Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1921-01-13

over the pdneleQ IroHt uooI. AHSA Z
were no street lights and no side
walks, in Portland. The traveller by
night carried a lantern, and, some
times, was helped along his way by
good friend hanging out a light at
his front door. People did their
journeying on horseback the women
sitting on billions" The horse
block appeared in front of all the
meeting houses. The numbering stage
coach served the public. Seventeen
hundred and eighty seven marked
the advent Of this crude form of con-
veyance, and the Concord coach did
not appear until 1928. Steam and
electricity. the two great discoveries
which made a greater change in the
, habits of men than anything which
| had ever happened. were still far in
| the future.
! The wind still bore the traffic vi the
| world across the great ocean. \ little
| steamboat had just toiled up the iiud-
son: but no steamboat appeared in
Maine for more than a decade. About
j the same time, Bi2. railroad began
to operate between Portland and Ports
mouth; ten years behind the first oper-
alton Of the railroad in America. The
| telegraph did not come for twenty
years. The shoemaker took his bench
and kit of tools to the home Of the
citizen. and remained in the household
| until he had made the footwear for
| the family. Life was not complicated.
Plain people lived plainly
| In these crude times how did it hap
pen that there We're Maine men fitted
| to do the constructive work Of organiz-
| ing the new State of Maine and of full
| filling the great duties put upon them?
1t did not merely happen. To aid the
| funds OF Bowdoin College, and of five
academies incorporated in Maine, the
General Court of Massachusetts, up 60
the year 1877. had made many liberal
{ grants Of the public lands of Maine;
/ each grant being limited to half a
township, and given only to such OBJ
! jects as had received substantial funds
| from private donations. From similar
sources came endoWments of certain
so-cailed grammar schools in several
towns of Maine. The Town of Turner
was an example. Hence the Maine
country Academy and the Maine en-
dowed High School. These institutions
gave an education to the early judges
! of Maine courts. State and Federal. as
well as to ali men who made the State
memorable, one hundred years ago and
/ for half a century afterward
| We must not forget what the Maine
courts owe to the old academy. 1t had
no narrow rules that kept the bright
| hoy back on the line with the dull
| boy. The laggard got help and cour-
age; the scholar swept through his
lessons like Il deTouring flame ana
J fitted for college or prepared himself
| to become school teacher, so that he
could earn money to put himself
! through college without depending up
on the narrow means of his father.
The young men and women went to
! those schools to learn. Their minds
were wide open for knowledge. The
academy was, in fact. and not in mere
poetic fiction, a temple of learning.
| The teacher was the priest who fed
! the sacred fire" But the Academy
could not have done its work of min
stry to the lawyers and judges and
governors and senators of the coming
century if it had not been for the dis
triCt schools Here every boy got his
start; here the dullest boy from the
farm digged out his lessons in the Win
ter as doggedly, as in summer he had
digged the rocky SOIL and the boy with
the quicker mind got enough in the
few short terms of the winter school
to fit him for the academy. And so
our fathers and grandfathers got their
education. The Country Academy and
the District School are not mere his
/ tory. They are milestones. They are
monuments.
i In later years, l have, with the deep
est reverence, turned the worn and
mouldy pages of the reading book that
| my father studied in the old red brick
district schoolhouse at the foot of the
hill. The reading book was literature:
it was about all the literature that he
had before him in his youth. No man
can understand the men of 1920 with
out looking at the district schoolhouse,
with it's quaint maXims scrawled up
on the walls; it's high, narrow seats,
and awkward, angular desks; it's great
smoky chimneys and floors worn with
the tramp of rOugh-shod feet: its
wood-shed Uttered with logs and chips,
and the open door battered by the
winds of years and looking out upon
the snowy hills of winter, and, in sum-
mer upon the green fields full of but
tercups and strawberries. Here in the
district school the college touched and
taught the outside world. The young
Collcgian Gas he was always called
kept the winter school, boarded around,
and got his lifelong hold upon the in
situations of his country; ne gave good
pay in return. All of the boys, even
down to our time, got their start in
fitting for college in the lessons after
school from these young men from
Dartmouth. Bowdoin and Waterville.
In Snow Bound" Whittier-you re-
member-has made the teacher Of the
winter school immortal He described
the school master as part OF the house
hold around the open fire, in the init
mate home scene of a winter evening:
Brisk wielder of the birch and rule.
The master of the district school,
Held at the fire his favored place;
peared
The uncertain prophecy of beard
Large Drained, clear eyed, of such as
Shall Freedoms young apostles be"
Tn, .AIt; xtn