Norwich bulletin., 1915-06-19

(written Specially for The Bulletin.)
 As commencement draws near. at- tention is directed, with annual inter est, to the Norwich Free Academy. This Alma Mater, fostering mother to many graduates, was opened October 21st, 1856, with eighty pupils-conse- quently vigorous, comedy mother, is nearly her eixtieth birthday.
 The school was incorporated two years earlier, after about fifty public spirited citizens had subscribed $S0,000 to found an academy of high school grade. The aims of the corporators as set forth were: First, to excite in the minds of parents, guardians and children a deeper interest in the sub ject of education; second, to stimulate grammar schools to make higher at tainments in the elementary branches; third, to elevate the standards of edu- cation in this town.
 1t is well known that the inspiration of the Academy project was the Rev. John Putnam Gulliver, for twenty years (1846-65) pastor of Broadway church.
 The seal adopted was the familiar there be light, against the radiant sun burst. Then and there, the Academy lighted the almp of Knowledge.
 From the first she has been a sage mother, to warn, to comfort, to com mand. She has taught in her class rooms the axiom. "Non scholae, sed vitae discimus," we learn, not for school, but for life.
 She has been likewise mother progressive, to be sure, but not one one of many changes. In all of her sixty years she has but four perman- ent principals: Elbridge Smith, the inspiration of the pupils of her rather humble beginnings, William Hutchi- son, of whom it was said by a pupil after his death, Tt was not so much what he taught us as what he was"; pr. Robert P. Keep. a man fifty years in advance of his time, in wise for seeing and breadth of planning for the institution to which he gave the ripe scholarship and devoted service of his life; and last, Henry Archelaus Tir- rell, A. B. Wesleyan, '94, who went out with the large class of 1890, to be re- called later to head the institution in which he had a sons pride and the natural interest in and devotion to. which no mere stranger could ever feel,
 Throughout it's career the Academy has always had the scope and influ- ence of a small college. The State of Connecticut held it's summer school there during one season, bringing to lIlo ltlSIIIUIlOn lecturers and teachers Of noteworthy reputation. The Ma tional Pathological Association held it's annual convention at Slater Hall, men and women from all over the country coming. to marvel at finding such an institution in a quiet New England town. The trustees of the great Met ropolitan Museum came by special train from New York, to learn from the selection and arrangement of the statues in it's museum: instances of the effective manner in which it's in fuences have reached out.
 A Norwich woman, speaking yester- day of the coming alumni meetinq when the speaker is to be the distin- guished author and traveller, Poultnev Bigelow, who writes: %My heart turns joyfully toward Norwich-and the Academy stirred her hearers when she said, My first impression of the Academy was one of it's broad-mind- edness and HberalityI I was a child when a member of the family returned fro msome graduation, to tell of the fine spirit shown in that early year soon after the war, when the color prejudice in many Connecticut towns was so bitter. One of the graduates that night had been a colored girl (who went out from Norwich to do signally good work for her people in