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

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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

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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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No gymnasium, no foot-ball, no base-ball, no maddening sports with hair-splitting issues and blood-curdling suspense, no long rows of restless, joyous, or delirious spectators intent upon the ebb and flow of fortune. Life in the beginning was simple, drear, and arid I Students everywhere have an opinion, all their own, of religious meetings, which they attend in routine because it is the thing to do. But at Friends School the meetings were quaint and curious to persons whose manner of worship at home had many attractions to eye and ear which they now sought in vain. Here is the first of the series. The first First day. In the corner of one of the four large square rooms QI wish we knew whether it was in the sitting-room, the principal's room, or the boys' or girls' nursery that the minis- tering and healing beganj containing nothing but a few chairs and a large stove, we, the household, with our bonnets tied, and our shawls on, seated ourselves. Moses, Obadiah, and Dorcas Brown, with Moses Brownls two granddaughters, were all who were added. Betsy Purington knelt in supplication. The first meeting, we may assume, was almost quiet, no other service is mentioned. The schoolbooks arrived Second day, the 1 rth of First Mo., and the ceaseless march of progress began. E But a more important event transpired the next day. Two gentlemen and three lady teachers, with seven girls and six boys, on 12th inst., with Matthew and Betsy Purington occupy for the first time the present dining-room, or the one on the same floor in the east wing. The tables were long and red, without linen. Heavy plain white china, with iron knives, spoons, and forks. The boys and girls sat on stools with- out backs to them. But, more important than all questions of nu- triment, the boys appear on this day for the first time. The story of creation represents man as first in possession of the garden, and his joyous reception of woman. This was all reversed at Friends School, where the girls took the lead in time and have ever since had the supremacy in most directions. From that day to this there have been two sexes, two streams of humanity, so near to each other yet remoter than a star, with notable exceptions of counter and cross currents, which have coalesced and formed lit- tle life rivulets of their own. There came a time when both were forced to dwell far apart in Siberian solitude, viewing the ideal be- ings of the other wings only remotely through telescopes as we