I have said in an early chapter that after having attended Ma’am
Weston’s school on North street, Mrs. Maynard’s in the second story
room in the building on the corner of Main street and Town Square,
and Mr. George P. Bradford’s school in a second story room on the
opposite corner of Main street, I entered the high school in 1832.
The high school house was situated on the north side of the Unitarian
church between School street and the town tombs, and was a one story
building about forty-five feet long and twenty or twenty-five feet
wide, with a door on the southerly end.
The situation of the house recalls these lines of Whittier:
“The town ne’er heeds the sceptic’s hands,
While near her school the church tower stands;
Nor fears the bigot’s blinding rule,
While near the church tower stands the school.”
Standing on sloping ground the foundation of the house on the street
side was high enough to admit of a cellar above the street level. In
the northerly end of the school room there was a platform, two steps
above the main floor, with the teacher’s area in the centre flanked
on each side by three unpainted pine desks with lids, and with long
seats to correspond, facing the area. An alley led from the door to
the platform with a row of desks and seats on each side, the row on
the east side being broken by a space for a box stove for burning
wood, the only fuel at that time used.
The house was built in 1770, and until 1826 was called the central
or grammar school, but in that year it received the name of high
school. It had a belfry on its southerly end, and a bell with the
rope coming down into a cross entry between the outer door and the
schoolroom. When the house was taken for an engine house the bell
was placed on the Russell street school house, and when during some
repairs, it was removed from that building and abandoned, I captured
it for Pilgrim Hall, where it now is. The first bells, as large as
this one, made in the United States, were cast in Abington by Aaron
Hobart in 1769, under the direction of a deserter from the British
Army, named Gallimore, a bell founder by trade. There can be little
doubt that the bell in question was made by Mr. Hobart in 1769. It
is not altogether gratifying that, with other customs of the past,
the ringing of bells should be falling into desuetude. The Court
bell no longer calls the liar to come to Court, the school bell is
silent, the funeral bell is not heard, even the fire bell is giving
way to the electric alarm, and I fear that the church bell will be
the next to fall asleep under the soporific influence of fashion.
But I trust that the day is far distant when the sweet voice of the
Sunday bell shall become mute. Years ago when Julian, the great
French composer of instrumental music was in the habit of bringing
out his new pieces for the year, he played them for the first time
at the series of mask balls, beginning each year at Christmas. I had
been in Paris six months without hearing the church bell ringing its
summons to service, and I have never forgotten the emotions stirred
within me when I heard at the first ball in the series, sixty years
ago, the piece entitled “_la dimanche au sonneur_,” the Sunday bells.
The first time I saw the “Angelus” by Millet, the same emotions were
revived, and the music of “_la dimanche au sonneur_” is still ringing
in my ears.
While talking of bells, I wonder how many of my readers know how far
church bells can be heard. I read a few years ago an article in the
_Living Age_ on the rut of the sea, or as it is better known, the
roar of the ocean, which many persons think is caused by the surf
on the shore after a storm. I discovered many years ago that this
was not so, as I had often heard it when there was no storm, and
when there was scarcely a ripple on the beach. The article referred
to stated that the rut was the sound of a distant storm, perhaps
hundreds of miles away, and illustrated the distance at which sounds
can be heard at sea by the following incident. A ship bound into
New York one Sunday forenoon was sailing close hauled on the wind
on the starboard tack about eighty miles dead to leeward from Sandy
Hook. The mate reported to the Captain that he could hear the New
York church bells. The captain doubting it, went on deck and heard
them distinctly. Putting his ship into the wind, and thus shivering
her light sails, he lost the sound, but putting her off again the
bells continued to be heard. The sound of the bells reached the upper
sails, and was reflected to the deck. I was prepared to credit the
story, because I have been told by grand bank fishermen that in old
side wheel days they had heard the paddles of an ocean steamer twelve
miles away.
