliot.
Clergymen.
Cotton Mather.
Joseph Tuckerman.
Henry Ward Beecher.
John F. W. Ware.
N. L. Frothingham.
Edward E. Hale.
James Freeman Clarke.
Phillips Brooks.
William Henry Channing.
Mayors.
Harrison G. Otis.
Frederic O. Prince.
Samuel A. Eliot.
Statesmen.
Robert C. Winthrop.
Charles Sumner.
Charles Francis Adams.
William M. Evarts.
George S. Hillard. Charles Devens.
Literary Men.
R. W. Emerson. Francis Parkman.
J. Lothrop Motley. Alexander Young.
N. P. Willis.
.
We condense from an article in Education prepared by a Boston school officer, a brief history of this remarkable school : -
Among other proceedings of "a generall meeting upon publique no- tice," held " 13th of ye 2ª moneth [April], 1635," we find the following cluly recorded : " Likewise it is genrally agreed vpon yt or brother Philemon Pormort " (sometimes spelled Portmorte) "shal be intreated to become schulemaster for the teaching and nourtering of children with us." For his support, a tract of land of thirty acres at " Muddy River"
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(supposed to be a part of Brookline) was allotted. Other grants of land were subsequently made for the maintenance of a "Free Schoole for the Towne." An income also was derived from the letting of "Deare Island " of £7 per annum, for three years, 1644-47, which was appro- priated to the support of the school. On the expiration of the lease in 1647, it was renewed for seven years at £14 per annum, and the next year was extended to twenty years at the same rent. It appears, more- over, that before the ex- piration of the twenty years- i. e., in the year 1662 - the island was leased to Sir Thomas Temple, Knight and "Barronnight," for thir- ty-one years at a rent of £14 a year, "for the use of the ' Free Schoole.'"
The immediate suc- cessors of Mr. Pormort were Daniel Maude, John Woodbridge, Rob- ert Woodmansey, Ben- jamin Thompson, and Nathaniel Williams.
One of the ushers of the school, for some JOHN LOVELL. time previous to the resignation of Mr. Williams, was John Lovell. "Master Lovell" may be said to have been one of the "institutions" of Boston. For four years he was the assistant master, and for forty-two years the head-master of the Latin School. A part of this period was a time of the most exciting character, embracing as it did the years which immediately preceded the Revolutionary War. Not a few of the men who were prominent in those times had been the pupils of "Master Lovell," and had been subjected to his rigid discipline as an instructor. In this discipline he is said to have been rough and severe. His portrait may be seen in the Harvard Memorial Hall, " drawn," says Judge Cranch, as quoted by Mr. Jenks, in his sketch of the Boston Latin School, "by his pupil Smibert, while the terrific impressions of the pedagogue were yet vibrating on his nerves.
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I found it so perfect a likeness of my old neighbor that I did not won- der when my young friend told me, ' A sudden, undesigned glance at it made me shudder.'" Lovell was a bitter Tory, and did not hesitate to give expression to his sentiments in his school. It is not unlikely that views advanced by a teacher not especially beloved by his.pupils may have been looked upon with disdain because they were enforced by lips which too often indulged in words of censure and fault-finding. An an- tidote, however, to the Royalist poison was found in the teachings and influence of his assistant and son James, who was as strong a Whig as his father was Tory. We are told that "the two masters occupied desks at the opposite ends of the room ; " and a pupil of a later day pictures them as "pouring into infant minds as they could, from the classics of the empire or the historians of the republic, the lessons of absolutism or of liberalism." That one of these pupils caught his inspi- ration from the so-called "rebel " James is plain from the following incident, which is related of Harrison Gray Otis : "Coming to school April 19, 1775, he found his way stopped by Percy's brigade drawn up across the head of School Street, in preparation for their march to Lex- ington. He had to pass down Court Street and come up School, and just entered the room to hear Master Lovell dismiss the boys : ' War's begun and school 's done : Deponite libros.'" Upon the evacuation of Boston by the British, "Master Lovell" went to Halifax, where he died.
The books used at this period were : First year, Chee- ver's "Accidence," "Nomenclatura Brevis," Corderius's "Colloquies." Second year, Æsop's " Fables," " Eutropius," Ward's Lilly's Grammar. Third and fourth years, Clark's Introduction, Cæsar's Commentaries, Tully's Orations, the Æneid, Xenophon, and Homer.
" The methods of Mr. Benjamin Apthorp Gould (at the time of his election a member of the Senior class of Harvard College) were, in many respects, just the opposite of his immediate predecessors. He sought to break down the barriers which hitherto had existed between teacher and pupil, and make his scholars feel that he was their personal friend. Like that prince of instructors, Dr. Thomas Arnold, he ap- pealed to the manly and generous side of the nature of his scholars, inspiring their confidence and winning their affection, while he com-
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1645.
manded their respect in the enforcement of salutary rules, the justice and propriety of which they could not themselves help acknowledging. Mr. Gould held his position some fifteen years, 1813-28, when he resigned.
" The successor of Mr. Gould was his assistant, Frederic P. Leverett. He is best known as the au- thor of the Latin lexicon which was so extensively used in our advanced schools forty or fifty years since. . He re- inained in office three years, 1828-31, when he resigned to take charge of a private school. For four years previous to the year of Mr. Lev- erett's resignation, Mr. Charles K. Dillaway, a graduate of Harvard College in the class of 1825, had been the sub- CHARLES K. DILLAWAY. master. He was now chosen master of the school, and was in office five years, 1831-36, when he resigned, and Mr. Leverett was reappointed and accepted, but before the time had arrived for commencing his duties he died.
