THE PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL HOUSE of the First School Society, situated on the corner of Asylum and Ann streets, was dedicated with appropriate religious and literary exercises on the 1st of December, 1847, "to the cause of good learning," "to the breeding up of hopeful youth for the public service of the country in present and future times," and "for a life of active employment.” as were duly set forth in the statutes requiring of such towns as Hartford the setting up of a Grammar School, the master whereof being able to instruct youths so far as they may be fitted for the university;" in the bequests of Edward Hopkins and others; and the Act incorporating the Trustees of the Grammar School, which is now practically merged in the High School. The following is the Programme of the Dedicatory Exercises: I READING SELECT PORTIONS | And there's a gem that foils II. MUSIC. BY REV. A. C. COXE. Directed by Mr. Barnett. Original Hymn by Mrs. Sigourney. Where are the hunters, swift of foot The bounding deer to trace, Not here! Not here! But in their place Who, nurtur'd 'mid these verdant vales Amid the ashes of their sires Do consecrate this day, A dome their unborn sons shall hail III. PRAYER. BY REV. JOEL HAWE3, D. D. IV. ADDRESS. BY HENRY BARNARD. V. MUSIC. Original Hymn by Mrs. Sigourney. Or gathered glittering gold,- But there's a flower that fears No adverse season's strife, And still its living fragrance cheers The robber's searching eye, Enshrined within the mind that toils For immortality. Oh ye, whose brows are bright, Whose young hearts feel no thorn, Seek knowledge, by the rosy light Of life's unfolding morn, With ardor uncontrolled Seek wisdom's love divine, VI: ADDRESSES: REV. H. BUSHNELL; REV. J. HARRINGTON; VII. MUSIC. Original Hymn by Mrs. Sigourney. In vain the watchman's care. To guard this home to science dear Unless God's spirit deign To light the altar's flame, Oh, may He deign to bless The streams that here shall flow, VIII. BENEDICTION. BY REV. THOMAS ROBBINS, D. D. SCHOOLS AS THEY SHOULD BE. REMINISCENCES OF AN OLD TEACHER.* INTRODUCTION. 'I should be glad '-writes the author in his brief introduction, 'to have every young man in the country seeking for a truly liberal education live such a life as I lived till I entered college. Through life, though spent at a distance from the fields, and in an occupation as unlike husbandry and gardening as possible, I have enjoyed the familiar knowledge I obtained of the earth, and of every thing that grows out of the earth, and of the animals, quadrupeds, birds, fishes, and insects with which I became familiarly acquainted. I have been benefited and blest by the habits I formed of using all my bodily faculties in daily vigorous exercise for some hours every summer's day, till I entered college. What can be more instructive to parents and teachers, what more encouraging to boys in the country, privileged to work on the farm in the summer, and attend a first class village school in the winterthan the following passages taken from the first and second chapters on his own early education. The titles are of our own wording. Object Lessons-Real Realism. As my father was a person of great public spirit, he was usually chairman of the school committee, and took care that there should always be a well-educated man as master of the school. Notwithstanding its excellence, my elder brother and myself were always, after I reached the age of eight years, kept at home and set to work as early in the season as there was anything to be done in the garden or on our little farm. I thus gradually became acquainted with sowing, weeding, and harvesting, and with the seeds, the sprouting and growth of all the various roots and stems and blossoms. I naturally watched the character, shape, and structure of the roots and of the leaves, the formation of the blossoms, their flowering, the calyx, the petals, their times of opening, coming to perfection, persistence of falling, and the successive changes in the seed-vessels till the maturity of the seed, of all the plants of the garden and the field. I became also familiarly acquainted with all the weeds and their roots, and the modes of preventing their doing harm. I was getting real knowledge of things; I formed the habit of observing. This was always valuable knowledge, the use of which I felt afterwards when I began to study botany as a science, and as long as I pursued it; for, reading the description of a plant, I saw not the words of the book, but the roots and stems and leaves and flowers and seeds • Reminiscences of an Old Teacher. By George B. Emerson, Boston. Printed by Alfred Mudge & Son. 1878. 