Returning from this digression, let me say that in 1832 I presented
myself at the office of Dr. Winslow Warren, on the corner of Main
and North streets, chairman of the school committee, to be examined
for admission into the high school. The requirements were at that
time, an age of ten years, an ability to read well and spell, to
write a fair round hand, a knowledge of Colburn’s first lessons,
and Robinson’s arithmetic as far as vulgar fractions, and ability
to parse a simple sentence. I had at that time not only gone beyond
the requirements in my studies, but had made a considerable advance
in Latin. When I entered the school it was kept by Samuel Ripley
Townsend. When he flogged a boy he did it neither in sorrow nor in
anger, but rather for the quiet fun it gave him. He wore spectacles,
and had a way of walking leisurely up the alley as if his thoughts
were far away from the school, and if any boy after he had passed
made a face behind his back, or threw a spit ball at another boy, he
would see the reflection in his spectacles, and then going quietly to
his desk, and taking out his cowhide, would walk back apparently in
an absent mood, and when he walked by the boy he would bring the hide
down smartly on his back, and keep on his walk with an ill concealed
smile on his face as if he had played a joke on the offender.
Mr. Townsend, son of Samuel and Abigail Townsend, was born in
Waltham, April 10, 1810, and graduated at Harvard in 1829. After
leaving Plymouth he engaged in business in Boston for a time, and
afterwards taught the Bristol Academy from 1846 to 1849, during
which period he studied law with Horatio Pratt, and was admitted to
the Bristol bar in 1850. In 1853 he was chosen treasurer of Bristol
County, serving three years, and in 1858 was appointed Judge of
the Police Court of Taunton. After the dissolution of the court he
practiced law in Taunton, serving three terms as a member of the city
council, and in 1882 was appointed City Solicitor. He married June
29, 1837, Mary Snow Percival, and died September 27, 1887.
In 1833 Mr. Townsend was succeeded by Isaac Nelson Stoddard, born in
Upton, October 30, 1812, who graduated at Amherst in 1832. He taught
the school about two years, and then moved to New Bedford, where
he taught until 1837, when he returned to Plymouth, and again had
charge of the school until 1841. In the latter year he was appointed
collector of the port, remaining in office until 1845, when he was
made cashier of the Plymouth Bank, continuing in office in that and
its successor, the Plymouth National Bank, until 1879, when he was
made president. He married in 1836, Martha Le Baron, daughter of John
B. Thomas, and died July 23, 1891. He fitted John Goddard Jackson and
myself for college during the first half of 1838, when we carried
on our studies at home, and went to Mr. Stoddard’s house late each
afternoon to recite. While in New Bedford Mr. Stoddard became an
intimate friend of Judge Oliver Prescott, Judge of Probate of Bristol
county, and hence the name of our genial friend, Col. Stoddard. The
ordinary punishment to which the boys were subjected by Mr. Stoddard,
was a squeeze of the ear between his thumb and forefinger, but the
punishment for high offences was a flogging on the soft parts, while
the victim lay across a chair. Some of my readers will doubtless
remember Bill Randall, and the jolly way in which he did everything.
One day knowing that Mr. Stoddard intended to flog him, he went to
school prepared for the occasion. When he was called out and told to
lie down he exhibited a protuberance never equalled by any bustle of
the dressmaker’s art, and as he took the blows which might as well
have been inflicted on a bale of wool, he would wink to the other
scholars as much as to say, “go ahead old fellow if you enjoy it, go
ahead.” Bill went to California, and on a visit to Plymouth a few
years ago he was the same old Bill, and if he be living and sees
these memories, he will have a laugh over the flogging incident.
During Mr. Stoddard’s absence in New Bedford the first teacher was
Leonard Bliss of Rehoboth, a scholarly man, who published a history
of Rehoboth, a valuable contribution to historical literature.
After leaving Plymouth he went to Louisville, Ky., and edited the
_Louisville Journal_. For some offensive remarks in the columns of
his paper, he was shot dead in his office. He was a son of Leonard
and Lydia (Talbot) Bliss, and was born in Swanzey, December 12, 1811.
Wm. H. Lord succeeded Mr. Bliss, a native of Portsmouth, born
September 10, 1812, and a graduate at Dartmouth in 1832. He graduated
at Andover Academy in 1837, and was settled for a time over the
Unitarian Societies of Southboro, Mass., and Madison, Wisconsin. At
one time he edited a newspaper in Port Washington, and was Consul
at St. Thomas from 1850 to 1853. He married Persis, daughter of
Rev. Dr. James Kendall, and died in Washington in 1866. He was a
popular teacher, and introduced a new feature into school government,
which proved successful. At the opening day of his term he told his
scholars that they might have the afternoon of that day to themselves
in the school room for the purpose of enacting a code of rules for
the management of the school, and reporting the same to him the next
day, but he wished them to distinctly understand that when enacted,
the rules were to be obeyed. It requires no deep knowledge of human
nature to know that such a confidence in the good faith of the school
would be conscientiously respected. I do not remember a single case
of flogging under his administration.
