Claude M. Fuess
An Old New England School

CHAPTER XVII

CECIL F. P. BANCROFT: THE PERIOD OF EXPANSION AND REFORM

BORN for success he seemed
With grace to win, with heart to hold,
With shining gifts that took all eyes.

ON the very day when Tilton's note of resignation was read and accepted by the Trustees, they were able to agree upon his successor. Several of the members were acquainted with Cecil F. P. Bancroft, a young Dartmouth graduate, who for some months in 1867 had taught Latin in Phillips Academy and who, in 1873, was in Germany pursuing university work towards a degree. After a brief consideration of his qualifications the Trustees sent him a cable message to Halle, Germany, offering him the principalship, with a salary of $2500 a year and a house. In a reply dated April 10 Mr. Bancroft said in closing:

If no better man in the meantime willing to accept the position is found, and the Trustees still desire it, I will do the best I can. I wish the Trustees to recall the appointment, without the least hesitation as regards me personally, if the interests of the institution can thereby be promoted. . . Till I hear from you again I shall regard our engagement as binding upon me, but not binding upon you.

Upon receipt of a prompt answer from Dr. Sweetser, and also of some urgent letters from intimate friends acquainted with the situation at Andover, Mr. Bancroft on May 17 cabled his acceptance. In response to Dr. Sweetser's inquiries he gave his opinion that George H. Taylor ought to be retained as a teacher, "because of his thorough acquaintance with the best instruction and discipline of Andover"; and he also expressed the wish that, if a new instructor in modern languages were appointed, he should not be a foreigner, but "should be a man in every religious and social respect, as well as in scholarship, capable of taking and holding, before the pupils and among the teachers, a position quite equal to that of the best among us, redeeming the department --- as Professor Churchill has that of elocution in the Seminary --from the vagabond character it so often wears." Otherwise he made no stipulations or requests, but hastened to America to take up the work which was to prove the splendid opportunity of his life.

CECIL FRANKLIN PATCH BANCROFT

Cecil Bancroft was born November 25, 1839, in New Ipswich, New Hampshire, of plain and substantial country people, his parents being Deacon James Bancroft and Sarah (Kendall) Bancroft. At an early age he was practically, although not legally, adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Patch, of the neighboring town of Ashby, from whom he received the additional names of their own son who had recently died; thus the boy was known as Cecil Franklin Patch Bancroft, and acquired the three initials to which he so often jokingly referred. Partly through the generosity of the Patches, he attended the common schools of Ashby, and later the Appleton Academy at New Ipswich. He entered Dartmouth College in 1856, where, in spite of the fact that he taught at Groton during the winter terms, he made an excellent scholastic record, graduating in 1860 fourth in his class of sixty-five members. For the four years ensuing he was Principal of Appleton Academy(1) at Mont Vernon, New Hampshire, where one of his pupils was Miss Frances A. Kittredge, whom he afterwards married. For one year, 1864-65, he took courses at Union Theological Seminary in New York, --- incidentally getting some war experience in the course of a few months spent with the Christian Commission at the front, --- but then removed to Andover Theological Seminary, where he graduated in 1867. At this time he was recommended by Dr. Taylor as the ideal man to manage a "loyal, Christian New England school" for Southern whites recently established by C. G. Robert, of New York (later the founder of Robert College, Constantinople), at Lookout Mountain, Tennessee. Ordained at Mont Vernon May 1, 1867, Mr. Bancroft was married there five days later, and started at once with his bride for the South. At Lookout Mountain, despite the depressing difficulties and insults which a Northerner, in such an environment and engaged in such an enterprise, could not escape, Mr. Bancroft, through his tact and optimism, won popularity and gained a reputation which became known to his friends in New England. The school, which proved to be an expensive charity for the founder, had to be abandoned in 1872, and Mr. Bancroft, temporarily without a position, resolved to improve the year by foreign travel. Thus it was that the call to Phillips Academy found him three thousand miles or more away. On July 31, 1873, he arrived on Andover Hill, where he took possession of the apartments in "Double Brick" and began laying plans for the future.

The time has come, nearly twenty years after his death, when the twenty-eight years of Dr. Bancroft's administration can be weighed in the balance and judged upon their merits. The excessive praise often bestowed upon Dr. Taylor has frequently been accompanied by disparagement and neglect of Dr. Bancroft; and yet, if we are to estimate by results, if we are to compare the development of the school under the two great Principals, Dr. Bancroft's glory will not be dimmed. Men of a different type they were, as everybody knows. Dr. Bancroft, although he might, had he been able to remain within the classroom, have become as stimulating a teacher as his predecessor, was obliged to leave the business of instruction mainly in the hands of his competent Faculty, and he wisely directed his own energies to points where his efforts were sadly needed. Few people, in these prosperous days, realize the trying circumstances which Dr. Bancroft had to face. In 1876 he wrote, almost in despair: --

The Academy is in a place where two seas meet, and needs as never perhaps before in its history the wisdom, the efforts, and the prayers of its Trustees . . . . It is a question, not of the life or death of the school, but of its being of a first- or of a second-class grade.

He stated at this date that there were at least six preparatory schools in New England with a finer equipment than Phillips Academy. The Trustees were constantly running behind financially, so that in 1874, for the first and last time in its history, the authorities spent a small sum on advertising in the magazines. Furthermore, the reputation of the Academy in scholarship was getting perceptibly lower, and for some years altogether too large a number of boys failed in their examinations for college. It was essential that the school should regain the confidence of the public at large and in particular of the colleges to which it regularly sent students.

There has rarely been a case in educational history where a man has been so marvelously adapted to his position as Dr. Bancroft was to meet the problems confronting him. If "Intensity and Conservatism" were Dr. Taylor's watchwords, "Breadth and Progressiveness" were Dr. Bancroft's. The extent of his actual achievement may be briefly summarized: he found his school with two hundred and thirty-seven students, and left it with a record of an average attendance of considerably over four hundred for a period of more than ten years; he increased the size of the Faculty from eight men to twenty-two, and gathered around him a body of loyal and efficient teachers; he added largely to the endowment and was, through his personal efforts, responsible for securing several new buildings and bettering the equipment; he liberalized the curriculum without lowering the grade of instruction; and when he died, Phillips Academy, mainly through his influence, was a more virile and substantial institution than it had ever been before. All this he accomplished quietly, without drawing attention to his part in the transformation.

His was a mind which, as Emerson says, -

Labors and endures and waits
Till all that it foresees, it finds,
Or what it cannot find, creates.

It must be added, also, that he was always, even when severely tried, a courteous gentleman; that he governed firmly, but with justice and with comprehension of boy motives and temptations; and that under him young men met with fair play without losing the benefits which are bound to result from strict discipline wisely administered.

It is a mistake to imagine that Dr. Bancroft devoted himself entirely to the material development of Phillips Academy. At the first alumni dinner, held in Boston, March 4, 1886, he outlined his conception of the function of an ideal school: --

It has a definite and noble educational sphere: --- to train men, not to meet examinations, but for the career of after life, through years which are the years in which character sets, so that when they go to college, they shall have their character, and not be left to form it there.

To the fulfillment of this aspiration he subordinated every other aim. Like all the great Principals he was occupied largely with moral issues. The growing plant, the new dormitories, the increased prosperity were all desirable only in so far as they contributed to intellectual and religious ends. Here again, however, Dr. Bancroft was more tolerant, more liberal than his predecessors, for he could see virtues in other sects than Calvinists and Congregationalists, and he was far from feeling sure that "conversion" was essential to sound character. He sought simply to turn boys into clean-minded, healthy men, and he was not inclined to worry if they showed no tendency to link themselves with any particular creed or church.

The most insistent problem confronting the new Principal was one towards the solution of which Mr. Tilton had already made some progress; the problem, as Dr. Bancroft expressed it, of "bringing the Academy into perfect harmony and working cooperation with the various colleges and scientific schools and holding it there." The initial step was taken by a vote of the Trustees, May 20, 1874: --

Voted, that the Faculty prepare a four years' course of study, submit it by letter to each of the Trustees, revise it in view of their suggestions, and submit the same at the annual meeting.

In the catalogue for 1875 the traditional division into three classes was replaced by a four-year course, the additional class being called "Preparatory." Meanwhile Dr. Bancroft had devised a curriculum and had submitted it, not only to individual Trustees, but also to many college heads, including President Porter of Yale, President Robinson of Brown, President Stearns of Amherst, and President Eliot of Harvard. With President Eliot the Principal discussed the matter fully, and the two men came to a general agreement. The resulting carefully drawn plan was approved almost in its entirety, and the four-year course was thus permanently established.

Under Dr. Taylor, and to some extent under Mr. Tilton, examinations had been oral, much to the dismay of timid and inarticulate pupils. In 1874 Dr. Bancroft abolished formal oral tests, and inserted a paragraph in the catalogue: ---

Examinations conducted in writing are held monthly; and, at the end of the first and second terms, on the studies of the term; and, at the close of the year, with reference to promotion and graduation.

This change was undoubtedly hastened by the emphasis laid by colleges on written entrance examinations; but it also appealed to Dr. Bancroft as being far kinder and less terrifying to the boy. Furthermore, certain stipulated requirements for admission to Phillips Academy were instituted, and to these applicants were strictly held. This system was far more just to the student and far more beneficial to the school than the earlier method by which a candidate's fitness for admission was determined solely through a personal examination conducted in the Principal's office.

The next two decades saw a series of changes in the curriculum so striking that they completely transformed the course of study. Some of these were practically forced upon the Academy by a shifting of the emphasis in college entrance requirements; others were brought about through the shrewdness and foresight of Dr. Bancroft, who, as a wise opportunist, was on the lookout to anticipate the drift of public opinion. He said in 1883 at Exeter: ---

No school can permanently prosper which does not keep in view at every point the genius of the time, the requirements of the age in which it labors.

From the opening of his administration he had in mind a consistent policy to which, in general, he adhered, although he never insisted upon theories when he saw that there was no possibility of their acceptance. He was a builder, an originator, with a power of vision almost prophetic; but he also knew when it was useless to press a point, and he was willing to be patient for the sake of ultimately gaining his end.

