Pauca Fideliter

CHAPTER III

Pauca Fideliter g g g g g g g g g 1865–1868 The New England hills were beginning to sew red and yellow patches on their long green aprons. It was early in the morning, only eight o’clock, but already the sun was warming the corners of the day. Worcester newspapers that Wednesday of September in 1865 made no note of this meeting of Institute trustees, although a full column of the Daily Spy was devoted to the Sterling Annual Fair and almost as much space to Worcester’s Cattle Show. The paper also noted that Secretary of War Stanton was to pass through the City that day.

But there was no mention of this meeting in which the location of the new Institute was to be decided. As a matter of fact, Worcester appeared to be doing very well without another school.

In the City there were seventy-six public schools and one high school. There were three private schools and even one college, Holy Cross, which, although it did not receive its charter until this year of 1865, had existed since 1843.

Holy Cross and two of the private schools were situated high on hilltops, in scholastic seclusion and with good view of the valley below, where manufacturers congregated in such mundane pre occupations as making paper machinery, wire, textile machinery, skates, razors, carriages, organs, boots and shoes, and leather belting. On Bigelow Court David Whitcomb had just finished building a factory which was the first in the world for the exclusive manufacture of envelopes. Already he had confided to friends that he was making more money than he had made in all the Temple ton years of manufacturing tinware. Crompton, Curtis, Heywood, Marble, Earle, Knowles, and Washburn were some of the worldknown names in manufacturing. Recently Jerome Wheelock had added to Worcester’s international reputation by his development of a steam engine.

In Worcester there were seven railroads, seven national banks, four savings banks, and two insurance companies—all in a city of only thirty thousand persons. A horse railroad line had been organized and at least half a mile of track had been laid on Pleasant Street. For five years Worcester had had a public library, housed in the upper story of the bank building on Foster Street. In this year of 1865 the policemen of the City had been issued their first uniforms. There were still no hospitals, no telephones, no electric lights in Worcester. But there were three good hotels and two newspapers.

This was the City in which the trustees of the Technical Insti tute proposed to establish a school, and this was the day on which they intended to choose its location.

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In those days it was a foreign country beyond the slope at Fruit Street where civilization then stopped. It was a common sight to see cows driven through Elm Street to pasture on Newton Hill.

—Robert M. Washburn, 1923

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When the first overture had been made to prospective contributors, Stephen Salisbury had offered cash and also a triangular piece of land at the north corner of Lincoln Square. This area was really too small for the school. The Common in the center of the City had also been suggested, but the argument of desecrating hallowed ground had hurriedly eliminated that possibility. Dale Hospital on Union Hill, where so many soldiers had convalesced during the Civil War, was a definite consideration. During the last few years fourteen large barracks had been added to the original building, which at one time had briefly housed a medical college. This prop erty had four acres of land.

On the south of the City another possibility existed in the battlement of buildings known as Oread. Built in 1849 of stone quarried from Goat Hill, where it stood, this feudal castle had evolved into a ghost of the Middle Ages to the consternation of many Worcester citizens. Eli Thayer, its owner, had told no one why he was building it. Four stories high, it had turrets and towers fifty feet in diameter. There were no moats, but this was the only anachronism.

As revolutionary as was its architecture, the building’s purpose was even more startling. In a year when Oberlin was the only college where girls were admitted, and a quarter century before other women’s colleges existed, Oread had opened its doors to women college students. Within four years the school had had twelve teachers and a hundred and fifty students. By 1865 its founder, Eli Thayer, had become prominent in Congress and in national issues, and the school had suffered from his absence.

Oread offered a solid structure, if that were a prerequisite for the Institute, and it could be bought for half its value.

The trustees conscientiously viewed all the sites and listened to the details of possible purchase, even though it was a foregone conclusion that they would choose another piece of property offered by Stephen Salisbury at the northwest end of town, where Mr. Salisbury owned at least two thirds of the land. The specified plot was part of the one hundred and fifty acres which the first Stephen Salisbury had bought from Cornelius Waldo on the west side of Mill Brook. The Salisbury land extended from Lincoln Square to far beyond Park Avenue and north to Chadwick Square.

