The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2. Various
of his example was elevating and wholesome, and as we review his life and deplore the loss of his presence and cooperation, it is interesting to hear the frequent and hearty testimonials to his kindness, and fairmindedness coming from men who were long in his employment; while others gratefully acknowledge his friendly counsel and assistance in their youthful days.
In politics, Deacon David was Whig and Republican; he believed in the policy of protecting American manufactures, and, during the most active period of his life, his opinions were in harmony with the sentiments of Mr. Webster. With the dissolution of the Whig party, and the undeniable intention on the part of the South to extend the area of slavery, he became a staunch Republican. On the election of Lincoln he put forth his best endeavors to maintain the government, and when the call was made for troops, he was among the foremost to pledge himself and all that he had to sustain the imperilled cause of Liberty. He encouraged his sons to enlist in the army and two of them entered the military service of the country.
Deacon David had seven children, of whom five attained majority and became heads of families; three of this number are now living, two sons and a daughter; and there are fifteen grandchildren. He retired from active business in 1875, but interested himself in the affairs of the Church, and in the business of a son in Boston. But his health, never very robust, became impaired with the advance in years, and he withdrew more and more from public notice. His wife and children were constant with their grateful ministrations, and, under the oversight of attentive physicians, his life was prolonged beyond expectation. He retained his mental powers in great activity until the end, his memory of recent, as well as remote occurrences, serving him with unusual accuracy. He was seldom depressed, and had none of the "melancholy damp of cold and dry," of which Milton speaks, to weigh his spirits down. Being able to see friends, he conversed with the animation and intelligence of one in middle life.
The change came at length, and sustained by an unfaltering trust in the Lord Jesus, whom he had publicly confessed for nearly half a century, he fell asleep on the third of September, 1883. He had lived with his wife fifty-seven years, and in the same house for fifty-two years. Soon after his death, the Church adopted formal resolutions, setting forth the grounds of their gratitude to God for his valuable life and services as an officer, and expressing the sincere affection with which they cherished his memory as a citizen and friend.
THE BOSTON LATIN SCHOOL
The one educational institution in this country which has the honor of ante-dating Harvard College by a few years, and of thus being the very oldest in the land, is the Boston Latin School. For two hundred and fifty years it has been a part, and an important part, of the town and city of Boston, influencing all its other institutions, social, literary, moral, political, and religious, and largely giving to the metropolis, directly or indirectly, its wide-spread fame as the "Athens of America."
The establishment of this School has its origin in a vote of which the following is a transcript:
"… 13th of the 2d moneth 1635 … att a General meeting upon public notice … it was generally agreed upon, that our brother Philemon Pormout shall be intreated to become scholemaster for the teaching and nourtering of children with us."
At this time, Boston was a village of perhaps, fifteen hundred inhabitants, and it was a hundred years later before it had reached as many thousands.
The first school-house was on the north side of School street, close by the burying-ground which had already received the mortal dust of several of the early settlers. It was a century before King's Chapel was built, but at the foot of School street, near the site of the Old South meeting-house, was Governor Winthrop's imposing mansion; and nearly opposite this, was the Blue Lion Tavern.
The foundation of this school was soon followed by several others. Charlestown had a school in 1636, Salem and Ipswich in 1637, and the Eliot school in Roxbury was established in 1645. The Latin school was alone in Boston, however, for nearly fifty years, and it was wisely cherished and nurtured by the town. Mr. Pormout was paid a salary of sixty pounds a year, a sum considered comportable to the talent employed, and the grave responsibilities of the position.