154 pages. The copy from which the following extracts are taken by permission, is cherished not only for the precious record of a happy and fruitful life which these pages contain, but because of the autographical inscription "with the author's best respect to his friend of many years. Dr. Emerson was born in Wells, now Kennebunk, Sept. 12, 1797, and graduated at Harvard, in 1817. See memoir in American Journal of Education, Vol. V 17 257 of the plant itself. And this habit of careful observation I naturally extended to whatever was the subject of my reading or study. This was valuable, but I made another attainment of still greater value. I learned how to use every tool, spade and shovel, hoe, fork, rake, knife, sickle, and scythe, and to like to use them. I learned the use of all my limbs and muscles, and to enjoy using them. Labor was never, then nor afterward, a hardship. I was not confined to the garden and field. I had to take care of horses, cows, sheep, and fowls, and early learned their character and habits, and that to make them all safe and kind and fond of me, it was only necessary to be kind to them. My father's garden extended from the house some little distance down to the river Mousum, a stream which issued from a lake more than thirty miles above, and furnished in its course motive-power to many saw-mills and grist-mills, two of which, and the mill-ponds which supplied them, were less than a quarter of a mile below our garden; and up to the lower one came the tide from the sea. My brother and I were never obliged to work hard, nor for more than four or five hours a day, except in times of exigency, such as the threatening of rain when the made-hay was on the ground. We were led, and opportunity was given, to become acquainted with the woods and streams and the sea. We were often told by our father that if we would make certain beds or squares perfectly clean, by such a day, we should go with him to Cape Porpoise, to fish for cunners and rockcod, to Little Harbor for sea-trout, or up or down the Mousum for pickerel or perch. I thus became gradually acquainted with the fresh-water fishes above the dams, and those of salt water below,―an attainment of great value when I became responsible for the accuracy of volumes of Natural History submitted to my oversight. We were allowed, at the proper seasons, on similar conditions, to join our sisters, in summer, in gathering huckleberries or blueberries, on Picwacket Plain, where they grew, as they now grow, in the greatest luxuriance. In the fall, we went up the Mousum to gather chestnuts, over the Harrasicket for shagbarks, along the edge of the fields nearer home for hazel-nuts, and to the nearer and sometimes the more distant fields for strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries. Early in the morning I drove, or rather accompanied, the cows to pasture, half a mile off, and led them back at night. I rode the horses to water, and often harnessed and unharnessed them. I have, through life, found it a great advantage to know how to do these things, and to be able to do them speedily and readily myself. I had constant opportunities, at all seasons of the year, of becoming acquainted with the trees and shrubs of the neighborhood,—the oaks, beech, birches, maples, hickories, pines, spruces, fir, and hemlock, and many of the shrubs and flowers. My father told me what stamens and pistils were, and that, according to the number and position of these, Linnæus had arranged all plants into classes and orders. Mr. John Low, a near neighbor of ours, lent me the first volume of the 'Memoirs of the American Academy,' containing Dr. Manassah Cutler's account of the vegetable productions growing near Ipswich, Mass. From this, with some other helps, I became acquainted with many, indeed most of the flowers and other wild plants in our neighborhood, all, at least, that Dr. Cutler had described. With all these pursuits, my brother and I had hours, almost every day, and the whole of rainy days, for reading and study. I read, with interest, books of travels,-Carver's and Bartram's, Park's travels in Africa, and Bruce's. I read much of the old poetry of our language,-Chaucer's, Surrey's, Drayton's, and still more of Cowper, Thomson, Goldsmith, Milton, Young, Gray, and others. With what delight did we devour the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel,' and all of Scott's poems as they came out! When the last ear of corn was husked and the last potato in the cellar, I went back to school. The other boys, my cousins and playmates, had been in school all summer, and were tired of it. I went back with delight, and gave myself to the work earnestly and diligently. Thus, though I was behind the others in my studies, I resumed and pursued them with so much zeal that I soon placed myself above many older, and brighter naturally than myself. So great were the advantages of my summer's employments that I have, for many years, had no doubt that it would be far better for all the boys in the country towns of Massachusetts not to be allowed to go to school in the summer, but to educate their muscles and form habits of observation and industry by pursuits similar to those which it was my privilege to be engaged in. Rural Life in New England, about 1800. Next to my father's house dwelt Major Cozens, a quiet man, who had been a major in the old French war. His mode of life was of the primitive type. His land lay next my father's garden and fields, which had been purchased of him. He cultivated Indian corn, potatoes, peas, and beans, and other vegetables, and flax, which he carried through