One of the first anomalies to disappear was the arrangement by which the English Department was managed by a separate head, who made a special report of his own to the Trustees. When LaRoy Freese Griffin(2) (1844-1916) resigned in 1875 as Head of the English Department, his successor, George C. Merrill(3) (1845-82), was, at Dr. Bancroft's request, engaged with the understanding that he was to be merely Peabody Instructor. In this year also the Exhibitions of the two departments were consolidated. When, in 1884, the English course was lengthened to four years, it became possible to prepare boys for the higher scientific institutions, such as the recently founded Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and for the scientific courses in other older colleges. Before this time only an occasional student had gone to college from the English Department; after 1884, however, the number steadily increased until this department became as truly preparatory for college as the classical side itself. The trend of events was indicated in 1885 when the students voluntarily decided to give the Presidency of the Senior class during the winter term to a member of the English Department.

In the following years many of the comparatively useless subjects, survivals of a bygone age, were gradually dropped without comment from the curriculum of the English Department, until by 1893 it had been so simplified and transformed as no longer to resemble 'Squire Farrar's original design. The title "English Department," indeed, was now felt to be inaccurate, as well as a source of confusion with the newly organized "Department of English." A more satisfactory name, "Scientific Department," was accordingly given to it by official vote; thus the union, theoretically but not actually completed in 1842, was finally, over half a century later, really consummated. Since 1894 the two courses have been growing more and more alike, until to-day the distinctions between them are merely nominal.

In 1894 Dr. Bancroft succeeded in securing a completely systematized course of study, with a specified number of hours a week for each subject. When this had been accomplished, he could boast of having at last brought Phillips Academy into harmony with American educational institutions.

With this revision of the curriculum came another reform of great importance in school development. The Faculty became a body with some power and responsibility of its own. In Phillips Academy, as in many similar institutions, the Faculty has no legal authority, and no official voice in administration, except in so far as the Principal chooses to invite the cooperation of his colleagues. This, it will be remembered, Dr. Taylor had preferred not to do. Dr. Bancroft changed Phillips Academy from an autocracy to an oligarchy. Mr. Tilton had originated the Faculty meeting; Dr. Bancroft made it an important gathering, the opinions of which he respected, and, except in unusual situations, followed implicitly. The Faculty were regarded by him as acting, not only in an advisory, but also in an administrative, capacity.

The success of this policy was largely contingent upon the possibility of inducing teachers to accept permanent positions. From 1870 to 1875 every place on the Faculty of Phillips Academy had been twice vacant and twice filled. Dr. Taylor, as we have seen, had grumbled intermittently over the fact that his assistants were mere birds of passage; so Dr. Bancroft for a few years had constantly on his mind the "unsettled condition of the Faculty," which, he said, "has been so often disturbed since Dr. Taylor's death that no coherency has been possible." In his first annual report he added: --

Doing the advanced work now demanded renders it more important than ever that we have able and permanent teachers .... At first the discipline was administered in the name of the Principal, and by him, but recently the, Faculty as a body have voted and executed penalties. The latter course became practicable as the younger members of the corps became accustomed to their work.

It was the Principal's aim to engage as instructors men of promise who could be counted upon to remain if they were given reasonable salaries and allowed a sufficient degree of independence. This policy soon met with success little short of extraordinary. After Dr. Bancroft took office in 1873, teachers began to show a tendency to remain on Andover Hill. The Faculty no longer consisted mainly of men eager to escape at the first available opportunity to other schools, if not to more lucrative professions; many teachers, indeed, when presented with a choice, deliberately preferred to stay at Phillips Academy rather than to take up college work. The Principal was delighted when, in 1877, he could report that there was "no new element in the Faculty."

With a stable and continuous teaching force a uniform, progressive policy over a series of years was made possible. Upon the happy results of this improved situation Dr. Bancroft was never tired of expatiating. In 1885, when three of his best teachers had declined attractive offers by other institutions, he wrote: --

The betterment in the condition and prospects of the Academy is largely due to the permanent able teachers who have won recognition by their work so many years with us.

In 1887 he reiterated his opinion: -

I think the external prosperity of the Academy is due largely to the fact that we have had good teachers, well paid, promptly and fairly, and have kept them from year to year.

Doubtless the Principal's modesty led him to insist too much on this feature of school organization and too little upon his own part in creating such a situation; but certainly the men who were associated with him added greatly to the reputation of the Academy.

Dr. Bancroft, moreover, knew how to deal with his assistants. Dr. Taylor, as his own words show, kept a sharp surveillance over his teachers, and used regularly to visit and examine their classes, in order to assure himself that their duties were being satisfactorily performed. These inquisitorial methods resulted in more than one instance in embarrassment for young and inexperienced teachers, especially in the not infrequent cases when the Principal did not hesitate publicly to criticize classroom procedure and to remonstrate with an instructor in the presence of his pupils. Dr. Bancroft, who insisted on "the inviolability of the lecture-room from outside intrusion," made such supervision and inspection unfashionable. He believed that teachers should feel free to control recitations in their own individual ways; thus he wisely allowed them to establish their own methods, and was content to judge them by their results, by their power to arouse enthusiasm and to stimulate scholarship. Under this treatment able men appreciated their independence, and acquired confidence, knowing that they were not to be hampered by the imposition of another's pedagogical views. In Faculty meeting also Dr. Bancroft was equally tolerant, permitting unrestricted liberty to his assistants, accepting the opinion of each on its merits alone, and making each man realize that it was worth his while to contribute to the discussion out of his knowledge or experience. The Principal's unerring tact and skill in handling diverse personalities enabled him to lead without acting the tyrant. He thus seldom failed to get from his Faculty that personal devotion which, as President Eliot has said, is necessary to the best working of any institution.

When Phillips Academy opened in September, 1873, Dr. Bancroft had with him four of Mr. Tilton's staff: of these, George H. Taylor, whom Bancroft had advised the Trustees to retain, remained for two years; LaRoy F. Griffin, the Peabody Instructor, also left in 1875; Professor Oscar Faulhaber remained only one year; and the fourth, Professor Churchill, was fortunately to be Bancroft's associate for many years to come. It was the new Principal's undisguised intention to waste no time in building up a Faculty of his own, on which he could rely implicitly. Three instructors he engaged almost at once: one, John Mason Tyler (1851-), could be kept only a year, and is now the brilliant Professor of Biology at Amherst College; another, Edward Gustin Coy(4) (1844-1904), developed at Phillips Academy into one of the great teachers of his generation; and the third, Matthew Scoby MeC urdy (1849-), is still connected with the school as Instructor in Mathematics, after nearly forty-five years of continuous service.

With Professor Coy and Mr. McCurdy the Principal had a nucleus for a loyal and efficient faculty. He tried assiduously to secure young and active men, and when he had found a teacher to his liking, he used every effort to prevent his escape. In 1874 came David Young Comstock(5) (1852-), who, almost contemporaneous with Professor Coy at Andover, became as famous in Latin as Coy was in Greek. Coy and Comstock, with Professor Graves, who returned to Phillips Academy in 1881 as Peabody Instructor, constituted the so-called "triumvirate," who governed the school for one year during the Principal's trip abroad.

A plan so decidedly at variance with previous procedure was naturally not perfected without some difficulties. Feeble and unintelligent teachers were occasionally added to the staff by mistake; good men could not always be retained, especially when the financial inducements were limited. But gradually Dr. Bancroft managed to reduce the number of instructors who stayed for one year only; and, as exigencies arose, the Faculty steadily increased in size. By 1886 their number had increased to ten, by 1892 to fifteen, and by 1896 to twenty. Many of the group, of course, made only a slight impression on community or academic life, and, with their withdrawal, were soon forgotten. In general, however, they were far more influential and efficient than the assistants under any earlier Principal. Only a few of them can be mentioned here. In 1880 Mr. George Thomas Eaton (1856-), son of James S. Eaton and brother of another teacher, William W. Eaton, came to Phillips Academy, at first as Instructor in Chemistry and Rhetoric, but later in Mathematics; from that date until the present time his service has been unbroken. Moses Clement Gile(6) (1858-1916), for nine years an instructor, is still remembered with affection by his students. Of those who once taught in the school and who are at work to-day in other institutions or professions a few should be named: Henry W. Boynton, now an author and critic; H. C. Bierwirth and Clifford H. Moore, professors in Harvard; Walter R. Newton, professor in Rutgers; William H. Terrill; and George D. Pettee. Others there are, perhaps the majority, who have not cared to leave Andover Hill. Of the seventeen men listed on the Faculty in the year 1892-93, seven still remain in 1917, with a record of a quarter of a century behind them. Of the twenty-two printed in the catalogue for 1901-02, thirteen are teaching in the Academy to-day. These statistics demonstrate how successfully Dr. Bancroft established his principle that the Faculty should be a permanent and continuous body.

It is significant, also, that Dr. Bancroft came more and more to see the desirability of increased specialization in teaching. On the rapidly waning theory of Dr. Taylor a young man fresh from college was often shifted arbitrarily from one subject to another, on the assumption, apparently, that any Bachelor of Arts ought to be able to give adequate instruction in any preparatory school course. The endowment of two chairs, one in natural sciences and the other in Latin, made easier the adoption of a radically different policy. Dr. Bancroft himself had no great confidence in would-be teachers who were mere Doctors of Philosophy; nevertheless he saw the necessity of reform. Long before his death he had so revolutionized the system that each instructor confined himself largely to one subject, English, or mathematics, or Greek, with the realization that it was his business to perfect himself as a specialist in that field. An interesting example of the situation before the anomalies were cleared up is the case of M. Clement Gile, who came in 1883-84, during Professor Coy's absence, to teach Greek; in the following year his province was "English studies"; in 1885 it was "English studies and Latin"; in 1887 it was "Latin"; and in 1888 it was "Latin and French." Mr. Gile, moreover, was an exceptionally able teacher. In 1894 Dr. Bancroft reported:---

At present Mr. McCurdy, Professor Moore, Mr. Pettee, Mr. Stone, Mr. Forbes, and Mr. Boynton have strictly departmental work. Professor Graves and Mr. Eaton approach it, but they do more or less work not strictly related to their main work. The difficulty of the time-table and the unevenness of the size of the classes, some requiring two divisions and others being not unmanageable in one division, and, thirdly, the amount of work in some subjects not being sufficient to engage all the time of a teacher, prevent, and probably always will prevent, the full introduction of departmental work.

For some years Dr. Bancroft struggled to retain in his own hands all the increasing labor of administration and also to teach seventeen hours a week. However, the burden of the routine office duty eventually proved too fatiguing for even his almost tireless mind and body, and by 1893 he had given up all classroom instruction except one division in Virgil's Æneid. As the school grew larger, he was compelled against his own desire to delegate many responsibilities to his teachers. He originated what is known to-day as the system of "class officers," by which an experienced member of the Faculty is assigned to each class, and entrusted with the arrangement of suitable schedules for the boys under his care. Each class officer soon came to be in a large sense identified with the work and the boys of the class in his charge.