Almost all of it was uninhabited. The younger generation in the City had dubbed the area beyond Chestnut Street as “Oregon,” because it, as well as the new state, was so far away from the center of Worcester. Far up Salisbury Street there were a few big farms and the Highland Military Academy, where so many officers had been trained during the Civil War. Every evening the City still held its breath waiting for the big sunset gun to be fired, a signal that the flag at the Academy was taken down for another day and all was well.

Absorbed now into other estates was the old eighty-five acre farm of Jo Bill, for whom the old trail that ran through the Salisbury

land had been named. This road was now just a wagon path running in a straight line over the lower edge of the hill. Intersecting Jo Bill Road, before it reached the hill, was a street known as Waldo (later changed to Boynton); between it and Lancaster Street there were no houses at all, only an uninhabitable swamp.

It was on a hilltop in this remote area that Stephen Salisbury proposed the school be built. His offer included a little more than five acres of land. The hill was heavily wooded, mostly with pine, but that, of course, could be cut and its profit used for landscaping in civilization’s usual circle of clearing land in order to plant trees.

Subsequently Mr. Salisbury’s offer was formally accepted. Be fore going further, the building committee then wisely visited the few scientific schools in existence. They also inspected the new gymnasium at Williams College. Paul A. Chadbourne, one of the professors at Williams, advised that “all buildings to which they (the students) have access be made just as simple as possible, so that they shall have no temptation to do mischief,” and added “without hesitation” that they should not have water closets in the two upper stories. Actually, he didn’t think they should be in stalled anywhere in the building—”I think that they would be useless expense.”

The committee listened politely to all the advice for which they had asked, then made their own plans for a three-story building with a laboratory of two stories so “that the roof could be raised.” There ought to be an entrance carried up into a tower where astronomical observations could be conducted. It might also be pleasant to have a room with a French roof built over it for classes in natural history.

They suggested common brick for the outside of the building and stipulated that the school must be big enough to accommodate one hundred and fifty students. There should be a laboratory for thirty chemical students, a drawing room for fifty students.

To insure complete impartiality in choice of architect, the committee asked that all bids be identified only by mottoes. “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good” submitted such a satisfactory plan along with the good advice, that Stephen C. Earle and his associate, James E. Fuller, were chosen for the job. Stephen Earle, a Leicester Academy boy and cousin of the prosperous manufacturer, Timothy K. Earle, was just beginning his career as a noted architect of public buildings.

Stephen Earle followed a few of the more important specifications made by the trustees, then digressed for the sake of economy.

First of all, he advised that the building be faced with granite from Millstone Hill. From the earliest history of the town, this quarry had belonged to Worcester inhabitants. They were free to take as much of the stone, as often as they wished, for any kind of building purposes. This was much too valuable a prerogative to ignore. To dress up the building, Stephen Earle suggested Uxbridge granite of a lighter color.

There were to be several classrooms and a chapel, the whole to

It is entirely useless for persons who have never had experience to say what students ought to be.

—Paul A. Chadbourne, 1866

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Spiral staircase in Boynton Hall

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be topped by a tower eighty-six feet high. The inside woodwork of the whole building was to be of chestnut, and the winding overhanging stairs, which were to jut out securely from the walls, were to be provided with a black walnut handrail.

The building was to be equipped with ventilating flues “for warming with stoves or furnaces,” and, expert advice notwithstanding, there were to be four water closets. Up in the attic an elaborate pressure system was to consist of two sixty-gallon cisterns of white pine, lined with lead. It was estimated that the plumbing of the building would cost about a hundred and seventy-five dollars.

