The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 | Page 7

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.
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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