During all the earlier years of his régime, and, to some extent, up to the time of his death, Dr. Bancroft, like Dr. Taylor, carried on all the office correspondence, even that on trivial subjects, in long-hand, there being no stenographers or clerks to assist him. In 1888, however, the position of Secretary of the Faculty was entrusted to Mr. George D. Pettee, who, in 1892, became Registrar. Mr. Pettee created an accurate and comprehensive system of- record-keeping; he kept on permanent file reports of grades, absences, and demerits, sent regular letters to parents, and answered all inquiries with regard to such statistics. The class officers, moreover, gradually took into their own hands a considerable share of the routine correspondence. All these changes, each in the direction of increased specialization, afforded the Principal no small relief from drudgery; but even with this aid he was often needlessly worried over unimportant details.

We have seen, then, how Dr. Bancroft satisfactorily carried out two of his chief aims: first, "to bring the Academy into perfect harmony and working cooperation with the various colleges and scientific schools, and hold it there"; second, "to get teachers who are both able and willing to remain with us, giving to us not alone their 'prentice work, but also their highest and best professional work in the glory and pride of their teaching powers." Still another problem of serious moment confronted him: to add to the material equipment of the school, to make the living quarters more comfortable and commodious, and to enlarge the endowment so that current expenses could be met without embarrassment. His achievements in this last field, no less important than his reforms in scholarship and administration, deserve the attention of a separate chapter.

 

CHAPTER XVIII

THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION;
MATERIAL DEVELOPMENT UNDER DR. BANCROFT

Growth is the only evidence of life.

To those who knew Phillips Academy and had watched its progress, the early years of Dr. Bancroft must have seemed very discouraging. In the first place, the attendance gradually but steadily declined, until in 1877 the enrollment was only 177, the smallest since 1842. For this falling-off no decisive cause can be cited. Probably the noticeable change in policy instituted by the new Principal weakened temporarily the public confidence in the school. Dr. Bancroft himself in his report for 1876 attributed the situation partly to the rise of other competing institutions like Williston Seminary and Worcester Academy, partly to "the unsettled condition of the Faculty," and partly to the failure of Andover boys to do well in college entrance examinations. In the second place, the Academy was running behind financially from $3000 to $5000 a year, and debts were accumulating. The $15,000 due on the Main Building in 1865 had, in ten years, increased to $29,000 simply through unpaid interest charges. Almost no money in the way of gifts was coming in: in 1876 Dr. Ebenezer Alden, of the Trustees, gave $1000 as a nucleus for a sinking fund; the Samuel H. Taylor Memorial Fund, collected mainly by William H. Halsted, reached the sum of $3850, the interest of which was paid to Mrs. Taylor until her death, May 12, 1878, when $3600 reverted to Phillips Academy as a fund for the benefit of poor students. But the contributions so badly needed for the general endowment did not seem to be forthcoming.

So far as buildings were concerned, also, the school was at a disadvantage. Andover Theological Seminary was well equipped, fully supplied with houses and dormitories; Phillips Academy had for its own merely the new Main Building, the eleven old Commons dormitories, the old Brick Academy (in, use as a gymnasium), and a few scattered buildings of no importance. The Trustees, as the Records and Dr. Bancroft's correspondence show conclusively, were more interested in the Seminary than in the Academy. Everywhere the Principal met with obstacles. His proposals were viewed with suspicion, and sometimes dismissed in curt phrases; but in the face of indifference he never ceased to present to his colleagues on the Board the immediate needs of Phillips Academy.

In the approaching centennial of the school in 1878 Dr. Bancroft saw his chief hope of success. As early as 1875 he mentioned the coming anniversary to the Board, and suggested that it must be observed with appropriate ceremony. In June, 1877, a committee was appointed for making the necessary plans, the chairman being the Reverend Edward G. Porter(1) (1837-1900), of Lexington, with the Reverend Francis H. Johnson, of Andover, and Dr. Bancroft as the other members. Dr. Bancroft, whose enthusiasm was earnest and infectious, did much more than his allotted share of the preparation. A large number of subcommittees were named, under whose direction the various details were discussed and arranged for. The town of Andover, when invited by the Trustees to participate in the celebration, appointed a large special committee, with Chief Justice Marcus Morton as chairman, under which were smaller groups delegated for specific purposes. To the fund required 242 donors subscribed the sum of $2024.85, and the additional cost, amounting to $897.02, was generously contributed by Deacon Peter Smith. Nearly a hundred families in the town put their homes at the disposal of the committee for the entertainment of guests. Under Dr. Bancroft's tactful guidance all went smoothly, and no friction was perceptible.

The celebration, which finally took place on June 5 and 6, 1878, proved to be the most notable event of that sort in the history of Phillips Academy. The streets and residences were lavishly decorated with flags and bunting; historic sites on the Hill and in the town were marked by draped inscriptions; the Campus was illuminated at night with Chinese lanterns hung from the old elms, and a full moon made the scene still more impressive. On Wednesday afternoon, June 5, the programme opened with the twelfth annual Draper Speaking in the Academy Hall, followed by the presentation of the portraits of seven distinguished men connected with the school: Ebenezer Pemberton, Samuel Williston, Horatio B. Hackett, Osgood Johnson, James S. Eaton, Lieutenant S. H. Thompson, and Frederic W. Tilton. In the evening the crowd gathered in a huge tent or pavilion with a seating capacity of 3500 people, which had been set up on the Training-Field, the open park in front of the Mansion House. The exercises here were partly musical: but they included also an address of welcome by Dr. Bancroft, with a response on behalf of the alumni by the Reverend William Adams, son of Principal John Adams, and an interesting and scholarly historical address, The Annals of Phillips Academy, delivered by the Reverend William E. Park(2) (1837-1910), son of Professor Edwards A. Park. In preparing this paper Dr. Park collected and preserved much valuable material concerning the early days of the school.

THE CHAPEL

THE FARRAR HOUSE AT THE CENTENNIAL IN 1878

On the morning of Thursday, June 6, a Phillips Academy Alumni Association was formed with a membership of over three hundred, the Honorable George O. Shattuck, of Boston, being elected President. The programme in the pavilion for that day included an oration by the Reverend Alexander McKenzie, and the reading by Oliver Wendell Holmes of his poem, The School Boy, written especially for the occasion. About noon a procession was formed which, headed by General William Cogswell as Chief Marshal and the Boston Cadet Band, marched from Main Street, through Chapel Avenue and up the Elm Arch, to a second large tent on the Training-Field, containing places for 1556 at the dining-tables. Here after luncheon many speeches were delivered, with Professor Churchill acting in his usual witty manner as toastmaster. Among those who responded were Governor Rice of the Commonwealth, Dr. E. K. Alden, Dr. Phillips Brooks, General H. K. Oliver, President Charles W. Eliot, Professor Park, Josiah Quincy, President Porter of Yale, President Bartlett of Dartmouth, the Honorable Gustavus V. Fox, and others, alumni and guests. In the evening a reception was held, with reunions of the various classes --- and the long programme was over.

The story of a hundred years was closed. The volume of Records, in which Clerk Jonathan French over a century before had inscribed the memorable words of the Constitution, was now, by a curious coincidence, exactly completed. On the last page was placed the following minute, from Dr. Bancroft's easy and felicitous pen: --

The Trustees, assembled this day at the Mansion House, review with thankfulness and exultation the historic facts, that more than 9000 students have enjoyed its advantages; that it is richly honored in its alumni, among whom are many distinguished merchants, manufacturers, inventors, scientists, college presidents and professors, doctors of medicine, statesmen, diplomats, missionaries, and ministers of the Gospel; that large numbers of its graduates have risen to high places of trust and honor; that not a few, for various eminent services, have been placed on the roll of the most distinguished men of our age, and that the Academy has been a fountain of measureless influences which through many channels have flowed forth for the good of our country and the world.

In many other ways also this Centennial Celebration marked the opening of a new era in the history of Phillips Academy. Dr. Bancroft had insisted that an organized effort should be made to raise at least $100,000. There was, unfortunately, no direct descendant of Judge Phillips able or willing to come to the aid of the school in its hour of need; but a member of another branch of the family, John Charles Phillips(3) (1838-85), gave $25,000 to establish a professorship of Latin. In a letter to the Trustees enclosing the promised check Mr. Phillips said: --

It gives me the greatest joy to tender this gift in the belief that it will be of material benefit in helping to build up and place upon a more solid foundation an academy of learning, founded by members of my family, in which I received my early education, and whose future career I shall always follow with the liveliest interest.

In recognition of Mr. Phillips's timely generosity the Trustees sent him a special letter of thanks, closing as follows: --

The Trustees. . . recognize the beautiful harmony between the beginning and the end of the first century in the Academy's history. On the first page of its records, under date of May, 1777, stands the honored name of John Phillips; and now in 1877, that one similar in name, and of the family of the founders, should come forward and repeat the strain, "Knowledge and goodness united form the noblest character, and lay the surest foundation of usefulness to mankind," is as remarkable as it is pleasing.

The further sum of $3,288.81 was made up by gifts from many friends of the school, including $10,000 from Joshua M. Sears(4) (1854-1905), $5000 from William O. Grover, and smaller amounts from other gentlemen. The largest contribution at the centennial, however, was the "Peter Smith Byers Endowment Fund" of $40,000, the income of which was to be "forever used for the support and maintenance of the Principal for the time being of Phillips Academy." The creators of this fund were Peter Smith, of Andover, who gave $20,000; his brother, John Smith, of Andover, who gave $10,000; and John Byers,(5) of New York, their nephew, who gave $10,000. The fund was intended as a memorial for Mr. Byers's brother, Peter Smith Byers,(6) whose premature death in 1856, when he was still under thirty, had been a sad blow to his family.

