Lyceum Phoenix of Friends School - Phoenix Echo Yearbook (Providence, RI)

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establishing commissions of investigation to suppress all political agitation 3 placing the universities under government supervision. The first great triumph of Christianity over idolatry in the Sand- wich Islands. The decease of James Watt, the great engineer, whose development of the steam engine continues to be one of the wonders of the world. William Wordsworth, the poet, said of him: I look upon him, considering both the magnitude and universal- ity of his genius, as perhaps the most extraordinary man that Eng- land ever produced. This year, also, John Ruskin and Queen Victoria were born, and Friends School renewed its youth like the eagleis, and arose from a peaceful but dreamy slumber of thirty-one years to newness of life, and Alabama became the twenty-second State of the American Union. The School was organized, not with a principal as at present, but with two superintendents, a man and his wife, who had the busi- ness affairs, with a -religious oversight, of the family in charge, and little, if anything, to do with the literary direction of the School. Matthew and Betsy Purington, of Salem, Mass., held that oiiice from 1819 to 1824. The teachers, for shorter or longer peri- ods during this administration, were Thomas Howland, Benjamin Rodman, Stephen A. Chase, Deborah Hill, Mary Mitchell, Dorcas Gardner, Abigail Peirce, Thomas Wilbur, Isaiah Jones, Samuel Boyd Tobey, Sarah Lockwood. We have some extracts from letters, and also a diary by Deborah Purington, from which we are able to gather interesting particulars of the opening of the School. It seems that two of the teachers, Mary Mitchell, afterwards the wife of Walter Underhill, of New York, and Dorcas Gardner, later the wife of Prof. Paul Swift, of Haverford College, came in a small sloop from Nantucket to New Bedford, thence by carriage to Moses Brownls house in Providence, the 3ISt day of Twelfth Mo., 1818, where they arrived in the evening, and proceeded to the School, First Mo., ISt, 1819, Sixth day, but could not organize the School as neither books, stationery, superintendent, nor teachers had ar- rived. Moses Brown came in his chaise, to assist and be in at the start. There were only three students who had come from Nan- tucket with the teachers mentioned. The School could not' open until Second day, First Mo., 4th, and even then it was slow. Mary Mitchell says in her letter, First Mo., 4th, 1819, Girls school-

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the subscriptions thus far only furnish an inadequate sum of 39,000 to erect buildings with, it breaks out in the following words: We tenderly exhort Friends to be liberal, in their subscriptions, accord- ing to the means afforded to them, remembering that we are only stewards of the goods we possess, that we hold them by a very un- certain tenure, and that a righteous and benevolent disposition of a part of them may call down a blessing upon the remainder.- Y. M. Rec., Vol. ff,j1. 372. The Meetings for Sufferings in the First Mo., 1816, decide to con- struct one building, to contain one hundred students, with one roof to cover both sexes, instead of two buildings, one for each sex, as had been thought expedient at one time. The meeting is informed, Fifth Mo., 1 816, that the location is determined and that the digging for the foundation has begun. The form described is that of the pres- ent central building, with wings forty-two feet long. The Yearly Meeting is informed in 1817 QRM., Vol. ff,p. 3135 that the out- side of the building is nearly completed, but that it will require 87,000 more than they now have to finish and furnish it, they had expended about 518,000 already. The meeting again appealed to Friends to support the enterprise vigorously. This was not in vain, the money was furnished, and in the Sixth Mo., 1818, the Yearly Meeting appointed a School Committee whose distinguished successors continue to this present day. This Committee was, we are pleased to note, composed both of women and of nien.-Rec., Vol. ff,p. 327. p Not vainly the gift of its founder was made: Not prayerless the stones of its corner were laidg The blessing of him whom in secret they sought Has owned the good work which the fathers have wrought. The year which witnessed the opening of the School where it now stands, First Mo., 1st, 1819, was distinguished by important events. The fearful riot at Manchester, England, originating in a denial of representation in Parliament, the same cause which drove our fathers into rebellion, which was the starting point of modern re- form agitation in England, of which Manchester was ever after the storm centre. The Carlsbad Resolutions 5 a reaction against liberal opinions 5 destroying the freedom of the press in the German Confederation, 4

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room,--Here Dorcas and I sit, each at a form, left entirely to our- selves .... Dorcas swept and swept, and I read two or three pages in Cowper's T ask I without understanding one sentence. Poor little Maria Fuller, from Lynn, who came with the superin- tendents, Matthew and Betsy Purington, of Salem, Mass., gave vent to her feelings by shedding a few pearly drops. She is the only scholar here except those who came with us. Poor little Maria ! l' thou wast the lugubrious, blubbering pro- totype of a host of thy brothers and sisters which no man can num- ber, with cups brimful of sorrow who have yearned for home sweet home, and have felt unutterably desolate even within thy protecting walls and fond embracing arms, dear venerable mother of us all. Homesick as death! was ever pang like this? ' Too old to let my watery grief appear- Aud what so bitter as a swallowed tear! -Htzluzex. She continues: Afternoon,-School overg and such a school ! At night we were conducted to the large vaulted lodging room, there were not many beds, as the bedsteads are to be corded, whe11 they are needed. Sheets unwashed, just as they came from the hands, of those who made them, at the sewing bee at Nantucket. A fire in the fireplace, or we should have sensibly felt the cold damp air of the room. No Thomas Howland. No Deborah Hill : there cannot be a regular school until the arrival of these teachers. Thomas Howland is expected to-night. The Browns and Ahnys are here frequentlyf, The procrastinating, loitering way in which these teachers and officers approached their duty is anything but inspiring. Congress was more than a month late in assembling under the constitution, in New York, in 1789. Time and appoint- ments had not the character and importance they now have, or ought to have. The extract from the letter is as follows :- Awoke before sunrise g dresses by Aurora's light, breal-:fasted at the heavi- est, large round table I ever saw 5 H tit is, no doubt, the very one now in the girls' parlor, the bottom rounds deeply worn by genera- tions of little feetj presented to the School by one of the Browns' . . . Benjamin Rodman went to town and bought some bat- tledoors and for want of anything else to do, we made good pas- time and exercise of it. Sociables were impossible, for there were no boys reported yet. What is one blade of scissors, solitary and alone, without the other? i