The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1897-10-30
THEN And NOW.
The Changes Of Seventy Years in
School Life.
PROF. WILLIAM MATHEWS TALKS
TO WATERvILLE STUDENTS.

The story of the Days When He Was a
Pupil How the Youth studied and
Er3oyed Themselves Long Before Ath-
letic Associations and Foot Ball Be-
came Paris of Academic Training.
(Prof. William Mathews to the Students
OF Coburn Classical Institute.
Mr.. President, and Young Ladies and
dentlemen:-I find it very difficult to
realize that 68 years, or nearly the three
score and ten years allotted to man, have
rolled by since I, youth Of eleven, en-
tered as pupil, with Jacobs's Greek
Reader under my arm, Waterville Aoad-
envy on the day it opened in the autumn
OF 1929. So small and youthful was I,
that thesprinclpal, Henry W. Paine, af-
terward the celebrated Boston lawyer,
thought | had mistaken the Academy for
private school.
What marvellous inventions and dis
coveries have been made since that time;
the iron horse devouring space at the rate
OF mile minute; the electric telegraph
enabling parted lovers to
Speed the soft intercourse of soul with
soul,
And watt q sigh from Indus to the poles"
the ocean cable, carrying the pulse of
human thought under tho Atlantic thous-
ands of miles; the telephone, enabling
two persons thousand or more miles
apart to converse as if face to face; the
monograph, in which wa can box up
human speech, fand transport 1t to dis
tant lands or to future years; the ocean
grayhounds, darting across the Atlantic
in Ia days; the monster rif1ed cannon,
hurting its deadly shells of 1000 or more
pounds across ocean and land for dozen
miles; the generation of electricity by
great waterfalls, destinded, according to
Lord Kelvin, to propel such an amount
of gigantic machinery that Niagara will
after few generations disappear. In
anuary, 1887, it took me six days to go
in the mail stage from Waterville to
Boston, having been SHOWED inn for
two days on the way; which, as I was
carrying in my overcoat pocket $1,000 for
two banks, was not very pleasant. In
1899 there were no sewing, moving, or
reaplng machines, no type-writers, no
steel pens, not even lucifer match.
Postage on re-mailed letter, for over
400 miles, was SO cents.
Think of the great political and social
changes which have taken plaoe since
the Academy was opened! How has the
map of Europe been reconstructed The
Russian bear, Prussian eagle, and the
Austrian wolf have devoured the last re-
mains of Poland; Prussia, once tramp
led under foot by Napoleon after her
humiliating defeat at Jena, has been en-
able ed by the genius of the man of ''blood
and iron,'' seconded by the strategy of
Moltke to absorb Saxony, Hanover, and
q multitude of small duchies and prinoi-
palities-to include, Bavaria, ,Wurtemburg
and Baden in her empire, and to become
the mightiest military power OF Europe.
France has expelled her two kings and
emperor, and become republic. Italy
the land of Virgil. Horace, Cicero, Dante
Raphael and Angelso, no longer writhes
under the iron heel of Austria; and in
place OF a score of warning Kingdoms, re-
publics. and Papal States, one free,
united independent nation dominates the
peninsular from the Alps to Calabria.
In the far Orient, Japan mas sprung like
Minerva from the head of Jupiter, clad
in full panoply, and become the foremost
nation of the East. Our own beloved
country, torn by civil strife, has recovered
and firmly established it's unity, and
stamped out that source.of endless dlssen-
sion, the plague-spot Of slavery, forever
The State If Maine, with its $500
miles of sea coast it's 515l rivers and
streams and its 1867 lakes, large and
small, averaging 900 feat above the level
Scotland; the state to whose hastily ex-
temporized war-ship the British flag was
first struck on the ocean in our contests
with that power, and which. before 1929
was an obscure State away down East''
in frozen corner of the Union, and had
produced but one man of national reputa
Glon, VIZ: Rufus King, the great states
man who was twice minister to Eng
land. having been appointed by Washing
ton N 1888 and by John Quincy Adams
III ls34,-who for five terms of six years
eacn represented the state of New York in
the United States Senate, and who was
the champion of the North in the great
Missouri controversy; the State of Maine
has become, since this school was found
ed, a colossus in the councils of the
nation. What other state.has 5sent to
Congress more powerful array of states
men and political debaters than George
Evans, M.1i Pitt Fessenden, Hannibal
Hamlin, James G. Blaine (who but for
the three RS might have BEEN Presi
dent OF the United States,) Lot Morrill,,
William Frye, that sinewy political
gladiator and unrivalled platform speaker
the Washburnes, that champion of protec-
ton Nelson Dingley, (once scholar in
this lnstitution), and, last, but not least,
that consummate parliamentarian and
m me leader OF men, Thomas B. Reed?
"h"5 other state or nation can show such
wonderful cradle as that of the Wash
burne family in Livermore in which have
Deen rocked three governors of states,
-FOUR representatives to Congress, a United
states Senator, a minister to France, a
minister to Uruguay, 8 maior-general,
ana know not how many other men of
mark? Since Watcrvil1e Academy was
opened, Mnioe has bee able to boast in
war OF that 3 ward sans peur ct sans re-
proche, Major G neral Chamberlain, and
OF that noui Christian soldier, Major
General How~f,i. In sculpture, she has
given to the world an Akers. a jackson,
BraGkett, and "a Simmons; in music,
o Kellogg, Il Cary, Nordica, and an
names; in literature, o Longfeliow. "a
WINS, Neal, o Cheever, q Spot d. an
ingraham, and a EWilkins; in jutispru