The donations which thus so unexpectedly and so rapidly filled the empty coffers compelled the Trustees to ask the General Court for an increase in their holding power; accordingly, by an act passed March 8, 1880, the Board was authorized to hold real estate amounting to $500,000 and personal property up to $1,000,000. The tale of gifts, moreover, was not yet ended. On June 18, 1881, came a check for $5000 in payment of a legacy to the school of Dr. Ebenezer Alden, of Randolph, a Trustee from 1837 until 1881. In March, 1882, through the influence of William H. Willcox(7) (1821-1904), a member of the Board and, after 1879, the almoner of Mrs. Valeria G. Stone,(8) a wealthy widow of Malden, Massachusetts, the "Stone Educational Fund" of $25,000 was tendered to Phillips Academy, with the stipulation that, during Mrs. Stone's lifetime, the income should be paid to her, but that, after her death, it should be devoted to the aid of poor students. After Mrs. Stone's death, January 15, 1884, the money became available for school purposes.

Meanwhile the attendance, which had reached almost its nadir in 1877, responded to the stimulus of the centennial and grew steadily, reaching 246 in 1882 and 266 in 1883. A year later it passed the 300 mark, and in 1892 it jumped for the first time to over 400. This increase was not a sudden spurt, but a gradual and natural growth due to causes far from inexplicable.

This gratifying prosperity was reflected in the confident optimism of the Principal, who, in his report for 1883, outlined very clearly the extent of the advance made in the preceding decade: --

I have been tempted to make some comparisons between the situation of the Academy and its prospects today, and the same ten years ago. It will be sufficient to say that a steadfast policy of "good material and good work"; an able and zealous faculty more stable and better paid than in any previous decade; the generous outpouring of gifts; the careful husbanding of resources and the creation of resources by the Trustees, have been crowned by a marked blessing from above. Our Yale examinations last year were of such a character as to elicit remarkable commendation and praise from the professors in charge. Harvard speaks less disparagingly of our students, and we are no longer in seeming antagonism with their methods and demands. Amherst, through the Dean, writes that no boys are better prepared, or a more desirable contingent to their college.

With many indications of outward prosperity, and a gratifying increase abroad, with much improvement in internal working, the Faculty feel, as none others can, that the work has just begun, and more consecrated work, more equipments, more money, are necessary to carry forward the interests of this old and honored school, and realize the comprehensive aims of the far-seeing Founders.

There were other indications, also, that the lean years had been left behind. The Samuel H. Taylor Memorial Library, started shortly after Dr. Taylor's death, had been augmented in 1876 by a gift from his sister, Mrs. Horace Fairbanks, of St. Johnsbury, Vermont, who presented to the Trustees her brother's collection of classical books, numbering nearly two thousand in all. By 1883 the volumes had increased to nearly three thousand. In the summer of 1882 the Trustees yielded to Dr. Bancroft's insistent demands and erected a small chemical laboratory at a cost of $8000. This was a brick structure, the east wing of the present Graves Hall. On March 8, 1883, it was formally opened with speeches by Professor Graves, Mr. George T. Eaton, and several members of the Senior class. In March, 1884, the ground was staked out for the Principal's Office(9) (now occupied by the Phillips Club), on Main Street north of "Double Brick," and it was completed in the summer of 1885. It had quarters for both Treasurer and Principal, and there every morning in term time Dr. Bancroft was found at his desk, busy with papers and letters, interviewing anxious parents, and chiding recalcitrant boys. The old Treasurer's Office, a small house built by 'Squire Farrar on the land between his own residence and the Park House, was moved in 1885 to the northeast corner of the Old Campus, where, at the suggestion of the Phillipian, it was transformed into a reading-room. The expense of the magazines and periodicals was paid by the students, who, at the opening of each fall term, auctioned off the publications to the highest bidder. For some years a reading-room manager was elected by the boys. Smoking was allowed there, and many sensitive youngsters complained of the foul atmosphere and dirty floors. For some years, also, an athletic store was maintained in one half of the building, and it became a center for undergraduate loafers.

The debt on the Main Building, which had been a burden for nearly twenty years, was finally canceled at the closing of accounts, April 30, 1885; thus a considerable financial problem was removed from the Treasurer's mind. On June 23 of that year a marble bust of Dr. Samuel H. Taylor, presented by his sister, Miss Emma L. Taylor, was unveiled, with a neat presentation speech on behalf of Miss Taylor by Professor John W. Churchill.

Certain alterations and improvements in the Seminary plant at about this period were eventually to prove important to Phillips Academy. As early as 1864 an anonymous gentleman had pledged $20,000 to the Trustees for the erection of a chapel, and a foundation had actually been dug; unfortunately, however, the donor met with reverses in business and was unable to fulfill his promise; the work, therefore, had to be discontinued. In 1875 subscription papers were circulated, with active soliciting by the theological professors and with happy results, and the cornerstone was laid(10) on July 1, 1875. This Seminary Church, the cost of which was $46,333.24, was dedicated on October 2, 1876, with a sermon by Professor Egbert C. Smyth. It is now the Chapel of Phillips Academy.

In the spring of 1880 the old farmhouse built by Judge Phillips on the corner of Main and Phillips Streets, and then occupied by the well-known Deacon Holbrook Chandler(11) (1820-86), was moved to the north side of Morton Street, and on the site was placed a modern "Queen Anne" dwelling,(12) strangely out of harmony with the colonial President's House next door. Here Professor William J. Tucker, afterwards President of Dartmouth College, made his home for many years; it is this house also which is described in Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's novel, A Singular Life, as the home of Professor Carruth and his daughter Helen. In 1881, also, the stately Farrar House, which, since 1812, had stood on the opposite corner of Main and Phillips Streets, was moved down Phillips Street to its present location, and in its place was erected a second "Queen Anne" residence(13) intended for Professor Churchill. These buildings are now owned and used by Phillips Academy.

The Mansion House, after its transformation into a tavern, became the logical center of social life on the Hill: there the Trustees continued to hold their meetings and to dine sedately together; there also the boys held their more noisy banquets on festive occasions. Under its roof many distinguished visitors to Andover were sheltered: Lafayette, Emerson, Webster, Jackson, Pierce, Wendell Phillips, James G. Blame, Beecher, Holmes, Ole Bull, Mark Twain, Phillips Brooks, William Dean Howells, and scores of others. Itself unscathed, it had weathered storm after storm, and had watched other apparently less perishable buildings go up in flames. Its second century, however, was hardly well started when, on the early morning of November 29, 1887, an incendiary kindled fires in several different sections of the tavern. The proprietor, Charles L. Carter, rode posthaste from his estate at Carter's Hill, but, although firemen and students labored for hours, it was soon apparent that the blaze could not be halted. By morning nothing was left of the historic structure but the tall brick chimneys looming up like gaunt apparitions among charred beams and débris. The huge lock and key, rescued by some careful antiquarian, were preserved; a bit of paneling saved by an old resident is now and then shown in an Andover home; but most of the valuable contents were destroyed.(14) Many precious memories and associations perished in that conflagration; indeed, to many people Andover Hill afterward was never quite the same.

Still another ancient landmark was also doomed. The Abbot House on Phillips Street, where Judge Phillips and Eliphalet Pearson had lived and where the Constitution of Phillips Academy had been signed, had gradually been falling into decay. Used for many years as a boarding-house, it had not been repaired or renovated, and experts pronounced it unsafe to live in. On December 9, 1889, workmen started to tear down the walls, and before the year was over, nothing remained but the stone cellar. This building, which was old when the Phillips School was opened in 1778, was almost the last structure on Andover Hill dating from the previous century.

The destruction of the Mansion House left the Hill temporarily without an inn; but the deficiency was supplied when Mr. Carter, the former proprietor of the Mansion house, was given the lease of the Stowe House on Chapel Avenue and remodeled it as a hotel, still under the somewhat inappropriate name of the Mansion House. In 1893 the Trustees spent about $22,000 for the addition of a wooden west wing to the original building; and when this was completed, Mr. E. P. Hitchcock replaced Mr. Carter as landlord.

Under his management and that of his successors, Mr. Charles Ripley and Mr. John M. Stewart, the Phillips Inn, as it soon came to be called, has been an indispensable part of the school equipment.

All these alterations and changes, desirable though they were, actually affected the needs of Phillips Academy only very slightly. The school was like a lanky boy of fourteen who has grown so rapidly that all his clothes are too small for him and who requires, not only a larger hat and collar, but a complete rehabilitation if he is to make a presentable appearance. New recitation halls, a more commodious assembly hall, larger and better dormitories --- all these were absolutely necessary. Dr. Bancroft soon learned that prosperity, like adversity, has its peculiar problems, and that a progressive institution cannot afford to let itself seem shabby.

It was in his report for 1879, when the wear and stress of the centennial were over and he had achieved in part his aim of strengthening the endowment, that Dr. Bancroft opened fire on a topic already well worn --- the amelioration of dormitory conditions. In outlining his views he wrote somewhat forcibly: --

As compared with Easthampton, Exeter, St. Johnsbury, New London, Wilbraham, Dean, St. Paul's, and several other academies, our accommodations are mean, expensive, and very unattractive. The unsightliness of Commons is of little account, but it is too true that our supervision of them is insufficient, that the care of the rooms is left to the boys entirely, even to the removal of waste water and ashes, the sweeping, bed-making, and cleaning. . . I know how difficult it is to improve accommodations without increasing the general scale of expense, but if the Academy is to be a great educational establishment, it must regard the physical, moral, and æsthetic requirements of its pupils, and it may be a serious question whether we are not sanctioning or tolerating conditions too perilous to the manners, morals, and health of the boys. I do not wish to be misunderstood. It is a part of a boy's education to build his own fires, no doubt; it may be to black his boots, bring his water, and sweep his room. No room, however, can be too bright or cheerful for his Dining Hall, no bread and meat too good for his young and growing brain, and no teacher can be too solicitous as to his companions and friendships, his industry, order, and piety.

This statement was but the beginning of a long campaign, in which the Principal, by argument, entreaty, and insistence, used every means to gain his desires. In a letter written December 2, 1884, he made specific suggestions: --

Our present Commons must be replaced by more commodious buildings. They are built on the right plan ... but the Farrar plan, so excellent, so prophetic, was poorly carried out. It is a marvel that only one of the twelve houses has been burnt. The walls are thin, the staircases too narrow, the outward appearance is ugly and poverty-stricken, the rooms all too small, with ceilings too low. As soon as we can get $5000 for the purpose, we want to put up a cottage which will be all that such a structure can be, pleasing in appearance, convenient, roomy without pretension, of the best materials, built on sanitary principles, and a perfect home for twelve high-minded boys, whose business is to get an education.

