The Middlebury register. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1850-1882, 1865-06-28
UNION SCHOOL.

ed to make clear TO Middleburians What
such a school is in aim and working
2dly, how imperative is our need of / to
usurp the place of our district and selyct
schools that the work which, from rail-
ical disability, they can never do, may be
done, and 3dly, how the College Ian
gushes from the lack of better "feeder"
here at the heart of the county than the
Addison Co. Grammar School---a blood
less creature that nine months of the
twelve is as torpid as the mummied Pha-
raohs but in violation of the natural Or
der is galvanized into show of life about
the first of January only to die down
again the last of March.
For one | am profoundly Inundated
that Middlebury is so dead to the inter-
ests of education That she is willing to
be seen by strangers in this her shameful
plight and that she doesn't blush when
tho sons of the College flock back at Com
menccment and look in upon the naked
ness L have painted. l take no pride
in the wrctched system that curses her
and in the inefficient apologies for schools
that it breeds. When strangers ask for
the noteworthy specalties of the place, l
tell them Of the sweet valley where we
live, its slopes and its river, of the lovely
Green Mountains that bound it in 50
gracefully on the east and the blue Adir-
ondacks that loom up across the lake on
the west, of Chipman's Hill that over
looks it all, of the plucky College that
will fight IFS way INTO prosperity in spite
of burlington, debt and the Grammar
School, of her Patent Sheep, OF a store
or two, q few private residences and here
after | shall speak of the valley Queen,
but my pride vanishcs rs does the pea
cocks when he looks from his tail to his
feet, if recall the educational apathy of
the town Or the fruits that grow out of it.
Her one vital interest next to the relig-
ious, that too by which outsiders Judge
her oftenest and most critically,-the ne
elect Of which costs her more in every
point OF estimate than an unwearied
attention to it could-is the one thing
she seems to hold cheapest, value
least In New England it has come to
be the first question asked of town by
by one casting about him for a home
'What is the status Of its schools ?" En-
terplising, intelligent men who have chill
dren to be educated or who are looking
for thrifty, bustling community in
which to plant themselves, never settle
(here at the East where the people are
so blind as not to see that the fruitfulest
source of all kinds of prosperity and the
pcoI commentator vi tHe toWH u Stral-
gers is such a system of schools and such
a spirit in supporting them as leaves no
child unreached but so preoccupies him
that he has no time for idlcness and its
offspring, vice.
have a moderate estimate oil my own
ability, but | can prove to any ones salts
faction, l think, that were a thoroughly
Graded Union School established here and
properly conducted, the town, through it,
would gradually attract to itself parents
who have children to be educated till, in
a few years, there would be such a call
for houses and lots on which to erect them
and such a corresponding advance in the
value of real estate as to compensate and
more than compensate the tax payers for
their outlay in erecting the necessary
building and setting the proper machinery
at work. Bushels of facts are within reach
all proving that 10, 10, and even 20 per
ct. advance in real estate and in certain
kinds Of personal property, has been the
result of the establishment Of such school
in village where educational matters
were, as in this they so obviously are, out
at the elbows and down at the heels. The
only possible objection that can be urged
to such an Institution is the cost of start
ing and maintaining it; but if, as can be
substantiated, this, in a few years. is more
than paid back by the increased worth ii
gives to estate, real and personal, the OBJ
lection is fairly met and rebutted.
We have had no trouble in raising
$40, 900 and more for Soldiers bounties
The debt we richly owed them, but, il
my way Of thinking, we shall show oul
appreciation of their services better and
pay them the further debt due them il
providing a school where their children
may be educated, not 3, 4, 6 or month!
in the year, but 8 or 10, and shall be ad
vanced from standing TO standing so fas
as fitted for the steps to be taken.
1t isn't of so much consequence whether
we eat up, drink up, and burn up 81 900
the coming 4th of July, or tie up $4,000
in the "Valley Queen" or even expenC
$1,000 or less in stone crossings, an'
street macadamizing, &c, &c. We cal
ventilate our patriotism at home, lay tn
livery under tribute for excursions an