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and spoke hearty congratulations. When these, over and over again repeated, were passed, then the supper. From houses miles and miles around had been borrowed knives and forks, glasses and crockery, chairs, and syllabub stands. If tables could groan, as some poet imagined, the grief of those beneath old-time wedding suppers must have been wholly disconsolate what time they were made to stand and endure. The strongest (indeed, if it could be called strong) drink was syllabub, a froth made of sweet wine and whipped white of eggs. With those experienced in grog and sweetened dram, it required tumblers on tumblers to help down the quantities on quantities of good eatables. At furthest, by 10 o'clock guests were departed, and in a few minutes longer the family, with its new addition, retired.

Yet, in all this gay assemblage of country folk usually, at least quite often, there was one whose feeling it was touching to note, one who not always, indeed who rather seldom, appeared elsewhere than in the dining room, and not always there, unless there were not another on whom with entire trust she could devolve superintendence. To her the loud, merry chattings and laughter imparted sadness whose relief was silent prayer and tears. Consent to the match, however unreserved, hopes for the bride, however abounding, her prospects however bright in the seeming, the addition of the bridegroom, however welcome, were not enough for the mother in the beginning of that period of change and separation. It was inevitable, yet upon the goer and her new guide it was a benediction.

Infare.-Next day came the infare, dining (if not at convenient distance apart) of both families together at the house of the bridegroom's parents. It was pleasant to note the ideas of the complete coalescence of the two young persons united in one according to the laws of the Creator and the State. That the union was to continue throughout their joint life none ever had a doubt, for this was regarded as one life, ever inseparable except by the hand of Him who had ratified and consecrated it. There is yet, here and there, living a man or woman who remembers the first libel (as the suit was named in the laws) for divorce in the State, and the sentiment of awe and repugnance with which its publication was met by all classes. It was brought in another portion of the State, and even to this date has had few successors in middle Georgia.

After the infare the newly married were expected to repair to the home provided for them. Henceforth the wife wore upon her head a white cap, both abroad and at home. Almost without variation her domestic work was inaugurated by cutting and making, without assistance from any other, a shirt for her husband. Any bride, however young, would have felt ashamed of incompetence for this task, preliminary to the others to come in married existence.

In this and the foregoing chapter the writer has endeavored to give sketches, as faithful as possible, from his own and his elders' reminiscences of the early school and vacation life of boyhood and girlhood in middle Georgia, and of their passing into manhood and womanhood, to be speedily followed by marriage. Brief and simple as were the preliminaries to this last consummation, it was done with sense of all its responsibility and the vicissitudes to be strewn along the unseen way before those who, with joined hands, were starting upon it, yet in cheerful hope of obtaining the goods allowed to be expected by the upright and industrious.

II.-ACADEMIES.

The period from the old to the new was not long. The peculiar ce early society, described in the first of this series of papers, soon the common sort-what had been all along in the minds of the up tion of a higher grade than that gotten from the old-field schools m for youth. The one to give embodiment to the sentits of the peo] all regions of the State in that behalf was a you cut, of which he was a native-Abram Baldw

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work must be postponed to a subsequent part of this chapter, in which some account will be given of the founding of the State University. In this will be noticed the earliest academies, the rise of which was hastened by the efforts exerted by him upon a more extended field. It will appear hereafter how wise and benign were his endeavors, and that they fell short of fulfillment because of his premature death and the lack of other equally competent leadership.

At the very beginning of legislative movements toward education, movements which, as will be noted hereafter, were on the wisest, most liberal scale, the country beyond the Oconee River, the western boundary of middle Georgia, was occupied by Indians. The State was without available resources, yet, foreseeing that in time these would become vast, it began to lay foundations on which to build as these should materialize. Those movements began in 1785. The following year, at a place called Shoulderbone, in Hancock County, on the hither side of the river, a treaty was made with the Creek Indians. This did not prevent an occasional murderous irruption into that and Greene, the adjoining county. Yet, thirty years later, in 1815, an academy was incorporated in the village of Powelton, about 25 miles, and not long after another at Mount Zion, in the same county, 15 miles, cast of that river. Within a short while these two academies rose to a degree of success and efficiency that in some respects have not been surpassed by any others since risen in the State. A number of planters, of well-descended ancestry in the older States, cordially joined by others who had become developed in thoughtfulness and intelligence by contact with them, having accumulated property to justify the proceeding, contributed to erect in these villages large and commodious buildings, and then, through advertising in Northern journals and by correspondence, succeeded in securing teachers of the highest degree of competence. Several of these planters, leaving their plantations to the management of supervisors, moved their residences into the villages for the greater convenience of schooling and for supplying board to the youth who, as they foresaw, would be sent from other communities.