all the processes of rotting, breaking, combing, and cleaning, till it was ready, in its two forms of flax and tow, for the little wheel of his wife and the large wheels of his daughters and granddaughters. They spun, and, in the winter, their father wove their spinning into the linen and tow-cloth for the pillow-cases and sheets, and tablecloths and towels, of the family. The Major also kept a flock of sheep large enough to furnish food for the family and for sale, and all the wool wanted for the warmer garments of the family, which the mother and daughters spun, and the father For the few things to be made of cotton, this was bought at the shops, and carded and spun and woven at home. Wove. They kept several cows, furnishing them abundance of milk, butter, and cheese; oxen, for all the summer's work of cultivation, and the hauling wood and lumber from the forest to the home, and the ship-yard or the saw-mill. They also kept a large flock of hens and turkeys and ducks,—a supply for the home and the market. They thus lived an independent, simple, patriarchal life, every individual active, industrious, and busy. Before the building of the mills below my father's garden, the Major often went, at the proper season, and, stationing himself on stones one on each side of the deepest passage in the river, secured, with a pitchfork, many a shad, and sometimes a salmon. Was this not a higher and more respectable life than many of the country people live now? For the females, especially, it was better and healthier than most of the forms of life that have succeeded to it in country towns. The large wheel obliged them to throw their arms out and backward, so as to open the chest fully and naturally, to walk backward and forward perfectly erect, so as to develop their muscles and give them the best and most graceful shape of which the female form is capable. With a son of Major Cozens, who was at home on the water, young Emerson was indoctrinated into all the mysteries of boating as well as the delights of fishing--and to him, the higher pleasure of observing the phenomena of the ocean in calm and tempest. We had a variety of adventures. Once, in a very dark night, I perceived by the sound that something was coming towards us. I ordered the men to take instantly to their oars, pulled vigorously upon the cable myself, and had the satisfaction of perceiving a large vessel pass directly over the place we had just occupied. There was no light on board, and nobody to hear our shouts. We had several other pieces of luck which it pleased me more to tell of than my mother to listen to; so that at last she absolutely refused to give her consent to my going on a night voyage. Before this, however, I had enjoyed a sight which I must describe. It was in that part of autumn when the sea, in our latitude, is phosphorescent. I had observed a little of it for several nights, but this night every ripple gave a flash of light. Our lines were visible for forty feet in the water, and the fishes we caught came up as masses of brilliant, golden light. We fished with two hooks to each line, and often brought up pairs of fine fishes. Once, each of us three was drawing up, at the same moment, two fishes; with them came the entire school, so that the whole ocean, to the depth of forty feet, was flashing with the most vivid light. All these fishes remained near the surface for ten minutes or more, when they began to descend, but were still visible, like thousands of flashes of lightning, and to the depth of eighty or one hundred feet. For the whole night every motion, every little ripple, every wavelet, was a soft flash of beautiful light. Experience in Teaching in District Schools. We have spoken and written much against the employment of teachers for short periods, and a succession of teachers in the same school in a single year. But the old custom of men, much more general forty years ago than now of college men, going out to teach for six or eight weeks in the winter, had much to redeem it, when such men were the future Emersons, Websters, Chases, Mann, Philbricks. At the end of the first term I went home, expecting to spend the vacation there; but on Saturday, the next day after my arrival, a man came from a school district five miles off, to engage my brother-some years older than myself to teach the winter school in Maryland district. 'You have come too late,' said my father; 'my son went off yesterday to Boston, to attend the medical lectures.' 'But who is this tall fellow? Why can't he come?' 'He is a boy, only sixteen years old, who has come home from college to spend his vacation.' It was, however, soon agreed that I should go and teach the school; and on Monday morning I went, in my father's sleigh, to Maryland Heights, where I taught, or rather very satisfactorily kept, a school of about twenty pupils, of both sexes, and all ages between four and twenty, for eight or nine weeks, the usual length of the term. I boarded with an old sea-captain, retired from service, whose maiden sister of forty years or more, unable to walk, had passed her time in carefully reading some of the best books in our language. |