The Bay State Monthly. Volume 2, No. 3, December, 1884. Various
and all news current pertaining to it.
'The Chatauqua Young Folk's Journal' is the latest addition to the sparkling list. This periodical was a natural growth of the modern liking for clubs, circles, societies, reading unions, home studies, and reading courses. It is the official voice of the Chatauqua Young Folks Reading Union, and furnishes each year a valuable and vivacious course of readings on topics of interest to youth. It is used largely in schools. Its contributors are among our leading clergymen, lawyers, university professors, critics, historians and scientists, but all its literature is of a popular character, suited to the family circle rather than the study. Mr. Lothrop now has the remarkable success of seeing six flourishing periodicals going forth from his house.
In 1875, Mr. Lothrop, finding his Cornhill quarters inaquate [sic], leased the elegant building corner Franklin and Hawley streets, belonging to Harvard College, for a term of years. The building is 120 feet long by 40 broad, making the salesroom, which is on the first floor, one of the most elegant in the country. On the second floor are Mr. Lothrop's offices, also the editorial offices of 'Wide Awake,' etc. On the third floor are the composing rooms and mailing rooms of the different periodicals, while the bindery fills the fourth floor.
This building also was found small; it could accommodate only one-fourth of the work done, and accordingly a warehouse on Purchase street was leased for storing and manufacturing purposes.
In 1879 Mr. Lothrop called to his assistance a younger brother, Mr. M.H. Lothrop, who had already made a brilliant business record in Dover, N.H., to whom he gives an interest in the business. All who care for the circulation of the best literature will be glad to know that everything indicates the work to be steadily increasing toward complete development of Mr. Lothrop's life-long purpose."6
This man of large purposes and large measures has, of course, his sturdy friends, his foes as sturdy. He has, without doubt, an iron will. He is, without doubt, a good fighter—a wise counselor. Approached by fraud he presents a front of granite; he cuts through intrigue with sudden, forceful blows. It is true that the sharp bargainer, the overreaching buyer he worsts and puts to confusion and loss without mercy. But, no less, candor and honor meet with frankness and generous dealing. He is as loyal to a friend as to a purpose. His interest in one befriended and taken into trust is for life. It has been more than once said of this immovable business man that he has the simple heart of a boy.
Mr. Lothrop's summer home is in Concord, Mass. His house, known to literary pilgrims of both continents as "The Wayside," is a unique, many gabled old mansion, situated near the road at the base of a pine-covered hill, facing broad, level fields, and commanding a view of charming rural scenery. Its dozen green acres are laid out in rustic paths; but with the exception of the removal of unsightly underbrush, the landscape is left in a wild and picturesque state. Immediately in the rear of the house, however, A. Bronson Alcott, a former occupant, planned a series of terraces, and thereon is a system of trees. The house was commenced in the seventeenth century and has been added to at different periods, and withal is quaint enough to satisfy the most exacting antiquarian. At the back rise the more modern portions, and the tower, wherein was woven the most delightful of American romances, and about which cluster tender memories of the immortal Hawthorne. The boughs of the whispering pines almost touch the lofty windows.
The interior of the dwelling is seemly. It corresponds with the various eras of its construction. The ancient low-posted rooms with their large open fire-places, in which the genial hickory crackles and glows as in the olden time, have furnishings and appointments in harmony. The more modern apartments are charming, the whole combination making a most delightful country house.
Mr. Lothrop's enjoyment of art and his critical appreciation is illustrated here as throughout his publications, his house being adorned with many exquisite and valuable original paintings from the studios of modern artists; and there is, too, a certain literary fitness that his home should be in this most classic spot, and that the mistress of this home should be a lady of distinguished rank in literature, and that the fair baby daughter of the house should wear for her own the name her mother has made beloved in thousands of American and English households.
New England Conservatory of Music
One of the most important questions now occupying the minds of the world's deepest and best thinkers, is the intellectual, physical, moral, and political position of woman.
Men are beginning to realize a fact that has been evident enough for ages: that the current of civilization can never rise higher than the springs of motherhood. Given the ignorant, debased mothers of the Turkish harem, and the inevitable result is a nation destitute of truth, honor or political position. All the power of the Roman legions, all the wealth of the imperial empire, could not save the throne of the Cæsars when the Roman matron was shorn of her honor, and womanhood became only the slave or the toy of its citizens. Men have been slow to grasp the fact that women are a "true constituent of the bone and sinew of society," and as such should be trained to bear the part of "bone and sinew." It has been finely said, "that as times have altered and conditions varied, the respect has varied in which woman has been held. At one time condemned to the field and counted with the cattle, at another time condemned to the drawing-room and inventoried with marbles, oils and water-colors; but only in instances comparatively rare, acknowledged and recognized in the fullness of her moral and intellectual possibilities, and in the beauteous completeness of her personal dignity, prowess and obligation."
Various and widely divergent as opinions are in regard to woman's place in the political sphere, there is fast coming to be unanimity of thought in regard to her intellectual development. Even in Turkey, fathers are beginning to see that their daughters are better, not worse, for being able to read and, write, and civilization is about ready to concede that the intellectual, physical and moral possibilities of woman are to be the only limits to her attainment. Vast strides in the direction of the higher and broader education of women have been made in the quarter of a century since John Vassar founded on the banks of the Hudson the noble college for women that bears his name; and others have been found who have lent willing hands to making broad the highway that leads to an ideal womanhood. Wellesley and Smith, as well as Vassar find their limits all too small for the throngs of eager girlhood that are pressing toward them. The Boston University, honored in being first to open professional courses to women, Michigan University, the New England Conservatory, the North Western University of Illinois, the Wesleyan Universities, both of Connecticut and Ohio, with others of the colleges of the country, have opened their doors and welcomed women to an equal share with men, in their advantages. And in the shadow of Oxford, on the Thames, and of Harvard, on the Charles, womanly minds are growing, womanly lives are shaping, and womanly patience is waiting until every barrier shall be removed, and all the green fields of learning shall be so free that whosoever will may enter.
Among the foremost of the great educational institutions of the day, the New England Conservatory of Music takes rank, and its remarkable development and wonderful growth tends to prove that the youth of the land desire the highest advantages that can be offered them. More than thirty years ago the germ of the idea that is now embodied in this great institution, found lodgment in the brain of the man who has devoted his life to its development. Believing that music had a positive influence upon the elevation of the world hardly dreamed of as yet even by its most devoted students, Eben Tourjee returned to America from years of musical study in the great Conservatories of Europe. Knowing from personal observation the difficulties that lie in the way of American students, especially of young and inexperienced girls who seek to obtain a musical education abroad, battling as they must, not only with foreign customs and a foreign language, but exposed to dangers, temptations and disappointments, he determined to found in America a music school that should be unsurpassed in the world. Accepting the judgment of the great masters, Mendelsshon, David, and Joachim, that the conservatory system was the best possible system of musical instruction, doing for music what a college of liberal arts does for education in general, Dr. Tourjee in 1853, with what seems to have been large and earnest faith, and most entire devotion, took the first public steps towards the accomplishment of his purpose. During the long years his plan developed step by step. In 1870 the institution was chartered under its present name in Boston. In 1881 its founder deeded to it his entire personal