Morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven [Conn.]) 1848-1894, 1880-12-29

woods, became afterward wildcat, and
after treading in trap set for woodchucks,
was dead cat at last" The cat lost her life
reaching for a luxury, and that very curiosity
which is the handspring of all knowledge was
the death of her. 1t is pitiful to find how
man, too, has struggled through all dangers
and deaths for the luxury of knowledge; how
in our own times those reared in the stumpy
corners of newly cleared land have sought, as
in the dark, for letters, and having found
them have choked and strangled over hard,
lumpy bits OF raw knowledge, which would
have ruined the digestion of less vigorous
minds.
The educational facilities of Guilford
have never been worthy of her great an
tiquity, and yet she has never really lacked
for letters; for two hundred years and to
spare her children have shared and shared
alike, each generation taking turn and turn
about in the little whitewashed, hard-tim-
bered seminaries, set up in various waste
places and three-cornered clearings along the
highways. And SO the town has kept fair
circulation of alphabetic characters, including
even such combinations as B. A., NJ A., NJ
c., M. D., D. D., and SO forth, D. d. in
most cases standing for Dabon and Dill
worth, by whom more than one son of
Guilford has graduated into national repute
To-day the Oldest inhabitant tells of the old
academy that stood on the hill, the red cloak
and cap kept for the few Guilford dances,
and Master johnson, the source and fountain
of learning to all the country round. There
the Hallecks, Harris, Bartletts, Bentons, Bur
gises Griswolds, Landons, Stewards, Chitten-
dens, Parmalees. and other names worthy of
a past generation, learned the excellent use
of letters, the quill and the rod. The old
academy served its day and then crept into
retirement just above North church. It had
trained those fathers of the town, now nearly
all passed off the stage, who still rise in mem
ory before us in their old-time manliness, ven
cradle and gray-men of the old school, who
stamped their own well-marked character
upon that of the town.
But "new times demand new laws" The
old methods were hardly abreast of the age.
Fancy then the Joy that stirred phlegm attic
Guilford when she awoke one morning and
found the new academy set up In the end of
the village, bringing prospect of arts and
sciences, new resources of literature and all
the pomp and circumstance of seat of
learning. No one would imagine what new
creation took place in the west-side section in
| order to bring this about. A snug dune or
| sand hill overlaid a drift of rock, which had
once been washed by the Atlantic these hob
nobbing heaps of sand were seized and mag
| ically transformed into academic hall and
grove. The hill was sent SPRAYING forward,
| making handsome ground for the institute,
|
gray granite, which has faded little now af-
| ter twenty-five years. Rev. E. Edwin Hall
| had shown what could be done with this same
sand rock, having in 1852 built fine house
of it near by, and he had suggested this sec
| ond transformation on the west-side corner
| of the town.
The little knoll Just mentioned was in the
| form of horseshoe, SO steep that cattle
| could hardly creep up it on hands and knees
and year by year it had been pecked away
| as common sand bank and made useful for
| securing knives and floors, plastering walls
and filling up the village mud holes. In the
| southeast part of the yard, where now re-
main the family well and huge pine tree,
stood the shackly house of John Stone.
People they passed counted the pigs,
penned under the pine tree hard on the road
| and guarding the approach in the free and
| easy style of old times. Such was the SIM
| pie staffage of the land, the whole lay of
| which with its thriftless belongings could
but tempt man of taste like Mr.. Hall, look
| ing where to plant handsome building with
| cupola and bell long Venetian blinds, two
| front doors and vestibules and spacious stone
steps for the double front.
All along down through ancient times such
| things have come in with omens and oracles.
| 1t would be of interest to know here what
portents and prodigies attended this gift from
| the gods. Did the infant heads of Guilford' s
| then rising generation show larger phreno-
logical bumps than usual, and did they cry
| when they cried, in the little vocables of
| some strange dead language? Some such
phenomenon and plenty of it, I doubt not
| might be found by looking far enough for it.
Naturalists say that the young of birds and
animals when first introduced to the world
| show surprising intelligence and adaptation
| to their new circumstances. It was so with
the young people of Guilford no sooner was
| the last nail driven and the white walls of the
| new temple of Fame dry than they swarmed
together from the three points of land COM
pass-which is all Guilford has-fetching
| states and pencils and the most heterogene-
| GUS lot of old school books that ever set up
a second hand dealer or threw a new school
teacher into despair. They came from pre-
cocious infant classes in underground rooms,
and from little white washed school-cabins
standing naked on barren hill-tops and from,
homes in the woods and from over rivers,
and even from the sandy sea-bottom of Long
Island.
1t was the morning of September 8, 1856,
and for miles around the land which had
been purchased of Shumpishoo and Wequash
for few empty kettles and porringers was
stirred with tumult as strange to Guilford
as news from the stars. For weeks it had
been discussed in hundred doorways and
over fifty fences whether Ann was too old, or
Amos too young, and whether Andrew could
be trusted as well as spared to go to the new
patched and crooked road from Bluff Head to
the lands end of Guihord was trod by farm
ers' wagons with country girls hid away in
deep sun-bonnets and rufdes, their
hearts at least rufied and beating
with excitement, their heads in ferment of
fear and wonder and their dinners neatly
rolled up in a napkin. And as the stiff fam
lily carriage and rusty carryall or Shandrydan
came rattling down the stony hills and thump-
ing over the six bridges that guard ap-
proaches to the borough, the geese fell
a-screaming the pigeons few wildly about
and every two and four-legged inhabitant in
the village ran together to see the strange
commotion, while many nag that day who
thought he was on the way to mill with a
light grist of grain was surprised enough to
fetch up at this new grinding establish
ment. And where all this time was
the family patriarch With his long
dark face shortened and Lit into
smiles, he was acting the part of
the Athenian pedagogue, and as he drove
along ON this novel errand of taking Nancy
to the new academy, he spoke thus to the
fiuttefing maiden Now Nancy, my daugh-
ter, you are going to the new Institute. It's
proper good chance to get an education
and make woman of yourself. Study hard,
mind the master, never mind the boys
and get your moneys WORTH An elder
brother brought bright damsel down the
long, descending road from North Guilford
oesAe-9
the Institute stile with her pretty ruffies and
school satchel and wondering eyes stRe-
member, Luella, and behave yourself like a
lady; in school keep your eyes on your
books, and when you go to and
fro don't lean on the other girls,
as have seen done, but walk
erect on your own shoes. AT four
o'clock leave school behind you and when !
you come home at the end of the term, don's /
think you know so very much more than the
rest of us-n Now what brother or mother |
to-day could give advice more arch and apt |
than this? Could you? Or you? For thus |
did those, who were themselves too over |
grown to enter the stocks of modern school |
desk, enter into the freer spirit of the hour
so that never. SO far as know, since creation /
Were school doors opened by better smans.
But now, before going further, let MS stop