Before the return of Mr. Stoddard to Plymouth in 1837 the school was
kept a short time by Robert Bartlett of Plymouth of the Harvard class
of 1836, and by LeBaron Russell of the Harvard class of 1832, but
nothing occurred during their terms, especially worthy of notice,
except the pranks usual in every school. One of these pranks was
tried on each teacher in turn. In the cool days of autumn or spring,
the fire in the box stove was not kept up continuously, so some
morning when there was no fire, a bundle of seaweed was rammed down
the chimney, and soon after the school opened the boys began one
after another to shiver and ask for a fire. Of course, when the fire
was kindled, the room would fill with smoke, and the usual result,
the dismissal of the school, followed. There were no janitors in
those days, and each Saturday two boys would be detailed to discharge
during the next week a janitor’s duties, including sweeping out,
sawing wood, making fires and ringing the bell. I do not think
such work ever did me any harm, indeed, I am sure that it taught
me as much that was useful as is taught today in some branches of
instruction included in the regular curriculum, for which special
salaried teachers are employed.
A school called the town school, was kept in my day by Thomas Drew
in a house built in 1827, which has been recently taken down. It
stood also on School street, near the way up Burial Hill, a little
distance south of the high school house. The boys attending that
school were older and larger than the high school boys, and when
there was snow on the ground there was scarcely a day without a
pitched battle between the two schools. During my time our leader was
Abraham Jackson, always cool and fearless, and generally leading his
followers to victory, and driving the enemy into their school. He
entered Harvard a year before I did, and on the Delta he was the same
hero in the strife that he was on Burial Hill at home. More than once
I have seen him there with ball in hand rushing through the crowd
with an impetus which no obstacle could check, and heard the cry,
“go it Jackson, go it Jackson,” and then a cheer when he sent the
ball home. I can conceive of no danger from which Jackson would have
retreated, and of no act of daring which he would not if necessary
have performed. He once saved a boy from drowning, who had ventured
on thin ice in the middle of Murdock’s pond and fallen through. While
other boys were paralyzed with fear he kept his presence of mind, and
did just the right thing. There was a pile of rails on the shore, and
seizing two he dragged them side by side near the broken ice, and
then lying down on them worked his way with his weight distributed
over as much surface as possible, to the boy, and taking him by the
collar, pulled him to the rails and to safety. He was always a hero,
and in war would have been a Cushing in Roanoke river or a Hobson at
Santiago.
A fuller history of Plymouth schools than I propose to give in these
memories, may be found in my Ancient Landmarks of Plymouth, and I
must content myself with saying that after the school became the
high school in 1826, the teachers, omitting those already mentioned,
were Addison Brown, Harvard, 1826, George W. Hosmer, Harvard, 1826,
who married Hannah Poor, daughter of Rev. James Kendall, Horace Hall
Rolfe, born in Groton, N. H., July 20, 1800, graduated at Dartmouth,
1824, married, 1828, Mary T., daughter of Stephen Marcy, and died in
Charleston, S. C., February 24, 1831, Josiah Moore, Harvard, 1826,
who married in 1831, Rebecca W., daughter of Wm. Sturtevant, Charles
Clapp, Mr. Jenks, Philip Coombs Knapp, Dartmouth, 1841, John Brooks
Beal, Thomas Andrew Watson, Harvard, 1845, Samuel Sewall Greeley,
Harvard, 1844, Wm. H. Spear, J. W. Hunt, Frank Crosby, Edward P.
Bates, Admiral P. Stone, George Lewis Baxter, Theodore P. Adams,
Harvard, 1867, Joseph Leavitt Sanborn, Harvard, 1867, Henry Dame,
George Washington Minns, Harvard, 1836, Gilman C. Fisher, and Charles
Burton, who was succeeded by teachers with whose names my readers are
familiar.
