Framingham State University - Dial Yearbook (Framingham, MA)

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14: They were all admitted. This was Wednesday. By Saturday their number was increased to five. They boarded in neighboring families. Sunday, Mr. Pierce told the five girls that he would call for them to go to church with him. They went to the church on the common and were shown to a pew not far from Mr. and lNIrs. Pierce. It was a square pew with a door in one side and with high-backed, uncushioned, wooden seats around the other three. The girls entered it feeling that, as pupils of the new Normal School, they were the observed of all beholders. They felt anxious to do just what was right in this strange church so, when the congregation stood during the long opening prayer, they also arose. The seats 'projected far out into the pew and, as the girls did not know that they could be turned up, there was not much room. Nevertheless they accommodated themselves as best they could and composed themselves into a properly reverential frame of mind. This was rudely broken, however, when, just as the minister said Amen,,' every seat in the church came down with a bang. They jumped, looked at each other and-sad to relate- laughed. And thus it was that the pupils of the Normal School were first introduced to the public. The next Monday, school was opened in the sitting room with lessons in reading, grammar and arithmetic. By Thursday they had moved upstairs and their number was increased to eight. By the end of the year the class consisted of twenty-five. This was surely rapid growth--an increase of SZLW. Their class room was furnished with green-topped double desks. All around the room was a formidable blackboard which in after years suggested trials to their minds to which we of the present day have only two equals-our special topics and uplat- form exercises. Fortunately, however, there were also pleasant associations with this blackboard. We hear tales of one guileless looking equation which extended up and down three lengths of the blackboard only to come to the wonderful conclusion that 0:0 Many were the graphic delineations of square roots, and one ambitious young lady is even rumored to have attempted to bound fthink of that Miss O-J the State of Single Blessedness. Oh, she was a true daughter of normality. They were as ready to argue for the sake of hearing them- selves talk as we are today. One sweltering day the subject came up for discussion, Does hot tea or ice cream make one the cooler ? QAsk Miss B--.Q One restless study hour a certain young lady tied her neighbor so securely to the rope of the bell in the tower that every time she stirred it jingled. From that time on Miss B-- was

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13 Hall Was also built during this administration and named in honor of Miss Abby W. May, at that time a member of the State Board of Education. Miss Hyde was succeeded by Mr. Henry Whittemore in 1898. In this year the heirs of Mrs. Augustus Hemenway, desiring to give up the Hemenway School of Household Arts, offered it on liberal terms to the state. The Board of Education accepted and installed it at Framingham where it has since been a valued part of the school. Wells Hall, in honor of Mrs. Kate Gannett Wells, was built in 1889. Of our present principal, Mr. Whittemore, there are no words to express the love, honor, and respect which We have for him as he, in his great unselfishness and love for his school and for us, follows in the very footsteps of the first great principals, who made our Normal School. It is good for us to contemplate the struggle of those first pupils Whose success was so great, that we, with the advantage of modern buildings and apparatus may try to make ourselves what they Were, Worthy graduates of the First State Normal School of America. M. C. N. sit 93 Some Anecdotes of the First Class How pleasantly within those walls We lived-a group of merry girls. -L. E. H arris. IXTY-NINE years ago the 3rd of next July, three girls went to Lexington, lNLIassachusetts, to take examinations. Going off' to take examinations is not a very unusual proceeding for us-We have all done it-but it was different for them. They were going to take examinations for entrance to a school which up to that time had never existed, a school unlike any that had ever been seen on this side of the Atlantic. Word had gone forth that the examiners Were to be grave learned meng and it' was with fear and trembling that they faced them. They were examined in turn in reading, writing, English, grammar, geography and arithmeticg and in their intense desire to do their best they forgot the beating storm outside.

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15 known as the Belle of the School. But the indignity did not go unrevenged, for, soon after, the tormentor was tied by the hair to the back of her chair and held long in durance vile as a punishment for her annoying conduct. Speaking of their restless study hours reminds me of the necessity of saying that although they had their jokes and their good times, these formed only a small part of their life. The work was even more exacting than it is now and a thorough comprehension of each subject was as much insisted upon. They were constantly inspired to do their best and then-a little more. It seems almost inconceivable that such a tireless worker as Horace Mann should have been forced to remonstrate with the principal for overworking the girls. Yet such was the case. It is their good times and their mishaps, however, which inter- est us most. So just one more anecdote. It seems a common failing of humanity that we think well of ourselves and enjoy our laurels in anticipation. A certain young miss who boarded in a nearby family had a rather trying experience because of this. She tells the story as follows :- f'By a combination of circumstances which will sometimes occur in the best-regulated of families, household duties once devolved upon me in the family of Mrs. Wi- Where I boarded. I bustled around like a person of no small consequence, conscious of little brief authority and resolved to exercise it most becom- ingly. c'Noon arrived, the Rubicon, I thought, was passed, and my fame established on a foundation that would endure, and I was already reposing in imagination beneath the laurels that I had won. I had baked some beans for dinner-of course felt very proud of the achievement and everything was ready but removing the beans from the oven. One can hardly conceive the sweet satisfaction I felt as I seized the beanpot, when alas, it slipped my grasp, transferred itself from a perpendicular to a horizontal position. Alarmed and horror-struck lest my beans should be numbered among the things that were, I thrust my hands into the steaming oven but sent them out at the opposite door on to the hearth, when, true to the laws which governed earthern beanpots, it broke. A' few of the beans were rescued uninjured but the feeling of chagrin and mortification it produced will, I fear, be a lifelong companion. I told Mrs. VV--- on her return that the beans were so very delicious they had eaten the beanpot, too. The story was so very reasonable that of course she believed it. S. L. S.