The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1897-04-24
MEMORIES OF SCHOOL DAYS
PUPILS or SCHOOLM4STER LOVELL
HONOR HIS MEMORY.

Lancasterian Association Meet Around
His Tomb-speech by Colonel Osborn
Annual Meeting and Election of officers
Banquet at Champion's-old School
Days Recalled.
The 1O2d anniversary of the birthday
of John E. Lowell, the revered school
master of the old Lancasterian school,
was honored yesterday by the Ian
casterian association.
About forty of John e. Lovell's old
school boys, now men prominent in the
various callings of life, met at Warner
hall at o'clock and marched in a body
to John E. LovelPs tomb in Grove street
cemetery.
Here upon the grave of the old
schoolmaster each member of the asso-
citation placed his tribute of flowers.
Colonel Norris G. Osborn of the Reg
lister delivered the annual address to
the association, recalling in fitting
words Mr.. Lovell's services to them
selves and to the country. He said:
Fellow Schoolmates:
This annual ceremony has come to be
something more definite than a recital
of the life and services of our old Ian
casterian schoolmaster. He served US
at different periods and under different
conditions, each generation according
to it's particular needs, and the particu-
lar educational circumstances which
enveloped them; and yet he instilled
q,,,, 10, +oJ xviii
ciple of cultivation, equipped us with
the same respect for candor and for
civic rectitude, and furnished us each
with the same unerring measurement
of personal worth. 1t is this common
inheritance which brings us together at
his grave side year after year, to not
only pay his memory the respect 1t de-
serves, but to draw from the act fresh
| inspiration and courage.
The Lancasterian Lowell, whom I
knew and whose school I attended, was
not the alert and sprightly master of
"the little red school house." He had
acquired the atmosphere Of the sage
and added it to the ripeness of the
| teacher, still going about his sympa-
thetic work with enthusiasm and intel
| ligence, but unconsciously reproducing
in his methods and their scope the last
trace of system of education which
was soon to lose itself in the more pre-
tentious and comprehensive system
which had sprung from the necessities
of free public education.
When a Lowell laid aside the rod, a
| Barnard picked it up, the one retiring
to private life with his mission fulfilled,
the other charged, with the same great
and noble qualities, to harmonic and
systematic the good of the old with the
radiant promise of the new. 1t was a
sudden change only in the disappear
ance and appearance of individuals.
1t was natural absorption, brought on
and achieved by the operation of natu-
raj laws. With what reluctance John
e. Lowell succumbed or surrendered to
| the stalWart march of new ideas and
fresh demands was illustrated by the
stubborn transfer of his school from
ample quarters on State street to the
parlors of his familiar home on upper
Orange street, then the most remote of
| houses in that section of the city. 1t
was not his nature to relinquish unre-
sistingly the work of a life time, though
undoubtedly realizing that as the days
went by and heightened into weeks and
months, his usefulness was becoming
more and more restricted.
1t is not the nature of such men of
iron, into whose work is thrown the
love of labor and the pride Of achieve
ment, to lay aside gratefully the tools
to which sustained industry has i'm
parted the sympathy and sensitiveness
of friendship. There Is something more
substantial than habit involved here;
there is enthusiasm, high sense of re-
sponsibility, a profound and impressive
conviction that men are in the world
for purpose, and that life and activi-
ty are synonymous terms.
I remember vividly the last declining
days of Mr. Lovelrs active career when
his labor was shared by his daughter,
and to this day the cupola upon the old
Lowell homestead, made familiar to
thousands of scholars wherever the
Lowell spelling book and the Lowell
readers were used, seem to greet me as
an old friend, who was an aye witness
and a participant in the closing days of
the Lancasterian schoolmaster.
There was nothing strange in the dis
appearance of the Lowell school of in
struction, and while we look back upon
it with increasing affection, ever CRATE
full for what it did for us, we have
nothing to regret in its disappearance.
Like the other incidents of it's time and
generation, it gave way to conditions
and demands which it was foremost in
creating. 1t would have lived in vain
it would be unworthy of a place in our
affections, had it not been a powerful
influence at work to acquire for our
children educational advantages which
we now see were denied us. If l should
undertake to place my finger upon the
chief value of John E. LovelPs service
to the cause of education, l should say
it consisted in the appetite he encour-
aged in others for education, to which
may be ascribed the abundant and gen
erous support which our public school
system of too day is receiving.
The Lowell school of educational phi
losophy was to the more compre-
hensive and refining school of phloso-
iphy of to-day what the religious
needs of our fOrefathers were to the
formation of American constitutional
law-it was the preparation for the en-
joyment of something better. 1t should