Curtis High School - Curtis Annual Yearbook (Chicago, IL)

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GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS HIGH SCHOOL Eight

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THOMAS C. HILL Principal of Curtis High School Seven

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GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS EORGE WILLIAM CURTIS C1824-l892j, after whom our school was named, was a man of the Washington Irving type, combining the steadfast, intense moral sense of his Puritan ancestors with his own peculiar social grace and charm, and a blithe and vivid fancy. When only eighteen he was admitted to the Brook Farm com- munity, where he met the ripest scholars, men and women of culture and accomplishment, the industrious and the lazy, the conceited and the sentimental, and where he acquired a fervor that showed itself in devotion to noble endeavor, sympathy with what is useful to men, patience and charityf' Mr. Curtis was one of the original editors of Putnam's Monthly, as well as a contributor to Harper's NVeekly,,' of which he became editor-in-chief in 1857. To the general reader he is perhaps best known by Prue and If in whose jewel lights his shining soul is still radiant. i Mr.'Curtis was, perhaps, in his lifetime even more widely known as a speaker than as a writer. At the very outset he entered with all his soul into the political agitation against slavery. Still later he delivered a remarkable series of addresses on the reform of ,the civil service, which was in a sense a second struggle for political freedom. Had Mr. Curtis sought only the fame of a writer, he could hardly have failed to gain it in notable measure. In pursuing the object he did, he might rightly believe at the close of his career-it is doubtful if he ever gave it a thought-that he had rendered to American litera- ture a service unrecognized and untraceable, but singularly, perhaps uniquely, great. Mr. Curtis died on August 31, 1892, about the time the older part of our school was being built. N ine