The teachers, without exception, came from New England. More conspicuous in that regard than all others was Vermont, to which, three-quarters of a century ago, middle Georgia became bound in a debt of gratitude which it has always gratefully admitted. A series of men, all of whom, with one exception, were natives of Vermont and alumni of Middlebury College, came to these two villages wherein they put and conducted academical instruction on a scale equal to any at that period in the whole North. The one exception was Salem Town, a native of Belchertown, Mass., where he was born in 1779. For several years he was master of the Powelton Academy, which in time rose to have near 150 pupils, more in number than the inhabitants, white and black. Boys and girls in the neighborhood as far as 3 and 4 miles outward, on foot, on horseback, some in vehicles called Jersey wagons, came from home; others from distant communities in that and other counties near and remote attended as boarders. A very large number of those who afterwards rose to distinguished positions were educated by him. He was destined to become far more famous as an author. In answer to a work appearing in 1822 entitled System of Speculative Masonry, he published in 1828 Reviewed in Freemasonry, Its Pretensions Exposed, etc. During the time he remained in Powelton, he taught orally the principles which afterwards (in 1836) were published in that well-known volume, Town's Analysis of the Derivative Words in the English Language. Admission of this fact appears in the preface to the book, which has run through many, very many editions, and which is still used by many teachers. Before the publication, he returned to the North, and for forty years longer taught in the State of New York. Here he wrote and published other school books, as Grammar School Reader, a series of readers, Speller and Definer, Chart of Elementary Sounds, Speaker and Reader, and several more besides. Allibone, in his Dictionary of Authors, says: "Of the readers, more than 1,500,000, and of the Speller and Definer, nearly 150,000 coples were issued (in Boston) in three years, 1857-1860. The series is recommended

by more than 1,000 authorities." Below this occurs the following note: "Over 1,000,000 copies of Town and Holbrook's Progressive Series, published by Oliver Ellsworth, of Boston, are printed yearly." (Amer. Lit. Gaz., Sept. 15, 1864.)

In this, the first academy of much note in that region, it was remarkable the interest taken by the people without distinction of class. A society democratic from the beginning, in which the humblest were made to indulge aspirations equal to the best, came forward in support of what became soon the object of its chief pride. Treated as equals in the old-field schools, and to a degree of equality in social life, youth of both sexes changed to the academy with assurance of like enjoyment of freedom in the larger opportunities put within their reach. Even those of straitened means dwelling at a distance were able by some straining to meet the small expenses of board and tuition. The former, abundant and excellent, including lodging and laundering, was gotten for $8 and $10 a month. Tuition was $8, $12, and $16 for a term of twenty-two weeks, which was as sure to run through its whole length as the sun to continue to give his light by day. A little more than $100 would carry a pupil, even in classes most advanced, through the entire scholastic year of forty-four weeks.

It has always seemed strange, and no less unfair, that teachers in schools among modern peoples, even those most accomplished and competent, have been paid for their services fees so little when compared with those received in other professions. Certainly, the work of a capable master of a school who has been made entirely qualified for it, who well understands all of its many duties and responsibilities, and who honorably devotes himself to the performance of them, the greatest and the least, is of very highest importance, and perhaps is of all, when thus considered, the one most exhausting to health of body, mind, and spirit. A dollar a month in the old-field schools was in most cases as much as the service therein rendered was worth, and the laborer escaped such exhaustion by never overworking himself, either in the preparation or cultivation of the one little field rented to him, and by his frequent outings, when his portion of the gathered crop was unsatisfactory to the owner, and he went away in search of another. What exhaustion was in him other than that in a natural way wrought by time coexisted with the beginning of his professional career. It was not possible for him to dwinlle into a smaller compass than that in which, at his start, he was inclosed. Like some insects, he was as big at his birth as he ever became afterwards.