Fortunately, water would no longer be a problem, for in 1865 the Worcester Water Works had effected a connection of the waters of Bell Pond with a forty-eight acre reservoir in Leicester, thus providing Worcester’s first adequate water supply. The City had been inconvenienced so long by lack of water, however, that there was still a special tax assessment for people who owned “bathing tubs” in their homes.

The man responsible for bringing water to Worcester was a selftaught civil engineer, Phinehas Ball. By popular vote of appreciation, he became Mayor at the next election. He thereby automatically became a member of the Institute’s first board and subsequently a member of its building committee. (In October of 1867 a four-inch water pipeline was brought to the top of Tech Hill, a privilege for which the Institute was charged the sum of $19.67.)

It was agreed by everyone—the committee, the architects, and the builders—that the school building was to be completed by July of 1868.

Meanwhile, the hill was cleared and its top sliced off to make a level area for the foundation. The grading carefully followed the most professional advice in America, from no one less than Calvert Vaux, who had laid out Central Park in New York. Cen tral Park’s beauty was attributed to the care given to it by the Commissioner, Andrew Green, who was a native of Worcester. It is very probable that Mr. Green helped to make the arrangements whereby Mr. Vaux came to Worcester.

For only a hundred dollars Mr. Vaux submitted a complete plan of walks, grades, and excavations. He also proposed a road to run from the southeast corner to the center of the property, then sweep down the southerly slope to soften the sharpness of the hill.

No part of the building had been started when on March 25, 1867, John Boynton died. He had not been well for many months, his feebleness causing concern when in the previous November and December he had visited the Whitcombs in Worcester. Di rectly resulting from pneumonia, his death was precipitated by exposure in a severe snow storm in which he had driven by sleigh to Templeton. His death occurred in the big house on the Common, just around the corner from his old tinshop. He had seemed to travel full circle. “He just went away and I never saw him again alive,” sadly reminisced David Whitcomb.

Mr. Boynton’s death, wrote the secretary of the Institute, “de mands a brief memoir on our records.” Only the trustees had known his identity as the donor of the hundred thousand dollars with which the school began. There is no evidence that he and Ichabod Washburn ever met except for one instance when Mr. Boynton attended a board meeting in 1866. At that meeting his offer of a Library and Apparatus Fund had been formally accepted and he had confirmed his willingness to extend the time for completing the building. There is no record that he spoke a word during the meeting; his wishes were made known entirely through David Whitcomb.

Up to the time of Mr. Boynton’s death, the building he had initiated had been given no name. Neither had he received any kind of public recognition. With good timing to remedy both situations, the trustees promptly announced that their unfinished building was henceforth to be known as Boynton Hall.

In the same month of March, Ichabod Washburn made his formal proposal to establish what he called a Department of Practical Mechanism. Overlooking nothing, his document was as long as his thoughts. What he hoped to do, he wrote, was to elevate me chanics as a class (it is true that they were low on the social scale), to add to their personal independence and happiness, and make them better citizens. He went on to say: “I propose to you a scheme. There shall be a machine shop with at least twenty ap prentices, a suitable number of teachers and workmen, and all the necessary equipment to carry on as a practical working establishment.”

All this he intended to make possible by his gift of a building, its equipment, and an endowment.

Running all through Mr. Washburn’s document a continuous thread of concern tied the proposal to his own philosophy of personal benevolence. He wanted to be sure, whatever happened, that some of the income would be used to help “indigent and deserving young mechanics.” He even hoped that it might supply food and clothing for some of the boys.

Although Mr. Washburn meticulously outlined every detail of organization and operation, he had lived long enough to know something of the caprice of time. To be sure, he wanted the plan “to be given a fair trial.” To see that it would be, he declared there must be a Board of Visitors with the responsibility of keeping the “balance of education in the shop and education in the school.” He did not intend that time required for work be en croached upon “by attention to study or vice versa.” In addition to the Board of Visitors, another group of men were to exercise a “visitorial power” over the funds.