Faculty inspection of the Commons, never taken very seriously, had become a farce. About 1880 a committee made a perfunctory visit every Friday noon. At Faculty meeting the oral report of this committee was usually received with smiles. Dr. Bancroft told gleefully of the occasion when he guided over Andover Hill a prominent statesman who was thinking of sending his son either to Exeter or to Andover. The great man struggled up and down the winding Commons staircases, smelt the unedifying odors and saw the unattractive sights; then, turning to Dr. Bancroft, he said, "Well, sir, this school is the place for my boy." "Good," replied the Principal. "Yes," continued the visitor, "any institution which can keep the fine reputation which Andover has, and yet lodge its students in such disreputable barracks, must have about it some miraculous quality which I want my son to learn to know."

The catalogues of this period were not all deceptive:

The accommodations provided in Commons are very plain, and intended expressly for those who wish to make their expenses small.

Not many complaints, however, emanated from the boys. Despite the somewhat unsanitary and primitive conditions under which they lived, most of them were willing to forego luxury in return for their feeling of independence. There was also about the weather-beaten buildings an indefinable atmosphere of romance, which made their occupants, however much they grumbled, really reluctant to leave. The wind howled terribly around the corners and whistled through the cracks on February nights; but there were always friends near by to join in talk around the stove and there were weird adventures in which to lend a hand. Few of those who once spent student days within those walls would, in the retrospect, be without that experience.

One Trustee said at an annual meeting, somewhat jocularly, that the cost of the glass broken in Commons every year was greater than that of the entire group of buildings. In the fall term of 1889 over two hundred panes were knocked out, nearly all in a single ferocious skirmish. Now and then, as if to allay criticism, a broken sash was repaired or a rotted board replaced. In the summer of 1890, indeed, $2000 was expended in improvements: rooms were painted and papered so that the interior looked clean and bright, and the names and numerals on the outside walls were covered with fresh paint. Andoverians began to feel that all hope of removing the Commons had vanished forever.

Dr. Bancroft in one of his few despondent moods had just written, "We are weakest, it seems to me now, on the material side." At this moment there occurred an incident, apparently trivial and unimportant, but in reality of far-reaching consequence. The first dinner of the New York Alumni Association was held on March 31, 1891, in the Hotel Brunswick, and an especial effort had been made to have a successful meeting. An elaborate printed programme containing good illustrations of school buildings, old and new, was provided, and the list of speakers was unusually interesting. It happened that Mr. Alpheus H. Hardy, then Treasurer of the Trustees, made a brief address, in the course of which he remarked incidentally that graduates might well give to Phillips Academy money for the erection of buildings, accepting from the Trustees an annuity of five per cent on the investment while they lived and bequeathing the property to the school at their deaths. This suggestion caught the attention of a gentleman present, Mr. Melville Cox Day(15) (1839-1913), who, after having accumulated a considerable fortune in the law, was now about to retire from active practice and who, having no near relatives to whom to leave his money, was ready to listen to a proposition like Mr. Hardy's, which had to do with the welfare of his former school. Before definitely deciding on his course of action, however, he consulted his intimate friend, Professor John Phelps Taylor, who, through his residence in Andover and his knowledge of the needs of Phillips Academy, was well qualified to give him advice. Professor Taylor at once assured Mr. Day that the latter could not do better than to further Dr. Bancroft's plans, and Mr. Day, who was familiar with the Commons as they were in 1857-58, was easily amenable to this suggestion. He therefore made to Mr. Hardy in May, 1891, a formal offer of $8000 for a new cottage, and the gift was accepted by the Trustees on June 8. In September ground was broken on Phillips Street nearly opposite Farrar House, and the construction was completed in April, 1893. In the following autumn it was occupied by students, with Mr. William H. Terrill as the Faculty proctor. Meanwhile Mr. Day, on January 2, 1892, had sent his check for the promised sum, together with the request that the building be named "Taylor Cottage," after his friend, Professor John Phelps Taylor. The architect, A. W. Longfellow, of Boston, had arranged the interior to accommodate the same number as each of the Commons dormitories; there were thus six suites containing two or three rooms, so that, under normal circumstances, ten boys and an instructor could be housed comfortably. The modern dormitory system for which Dr. Bancroft had labored since 1879 was at last under way.

Meanwhile the question of the needs of Phillips Academy had become so acute that it was being agitated in Andover itself, by Professor John Phelps Taylor(16) (1841-1915) as a leader, and other prominent citizens. The Phillipian for February 12, 1890, complained that Andover Theological Seminary had nine professors, two lecturers, and a librarian for forty-eight students, while Phillips Academy had twelve teachers for three hundred and sixty students. Two articles in the Andover Townsman, by Professor Taylor and Warren F. Draper, resulted in a large mass meeting on May 21, 1891, in the Town Hall, at which Colonel George Ripley was the presiding officer. It was announced, amid great enthusiasm, that Miss Emily Carter, of Andover, had collected over $1600 to be used as the nucleus of a fund for a new dormitory. After some stirring speeches, many citizens offered pledges, and, before the day was over, $691.34 had been contributed to what Professor Churchill called "Father Phil's subscription list." At seven o'clock that evening the boys marched to Miss Carter's home and cheered her lustily, and she responded in a stirring talk. The Andover Cottage thus made possible by townspeople was started in May, 1892, and finished January 3, 1893. Still another cottage was provided by Mr. Warren F. Draper, the Andover publisher, who took advantage of Mr. Hardy's suggestion by offering to erect a dormitory on condition that an annuity be paid to his wife until her death.(17) This Draper Cottage was located in the row of English Commons, not far from School Street. In 1892 Mr. Day, pleased with his first gift, presented money for another similar building, which was finished in 1893. This dormitory was known as "Bancroft Cottage" until 1901, when, with the completion of the larger Bancroft Hall, it was renamed "Eaton Cottage," in memory of James S. Eaton.

JOHN PHELPS TAYLOR

TAYLOR HALL

So it was that Phillips Academy within two years acquired four new brick cottages, modern in construction, fire-proof, comfortably heated, and attractive in appearance. The school was at last launched on one of Dr. Bancroft's favorite policies --- that of housing the maximum number of boys in buildings owned or controlled by the Trustees. The theory was clearly stated in the catalogue for 1894, which describes the four cottages then existing as "the partial realization of a plan to replace, as fast as funds are provided for the purpose, the present Latin and English Commons with modern buildings, combining approved sanitary arrangements with comfortable and homelike rooms, as favorable as possible to the best student life."

The results of this arrangement upon school government were to be comprehensive. As Dr. Bancroft was well aware, Faculty supervision was bound to become more effective. With a teacher in each cottage, as a permanent proctor, student exuberance could easily be restrained, and the eight o'clock rule could be enforced without difficulty. Under the old system, or lack of system, offenses against discipline, even when flagrant, were hard to detect unless the instructors were willing to resort, as they were often compelled to do in self-defense, to vicious methods of espionage. The new plan meant also that teachers and boys would be brought more closely together, and that this intimacy would make for a better understanding between them.

The revival of Mr. Day's interest in the school led to his becoming the greatest individual benefactor of Phillips Academy. It is no exaggeration to say that the present splendid equipment would have been impossible but for his long continued generosity. The dormitory system was Dr. Bancroft's conception, but had it not been for Mr. Day, it would have remained an idle vision. To these men we owe it that, in 1917, fully three fourths of the students live under direct Faculty supervision.

Mr. Day was extraordinarily modest, and habitually avoided all reference to his gifts. On one of his rare visits to Andover, in June, 1891, the boys, headed by the Glee Club, marched to Professor Taylor's home, sang and cheered, and finally induced Mr. Day to make a brief speech in response. An incident of this sort convinced him that his generosity was deeply appreciated. On January 12, 1898, without any previous warning, he wrote to Mr. Hardy: --

Would the Phillips Trustees care to have another cottage with an annuity attached to it? And if so, and if I would furnish the necessary funds, would they agree something to this effect, viz. that all receipts or incomes from the Taylor or Bancroft and other cottages I may furnish the means to build shall be kept separate as say "The Cottage Fund"; that out of this fund all expenses for care, insurance, repairs, and interest on the sum presented by me shall be paid and that any surplus shall not be devoted to any other purpose except with the mutual consent of myself and the Treasurer of the Trustees?

Mr. Hardy was able to assure the donor that the Board was quite willing to comply with his not very severe stipulations. Foundations were soon excavated on Phillips Street, opposite the Latin Commons, for this new dormitory, which was a large structure, arranged as if three smaller cottages, like Andover or Draper, were joined in one. It was finally completed in 1900 at a cost of $42,375.13, and dedicated as "Bancroft Hall."(18)

In carrying out his designs for modern dormitories Dr. Bancroft had been blessed with good fortune. There were other needs, too, which he could not evade. The rapid expansion of the school was putting an excessive strain on the English or Scientific Department, which lacked room for recitations. The small laboratory erected in 1882 soon became inadequate. When chemical experiments were carried on in the basement of the Academy Building, the fumes were almost stifling. On September 2, 1891, the Trustees voted to make an addition to the Science Building, and by the autumn of 1892 the completed structure, now known as "Graves Hall," was ready for use.

Until the construction of Taylor Cottage there had been literally no place owned by Phillips Academy where students could bathe, and boys were fortunate, indeed, who had access to the set tubs in private houses. In the primitive gymnasium located in the old Brick Academy the apparatus was rusty and out of order, and there were no baths, either tub or shower, and no washstands. It is a miracle that the boys did not start a rebellion. At a school meeting held on May 20, 1891, they did take matters somewhat into their own hands by pledging over $1500 towards a gymnasium fund. When the situation was examined, however, it seemed best not to wait for a larger sum, but to expend the money for temporary relief; accordingly the Athletic Association erected a track house, which was informally opened on February 18, 1892. In it were several hot and cold baths, a large number of lockers, and benches for rubbing down. The Phillipian reported that the boys grasped eagerly the opportunity afforded them for daily ablutions.

On the morning of Tuesday, June 23, 1896, the Brick Academy was gutted by fire, only the walls remaining intact. The roof and cupola were at once restored, but it was evident that it would be undesirable to attempt to use it again for athletic purposes. The only practicable solution of the problem confronting the authorities was to make an effort to raise money for the new Gymnasium. Largely through Dr. Bancroft's personal enterprise $50,000 was finally secured, and the long-desired Gymnasium was started and named after its principal donor, Mr. Matthew C. D. Borden of Fall River. The building itself, however, was not dedicated until after Dr. Bancroft's death. The athletic field, part of the money for which was contributed on December 19, 1900, by Mr. George B. Knapp, was also not ready for use until Dr. Bancroft's administration was at an end.

