Litchfield enquirer., 1881-09-08
A CURIOUS, SCHOOL AND, ITS ,...s ..i ..;, MASTER o,ni es9s5s fa.
LrroHF1ErD. Conn, Aug. seth, 1881
Correspondence of the Evening Post.l

Gum, the head of the famous school called the '.Ghnuery," after the name of it's nlaster.s The school and it's head have often been writ-
 ten about; pnder symbolic names both have
 been introduced into novels, into magazines.
 into newspaper sketches and a writer of re- nown whose summer leisure once brought him into contact with the school has endeav- ored in one of his works to portray its fea
 tures. He failed as all must fall who under- take the task. t The theory of the school may perhaps, be described, some of it's leading traits depicted some of it's incidents cited to show how the institution worked. But it's inner life, it's sympathies, it's spirit and its be-
 ign influence on youthful character turn 10 phantomsi under the pen,ii and can only be
 resurrected in the hearts of the old boys wlio hold the place in tender and grateful remem- braiice.
 Tks curious school owed it's conception and success scarcely more" to the genius of its founder than to the peculiar cnnmnnity in
 which it was placed. The town of Washing ton has been as unique in it's way as the Gun
 nery itself. TLe village is perched upon a hill sloping with precipiteus sides down to d wift rlver. ,AlLagpund lie rich farms broken
 by wild streehes of swamp, ravine and wood-
 land. Nature and the hand of man have
 both done their best to make the region at
 once fruitfala and picturesqne4 Until few years ago. when a railroad penetrated the vaia
 ley, the village was reached only by stage coach which plodded daily over the long hills
 to station ten miles away. In it's isolation the community grew up with singular sim plicity of manners and rigid purity of ife.s Crime ana vice have been almost unknown;
 for fifty years rumshop has never been opened in the village except as rash and transitory experiment; the dwellings never used to be locked at night, and neighbors ran in and out of the open doors as freely as if all houses were owned in common. Add to these social traits of the village hospitality and un-
 bounded local pride, and one can see how fa-
 vorabie were the surroundings for training
 spot for boys The school had of necessity
 to be part of the community. It received
 from the village the prevailing tone of good
 morals, simplicity and sweetness. The boys
 needed no rigid bounds. no narrow code of
 rules as to going here kOr not going there, for,
 go where they would in the village, they
 could find only incentives to good conduct.
 This environment of the school, and the im- press that it received from the community around it, were large factors in the Gunnery scheme of education and in the success to
 which it attained. t.'''' " g. 55.'
 But all was not serene in the ilttle town
 when forty-three years ago Mir. Gum, a na-
 tive of the place, who had just been graduat- 
 went back to open an academy. The aboi- tion movement had just begun to stir up the community. To he Connecticut abolitionist in those days was to invite the ban of church.
 state and society, to be regarded as the foe of order, to be almost an outcast But Mir Gum, ardent and radical, ranged himself with the little band of anti-slavery men in Washing ton. The minister of the church illuminated against them from the pulpit. the Church So- ciety excommunicated them, society at large ostraeized them, but still the new party wax. edEin spirit and numbers until it became majority in the town. The intermediate years up to 1850 were. however, full of artiuoAns trial for the young teacher. Beside his anti slavery heresy he was suspected of skepticism son certain points of church dcetEine. svo attempts to teach school failed because of the popular Odium against him, and in 1S4S, after having married Miss Abigail Brinsmade one of the daughters of the leading family of the town, who braved the anger even of her own kindred to wed the man whom she loved, he was literally driven away to earn his bread. He went to Towanda, in Pennsylvania, where, with O. H. Platt, now United States Senator from Connecticut, as his assistant, he opened a school. In two years public sentiment at ishome had changed. The despised party had become the nucleus of the great anti-slavery organization crystaizing from the decompos- ing w big elements: and Mir. Gum returned to found the boarding -scll llpol with whicI, his name has for thirty lone years been honorably identified >a.Ea .ftf !r..t >
 Mir. Gunn's scheme for training boys was unique. Its central objects were manhood, character and physique. With these secured he believed that mental growth would follow, or at least without them mental growth was good for nothing. He sedulously cultivated, therefore, the honorable side of boy nature A lie was his abomination to be visited some times with an emphatic thrashing. An habit ual tattler was even worse than a liar 'fDon't be running to me with your stories about each other, ,' he used to say to his boys, ''but learn to govern aud restrain yourselves" An oc- casional fight between boys was passed in si lence, but repeated offences of thiskind which argued quarreisome disposition on the part of any boy were checked severely. One incl. dent out of many will illustrate this branch of the Gunnery discipline: In the society of the quaint village, pretty girls were a great rarity One winter there came for a short stay fair visitor from the. Vest Two of the biggest boys in the school who paid her attention got madly jealous of each other. Their perverse mates fanned the green fire to hame A challenge passed and was accepted, a rude code modelled on that of the prize ring was out. and the rivals, strong youths of seventeen, met, belted and stripped to the waist, in the chestnut grove behind the Gun- nery. Never will the dozen boys who watched the combat forget the struggle. The first round ended in a harmless grapple and fail; in round second one of the fighters opened with rattling kick on the shin of his antag- onist. Tine claim of sfoup was promptly overruled, and the battle went on In tue third round one of the principals knocked the other out of time with bleeding nose and con- tused eye. The bruised organs told the story at the supper table, but Mir Gum never open ed his lips on the subject. He regarded the appeal to arms by big boys as suspending the laws and settling all controversy, and, in fact, the foes soon became good friends As in fighting so to degree was it with profanity Mir. Gum abhorred and punished it's use by i small boys; but in one case he heard youth fifteen years old usually scholarly and tracta. ble, carsing his room-mate ronndly. The teacher listened until he found out the pro, voking cause, then stole softly away, and gentle admonition days after was the only outcome. Smoking and drinking were vices only possible when the boys made. excursions outside of Washington. When discovered Mir. Gum made the evil doers swallow a live ly emetic, deeming it's effects at once purga- toriai symbolic and a practical deterrent. ar, ,f The master had an original code of penal II or agile in the GnnnerY sitting room might be sent to hug a tree for two hours in the grove or on a three mile walk by, moonlight. An, other offender, particu' 'arly if diffident, would be ordered to call on some lady, young or old, in the village. A small boy too volubie would be checked by chip to be held Tn the mouth until dinner tune, Two boys ,quarrelsome with each other, pr between whom there was a feud, had to take turus, in holding each other in the lap for an hour or two. These were but specimens of a hundred queer pen- alties which Mir. Gum would invent of hand to meet exigencies. They seem absurd on their lace, and. in truth no one could have made thenlSeffective but Mr. Gum. The man had keen insight into boy character; his facile acutepess gave him Ia quick measure of q pn- pil'sfauits; if he failed to see them promptly he was sure to find them out before term had passed; and so each one of his odd pun. ishn,ents was levelled at particular flaw.