He explored all the possibilities he could think of, then paid poignant tribute to the transitoriness with which any human venture must comply. “Knowing the impossibility of providing for con tingencies in the future,” he released the trustees of the Institute

Like the workmen on the outside and the inside of a boiler, our benefactors did not labor in sight of each other.

—Stephen Salisbury II, 1871

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Charles H. Morgan

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from practically every phrase with which he had tried so hard to bind them.

The building itself was another matter. This was something he could control. No one to this day knows the exact amount ex pended on the brick structure which evolved on the hill near Boynton Hall. The two buildings had different architects, different builders. It was as if the two were not related at all. They even turned their backs on each other.

In a much later year, George Hoar told of the worried reaction: “When Deacon Washburn endowed the machine shop . . . everybody who took an interest in the school felt the gravest anxiety as to the result. Deacon Washburn was getting to be an old man, and his health was feeble. So far as the trustees were informed, there had been no instance in this country and very few in the world, where an institution of education has conducted profitably a manufacturing establishment.”

In February of 1868 Mr. Washburn suffered a paralyzing stroke. His machine shop, with its walls only half up, might have been abandoned if not for the rescuing interest of a young superintendent at the wire mill, Charles H. Morgan.

It was only because of a chance recommendation that Charles Morgan was in Worcester at all. Trained in nearby Clinton, this young engineer had moved from Massachusetts and was living in Philadelphia when recommended to Ichabod Washburn by Erastus B. Bigelow of the famous Clinton mills.

In 1864 Charles Morgan came to Worcester to become Mr. Washburn’s most valued confidante and to weave forever the name of Morgan into the story of the Technical Institute. In 1866, at the suggestion of Mr. Washburn, Charles Morgan was elected a trustee of the school, and to this young man was given the re sponsibility of erecting and equipping the machine shop, as well as planning for its continuance.

Brick by brick and stone by stone the two buildings grew toward the skyline in a dichotomy for the whole City to see. The two contrasting roofs, with towers rivaling each other for attention, expressed the relationship in eloquent lines. Here are two ideas, they seemed to say to anyone sensitive enough to listen with his eyes, two ideas which are different. The history of the world has shown both of them to be necessary, and here, if not in the same building at least on the same campus, they shall exist to gether, sometimes complementing each other, often in conflict, and always dependent on each other.

While the school was turning into two buildings, it was also quietly shaping into a curriculum. The first formal vote which indi cated the kind of education to be expected from the Institute was recorded in October of 1865, when it was agreed that a “professorship of engineering and one of chemistry” be established.

Even before its doors were opened the school was thus broaden ing its scope, for this is the first time the term “engineering” had

been mentioned in connection with the school. This development was largely possible because Stephen Salisbury had increased his gifts. His first letter to the treasurer noted casually: “I enclose my check for $10,000 for the expenses of instruction.” Less than a year later he gave a fund of $50,000 for the same cause, hoping, he said, that it would “encourage contributions from others.” It did, in a very few cases, but at the same time it set a precedent for Salisbury generosity which all too often was a comfortable hedge for others to hide behind.

Engineering had worked its way through a series of definitions and was now more than a union of art and craft in which the men who operated machines were called engineers. Now engineering suggested techniques and skills which had picked up the tools of chemistry, physics, and mathematics. There was a substantial body of principles, and already there was evidence that science would soon be part of engineering’s connotation.

Formerly the United States had relied almost entirely upon European-trained men for all of its engineering. As Emory Wash burn deplored, “Instead of educating scientific men to take care of our shops, we went abroad for them.” The pattern had been the same when civil engineers had been needed for the railroads. “So it was with mechanical engineering, in the invention and construction of our machines. They picked up their education by piece meal in the best way they could. They were educated by the necessity of the case, at a very great expense, as well as loss and inconvenience.”

Only one nation-wide society of engineering existed in America, the American Society of Civil Engineers, founded in 1852.

Such was the situation, as far as engineering was concerned, when the board of the Institute ambitiously voted to offer courses in “Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Physics, Chemistry, Drawing, French, German, and English.”