One other munificent gift came to crown the Principal's closing years. In a letter dated March 1, 1901, Mr. Robert Singleton Peabody(19) (1837-1904), of Philadelphia, offered, in behalf of his wife and himself, to present to Phillips Academy a collection of forty thousand specimens in American archæology; to provide a suitable building for their housing and exhibition; and to furnish a fund for the maintenance and enlargement of the collection and for the care of the museum. In a word, all expense of every kind was to be met by Mr. Peabody's fund. In making his arrangements Mr. Peabody consulted especially Dr. Thomas Wilson, Curator of the Smithsonian Museum, and Mr. Warren K. Moorehead, who was to be Curator of the Andover collection. In the fall of 1901 the Churchill House, on the southwest corner of Main and Phillips Streets, was moved to its present location on Main Street, and on its former site a cellar was dug for the Archaeological Building.

The later history of this fund --- which amounted eventually to over half a million dollars --- belongs to the twentieth century. It is important here, however, to emphasize Dr. Bancroft's part in securing and applying the gift. Dr. Charles Peabody, the donor's son, has said repeatedly that it was Dr. Bancroft's progressiveness which was responsible for encouraging Mr. R. Singleton Peabody. The experiment of establishing a Department of Archaeology was absolutely without a precedent in preparatory schools; but Dr. Bancroft, although he was well beyond middle age and had reached the conservative "sixties," said, "I like new ideas." When it was suggested that there might be no students, he continued: "Suppose we don't have any students; there are sites to look at; there are cemeteries; there are ancient ruins to be dug up; there is lots of work." The Principal's irrepressible optimism did not allow him to believe that the enterprise could be unsuccessful.

What has been said may unintentionally lead to some misconception. So far, only the brighter features of the administration have been touched on. There were also the failures and the bitter disappointments, particularly depressing when they involved the renunciation of some long-cherished plan. In a pamphlet sent out to alumni in 1891 the seven committees entrusted with the work of securing money for various branches of the so-called "Reendowment Fund" asked for at least $325,000, but, with the exception of Mr. Day's contributions, only a relatively small sum was obtained. It was seldom that there was cash available for even small current needs. The salaries of the teachers, including that of Dr. Bancroft, were very low, and continued so in spite of the rapid advance in the cost of living. In 1900, when the Trustees voted the Principal $500 towards his trip abroad, he refused to accept it, on the ground that the treasury was practically empty. The buildings which he desired had often to be abandoned. He wanted, for instance, a dining-hall, where food of good quality, served in clean style, could be procured at reasonable rates; but this reform was not made possible until after his death. Phillips Academy had no good library of its own; its two or three thousand volumes were inadequate, and, when teachers required reference books, the Seminary library was the only recourse. There was no infirmary where cases of illness could be properly diagnosed and cared for, and quarantined if necessary. After 1890 the Academy Hall was too small for seating the entire undergraduate body; when the boys regularly numbered over four hundred, the recitation rooms were crowded, and a falling-off in teaching efficiency was averted only by strenuous efforts on the part of the instructors. In the face of such irritating obstacles, with a plant in so many respects inadequate to the school needs, Dr. Bancroft toiled on patiently and courageously, sacrificing much himself, welcoming joyfully even the smallest gifts, and hoping constantly that some good angel would appear to make all gloriously right.

 

CHAPTER XIX

THE DAYS WHEN "BANTY" RULED

Remembered joys are never past.

DR. BANCROFT, holding sway over what Disraeli calls "the microcosm of a public school," was fortunate in having an understanding of boy psychology which enabled him to treat student problems sanely and judiciously. He often overlooked minor offenses, because in them he saw nothing more dangerous than the inevitable exuberance of youth. Athletics, even in his time, were not compulsory, and the energy and enthusiasm which to-day are vented in a healthful way on the playing-fields sometimes found an outlet in less legitimate channels. The boisterous parties at Pomp's Pond, the spring parades and "rough-houses," the intermittent bonfires and class fights which alumni love to recall, were seldom actuated by a vicious spirit. It was for this reason that Dr. Bancroft sometimes turned away his head or went down another street when such blood-letting presented itself too obtrusively to his notice. "There are some things," he used to say, "which a teacher will do well never to see."

Nevertheless, Dr. Bancroft was not free from troubles of a more serious kind. In his first report he gave some of them specific mention: ---

With respect to discipline the new administration has had a considerable trial. Ignorant of the "personnel" and the precedents of the school, unable to anticipate the favorite forms of disorder, we have done the best we could in much ignorance and inexperience, and have been gratified to learn that, in the view of some judicious citizens, not to make comparisons with former years, the present has witnessed decided improvements upon its beginning. Tobacco has proved a fruitful source and occasion of disorder .... Twelve boys have been rusticated for periods varying from six to eleven weeks, four expelled, five suspended for a term. In certain cases civil penalties have been inflicted, it is thought with the happiest result to the general tone of the school.

A group of wild youngsters, who called themselves the "Mulligan Guards," gave the Principal much anxiety, until eight of them were suspended. When he gained more experience and secured a closer grip on affairs, many of the more conspicuous disorders gradually disappeared, for, when punishment was necessary, the "Doctor" had a firm hand and the penalty followed promptly upon detection. In some respects this period was lawless. It would have been strange if it had not been so. To supervise properly the old Commons and to keep within bounds the large number of boys who roomed in private houses required a combination of omniscience and prophetic foresight not possessed by Sherlock Holmes or Monsieur Dupin. No mere man can be at once in all the dark corners on Andover Hill; and where the Principal was not, there was always fuel for flame. The Latin Commons "White Caps" could thus go on their depredations for many weeks undiscovered. On one occasion a few boys agreed to station themselves in different places on the Hill and in the town, and, at a given signal, to set off guns and rockets simultaneously. The plan worked to perfection. Crowds soon gathered near the points where the noises had originated, and bedlam reigned everywhere. Meanwhile the guilty ones had discreetly retired, and no one, except those in the secret, ever knew how the excitement started.

Like his predecessors Dr. Bancroft did some prowling around at night, and thus incurred the dislike of those whose consciences were not free from fear. He did this, however, only when there was some definite object in view. The excuse for such action lies in the fact that he often found it impossible to unearth viciousness by any other method. To-day, when every boy is directly under the guardianship of one teacher, the problem of discipline is far simpler.

Dr. Bancroft did not lay down many rules. The eight o'clock regulation was on the books, but was not, indeed could not be, strictly enforced, under conditions as they then existed. He made a standardized system for the imposition of absences and demerits, and failure to comply with the published restrictions was reported at once to parents of the boys concerned. It was one of his favorite maxims "that a boy cannot be bribed or frightened into tobacco abstinence"; but he nevertheless forbade smoking on the street, in the dormitories, and in "public places." It was not his policy, however, to lay much stress on the value of a detailed penal code.

In many respects the students under Dr. Bancroft were independent and strongly resented any interference with their liberty. In 1879, when a rule was passed compelling landladies to make a weekly report as to the conduct of the boys in their houses, the Phillipian and the Philomathean Mirror joined in ridiculing and condemning the measure. In some cases a plainness of speech was used which recalls the days of Dr. Taylor. A correspondent, writing to the Phillipian in 1896 regarding a "graduation fee," said: --

It is the arbitrary way in which the fee is imposed upon us that we object to, and it seems no more than right that the Faculty should give us some explanation if they have any.

In the same year, when the Faculty debarred five out of six candidates for the debating team, the Phillipian said editorially:---

The Faculty have brought this state of things upon themselves. If they were anxious to have the debate take place, they could have advised the committee sooner. As it is now, the Faculty are in a large measure responsible for the failure of the debate.

When the question of a cooperative store was brought up before the student body, the project, which had received the approval of the Faculty, was voted down by the boys, who, in protest, held nocturnal gatherings, after which quantities of red paint were splashed in conspicuous places on prominent buildings. Dr. Bancroft's policy of laissez faire in such matters was in accordance with certain school traditions, but there was always danger that liberty might degenerate into license.

Dr. Bancroft was exceedingly skillful in his ability to feel the pulse of the school. In 1875 he writes: ---

Fires and horns, which caused so much trouble last year, have been almost unknown.

In 1880 he detects signs of other evils:---

We have had much anxiety as to some indications of betting and gambling on the part of the boys, college vices which are difficult to handle.

Now and then, as in 1893, he states new difficulties as they arise: --

The increase in the size of the town, the multiplication of trains to and from Andover, and the introduction of the electric cars have made the discipline of the school more difficult. While I think a casual observer is very much impressed with the success of our methods, we feel very much our deficiencies, and lament that we cannot maintain a higher standard of self restraint and moral worthiness.

A year later he puts into no uncertain words his administrative creed, as applied to changed conditions:---

To maintain the standards of proficiency with these large numbers is at once more easy and more difficult. To maintain the standards of deportment and decorum, of industry and moral tone, requires increasing vigilance and assiduity. The multiplication of details resulting from an addition of 300 pupils to less than 200 of twenty years ago is very large. The opportunities to escape immediate supervision are multiplied, and the school is forced to take on certain college features which remove it still further from the category of boarding-schools, family schools, and the like. The tendency at present in the new schools established is to move in another direction and to make the schools more nearly conventual. But Andover has made a success after another method, and it ought not to break with its traditions unless experience and the changed condition of our society and of our education make the demand urgent and plain. My present anxiety is to provide for the students protection against moral disorder, and to foster the Christian influences of the school and the surrounding community.

The coming of the trolley line made necessary some modification of the Principal's theories, but the logic behind them was not altered. Phillips boys were not to be kept sheltered and secluded from a wicked world without the walls; neither were they to be allowed to run deliberately into temptation. They were to be taught to stand on their own feet, to learn the lesson of "self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control." Dr. Bancroft, even when the tension increased, never lost his reasonable view. He did not expect boys to be embryo angels, nor did he desire to be too severe on mere thoughtlessness or mischief-making. Bad boys were summarily dismissed; chronic offenders sooner or later met a well-deserved fate; but the process of purging the school was not carried out ostentatiously, and the victims were given no publicity. The students expelled by Dr. Taylor seldom forgave him; those sent away under Dr. Bancroft are often among the most loyal supporters of the Academy, because they recognize that the Principal acted for the real interests of the institution. "Banty fired me," said an old Andover boy some years ago, "but it woke me up, and was the best thing that ever happened to me"; and he signed his check for a large sum towards the Seminary purchase fund. Dr. Bancroft had the rare gift of being able to administer a reprimand or to inflict a punishment without losing the regard of the culprit.

