The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 | Page 8

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.
[Footnote 1: Rev. Phillips Brooks.]

* * * * *

THE WHITE AND FRANCONIA MOUNTAINS.
By Fred Myron Colby.
[Illustration: WHITE MOUNTAIN RANGE FROM MILAN.]
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 us that they have
found more in the strength of the hills