" Mr. Epes Sargent Dixwell, a graduate of Harvard College in the class of 1827, and sub-master of the school for a year and nine months, was appointed to fill the place made vacant by the decease of Mr. Leverett. He remained in office till 1851 ; he then resigned and established a private school in Boston.
" The successor of Mr. Dixwell was Francis Gardner, himself a pupil of the Latin School, and a graduate of Harvard College in the class of 1831. He was connected with the department of instruction from the time of his graduation to the day of his death, about twenty-five years, during all this long period being absent from the city only one year, which he passed abroad."
The Latin School was begun on School Lane, now School
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Street, where City Hall now stands. In regard to its locations we again quote from the article in Education : -
"The exact position of the first schoolhouse is not known : but it is matter of record that just ten years after the first employment of Mr. Pormort the town purchased of Mr. Thomas Scottow his dwelling-house and yard, which at this time (the 3Ist of March, A. D. 1645) was situated on the very lot upon a part of which the City Hall now stands ; and that in
FIRST LATIN SCHOOL, SCHOOL LANE.
the October following the constables of the town were ordered to set off six shillings of the rate of Mr. Henry Messenger, the northerly abutter, 'for mending the schoolmr his pt of the partition fence between their gardens.' On this spot stood the first schoolhouse in Boston of which we have any positive knowledge ; edging westerly upon the burial-ground, and fronting southerly upon the street which obtained its designation, School Lane, from this fact. As time wore on the old schoolhouse, which had served not only as a place for nurturing the youth of the town but also for the indwelling of the master and his family, fell into decay ; and in order to make room for an enlargement of the neighboring chapel, it was taken down in 1748, and another building was erected on the opposite side of the street. 'Master Lovell' opposed the removal ; but the town agreed to it in a tumultuous meeting (April 18, 1748), by two hundred
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and five yeas to one hundred and ninety-seven nays. In the afternoon of the same day this epigram was sent to Mr. Lovell : -
"'A fig for your learning ! I tell you the Town, To make the Church larger, must pull the School down. Unluckily spoken, replied Master Birch, - Then learning, I fear, stops the growth of the Church.'"
Dr. Shurtleff continues his sketch : "In course of time, also, this building yielded to the effects of age and inadequacy, and was renewed about the year 1812," - on the site of the Parker House. "Up to this time the building was designated as the Centre Schoolhouse, after which time it was properly called the Latin Schoolhouse.' This building gave place to the one on Bedford Street, erected in the years 1843-44."
Strange stories are told of the discipline of these old-time schools from fifty to one hundred and fifty years ago.
Good Dr. Johnson, of the " English Dictionary," once had a teacher who wrote a spelling-book and dedicated it "To the Universe." Perhaps it was the comprehensive mind of this teacher that made Dr. Johnson a philologist. In speaking of the severe discipline of the schools of the time, Dr. Johnson says that his teacher would punish a boy for not answering a question, whether the boy had any opportunity to know the answer or not.
" He would ask him the Latin for candlestick, and if he could not answer he would beat him."
General Oliver, in speaking of the punishments inflicted by one of the teachers in the Latin School, says : -
" He gave me a whipping, but soon after discovered that I was not guilty of the act for which I had been whipped. ' Never mind, Oliver,' he said, 'I will put this to your credit for the next misconduct, and it will not be .long before the account will stand all right.'" The General says he soon cancelled the account.
The new Latin School building on Dartmouth Street and Warren Avenue, erected for the use of the High School as
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well as the Latin School, is the finest structure in America devoted to educational purposes, and the largest in the world as a free public school. It was begun in 1877 and com- pleted in 1880. It is 339 feet long, 220 feet wide, and con- tains fifty-six school-rooms. It has an elegant exhibition hall 62×82, and a drill hall 130×60. The halls, passages, corridors, and stairways more resemble an academy of art than a school building. Statuary, pictures, and adornments of art meet the visitor on every hand. No one interested in edu- cation should visit Boston without seeing this elegant little city of school-rooms, and gaining the inspiration that such a noble structure inspires.
HARVARD COLLEGE.
The beginning of Harvard College in Cambridge, of which we would speak briefly, was similar to that of the Boston Latin School. Boston had been settled six years when, in the autumn of 1636, the General Court voted the sum of £400 towards the erection of a college. In November, 1637, the college was "ordered to be at Newtown," and in the following spring it was enacted that "Newtown shall hence- forward be called Cambridge," in honor of the place of education of many of the colonists.
In 1638 Rev. John Harvard of Charlestown died, leaving to the institution one half of his estate and the whole of his library. In return for the benefaction it was ordered that, " The college to be built in Cambridge be called Harvard College."
Mr. Nathaniel Eaton was the first master of this school. He belonged to the old type of teachers. "A mere Or- bilius," says Hubbard, " fitter to have been an officer in the inquisition, or master of an house of correction than an
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instructer of christian youth." We must doubt his fitness even for the position of an officer in a penal institution, for he demeaned himself "in such a scandalous and cruel man- ner," as a teacher at Cambridge, that he was dismissed. In 1638 commenced the regular course of academic instruction in the new college, and in 1642 nine young men graduated and received their degrees.
The bequest of Harvard amounted to only about £780, but it promoted the establishment of a university which to- day has more than twelve hundred students ; a million in endowment ; theological, law, medical, and scientific schools of the highest reputation in America; and whose elegant buildings fill a park and would constitute a town.
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