Bradford Academy - Chimes Yearbook (Haverhill, MA)

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trod ord e:4z1f2fvtJflf5 which the deepest education that we received came through our imaginations and our hearts,-how clear and beautiful they are ! And then our associations with our teachers! lt is astonishing how metimes we change our view of our instructors later in life. fl.,augliter.j so g You remember Dr. Hale says in his delightful reminiscences, that the earliest chool to which he went was presidec s the most learned woman in Boston, and who ie supposed for a long time cl discovered that at that time she was seven- l over bv a lady who, he was sure, was was the oldest. He afterwar teen years of age. fLaughter.l This is an that sometimes takes place in our minds with re infinite patience with our slow development 1 t' ineication of the sort of change gard to our teachers. Their ieir care for our daily needg iese things we do not know their watchfulness against our heedlessness: t until we come to see them in the light of memory. :Xnd yet how con- stantly it happens in everv school and college tiat the student recognizes at the time the vitalitv of the teachers, and feels and appreciates the inspiration that comes from contact with them. livery school, l venture to sav, that has great power, is associated with some noble personalitv. And one thing that I have found significant in the histori' of this school, as in the historv of all schools which touch and affect deeply their students, is the fact that from its very beginning it has numbered among its friends and teachers men and Women of vigorous character and of marked individualitv. bo strong a hold do these teachers come to have on our lives, so deeplv do thev come to touch our natures, that they seem at last a part of the very order of things. You remember when Tom Brown, coming in at night from a fishing expe- dition, found a newspaper which some friend had brought during the day. and opened it and saw that 'l'homas .-Xrnold of Rugby was dead, it seemed to him as if the world had stopped moving. How could the world go round without Thomas Arnold of Rugby? He was part of the order of life. So if is f0'df1j!- 501110 of US have had great teachers, and have felt that, because those teachers were identified with the impartation tif truth in the most SCI1SitiVe years, they were reallv part of the truth itself. And then access to books and the time to read them! Modern men a . 1 1 . . ' l , - ' nd Women, if they envy school girls and bovs anvthing, envv them their tim - . , h . ' i K 6 to read, but such has been the perverseness of modern life that to-day even 1 ' H , . - - ' the revised curriculum of the college has made it almost impossible fora 1 no 1 X uf' Mfr -stiff M, . WW . nf-1' ' . 'va' il' 'M :sf W 'X ,gm 'Kg 59' 135' 4 rn -i 325-' E YT' Slight? 1112.43 ttf Q75 'li'-Si 'T' rf'9m ?'1T,'g fs... 441 ' Wray c me 'ffr,,. s ,la 'X tu 'Mtn Qhnm u,,w than 'Na K-KM mx.

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Brad orc! o4nnat5 How rich and beautiful the school life is! When we speak of a school we think of the catalogue and of the list of the faculty and of the methods and instruments of education. And these are all of very high importance, but they do not constitute all of school life. There are women who are listening to my voice this morning to whom, when I speak of Bradford Academy, there comes the rush of memory, not only of teachers and of text- books, if they are so fortunate as to remember the names of them llaughterj, but the recollection of the beauty of the surroundings. How fortunate is a school which appeals to the imagination with every morning and with the splendor of every starlit night! How fortunate is a school which associates the choicest and most inspiring years of life with the entrance into the world of nature! I remember, when I was a student, Emerson, then an old man, came to my college one day. He was talking with a little group of us, and he said. looking at the mountains which surrounded the college, I don't see the names of the mountains in the list of the faculty. 'Iihey surely ought to be there. And everyone who has lived in the shadow of those moun- tains. and who has seen the little river pass through the town through four quiet. reposeful years, knows how much the beauty of Berkshire and the shadows of the hills have meant in his education. And those who hear my voice to-day remember, perhaps, above all, the dear companionships of those early days. :Xml nothing has more to do with education than what you call the atmosphere of a school 1 and the atmosphere of a school is largely the expression of the ideals of the student life. So much importance do I attach to the atmosphere of a school and to the edu- cational influence of school association that, if I were forced to choose between a school in which the life of the undergraduates was vigorous, and fine, and generous, and the faculty weak, and a school in which the faculty was strong, and the life of the undergraduates was mean, and ungenerous, and ignoble, I should not hesitate a moment. I should dislike to make such a choice, but I should not hesitate a moment to choose the school in which the touch of the student on the student was generous, and aspiring, and noble. These old fellowships,-how dear they become in after life! Those friendships formed in the generous years when the skies of morning are over us, and the world is before us, and the birds are singing, and the heart opens spontaneously to the incoming of every new influence, those days in l59fl

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E3-'gzci 02 Cl gb'421f21fGfl.5 man to read those things which were not absolutely prescribed in the course. And there is nothing, I think, that the man who has been out of college twenty-five years, rejoices in more than the recollection of the old sense of freedom and access to libraries before a hundred elective courses had laid their hands on every mimite of his precious time. Access to books, and the quiet and the leisure in which the voices of books can be heard ! I venture to say to-day that I remind many of you of some hour and some place where some great book first opened its heart to you, and in opening its heart made the heart of life plain to you. It was on such an afternoon that YValter Scott opened Percy's Reliques in the shade of that great plane tree, and forgot that there was such a thing as an evening meal 3 and when a boy forgets an evening meal, it means that something important is taking place inside him. fLaughter.l It was on such an afternoon that John Keats, in company with his friend Cowden Clarke, in a half ruined arbor on the outskirts of the London of the beginning of the last century, opened Spenser's Fairie Queene, and knew before the sun went down that he was not to remain the apprentice of an apothecary, but that he was to be one of the poets of the English race. It was such an evening that Robert Browning came home, a boy, with an early volume of Shelley under his arm, and when two nightingales began to sing at the end of the garden, in two great trees, one responding to the other, it seemed to the boy, not as if he were listening to the songs of the birds, but as if Shelley and Keats were singing, antiphonally, one to the other. Those are precious moments when, the imagination being sensitive, and the whole mind open, there passes into us the great impulse of the men and women who have had the deep insights into life, and have been able to make others see what they discerned so clearly. This is the age of the trained man and the trained woman. I venture to say, without fear of exaggerating, that there is no safe place in modern life for anyone but the trained man and the trained woman. God grant that the order of things in which it is possible for any man who has a good character and a strong arm and a willing mind, to support himself, may long continue. But the time has already come when no man can, by these quali- ties alone, hope to make his position assured in the world. The only man to-day who is safe in the industrial world is the man who commands i611