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success. The tide soon turned; the attendance in the English department rose to a higher point than it had ever before attained, while the number of graduates in the classical department steadily increased from two in 1845, to eighteen in 1852.

It may well be questioned whether Arnold relatively did more than this in the same time. He tells us distinctly what was the aim of his school policy adopted from 1845 to 1852; that "policy was shaped by the constant and unremitting endeavor to solve successfully the problem whether Monson Academy could be made to live and thrive as a classical institution, and as such to subserve, not merely the educational interests of the town, but of all that part of New England not within the proper limits and influence of other classical schools of established reputation." This problem he had for the time successfully solved, though in the face of obstacles which in the end might prove insurmountable. The Williston Seminary, at Easthampton, with all the money it could profitably spend, was fast rising in importance. At Holyoke, Mary Lyon had founded a school to which young ladies went thronging to learn to work as well as to study; in the adjoining town of Wilbraham, Methodist Latin, Greek, and mathematics were taught to large numbers who could not distinguish between the Wesleyan and Congregational algebra, geometry, syntax, and prosody; hard by, in Suffield, the Baptists were protecting their denominational interests in an institution which, though without intended rivalry, could not but be competitive. Moreover, high schools were springing up with great frequency, and the teaching given at the academies was carried to the doors of hundreds who would otherwise have gone abroad for it. Thus rivaled and environed by seminaries, institutions, and academies, which rested on boundless wealth, denominational zeal, and statute law, with no William of Wykeham or Lawrence Sheriff at hand to give permanence and enduring fame to the well-earned trophies of Monson by a princely endowment, a broader field with ampler resources would present great attractions and awaken high aspirations.

At this time the preceptorship of Lawrence Academy, in Groton, became vacant; in filling it, it was quite natural that the trustees at Groton should have their attention turned to the successful teacher at Monson. It was as natural that the larger foundation at Groton, the large expectation inspired by the name of a family which had revolutionized the industry of the State, and spread its

benefactions through the nation, should find an attentive ear in one who desired to connect his scholarship and skill in teaching with an institution which had the means to give them full play. The academy at Groton had long been famous in Middlesex, and its general catalogue (published soon after Mr. Hammond took charge of it, the work of Miss Clarissa Butler, the daughter of one of its earliest and ablest preceptors) is one of the most useful volumes in existence, as showing the character and sources of the patronage which these schools received, during the first half of the present century. The kindred schools in the county at Framingham, Westford, Stow, Marlborough, Lexington, Concord, and Woburn, -presented no such rivalries as the wealthy foundations that were springing up in Hampden and Hampshire. Indeed, the actual and prospective promise at Groton, to an enterprising scholar, was not surpassed by that of any institution in the State. The result of the negotiations between Mr. Hammond and the trustees at Groton was his appointment to the preceptorship in 1852, and his removal thither in 1853. He found at Groton the same type of school which he had left at Monson. It was a co-educational school, as indeed were all the early academies with the exception of Dummer, and the two foundations at Andover and Exeter. None of these institutions were fettered and frozen by the fancies and bigotries of their founders. The traditions and formularies, handed down through constantly changing dynasties of trustees and teachers, imposed no vexatious restraints nor transmitted any petrified methods in teaching or courses of study. The teacher enjoyed a large liberty, and when that liberty was not abused, it became practically unbounded. The full force of ten years, experience in teaching, and the accumulated knowledge of twenty years, were thus at once made directly available in this new field of labor. Here for eleven years, he remained in the successful prosecution of his work. His preceptorship at Groton was the longest continuous term of service that this academy had received. Mr. Butler had served two terms, one of eight and the other of three years.

We now find in the life of Mr. Hammond what rarely occurs in the life of any public servant. Twice we have already seen him called to the preceptorship of Monson. We have now to notice the beginning of a third term, longer than the sum of the two preceding, and which was to terminate only with his life. The funds of Monson Academy had always been limited; it had always lived and flour

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ished more by its good behavior than by the strength of its pecuniary foundation. In 1863, its resources had become so narrow, that it was found necessary to close the school for a time, and gather strength for a higher flight. The return of Mr. Hammond, in 1845, was characterized by a great revival of interest and increase of means in the school. His return in 1863 was still more marked in these respects. The building was so transformed that no trace of the original structure remained; ten thousand dollars were added to the permanent fund of the institution, and the apparatus was enlarged by the expenditure of eleven hundred dollars; and last and greatest, it would seem, by the presence of the teacher who had gained their confidence, and whose leadership they seemed to regard as essential to success. With this emphatic expression of confidence and regard, Mr. Hammond entered upon his last fifteen years of teaching on the very spot where his academic life began thirty-two years before.