That compensation for the services of such a man as Salem Town would seem more strangely inadequate to the work done if it had not been general throughout the whole country, and if it had not received so little increase down to this date. Workers in other professions are paid according to the comparative worth of their professional services, and the comparative importance of the ends for which they are employed, little to the untried and the ordinary, larger to the experienced and the distinguished; but teachers for the most part must be content with graded pay, beginning low, and never rising high. Yet, with a commuuity in a most fertile

In ancient Athens difference between the lowest and highest grades was much. Masters of elementary schools, besides being usually regarded with little respect, were paid next to nothing, while the rhetoricians and sophists demanded large sums. In Professor Becker's Charicles occurs the following: "Advanced instruction was imparted by teachers of a higher order, the rhetoricians and sophists, whose charges only the rich could defray. Thus Aristippus demanded 1.000 drachmas (about $150 of our money) and, according to Plutarch, Isocrates required a like sum; and when Demosthenes offered him 200, with the understanding to take only a fifth part of the course, he ans thenes, we do not important work in pieces; as the finest fish are purchased w to learn, must give you my full course."

That was a scene to be pictured by an artist, the poor, wheezing, stammerin applying for entrance into the school of the great Isocrates, whom Cicero co wooden horse, because of the number of eminent Greeks it had educated and p country, and offering a fifth part of the fees for a fifth portion of the instruction. pardonable departure from the usual modesty of the illustrious rhetorician in rem answering that the best fish in the market were not 'ices for purchasers, bu Regarding the higher class of schools among the t

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region, whose simple wants made comfortable living easy to be gotten, those fees were accepted by the best teachers without complaint or attempt to have them increased.

Town's successors for several years were without exception Vermonters-Baptists, and graduates of Middlebury College, Otis Smith, Lucius Whittle, and others. Of these the one to become most distinguished was the former, who was as prominent in the pulpit as at the head of the academy. Accorded the degree of doctor of divinity, he was for several years president of Mercer University, founded by the Baptists at Penfield, to which, with others of its kind, reference will be made hereafter. Lucius Whittle, perhaps as a scholar more erudite than his predecessor, unfortunately, as was believed from disappointment of his hope to marry a young lady, his countrywoman and teacher of the classes in music, partially lost his understanding, left the school and the village, wandered to the West, and was never again heard from. Then, in 1835, came in a native Georgian, Simpson Fouché, long celebrated as a teacher and disciplinarian. For, by this time, the profession under the conduct of those New Englanders had been lifted above the repugnance created by their predecessors, the old-fielders.

During all these years this school was coeducational. Boys and girls from 8 to 18 lived in the same families and recited in the same classes. In forenoons and afternoons they had their quarter of an hour's recess alternately and their separate playgrounds. Besides occasional small gatherings at private houses, not seldom one was had for all in the long music hall of the academy, sometimes given by boys and girls alternately, and sometimes by both jointly, the former contributing bonbons purchased at the stores, and girls substantials from their mothers and hostesses. Two or three Saturdays in the spring fishing excursions made up of both sexes, with one of the towns women for matron, were made to the Ogeechee River, a mile or so distant, or they went nutting in the unent woods or gathered berries in the fallowed fields. Despite the decay of the old village, lads and lasses yet repair to the same ground under the red oaks and hickories. The school has never had a blot upon the name it obtained and carried during the seasons of its greatest prosperity. From its foundation four score years ago, until now, when it is conducted by that excellent scholar and gentlemen, Prof. Samuel N. Chapman, it was never stained by a single scandal. Salutary have seemed always competitions among and between the two sexes. Associations permitted under guidance of a discipline which, both in school and in families, was no less prudent than generous, stimulated to emulation for highest possible development of understanding, and for practice of best deportment among gentlemen and ladies. In the State of Georgia, and in the two States, its daughters, beyond the Chattahoochee, are to-day great numbers of descendants from happy unions, first thought of which, although not often yet put in words of solemn avowal, had their beginnings in class and other reunions at this time-honored school.