Dr. Bancroft was an ordained clergyman and keenly alive to the religious needs of the boys, which he knew could be met only by religious influences wisely and continuously but often indirectly applied. He laid emphasis on conduct, but he did not neglect true inward conviction of a kind appropriate to a boy's stage of maturity. In 1876 he allowed boys, with the consent of their parents, to attend other churches than the Seminary Chapel; from that date on, Congregationalists, Baptists, Episcopalians, and Roman Catholics (the denominations represented by churches in Andover) were permitted to go regularly to services to which they were accustomed. The morning chapel requirement, however, was not relaxed. The so-called Monday morning "Biblicals" were continued, each instructor being required to occupy half an hour a week in drilling his eight o'clock class in Scripture study. Towards the close of the administration these "Biblicals" lost their original significance, and teachers, by tacit agreement, used the period for talks on literary topics, reading from periodicals, or comment on current events. The prayers which, under Dr. Taylor, had been held on Wednesday and Saturday noons, were quietly dropped, and the evening prayer-meetings, which at one time exercised a strong religious influence and to which many graduates still look back with gratitude, were diminished in number. These changes, however, did not involve a lessening of the interest in such matters. In 1888 Dr. Bancroft wrote: --

The religious life has been more active and penetrating, more controlling, than I have ever known before. The meetings of the Society of Inquiry have been numerously attended and well sustained. It has not been uncommon for a hundred boys to be present at the evening meeting on Sunday. The services in the Chapel on Sunday have been unusually attractive, and the boys have approached them in a better spirit.

The students were still obliged to attend church services twice on Sunday in the Seminary Chapel, where, although they were occasionally stirred by the eloquent sermons of Professor Harris, Professor Churchill, and Professor Tucker, they only too often listened to discourses from which they could hardly be expected to find much spiritual nutriment. Their attitude towards these sermons may be gathered from an occasional note in the Phillipian, such as that on November 16, 1878:---

Dr. Dexter preached in the Chapel on the 3d instant. If longevity [sic] and a multiplicity of words are the principal elements of a sermon, he should receive the unlimited admiration of the students.

Certain preachers who made a point of talking directly to young men were greeted with frank admiration; but the intricacies of theology did not arouse enthusiasm.

Phillips boys in those days had their fill of public speaking. At the Draper and Means contests the Academy Hall was packed to the very doors and windows, and, until the early "nineties," each class sent huge bouquets of flowers to those of its members who were competitors. The lyceum and the lecture were still flourishing, and Andoverians heard many distinguished platform orators, including Joseph Cook, J. T. Stoddard, John B. Gough, Henry Ward Beecher, John Fiske, and others. Wendell Phillips's eloquent lecture on Daniel O'Connell has never been forgotten by those boys who listened to it. One memorable visit was that of Matthew Arnold, who was trained by Professor Churchill so that his voice could be heard more than thirty feet away. Andover residents still recall how the poet talking to his audience said with deep earnestness, "I shall never forget what Carlyle says of Emerson"; and then turned to his manuscript in order to quote the passage burned so vividly upon his mind. The "cads" cheered Arnold vociferously before his reading, but most of them slept peacefully in their benches through his remarks, and walked home in silence.

The boarding-house problem was for Dr. Bancroft a perpetual source of annoyance. In order to lodge and feed the boys properly, the Principal was compelled to rely chiefly on private enterprise. Especially difficult was the problem of furnishing food at reasonable rates to the Commons men. In 1885 he wrote: --

Our most pressing want is a house for the accommodation of the boys who room in Commons and take the cheapest board. The most vexatious discipline in the Academy the past year has grown out of the insufficiency of the present arrangement as compared with other schools most like this. Boys who belong to us are likely to go elsewhere because our present provision for those who must live at least cost is so far behind the requirements of health, comfort, and self-respect .... The Faculty are agreed that our most urgent need is here.

Shortly after this the Clement House on School Street was remodeled as a Commons boarding-house, and the well-known Major William Marland was placed in charge. Students rooming in Commons were required to board at the "Major's," the fixed rate being, in 1887, three dollars a week. Major Marland and his wife ate with the boys and undoubtedly did their best to keep an orderly establishment.

The other eating-clubs and houses, some of them managed by active boys, still continued. The Shawsheen Club, located in the old Abbot House on Phillips Street, maintained a somewhat precarious existence until 1889. In 1893 a number of boarding-houses could be named: Ellis's, Blunt House, Brown's Café, Eastman's, Brick House, Cheever House, Hitchcock's, and Butterfield's. The usual student legends clustered around these "eating-joints," as they were called; stock stories of the pancakes used as "scalers," of the "baled hay" provided at breakfast in enormous quantities, of the steady deterioration in food quality as the term wore on, are told at every Commencement reunion. An entertaining account of a typical boarding-house, "Aunt Hattie's," is to be found in Lee J. Perrin's My Three Years at Andover.(1)

The fact that prices in some of the best of these establishments were very high often caused the "Doctor" some anxiety. In 1891, in the course of a discussion of the situation, he said: --

The inordinate increase in prices has already engaged the attention of the Trustees, and it will continue to tax the best energies and best wisdom of all friends of the school. No method can be devised except to add to the endowments and equipments of the school, and to resist in any proper way the tendency to advance the rates for board and lodgings. The sumptuary regulations are difficult to manage, and especially so under a mixed system of open competition, sharp restriction, and endowed charity such as prevails here.

The increasing seriousness of this problem led the Principal, in 1893, to some further observations: --

The provision for boarding accommodations is very pressing. Prices remain very high and are likely to increase. The reputation for being an expensive school is very much to be deplored. The decline of the old family home for boys, and the rise of the Academy boarding house is not peculiar to Andover. Modern life has become too sumptuous and artificial, the competition too sharp, to admit of the simplicity and frugality of the earlier day. . . The immediate danger is that the school will divide, as some of the great English schools were once divided, into a group of rich boys on the one hand and a group of poor boys on the other. In the English schools the poor boys were gradually crowded out. It is our present obligation to make it possible for persons of moderate means to get good accommodations at Andover at a moderate expense. We need a dining-hall for the express purpose of providing for a class which does not ask for charitable assistance and which cannot pay extravagant prices.

The Principal, with his usual acumen, had discovered a tendency which was likely to overthrow the traditional democracy of Phillips Academy. A few landladies, who were obviously not in the business for charity, were prepared to charge "all the traffic would bear," and, to many rich boys, a dollar or two a week more for board was not a material consideration. Not until the school, with a dining-hall of its own, could keep down prices by open competition, was the problem solved to the satisfaction of the authorities.

An equally unfortunate state of affairs arose in connection with the lodging-house system. In these private establishments the managers, in accordance with an edict of the Trustees, were obliged to make regular reports concerning the absences and misdemeanors of their boys. In spite of this rule, however, discipline was in a few conspicuous cases much relaxed. If the housekeeper had no objection, smoking was allowed, --- and the rent of the rooms was often so high as to counterbalance any instinctive prejudice against pipes and cigarettes. Here, then, congregated the boys who wanted to smoke away an idle hour, usually not the least lawless element in school. Undisturbed by the immediate proximity of Faculty guardians, daring spirits did almost what they pleased and certainly violated most rules with comparative impunity. In dealing with landladies of this type the utmost tact was required, and it was here that the "Doctor" showed himself to be a master diplomatist; he did not wish to incur their displeasure, and yet he was unwilling to allow them too much freedom from the normal school restrictions. In the end the situation was relieved by refusing sanction to all but the most reliable houses.

In the student "resorts," also, Dr. Bancroft was compelled to tolerate certain features which he personally disliked, but which he preferred to greater evils. Such institutions as "Hinton's" and "Chap's" came to be a familiar and intrinsic part of Academy life. As far back as 1886 the Phillipian printed a half-jocose attack on Allen Hinton for trying to raise the price of ice-cream five cents a pint; and in 1887 it complained that he refused to advertise in school publications and even to pay admission to games. Hinton's popularity, however, survived these ephemeral attacks, and his farm off South Main Street continued to be a favorite gathering-place for the boys who, on hot spring nights, chose to risk the chance of a "cut" in order to get a plate of frozen pudding and to have a chat with Allen about the days "befo' the wa'." This sort of dissipation, as the Principal recognized, was innocuous, and he closed his eyes discreetly, even when he knew that the Latin Commons were nearly empty of students on an occasional warm June evening.

"Hatch's," which later became "Chap's," was easy of access to the boys on their way downtown, and soon came to be the great student rendezvous. Presided over by the picturesque Ovid Chapman, with his long gray beard, it had that rare aroma, so delightful to school and college undergraduates, of smoke and food and musty hangings properly blended. There the agents of clothing-houses congregated like harpies, ready to swoop down upon the lucky youngster with a "check from home" and sell him wearing apparel at war-time prices. As smoking was prohibited in the dormitories and cottages, "Chap's" was also a convenient place for buying tobacco, and the air was usually blue and foul. It was also a restaurant, where light lunches and even elaborate beefsteak dinners could be procured when the boarding-house fare grew tame. No doubt rules were broken over and over again by the coterie who made "Chap's" their haunt; no doubt, also, many unsophisticated youths overspent their allowances, acquired a useless stock of banners, neckties, and shoes, and even injured their health in order to dwell in the atmosphere of school "romance." The Faculty, however, believed that, as conditions were then, it was best not to put the ban on "Chap's"; some of the teachers, therefore, hurried past in study hours lest they should inadvertently detect an indiscreet student emerging from the door, and they remained secretive when, long after ten o'clock, they could see as they passed by a score of night-owls smoking their bedtime pipes in defiance of authority. "Chap's" was far from being ideal; but the boys, while they were there, were in Andover, and thus partly under the scrutiny of the Principal; furthermore, there was nothing to offer as a substitute. The opening of the grill, and later of the Peabody House, eliminated "Chap's" with hardly a murmur from the boys.

Undoubtedly the most conspicuous feature of Dr. Bancroft's administration, so far as the undergraduate life is concerned, was its increasing complexity, especially through the development of "outside activities" or "extra-curriculum diversions." The Philomathean Society and the Society of Inquiry continued to exist, and, through limited periods, to prosper. To these, however, were added other interests. The Phillipian, started October 19, 1878, gave a chance for the development of journalistic talent. The organization of Forum in 1892 made a formidable rival for "Philo." The growth of secret societies and their recognition by the Faculty effected a decided change in social conditions among the boys. Above all, the spread of organized athletics and the beginning of contests with Exeter and other outside schools brought in a new factor which gradually loomed larger and larger. The simple institution over which Dr. Pearson presided was marvelously altered after the passage of a hundred years.

