Lawrenceville School - Olla Podrida Yearbook (Lawrenceville, NJ)

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4w4,,,,5,. N 4. . , dd!- ,.Jf lQ .2 'ta:4' ' '- '- Q 4 my W .A R 1 Vx Jig T A, h Q 5.33.-,H fradifiwzs HERE was once a young man who combined both a sense of good business and high efficiency with lofty idealism. He was a struggling young minis- ter in the tiny town of Maidenhead, just five or more miles from Princeton. Perhaps his salary was not very great and his family was growing: perhaps he saw the need of education in a young land: perhaps his eye for business and a certain love of boys possessed him-we shall never know for sure-but, at any rate, he made up his mind to begin a school. So, one fine morning in 1810 he cut himself a stout elm switch, gathered nine boys in a little house on the King's Highway, took EucIz'd's Elements from the shelf, and set himself up as school-master. The young man's name was Isaac Van Arsdale Brown, and his tiny school grew into Our Lawrenceville. The story of the growth of the school, as the history books go, reads like a fairy tale, and yet when one thinks about it, there is much more reality than imagination in the chronicles of its sturdy development. The Reverend Mr. Brown, as has been said, had an eye for business. By 1812 he called his school the Academy of Maidenhead, had a board of trustees Qcomposed of men with names famous in Lawrenceville memoryj, and was advertising widely for boys. In 1814 a suitable building, the Hamill house, was constructed, and by 1834, when he retired from its directorship, the school was happily flourishing. But this man was not all business. He was a dreamer, too. He innovated the system of having separate classes recite in separate rooms, a radical departure in those days. He not only saw that his boys learned Penmanship, the Art of Speaking, the Classics, Modern Languages, Surveying, and Navigation, but he announced that their morals, their manners, their amusement, and their health would receive particular attention. Gymnastick exercises and other athletick amusement, horsemanship and riding in carriages, are employed to improve health and inspire cheerfulness among the pupils, says his advertisement. A sound rock upon which to build a school was Isaac Van Arsdale Brown. Twelve

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N 5Q5lHHDWg T 183 I. LA llflllillitilsla 00zEi L They say that a school is like its headmaster, that it rises or falls as its leader is strong or ineffectual. He is a doctor that watches or neglects its health. Isaac Brown was most fitted to superintend its birth and infancy, but none the less suitable have been the men who have nurtured it, and sat up nights feeling its pulse-beats since those early times. For three years it was guided by a man named Phillips, and then Dr. Samuel Hamill, a scholar and a teacher, served forty-six years of a long active life to keep alive the bold little flame of erudition that flickered out in many another institution during his day.' In the Hnal period of Dr. I-lamill's career, John C. Green, one of the nine original boys, died and left to his trustees the foundation endowment fund that the school has rested upon until this day. Dr. Mackenzie, an organizer, was administrator in the new beginning. Then came the great old man who watched through the trouble of war times, giving his very life that the old school should continue to keep all the old good and attain some new things, too. McPherson was his name. The regime of Dr. Abbott is known well enough-dreamer, builder, and teacher, he has made the sound of the carpenter's hammer and the ring of the mason's trowel familiar on the campus. Through his efforts have come more numerous eighties and nineties in the College Boards, a liveliness that keeps us up to date. and a certain Hneness and nobility, mixed with the fire of inspiration. Thus go the traditions of Lawrenceville as the history books tell them. But there are other traditions, too-little feelings that words cannot express, feelings that play in our hearts at the mention of Lawrenceville, feelings that are peculiar to Lawrenceville alone, They are the consummate expression of everything that is good in school life. Every master, every single boy, and even those only vaguely associated with the school have added to or subtracted from their store of riches. Down from the time when a master's contract with 'the school stipulated that he should cut his own firewood, have they come. Through the bowl-and-pitcher and the oil-lamp age, they grew, imbedded themselves, became the priceless heritage that we today may call ours! And beautiful is the thought that on they may go, those traditions that are our love for Lawrence- ville, forever and forever, and forever. ROBERT E. NAIL, JR., C1358 of '29. iff l s . as ,ati Thirteen