About the same time, in the village of Mount Zion, 10 miles to the southwest, was begun another academy destined to become equally famous with that at Powelton, one of whose masters came to be more widely known than any other that ever taught in the State. He was Carlisle P., younger of the brothers Beman, who came to are not aware what the pay for tuition amounted to; at all events, it varied a good deal, and in the elementary schools was very trifling." (Juv., vii, 228.)

It appears from this satire that Quintilian, the most illustrious rhetorician of his time, received what would be about $50 or $60 of our money.

Quintilian gets and hardly gets ten pounds,
On education all is grudged as lost,
And sons are still a father's lightest cost.

Of the school of the poorer Palamon, the poet ends his compassionate words thus:

Where ropy vapours Virgil's pages soil,

And Horace looks one blot, all soot and oil,

Even then, the stipend thus reduced, thus small,

Without a lawsuit rarely comes at all.

(Gifford's Translation.)

Mount Zion, the leading citizens of which were Presbyterians. In their native State, Vermont, they were of the denomination of Congregationalists. As there were no congregations of these any where near by-perhaps nowhere in the State-they became affiliated with Presbyterians, from whom they differed in nowise except in the matter of church government. The elder, Nathan, a man of highly brilliant parts, established his famous academy, but after some years returned to the North and resided for the remainder of his life in the upper portion of New York State. His second marriage was with the mother of the distinguished William L. Yancey, one of the principal leaders of the secession movement in the Southern States. The younger remained, like his brother, became a doctor of divinity, and although inferior to him as a divine, as a teacher, during more than forty years, became well known throughout the whole South. As large a number of distinguished men went out from this academy as from that in Powelton, nearly all of whom were taught by these two brothers. Carlisle for a few years was president of Oglethorpe University, founded at Midway by the Presbyterians, but, preferring to teach without superintendence of trustees, he gave up this position, for some years conducted one at Lagrange, then returned to Mount Zion, where he continued to teach until he became an old man. Wherever he went pupils followed him. His school was large when he went into retirement. Like the rest of his countrymen who remained in the State, he became entirely devoted to its interests. Their descendants fought and some of them fell in the Confederate war.

Within a few years afterwards Putnam County, immediately west from Hancock, with the Oconee River between, having been relieved of the Indians, another Vermonter and Middlebury graduate came from Brattleboro and raised to high repute an academy just founded at Eatonton, the county seat. This was Alonzo Church. He had not been there long when he was made professor of mathematics and astronomy in the State University, afterwards its president, and so continued for thirty-five years, at the end of which advanced age and infirm health led him to resign. He was a man of commanding presence and courtly manners. He and his family were perhaps most efficacious of all in that beautiful town of Athens in imparting to its society a tone which was not surpassed by that of any village in the whole South. Its influence extended far and wide, particularly throughout the adjacent counties of middle Georgia.

Yet later, about the year 1833, two academies for girls were founded and became justly famous, that of Sereno Taylor, another Vermonter, at Sparta, the county seat of Hancock, and that of Miss Brackett, a lady from Massachusetts, at Washington, the county seat of Wilkes. To these noted schools large numbers of girls came, not only from that and many other counties in the State, but from Alabama and Mississippi. Unfortunately, both of these institutions when at their highest suffered sorely from the departure of their principals-Mr. Taylor, from the pressure of debts contracted by too large expenditures in behalf of his academy, and Miss Brackett by marriage with Dr. Adams, a well-known Presbyterian divine, of Massachusetts. Neither of these schools were ever able to maintain afterwards the reputation and patronage before held by them.

A rather curious circumstance served to weaken the hold of Mr. Taylor, partienlarly among the patrons near by, and it is another illustration of the hostility felt by both of the leading religious denominations for one musical instrument in particular. The organ, the piano, the harp, and the seraphine had reasonably cordial welcome in the schools, and the piano in families. But the violin continued to be feared as before when the Baptist and Methodist divines first began to cry out against dancing, a sin which this instrument was suspected to have been devised by the evil spirit to encourage. Mr. Taylor, whose appointments in music, judging from the number of excellent pianists who were educated therein, were perhaps more complete than those of any other school in the State, then and afterwards set high importance upon the violin, which, although a Baptist clergyman, he himself played at his concerts, occasionally taking it with him even to the Baptist Church on Sunday

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