Finding teachers for this advanced curriculum would not be easy.

First of all, there had to be a principal. Paul Chadbourne at Williams was invited twice, but twice refused. Professor C. F. Brackett of Bowdoin was asked with the same result. Recommended by the superintendent of the Boston public schools was the well-educated principal of the Arlington High School, Charles O. Thompson, a graduate of Dartmouth with a special interest in chemistry.

Thinking that they might fill two posts with one man, the trus tees invited Charles Thompson to visit a board meeting in April.

With full dark-red beard, freshly trimmed now that it was spring, Mr. Thompson clearly impressed the older men. In spite of his youth (he was only thirty-one), he was asked to be “professor of chemistry and to act as principal.” Mr. Thompson accepted the position with the condition that the opening of school be delayed long enough for him to visit the technical schools of Europe.

The board of trustees agreed, and by that agreement gave good evidence of the scope of planning which characterized the begin-

Engineering—“The art of directing the great sources of power for the use and convenience of man.”

—Thomas Tredgold, 1818, in charter of Institute of Civil Engineering in Great Britain

I can remember when we thought the idea of a man’s tending a loom was something like that of rocking a cradle, because it was taking the place of a woman at home, and the idea of introducing manufacturers into Massachusetts was as wild as it would be to introduce the navigation of ships in the lake in Worcester.

—Emory Washburn, 1869

Charles O. Thompson

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This school was not framed on the model of any existing anywhere.

—Seth Sweetser

When I entered Harvard no knowledge even of common arithmetic was prerequisite; nor were we required to know anything of geography, but simply the place of our nativity.

—Emory Washburn, 1869

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ning of the school. This was no idle school-boy venture in which they were involved; it was a serious attempt at educational innovation, and they were willing to pay the price for it.

For the trip abroad, Mr. Thompson was given five hundred dollars in addition to half of his first year’s salary of twenty-five hundred dollars, and an extra five hundred with which to buy laboratory equipment. His wife (Maria Goodrich of Ware), whom he had married in 1862, was to spend the summer in Templeton with her uncle’s family while Mr. Thompson was overseas and while she awaited the birth of their child. Templeton was a small town; it is impossible not to surmise that the Thompsons were thus well acquainted with John Boynton and David Whitcomb, which may in itself explain the choice of Charles Thompson as principal of the new school.

Charles Thompson sailed in May. He visited every school even remotely resembling the new Institute of which he was to act as principal, then wrote to the trustees at home: “No schools here can be imitated, but the ideas can be Americanized.” One of his main impressions was the difference between European boys and American boys. This difference, he wrote with emphasis, must never be ignored.

Mr. Thompson concluded that the Institute’s curriculum should offer a four-year course and require a high-school entrance prerequisite. This, however, seemed too ambitious to the trustees, who announced in their first circular that the course would last three years. Students on admission were to give evidence of an acquaintance with the usual studies pursued in the district schools, especially in arithmetic, geography, and history of the United States.

The board followed Mr. Thompson’s recommendation, however, in hiring his wife’s sister, Harriett Goodrich, to teach mathematics.

Although Mrs. Thompson had graduated from the Oread Institute in Worcester, her sister was an alumna of Mount Holyoke and had been Mr. Thompson’s assistant in Arlington. George Gladwin, an artist who had studied abroad and worked in Worcester, had also been engaged as a part-time teacher of drawing.

School was to begin in less than a week when George I. Alden of Templeton, only twenty-five years old, was asked to teach theoretical and practical mechanics. How this young man found out about the school, or how the school found out about him, is not known. He had been graduated summa cum laude in June from the Lawrence Scientific School, and for the few months since gradua tion he had worked at the Harvard Observatory.

It is possible that John Boynton had reserved this teaching berth at the Institute for George Alden. It is certain that Mr. Boynton knew the Alden family and knew them well. In the funds which became a permanent part of the Boynton endowment to the Insti tute there was evidence of this acquaintance in a hundred-dollar note signed by one of Mr. Alden’s uncles in Templeton.

