EDWIN P. SEAVER

Edwin P. Seaver, who ranks among the best educators that the state of Massachusetts ever produced, was born in Northborough, February 24, 1838, and he always reserved a warm place in his heart for his native town. He was a product of the district schools of Northborough, having been a student at both the South and the Center Districts. Upon his graduation from the Bridgewater Normal School he embarked upon a career of teaching which has few parallels in the country. His career is partially told in a letter to Miss Harriet L. Allen, who, in 1912 prepared a paper on "Some of the Teachers Who Have Gone Forth from Northborough." This letter is such a charming bit of biography that we publish it in full. He says:

"After graduating from the Bridgewater Normal School I taught for one spring term (13 weeks) a district school in East Stoughton-now the town of Avon; and in September of that year went to the Friends' Academy in New Bedford where I was the assistant of the late Thomas Prentice Allen, having charge of the English branches. Mr. Allen, as you know, was born and educated in Northborough, and was one of the most renowned teachers of his time.

"I remained with Mr. Allen three years devoting my spare time to the study of Latin and Greek, and receiving Mr. Allen's instruction in these languages as a part of my compensation for teaching. Sometimes it happened that I recited Latin and Greek with the same boys I had taught arithmetic the hour before, or would teach geography the next hour. In this way I was prepared for college; but feeling some doubts as to the thoroughness of my preparation, thought it best for me to enter the Phillips Academy at Exeter for one year. This I did, and during the year 1860-61 took double work, finishing my preparation for college with a higher class and doing the whole work of the freshman year. This cannot, however, be considered as doing the whole of two years' work in one; for I was already well advanced in mathematics.

"During my college course I did some teaching, including one winter term in the East District in Northborough. After graduating from college I came back to the Friends' Academy for a year (1864-65) and was then called back to Harvard College, where I served as tutor and assistant professor of mathematics for nine years-1865 to 1874.

"Then I was elected Head Master of the English High School in Boston, and held the position for six years, 1874-80. After which I served the City of Boston for 24 years as Superintendent of Public Schools-1880 to 1904."

In speaking of the number of teachers of Northborough he goes on to say: "It seemed to me when a boy that almost everybody who was possessed of more than a common school education was, or had been, a teacher; and that so many went to Bridgewater Normal School was chiefly due to the influence of Dr. Allen, who is the one man to whom Northborough owes its reputation as a nursery of teachers."

The Massachusetts Schoolmasters' Club put forth the following brochure on Edwin P. Seaver, in 1919:

"Edwin P. Seaver, born in Northborough, Massachusetts, Feb. 24, 1838, died at his home in New Bedford, Dec. 8, 1917, in his eightieth year. Mr. Seaver was always both a scholar and an educator. He was an unusual combination of the student and the schoolmaster. We can learn of no educator who, prior to 1870, spent so much time in scholastic preparation as did he.

"From seventeen years of age, when he entered the Bridgewater State Normal School, until at thirty-two, when he was graduated from the Harvard Law School, he was always a student in one of the four leading educational institutions of their class in the United States.

"Later he spent two years in study and travel in Europe. This makes seventeen years devoted to student life, in the Bridgewater State Normal School, Phillips Academy, Harvard College, Harvard Law School, and the schools of Europe.

"Even now such extended preparation for a public school career would be unusual, but fifty years ago it was phenomenal. "Although Mr. Seaver early taught, incidentally he had set his heart upon college work in mathematics in which he had made a reputation as a student.

"Mr. Seaver was the first Bridgewater graduate to go to Phillips Academy and Harvard University. After fifteen years of eminently successful student life he was successively principal of a Boys' School in New Bedford, assistant professor in Harvard College, headmaster of the English High School of Boston, and for twenty-four years superintendent of the schools of Boston, a longer term than that enjoyed, or endured, by any other educational leader in Boston. He was for twelve years one of the overseers of Harvard University, as high a professional honor as can come to a public school man.

"Bridgewater men have always known Mr. Seaver, who was for more than sixty years among its alumni, but the great body of New England school men of today knew him as superintendent of Boston schools.

"Mr. Seaver was one of the most impersonal men who ever

honored the profession. He cared little what people said about him in praise or censure.

"He was always a storm center. He bore much abuse for a time from the ardent admirers of John D. Philbrick, and later from the worshippers of Colonel Francis W. Parker, and no one was ever an admirer of both Philbrick and Parker.

"In later life when the storms raged fiercest he had as near the unanimous support of the teaching force of Boston as one can ever expect to enjoy.

"Through thrift and fortunate investments Mr. Seaver was able to retire at the age of sixty-six and enjoy a leisure life for the last thirteen years.

"Mr. Seaver was not naturally educationally progressive, but his great professional service to the country, was as chairman of a famous Committee on Industrial Education, which was as important progressive service as any committee up to that time had ever rendered through schools of America since the days of Horace Mann and Henry Barnard.

"Mr. Seaver was a noble man among schoolmasters. His preparation for the work was wholly unprecedented, his service unusual, his honors abundant.”

PROFESSOR SAMUEL T. MAYNARD

The town of Amherst, in Central Massachusetts, is an educational center, being the home of "Amherst College" and of the "Massachusetts Agricultural College." Both of those institutions are beauty spots. In fact, the town itself is a beauty spot, being accounted one of the most beautiful of the cultured New England towns. The visitor to Amherst always carries away with him a mental picture of rural loveliness. Nature has done much for it, but the brain and hand of man have done more. The casual visitor to any town accepts such beauty as he finds, and is satisfied. But he seldom questions himself or anyone else as to who is responsible for that beauty. In these latter days we assume that the beauty of a town was wrought under the magic touch of some landscape gardener, name unknown. And we assume rightly. But in the case of beautiful Amherst it is not difficult to trace her beauty to its source. Given an agricultural college, with a professor of horticulture whose interest in his department is personal rather than general, and a beautiful town is easily accounted for. For that professor soon becomes well known, and his genius much sought after.

Amherst is indebted (not wholly, but pretty largely) to one such professor-a man whose name was a household word in