There are two of the above of whom I am able to furnish meagre
sketches. Charles Burton, son of Thomas and Elizabeth (Deane) Burton,
was born in Wolverhampton, England, December 16, 1816, and about 1818
came to America with his widowed mother and one brother and four
sisters, and settled in Pittsburgh, where in early life he learned
the trade of pattern maker. In Pittsburgh he became acquainted with
Lemuel Stephens, who was instructor there in Daniel Stone’s private
school, and about 1839 sailed with him for Germany in a vessel
belonging to I. and E. Morton. After a year’s study in Gottingen and
Heidelberg, he returned home, and soon after came to Plymouth with
messages from Mr. Stephens, whose sister Sarah he afterwards married.
He taught first a private school on Watson’s Hill in a building
erected for the purpose, and for many years afterwards was associated
with the public schools of Plymouth, either as principal of the high
school or as superintendent of schools. He died November 25, 1894.
George Lewis Baxter, son of William W. and Ann E. (Weld) Baxter, was
born in Quincy, Oct. 21, 1842, and graduated at Harvard in 1863. In
1864 he was principal of the Reading High School, and afterwards for
three years principal of the high school in Plymouth. In 1867 he was
appointed headmaster of the Somerville high school, in which capacity
he is still serving with about four hundred and thirty scholars under
his charge. In 1872 he married Ida F. Paul, and has a son, Gregory
Paul Baxter, who graduated at Harvard in 1896.
I entered college at sixteen, the usual age at that time, while now
it is eighteen. There are persons who believe that everything is
lovely in our day, and that our fathers were uneducated, ignorant
men. They claim that our public schools are more efficient in
instruction, and their pupils further advanced than formerly. This
I doubt. I began to study Latin at nine, and I have no reasons to
think that I was an exception. They explain the advanced age of
freshmen, by claiming that the requirements for admission to college
are greater, and this claim I also doubt. They further claim that a
higher scholarship is reached by the graduate of the present time.
But to substantiate this claim, they should show first that the old
instructors were inferior to the present, and second that the various
activities of life are now represented by abler men than ever before.
But are Professor Felton in Greek, Professor Beck in Latin, Professor
Channing in Rhetoric and Elocution, Professor Pierce in Mathematics,
and Professor Longfellow in French, outclassed by recent professors?
Then if we turn to the various professions we find among the
graduates of the earlier half of the last century in the ministry,
Wm. Ellery Channing, James Walker, Frederick Hedge, George Putnam,
Wm. P. Lunt, Henry W. Bellows, and Edward Everett Hale; in law,
Samuel Dexter, Lemuel Shaw, Sidney Bartlett, Benjamin Robbins Curtis
and William Whiting; in literature, Wm. H. Prescott, George Bancroft,
Jared Sparks, Francis Parkman, J. Lothrop Motley, James Russell
Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes; in medicine, John Collins Warren,
Henry Bigelow and George H. Gay, and in statesmanship, John Quincy
Adams, Josiah Quincy, Harrison Gray Otis, Edward Everett, Charles
Sumner and George F. Hoar; in science, Benjamin Pierce, Asa Gray
and B. A. Gould. Is a comparison with recent graduates unfavorable
to these men? I was told not many years ago by a distinguished
scholar, a graduate of Harvard, and one of its professors, that in
his opinion Harvard did not graduate as good scholars as it did
fifty years before. If this be true, I think there is a reason for
it. Many persons mistake bigness for greatness, but I believe that
sixteen hundred undergraduates cannot be moulded as well as four
hundred. There is not that personal interest felt in the student by
the instructors, which was once felt. I am inclined to doubt whether
in the faculty today there is more than one member able to recognize
and call by name fifty students. In my day it was different, and to
apply the _reductio ad absurdum_, there was Charles Stearns Wheeler,
Greek tutor, the Pinkerton of the faculty, who boasted that if day
or night he could see the heel of a student going round a corner he
could give his name—_ex pede herculem_. Only a few incidents in my
college career are worthy of mentioning. I think I am one of very
few students whose pardon has ever been asked by a professor. One
day while solving a problem in geometry before Professor Pierce,
or Benny, as we called him, and performing my work with ease and
rapidity, he stopped me suddenly and sent me to my seat, telling me
to begin at the next recitation at the beginning of the text book,
which we were then half through. At the next recitation he called me
to the blackboard and asked me how far I was prepared. I told him,
“Up with the class,” and then he began to screw me, giving me three
problems in different places in the book, which I solved with ease.