It is just as possible that David Whitcomb remembered and rec-

ommended this promising young man. On the other hand, the choosing of George Alden, which initiated one of the school’s most lasting relationships, may have hinged entirely on the reputation he had earned for himself at Harvard. He was rated as one of the most brilliant students that was ever graduated from the Scientific School.

For the time being Mr. Salisbury was listed as principal of the Institute, but this arrangement lasted for only a few months before it was announced that Mr. Thompson’s inauguration would coincide with the dedication of Boynton Hall. With four teachers sharing the teaching load for thirty-two students, the school was opened on Tuesday, November 10. There were middlers and juniors—no seniors. All but two of the pupils were from the County of Worcester; one lived outside of Massachusetts. Two boys came from Templeton. Most of the boys lived at their own homes in Worcester or in surrounding towns, relying on trains or horse and buggy for transportation. A few boys planned to live with Mr. and Mrs. Thompson in the big house rented from Stephen Salisbury; the rest would find places in nearby boardinghouses where board and room was available for four to six dollars a week.

Among the students there were no girls. In the case of those few who had applied, Mr. Thompson answered: “We cannot receive any women without undertaking to instruct all competent women who apply. This we have not room for now. It is our purpose to throw the school open to youth of both sexes as soon as we can.”

The first day of school was a formality of greetings. The next was a vacation, for November 11 had been chosen as the date for the dedication ceremony of Boynton Hall. It was a melancholy day, instituting what became almost traditional as far as weather and Institute celebrations are concerned. A never-ending rain made long rivulets down the steep hill, and according to the Spy report, “The streets leading to the grounds and the grounds themselves were in a horribly muddy condition.”

Everybody had been invited to the ceremonies, either by special invitation or through the newspapers. Everybody had also been invited to bring food and instructed to leave it at Seth Sweetser’s church in good time before the opening exercises. By actual count, there were ninety-nine persons on the collation committee.

The ceremony lasted all day, and its story by itself would fill a big book. There were twelve long speeches in which almost everyone concerned with building the school, plus a few visitors, tried manfully to put into words the purpose of the school and his hopes for it. John Woodman said in his remarks that this was an era when people were judged by the kind of speech they could make. On this historic day there were many persons willing to submit to the test.

Greeting the guests who crowded into the new chapel of Boyn ton Hall was D. Waldo Lincoln, chairman of the building com-

George I. Alden

To be a Lincoln in Worcester was and is enough.

—Robert M. Washburn

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We believe it will rank among model public buildings of the Commonwealth.

—D. Waldo Lincoln, 1868

A man of action is no antagonist, but a co-worker with the student of books.

—Stephen Salisbury II, 1868

I see not simply a new institution, but a new class of institutions.

—Chester S. Lyman, 1868

The only hope and ambition of the good teacher is to make great and good men of his students.

—John S. Woodman, 1868

It is not the boy we are training, but the giant he is to become.

—Charles O. Thompson, 1868

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mittee and a member of the board. It was he who reviewed the usual travails of building, paid tribute to architects and builders, especially to James White, the superintendent, then turned over the keys and custody of the building to President Salisbury. The cost of the building to the penny was $73,343.68.

Noticeably absent was Ichabod Washburn, who was still very ill at home. Early in the proceedings, Mr. Salisbury made mention of his absence and paid him special tribute. Mr. Salisbury also could not resist this opportunity to state his own case for traditional classical learning of which he was so fond, and he admitted to being “impatient with comparisons of book learning and practical knowledge.”