The masters who succeeded to Mr. Pormout are, in their order: Rev. Daniel Maude, Rev. John Woodbridge, Robert Woodmansie, Benjamin Thompson, Ezekiel Cheever, Rev. Nathaniel Williams, and John Lovell, whose rule continued for forty-two years, or until the Revolutionary war. Among Lovell's pupils was Harrison Gray Otis. During the excitement of the war, the school was closed for a short time, but was again opened in June, 1776, under the rule of Mr. Samuel Hunt. He was in authority for twenty-nine years and was then succeeded by William Bigelow of Salem, who held the sceptre until 1813, when it passed to Benjamin Apthorp Gould, and in 1828 to Frederick P. Leverett. The later masters have been Charles K. Dilloway, who succeeded in 1831, Epes Sargent Dixwell in 1836, Francis Gardner in 1851, Augustine W. Gay in 1876, and in 1877 Moses Merrill, the present efficient master. Among these many school teachers, some have been famous for their marked abilities. This is especially true of Ezekiel Cheever, John Lovell, and Francis Gardner.
"Cheever and Lovell and Gardner, the Puritan, the Tory, and shall not we say, in some fuller sense, the man—are they not characteristic figures? One belongs to the century of Milton, one to the century of Johnson, one to the century of Carlisle. One's eye is on the New Jerusalem; one's soul is all wrapped up in Boston; one has caught sight of humanity. One is of the century of faith, one of the century of common-sense, one of the century of conscience. One leaches his boys the Christian doctrine, one bids them keep the order of the school, one inspires them to do their duty. The times they represent are great expanses in the sea of time. One shallower, one deeper than the other; through them all sails on the constant school with its monotonous routine, like the clattering machine of a great ship which over many waters of different depths, feeling now the deepness and now the shallowness under its keel, presses along to some sea of the future which shall be better than them all."1
The first school-house stood until 1748. Another was then erected on the opposite side of School street, where the Parker House now stands. In 1812 a new building was erected here. The Latin school was moved in 1844 to Bedford street, where it occupied the building recently torn down, until 1881, when the magnificent structure on Warren Avenue became its home.
A glance over the list of those who have graduated reveals the names of John Hull, Benjamin Franklin and his four fellow-signers of the Declaration of Independence, John Hancock, Sam Adams, Robert Treat Paine, William Hooper; Presidents Leverett, Langdon, Everett and Eliot of Harvard, and Pynchon of Trinity College; Governors James Bowdoin and William Eustis; Lieutenant-Governors Cushing and Winthrop; James Lovell; Adino Paddock, who planted the "Paddock Elms"; Judges Francis Dana, Thomas Dawes, and Charles Jackson; Drs. John C. Warren, James Jackson and Henry I. Bowditch; Professors William D. Peck, Henry W. Torrey, Francis J. Child, Josiah P. Cooke, and William R. Dimmock; Mayors Harrison G. Otis, Samuel A. Eliot and Frederick O. Prince; Honorables Robert C. Winthrop, Charles Francis Adams, George S. Hillard, Charles Sumner, William M. Evarts and Charles Devens; such writers as Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Lothrop Motley, and divines as Right Rev. John B. Fitzpatrick, Roman Catholic bishop of Boston, Right Rev. Theodore Dehon, bishop of South Carolina, and Revs. Cotton Mather, Benjamin Colman, Andrew Eliot, Joseph Tuckerman, William Jenks, Samuel Cooper Thacher, Francis Parkman, N.L. Frothingham, William H. Furness, Alexander Young, Frederick A. Farley, James Freeman Clarke, William Henry Channing, Henry Ward Beecher, John F.W. Ware, Edward E. Hale and Phillips Brooks.
THE WHITE AND FRANCONIA MOUNTAINS
What would the world be without mountains? Geographically, one vast monotony of unchanging surface; geologically, a desert waste. Mountains are the rib-bones of the great skeleton of nature, and they hold together the gorgeous outline of river, valley, lake, and savannah that gives the earth all its varied beauty. Beautiful and grand as they are, they are as useful as ornamental, and serve a momentous necessity in mundane affairs. They are grand landmarks of the Almighty's power and mercy and goodness, and historically occupy a high position in the lives of nations.
The seers and saints of the old time speak of the strength of the hills as if they were the special gifts of the Creator to his favored people for their defence. The history of later nations has shown
Rev. Phillips Brooks.