THE OLD CAMPUS IN 1890

THE OLD FIRE ENGINE

The rivalry with Exeter, started in 1878, became soon very intense, and led, on two dramatic occasions, to a complete severing of relations between the schools. In the last ten years of the century Andover teams, with their professional coaches and the prestige of many victories behind them, were competent to hold their own with the teams of the smaller colleges, and even, in some unforgotten contests, with Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. The emphasis laid on athletics was altogether too great, and games were taken too seriously. Those were the days when men on the baseball team came to afternoon recitations in their athletic suits, and rushed to the diamond as soon as classes were over. The spirit of "victory at any cost" was abroad in the school, and the strain on the days of the annual contests was oppressive. When the game was held at Exeter, the Andover boys went there by special train and marched through the rival town to the field, giving cheers and singing songs of defiance. At the game itself, pandemonium seemed to have broken loose. From the first play until the last there was a steady succession of songs and shouts; cries of triumph from one side were followed by cheers of reassurance from the other; and when victory was established, the winning school did its snake dance across the playing-field.

It was not long before "celebrations" were permitted as the fitting reward for success. After a victory the students usually met at "Chap's" about seven o'clock, attired in night-shirts, or pajamas, and bearing torches distributed for the occasion; from there, headed by a band and by the members of the team drawn in a barge, they marched noisily about the town. The procession always passed by Abbot Academy, where cheers were given for the "Fem-Sems," who had, of course, hung out banners from their windows. It halted, too, at the homes of popular teachers, who were called upon for appropriate "remarks." The tramping over, the boys assembled around a huge bonfire which, since early evening, had been piling up on the Old Campus; there every member of the team, the coach, and the manager each had his say, and the boys yelled until their throats were raw and aching. On these nights all restrictions as to smoking on the Campus were removed, and cigarettes and cigars glowed everywhere.

One interesting "celebration" came in the spring of 1888, when, after the nine, chiefly through the remarkable pitching of "Al" Stearns, had defeated the "Beacons" of Boston, 5-4, an enthusiastic crowd called upon the "Doctor" for a speech. After referring gracefully to the victory, he spoke of two recent additions to the population of Andover Hill, and the boys, at his request, gave "three times three" for Coy minimus and Hincks minima. Coy minimus was to be the redoubtable "Ted" Coy, captain and fullback on the Yale team in 1911.

Class spirit, which was especially strong under the "Doctor," displayed itself in various ingenious ways. In 1883, in spite of the protest of a disappointed minority, the Seniors made themselves conspicuous by wearing Turkish fezzes. In 1886 the Seniors wore silk hats and carried canes. In 1896 the graduating class tried the experiment of wearing caps and gowns, but the plan was not altogether successful and has not since been revived. Cane rushes between the two lower classes were often held, instigated and engineered by the upper classmen. As early as 1879 there was an informal clash between the Juniors and the Middlers, in the course of which much blood flowed. In the fall of 1886 there was a spectacular rush between '87 and '88, in which '87 won by ten hands to six. In 1887, owing to some warnings by the Faculty, the contest was held on the Punchard Campus, and '89, after defeating '90, proceeded to serenade Abbot Academy. In 1888 the cane rush was given official sanction by the presence of Mr. Pettee, who acted as arbiter; it was held on Saturday afternoon before a large crowd of spectators, '90 winning by a score of 21 to 14. Until 1891 such rushes were held, but they were finally discontinued on the ground that the strain was too exhausting for the younger boys.

Another now forgotten custom was the class sleigh ride and dinner, at which members of the Faculty were usually present as invited guests. The class, after starting out in roomy barges in the midst of a volley of snowballs from the remainder of the school, drove to some inn several miles away; there a banquet was served, followed by a long programme of speeches, after which came the somewhat dismal journey back to Andover Hill. On January 25, 1887, the Seniors, in two huge sleighs, each holding twenty boys, went over the road to Lowell, where they were joined by Dr. Bancroft and Professor Coy, who had wisely taken the train. The party returned with the temperature at thirty degrees below zero.

As a substitute for the cane rush an annual baseball game between Middlers and Junior Middlers became very popular, and resulted in unrestrained enthusiasm. When '98 won from '97 by a score of 19 to 11, the victorious class held a miniature "celebration," at which guns were discharged in defiance of the constabulary; one little chap was arrested, and there was a vigorous street altercation between the class and the "cop." At these games the players were assailed with mud, vegetables, and weapons of every conceivable kind. At the game between '98 and '99 in 1897 cannons were placed near first and third bases, bass drums were beaten, cymbals were clashed, horns were blown, and revolvers were shot off. Each class had purchased its own suits just for this game at a cost of nearly $200, and one class used over $100 worth of cannon crackers. In 1899 the class of 1900 defeated '01 by a score of 29 to 26. In the course of the evening excitement, a false fire alarm was rung in and a government mailbox was blown up. These unfortunate incidents, together with the fact that the class games were drawing undesirable crowds of "muckers" to the Hill, led to the abandonment of the contests.

The school fire department was still continued with an elaborate organization consisting of a foreman, six men at the hose, four at the suction hose, and four at the brakes, besides others who, in case of need, volunteered their services. To every conflagration in the town or its vicinity this apparatus was taken, often to the disgust of the village fathers, for the firefighters were frequently careless about the direction in which the stream was thrown, and many an innocent bystander was deluged. When the town water system was built, the necessity for a school engine disappeared, and the apparatus was stored in a convenient barn.

Town and gown in Andover have usually dwelt together in amity, each being of obvious advantage to the other's happiness. Now and then, however, friction developed. The most frequent cause of trouble at this period was the regulation of coasting, or "bobsledding," on the town thoroughfares, especially School and Phillips Streets, where the grades were steep and where the boys resorted in large numbers on evenings when enough ice had formed to make the sport exciting. In 1881 the Selectmen, irritated by the complaints of one or two staid citizens, passed somewhat hastily a measure forbidding coasting on any Andover street. On the following Saturday night some eight or ten daring spirits, who had continued to coast in defiance of the law, were arrested, haled to court, and fined a dollar each. The Phillipian, manifestly belligerent, published in its next issue an editorial on the conduct of the Chief of Police, Mr. Howarth, in the course of which it said: --

He is such a completely idiotic and stupid nonentity, even when he is sober, that he would fail to have the penetration to discover the application did we not drive our remarks home

A few days later the boys held a large and noisy meeting, and resolved in revenge to withdraw all patronage from the merchants of Andover. This drastic action soon brought the citizens to terms, and, at the annual town meeting, the voters, on the motion of Warren F. Draper, annulled the obnoxious by-law.

Incidents of this kind --- and there are many others ---are told by alumni at every Commencement gathering. Those who are familiar with the annals of colleges during the "seventies" and "eighties" know that it was an age of vandalism and rough practical joking. It is to be said for the Phillips boys that they rarely showed deliberate malice. It was regularly the custom, of course, to decorate the Commons dormitories with numerals and school emblems, and to cover the fences with the scores of recent games. On the nights of celebrations no outhouse or gate was safe without a guard. In 1896, during the exercises connected with the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the town, the school acquired some undesirable notoriety through hoodlums who, on one or two dark evenings, tore down signs, painted sidewalks with unedifying inscriptions, and concluded by burning a fence belonging to the Churchill House. The offenders, however, were soon apprehended, and the school as a whole condemned the acts.

"Stacking rooms" in the Commons was a favorite diversion for student bullies. In 1890, while the Seniors were having their sleigh ride, the Middlers went systematically to work to stack their furniture throughout the dormitories, and no small commotion resulted when the Seniors, cold and tired, returned to find their rooms in a state of utter confusion. This exploit also was discountenanced by the remainder of the student body, and resulted in a contrite apology from the Middle class.

The class of 1875 achieved fame by stealing Professor Coy's copy of Cicero and cremating it on the Campus. The ashes were put in a glass jar labeled "M. Tulli Ciceronis, Cato Major de Senectute," and sealed with red wax. This remained for years in the Academy library, apparently preserved as a relic of value.

A typical example of undergraduate humor took place on one occasion when Dr. Bancroft explained one morning at chapel that a comet would be visible on the following morning, and advised the students to get up early enough to see it. They all, of course, crawled out of bed at four o'clock, perched themselves on the ridgepoles of their houses, and, at a given signal, made a hideous noise. Dr. Bancroft opened his remarks in chapel two or three hours later by saying, "Boys will be fools; do what you may, boys will be, fools."

In presidential years the students organized their own political companies. In 1880, for instance, the "Garfield and Arthur Battalion" was one hundred and fifty strong; the members wore red Turkish hats, white cutaway jackets trimmed with red, white leggings, and carried swinging torches. They marched in processions in several cities. In 1888 the Democrats organized the "Cleveland Cadets," secured picturesque uniforms, and marched with a similar company from the town in an elaborate torchlight parade. Two weeks later the Republican Club of the Academy, not to be outdone, held a rival celebration. The excitement in this particular year was so great that much disorder ensued; fortunately, however, attention was diverted by the approaching football game, and Harrison and Morton were elected without any undue hilarity.

The Spanish War naturally did not cause as much disturbance in the school as the Civil War had done, but the boys, nevertheless, showed some military ardor. A mass meeting held April 5, 1898, nearly ended in a riot because of a speech by an instructor, who condemned American policy in no uncertain terms. At a flag-raising which took place at Brechin Hall on June 1, Professor George Harris delivered an address, and Professor Churchill read Mrs. Stowe's Banner Hymn, which had been written for a similar occasion twenty-five years before..

The days of Dr. Bancroft are too near our own time to make it possible to recount the anecdotes which are common talk around the fireside whenever Phillips alumni meet. Some of them, like the tale of the student who dressed up as a girl and went with the Abbot young ladies on a sleigh ride, can be told properly only by those who participated in them. Others, like the classic yarn of McDuffee's stove which wandered mysteriously from place to place on the Campus, have become part of school tradition. If one or two of the instructors would consent to write their reminiscences, they would be entertaining reading. It is the men who lived through those years who can best transmit their spirit and make them seem once more alive to Andover men of the twentieth century.


Chapter Twenty

Table of Contents