The professional guests for the occasion included Chester S. Lyman of the Sheffield School at Yale and John Woodman of the Chandler School at Dartmouth. During Professor Woodman’s speech the young Charles Thompson was visibly moved. Professor Woodman, who had been his teacher at Dartmouth, spoke with the perspective of experience, and suddenly the portent of this day made its impact. This was indeed a solemn thing to do —this starting of a school; it was almost like manipulating destiny. Professor Woodman spoke of the education of a former day which was “liberal on a literary basis” and the new kind which was “liberal on a scientific basis,” and expressed his belief that neither should dominate.

He pleaded that the student not be forgotten in the controversy which was sure to come in the resolving of this issue. In the preoccupation of establishing and building the school, creating its funds and determining the curriculum, this was almost the first time that the student as a human being had been given much consideration. Let nothing interfere with the work of “making splendid men,” implored Professor Woodman. “You will be im patient to have character and standing as an institution; but have patience. The great element of character, not to be stepped over, is time.” Then, capsuling the whole future history of the school, he concluded: “When graduates get out in the world, not until, the school will have its character.”

Charles Thompson responded with soberness. He reviewed the school’s founding and paid tribute again to John Boynton and Ichabod Washburn. In the case of the latter he hastened to say that the details of the shop had not yet been determined, but he promised that “every student . . . will have as broad an oppor tunity as is possible . . . to learn the practical application of everything he studies.”

Mr. Thompson tried to temper the word “practical” for the wearying audience. He recognized it as a term which made university men shudder. At the same time he reassured skeptical members of the community that “this school is not a subtractor from established means of education, but an addition to them.” Its purpose is not to expand instruction, he said in his crisp voice, but to

concentrate it. “We should write a motto over our gates, Pauca fideliter, a few things faithfully.”

James Blake, the new Mayor of Worcester and therefore a member of the board, invited the guests to the collation. After wards the whole assembly reconvened for the afternoon session.

Again there were speeches, this time by Alexander H. Bullock, Governor of the State and citizen of Worcester, Thomas A. Thacher, professor of Latin at Yale, the Reverend Seth Sweetser, the Honorable Emory Washburn from Harvard, who had been so instrumental in founding the school, George F. Hoar, who in this year became a member of the United States Congress, Judge Henry Chapin, and William P. Atkinson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Judge Chapin moved an adjournment but became so interested in his own speech that he talked on and on, ignoring his own motion. It was he who told the only joke of the day; even that was feeble fare. His story referred to the old superstition that when a new child is born, it becomes the possessor of a soul of someone who dies at that same moment. Judge Chapin went on to say that he knew one man so stingy that when he was born, nobody died.

It was not much to lighten a whole day of ponderous eloquence, but it helped. Shortly afterwards, George Hoar finished the speechmaking and Judge Chapin stood up again, this time to thank the people for bringing so much good food.

It was already dusk as the carriages grumbled down the muddy driveway. The two buildings stood stark and still on the bare hill now stripped of all its trees. Charles Thompson, fortified by only one young teacher, a part-time artist, and his sister-in-law, must have felt he had fallen heir to a strange legacy.

The fathers and godfathers and advisers had had their say and now had gone away, leaving what they hoped were adequate provisions and instruction to last the winter.

Now the test would come.

There was nothing to do but pick up after the company, then get on with the homework for tomorrow’s classes.

g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g

This school comes to us at the right time.

—Alexander Bullock, 1868

We expect to send out boys who will not be ashamed to go back to the shop to work.

—George F. Hoar, 1869

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Lincoln Square, first Salisbury house in center, second on top of hill at left

36 Salisbury Street, west end of Salisbury Pond, now corner of Park Avenue

Salisbury house from Harvard Street

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37 Salisbury Street, with Salisbury land being broken up into streets and estates, 1888

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Above: Highland Military Academy Below: Oread Collegiate Institute, for Young Ladies

Above: First Letterhead Below: Opening-day notice

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Institute campus, with Boynton Street faculty row: Thompson, Alden, Cutler, Eaton, Kimball, Sinclair, George Gladwin lived on Harvard Street, Milton Higgins on Bliss Street.

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Cartoon labeled “Our Gymnasium� by students, 1881