He then said, “Take your seat, and remain after the class leaves the
room.” When we were alone he said, “Davis, I thought you were copying
at the last recitation, but I am satisfied that you were not, and I
beg your pardon.” The students sometimes marked difficult points in
the problems on their cuffs, and sometimes on a slip of paper, and
the professor seeing me doing my work so glibly, thought I had an
auxiliary somewhere about my person. He never alluded to the matter
again, but he manifested his regret by inviting me very frequently to
spend a part of a night with him, or his assistant in the observatory
to aid in recording magnetic or astronomical observations.
No professor was more interesting to me than Edward Tirrell Channing,
at the head of the department of rhetoric and elocution. I think
he made a deeper and broader mark on the undergraduate mind than
has been felt since his day. His custom was to take up the themes,
which he had examined, and criticise them before the class. On one
occasion, taking up mine he said, “Davis, I have only one thing
to say to you, when you have written anything which you think
particularly fine, strike it out.” A member of my class published
a book of poems during his college course entitled, “Pebbles from
Castalia,” which we boys called, “Brickbats from Kennebunk.” On
one occasion he wrote a theme in verse, and Channing taking it up
said, “Mr. Blank, I see that in your theme every line begins with a
capital, what is the reason?” “It is poetry, sir.” “Ah, poetry, is
it, I did not think of that, but hereafter, leave out some of your
capitals.”
In my day there were five degrees of punishment: expulsion,
suspension, public admonition before the faculty, private admonition
by the president, and mild censure by the professor, who had a room
in college. There was a race course a little more than a mile from
the college which the boys often attended to see trotting races
under the saddle. One rider was easy and graceful in riding jockey
hitch. At one time I was called before Professor Lovering who held
the position above referred to, and told by him that I was reported
for attending the race on the Wednesday before. I said, “Yes, I was
there, and saw you there.” “Well, how do you like jockey hitch,” he
asked, and after we had exchanged our views on that style of riding,
he bade me good morning. This mild censure reminds me of a story told
of Professor Felton, one of whose brothers, some twenty years younger
than himself, was an undergraduate, and was reported for swearing in
the college yard. The faculty requested the professor to speak to his
brother, so sending a messenger for him to come to his recitation
room he told him that he had been reported as above mentioned. “Yes,”
his brother said, “I plead guilty, but I do not often indulge in
profanity.” “Damnation, John, what do you mean by using the word
profanity. There is no such word; profaneness, John, profaneness, not
profanity—you may go.”
Josiah Quincy, born in Boston, Feb. 4, 1772, a Harvard graduate of
1790, was president during my term. He had occupied the positions of
member of congress, state senator, mayor of Boston, and Judge of the
Boston Municipal Court, when he was chosen president in 1829, serving
until 1845. He was sixty-six years of age, when I entered college,
but appeared much older. He bore the reputation of being absent
minded, but though many of the stories illustrating this mental
condition, are probably untrue, an instance of it once occurred
under my own eye and ear. He and Hon. Tyler Bigelow, the father of
Chief Justice Geo. Tyler Bigelow, were intimate friends, and their
families were also intimate. Meeting one day in the waiting room of
the Old Colony station some years after the death of Mr. Bigelow’s
wife, Mr. Quincy asked him how Mrs. Bigelow was. Putting his hand to
his ear, as he was very deaf, Mr. Bigelow said, “What did you say?”
Mr. Quincy raising his voice said, “How is Mrs. Bigelow.” Mr. Bigelow
said, “Speak louder,” and Mr. Quincy called out in his loudest
voice, attracting the attention of every one in the room, “How is
Mrs. Bigelow.” “Dead, dead,” said Mr. Bigelow, much to the amusement
of the crowd. Mr. Quincy was a noble man. He loved Boston, and was
devoted to its interests. The city owned what was called city wharf,
opposite the Quincy Market, and when he was about eighty years of age
the city government voted to sell it by auction. Mr. Quincy protested
publicly against the sale of property which in his judgment would
appreciate largely in value in the near future. No attention was paid
to his protest, and the sale went on. He bought it, and then offered
it to the city at the price he paid, but his offer was refused.
I have heard his profits on the purchase put as high as a half a
million of dollars. He died in Quincy, July 1, 1864, at the age of
ninety-two.