Los Angeles herald., 1909-08-08

Herald Co. All Rights Reseved)
n N the honor place the campus of the old
n Cheshire School, the Episcopal Academy Of Connec-
ticut sometimes called the Elton of America by rea-
son of the many distinguished men who received
their early education there, will be erected tower,
the home for all time of the old bell which hung for
many years in the tower % Bowden Hall, and which
has carved on its Wheel yoke and time worn frame
the names and initials of men who in their boyhood
days rsked life and limb to climb Up in the old
belfry and who later to become famous n their
different lines of endeavor.
1t was no task for mollycoddle to climb up the
cobweb covered rafters and into the I'D beIfry of
Bowden Hail. for not alone there risk Of fall
ing but punishment was meted to those who were
discovered doing this. violation of one of the rules
of the school. For this reason only the adventure
some spirits took the risk and compared with the
number of boys who attended the school only few
have perpetuated their names in this way
When after a long search the bell and its original
frame were found in church in Southington Conn.
and removed to Cheshire where it will forever re-
nain underneath the paint and whirewast was the
work of two boys, schoolmates, who after they
reached mans estate travelled along widely differen
paths, each to become famous i'll his own field.
The rudely carved initials u. p NJ" show where
one of the great fnanciers of the world Pierpont
Morgan left his mark after taking the risk of climb
ing the old tower. while the same timber. but on
another side is carved ~. Wheeler" the work of
General Joseph Wheeler, that intrepid cavalry leader
and hero of two wars, who fought against the Stars
and Stripes in 1S6164 and under them during the
Spanish American War in 1898.
There are few persons that know that the great
banker and the famous soldier were schoolboys to-
gether Mr. Morgan of the class of 81 while
General Wheeler was year earlier, and it IL not i'm
probable that they climbed together the dusty
rafters and through the shadows of the belfry to
carve their names. The bell had been there many
wears then and many other boys had preceded them
in this daredevil climb, but they found room to use
their knives on the old wooden supports
Recently Discovered.
1t was only recently, and then by a strange COM
bination of circumstances that it become known tha
the name of General Wheeler and the initials of Mr.
Morgan had been placed the old bell frame with
those of hundreds of the other old Cheshire boys Mr
Joseph W. Hartman, of New York. recently gave
S15OOOO for thorough renovation and modernization
of the buildings and grounds and from all over the
country men came to celebrate the one hundred and
fifteenth anniversary of the school last June and at
the same time the plans that had been made for
be modernzation of the school, that it might retain
the position it had held for years the foremost
preparatory schools of the country.
None but the old Cheshire boys understand the
reverence in which this bell was held. There was
tradition in the school that it 25O years old and
rbat If had once done duty Spanish vessel and the
imaginative boys knew it must have been pirate
shin After that it hung for a long time in an old
Spanish mission before it placed. in 1885, In the
belfry of Bowden Hall. There for more than three
oualters of century it sounded the daily call to the
boys of Cheshire
1t was in 1880 that the old bell was replaced by