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

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truth itself is eternal, unchangeable. Most religious contests have been over non-essentials, or else over mysteries which no one can ever solve, and which are capable of suggesting any amount of theory, one view possibly as full of merit as another. The moral is to keep out of religious controversy. This trouble entered the courts, and the parties struggled for the possession of meeting-houses and other property. Friends School remained with the majority. It lost students. In 1844 it only averaged fifty-five in attend- ance, and in 1845, the year of most severe disturbance, there is no report of numbers. They report in 1846, 84, and they say that the smallness is due to excellent public schools. George F. Reed, the quaint and curious classical teacher, disappeared in 1842, but he arose and flourished in the smaller body for years. No one ap- pears again on the record as teacher of Greek and Latin until La Fayette Burr came in 1848. The average number was, in 1849, 117. The School ran behind a 31,000 that year. It also sold the land north of Olney street. A new impulse towards higher learn- ing distinguished the year I85O. Rachel S. Howland, of New Bedford, an accomplished woman of great personal influence, became a member of the Committee in 1849, and is, after more than half a century, like Nestor, the most experienced of all the Greek Chieftains. Her purifying and ennobling influence upon two generations of school children is beyond computation. Silas Cornell and wife became the superintendents in 1847, and Gertrude E. Whittier, afterwards the wife of Joseph Cartland, then first appears in the faculty as a teacher. She had distinguished herself already at Portland, Me., and her career was a very important one in Friends School, to be referred to later. Silas Cornell and Sarah remained in oflice until 1852. Silas Cornell and his wife were excellent, cultivated people, who came from Rochester, N. Y., and were probably persons of more educa- tion than any of their predecessors in that particular ollice up to their time. Charles Atherton, before their arrival, had been a member of the faculty, and continued to be through their adminis- tration, and became one of the principals upon their retirement-a man whose very name is a synonym of honor, dignity, and jus- tice. His memory is revered by every boy of worth who ever came in touch with him.

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tained in all 1,6oo volumes. Many of these books were very valu- able and still continue to be. Indeed, as a collection of ancient Friends books, they are priceless, but they were not the nutriment for youth, except of the mature, sober, reflective, introspective sort, of which species the ordinary American school does not afford many specimens. The students were allowed no books except those in the library, so that the waters of life were only permitted to How into the in- stitution in very narrow and sluggish channels. VVe now have about ten thousand volumes in the house, and feel satisfied o11ly because all the valuable libraries of Providence hold their doors wide open to us. Charles F. Coffin, afterwards of Lynn, Mass., was a teacher this year. He was a very accomplished man, the dearest friend to Whittier, it is believed, outside of his own family. The School received its painting of Whittier from him, which was intended by both of them to be the standard, original painting. The next year, 1840-1841, Dr. Charles H. Nichols, afterwards the eminent super- intendent of the NVashington Asylum for the Insane, and later of the Bloomingdale of New York, was a teacher here, and he and Charles F. Coffin were life-long and very dear friends. Twenty acres were added to the estate in IS42, paid for by ive thousand dollars left by Moses Brown for that very purpose. A division came into the Society of Friends in New England in 1844-5 which extended far and wide, and its influences are found, even now, wherever the Society exists. John 'Wilbur, of Hopkin- ton, R. I., thought that he discovered a spirit of worldliness among Friends which was inconsistent with the history of the Society. He agitated, and was in part correct, no doubt, but he could not convince the majority, and led off what has been called the smaller bodyf, He seems to have lost what had hitherto been regarded as a fundamental doctrine, namely, submission to the sense of the body. Perhaps he argued that the sense was with the minority, in this case, as it has sometimes been in history. There was no difference in Christian doctrine, it was only in practice, in dress, and usages deemed by the majority non-essen- tial. There is a perpetual evolution in society, and it is the duty of every generation to keep up with the progress, for it is the sur- vival of the fittest, in religious organization as in everything else. Every great religious reformation in history is in evidence. Yet

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I This administration of Silas Cornell and wife attempted to throw some sweetness and light 'into co-education, by letting boys and girls walk certain streets of the city in sweet companionship, under what particular guards and conditions we are not informed. The result was that attentions were soon too marked between them. Some of them, by a strange fatuity, walked always with the same girl, and fond parents took away their girls. A re-action followed, which was made more trying by this very agreeable experience. Not even sociables were granted, but for a while meetings in the sitting-room softened the asperities of the situation. Also for a while correspondence was permitted beween the wings. Letters were brought in and placed upon a table, and answers were left in the same place. The nature of the correspondence is not generally known. One remarkable instance of fraud is remembered. The girl and boy were probably the last among the students that were attired in the honored and venerable garb of ancient Friends. They were so like the Friends of the olden time that you might fancy yourself looking at our ancestors through the big end of a telescope. Birds of a feather Hock together, and they flocked so far as the powers that were made way. They attempted to correspond, and all went merry as a marriage bell H until naughty boys interrupted the How of soul and wrote letters themselves to him in her stead, and the disguise was so perfect that he did not for a long time discover the deceitg not, indeed, until informed by a friend. This last corre- spondence was doubtless unique. We ought to have sympathy with the girl, severed in such an untimely manner, without a faint echo of the joyous past to comfort and console her. Silas Cornell lost his hold upon the boys chiefiy by one mistake. The farmers were ploughing in the field next to the play-ground, and the bars were temporarily down. The men went 'to dinner, and the boys went out of bounds into the field, and attached their long jumping-rope to it, and with a hundred boys for power and a student at the handles ploughed eight most beautiful long furrows around the field, more perfect than the work of the farmers. The affair was made cheerful by the presence of beautiful faces at the windows of the other wing and of the middle house. It was re- garded by the government as a serious violation of duty and order. It was in the nature of rebellion, and all privileges were instantly suspended and all were punished.