The Newtown bee., 1908-08-21

to find in rural communities antyhine
 that deserved the name of literary ol
 dramatic or artistic culture. There hac
 been a time earlier when such culture
 was not uncommon in the rural regions
 of New England. Have you read tht
 very charming picture which MT Trey
 elyan gives in his History of tht
 American Revolution" of the life o1
 some of those colonies as it has beer
 described in the writings of the young
 French gentlemen who had volunteered
 for service in the Revolutionary army!
 More than one of them testified thai
 they had never found in France itsel1
 any more perfect gentlemen than Wash
 ington ana some of his associates
 Something of the same type of char
 acter had continued for awhile, but be-
 fore the time l speak of tendencies
 arose which drew the more energetic
 of our young people from the country into the city, so that refinement of that kind was coming to be very rare in the country regions. The still later current, which for the Hast fifteen or twenty years has been taking so many
 sensible people from the city back into
 the country (for considerable part of the year, at least) had hardly started; i; so that in those days little village like Washington was not apt to show anything that smacked of learning or literature. But here it was different. There had been here another school, for young ladles, under the l adership of Miss Mary Brinsmade, member of that remarkable family which we hope will go on supplying teachers as long as thhe world stands. And as to the life on the Green itself, we'll remem-
 Der reading an article published m those days in one of the New York pap CTS, 1 think the Evening Post, giving the experiences of a traveller, who, by some happy accident, had directed his
 journey to this remote corner of the wilderness. and how he confessed his amazement at what he found here some dramatic triumph, the finest mus ic of Beethoven rendered with artistic sympathy, and such a company of scholars and literary people, drawn to- gether by the strange attractions of the place, as he had not elsewhere found. There was nothirg pedantic about this society; no trail of the book worm upon it; but it was literary culture ot rarest quality, not the shad- ow, but the real thing, commanding the resources of the past, but always controlled by and administering to all sorts of present, living, human inter- ests. Little by little, as the knowl- edge of what was here became diff. fused, others like-minded were attra|t- ed, one by one, many of them drawn more and more into the life and the traditions of the place; men like that honored statesman of this Common wealth whose name will always be as- sociated with this tuilding; and many more, men and women, some of them still with us to-day, whom therefore l am forbidden to speak of in particular. And of course every newcomer of this sort would bring his own treasure with him. so adding to the rare advantages of the place. Nevertheless, they would all be quick to confess, as we do con- fess to-day, that the one man who, from the first, contributed most to the strange quality of life that was devel- oping here on Washington Green, was Mir Gum himself. For the Master of the school was also the first citizen of the town, and whatever makes the history either of the school or of the town especially notable has to do with