The lives of teachers are not what we call eventful lives. They are not distinguished by Marathons and Thermopylæs, Trafalgars, nor Waterloos, nor do they share in the triumphs of the senate and of the forum; they do not achieve an ephemeral distinction by political leadership, nor convulse whole states and nations by "countings in" and "countings out." It is with mind in its nascent state that they are mainly concerned, and hence their work is often underrated and even despised. Agassiz once told me that he had stood on the Alps where he could throw a chip at his pleasure so that it would reach the German ocean along the tortuous course and down the cataracts of the Rhine, or float down the Rhone to sport upon the warm bosom of the Mediterranean, or trace the windings of the Danube until it should be tossed by the angry billows of the inhospitable Euxine. And Tyndall also tells us in one of his most interesting and startling paragraphs, that he has stood upon the Alps and seen the stone avalanches smoke and thunder down the ravines with a vehemence sufficient to stun the observer; and that he had seen the snow flakes descend so softly as not to harm the frail spangles of which they are composed; and yet in the formation of such an amount of these tender crystals as a child could grasp, there was employed an energy sufficient to gather the fragments of the largest stone avalanche and hurl it to twice the height from which it fell. In these physical facts we see symbolized the position and work

of the teacher. Just such has been his position in the moral and intellectual worlds, from Macedonia's madman to the Swede, from Alexander studying his Homer with Aristotle, to the Swedish Charles poring over his Quintus Curtius.

"To leave the name at which the world grew pale

To point a moral or adorn a tale."

We hold at our disposal thoughts, purposes, and motives which, at our will, may terminate in the widest extremes of character and conduct; and we control forces which may create or destroy states; may penetrate to new properties and functions of matter, new combinations of the elements, and point out broader generalizations than have hitherto been reached. Do I state the truth in these assertions, or am I merely indulging in the partialities and bluster of professional pride? Let us test these statements by facts drawn from the life which we commemorate. During Mr. Hammond's second term of service at Monson, there appeared for the first time in an American school-room, a subject of the oldest and most absolute despotism in the world, a disciple of Confucius, a representative of the uncounted millions of China. That boy was admitted to his school, and to his personal supervision. He fitted for an American college, gained its diploma, and returned to his countrymen resolved to replace by western science and western thought, the obsolete civilization based upon the philosophy of Confucius. It was a bold enterprise. The ambition of Phaëton was scarcely more daring; but it was successful, and in the wake of his influence and by the light of his example, scores of his countrymen have found their way to our schools and colleges. And now that lonely boy, ripened into a broad and Christian manhood, in company with another of his race, from the same teacher and the same school, is moving in the highest circles of diplomacy at Washington, a mediator between the oldest and the youngest of the nations, between sunrise and sunset.

Again, had you been on board an American vessel leaving Japan some twenty years ago, you might have detected, through a deep disguise, some Japanese boys with a purpose and a mission that would have been death if detected in their native land. These boys, also, were in a few months found at Monson, in the same school, and under the same personal influence.

The sequel need not be told. A part of it was seen in this very hall a few weeks since when some of the leading educators of the

State gathered to bestow their benedictions upon one from the Boston corps of instruction, who has gone to Japan to continue the work which Mr. Hammond began at Monson.

I do not forget that there have been other agencies at work. I do not forget with what parade of pomp and power our own government made forcible and yet peaceful entrance through the barriers which had been reared by national prejudice, custom, and law, around the islands which are now pressing to the very front in the march of improvement. I remember the short, sharp logic by which England opened the ports of China to the commerce of the world. I am aware that envoys and ambassadors have plied their wisdom and their cunning in this great action and reaction between the East and the West. But commerce is selfish, while it is friendly, and diplomacy is national and partisan. It is Christian learning alone that is humane and cosmopolitan, that overlooks the clan, the race, and the nation, as its great apostle did when he enlarged the sphere of Athenian vision on the Areopagus, to comprehend the great truth that there is one blood among all the nations of men and in all their bounds and habitations.

And this association would be careless in its work and false to its trust should it allow it to pass without notice, that one of its constituent members has long since solved the problem over which purblind statesmen and reckless demagogues had wasted the national treasure and honor and exhibited their own folly.

I have emphasized these facts in Mr. Hammond's career, not merely because of the importance which conspiring circumstances have given to them, but to bring into clear light the character of his whole life work. The work that he did for Yung Wing and his Chinese and Japanese associates was in no respect different in kind from what he did for every boy and girl who came under his tuition. Send a few educated and high-souled youths to China and Japan and those ancient depotisms begin to crumble and teem with new life. They appear great by contrast. Send the same to an enlightened state and they blend so quietly with its higher life that they almost escape notice.

The daily routine of school and academic life, and the annual recurrence of the same subjects as regularly as in our yearly round we pass the constellations of the firmament, may seem but the mere labor of the tread-mill, and in fact it is sometimes made so. But this routine of declension and conjugation, of comparison and

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