A program of the Prize Declamation of May 27th, 1871, has been preserved. The opening number was “Harold the Dauntless”, given in great style by “Carty” Fenno. My kinsman, Morton Prince, recited William Everett’s “Themistocles.” The “Daughter of Herodias” was sympathetically interpreted by Dumaresq; and the “Burial of Dundee” by Colonel Lester Clark. After the award of prizes, Gilmore’s Band played “Fair Harvard.”

We sometimes condescended to attend the Chauncy Hall School’s “Declamations”, to hear George Riddle’s fine recitations. Riddle was a beautiful boy, with a poetic face and fiery brown eyes. I was present when he won his first prize by his recitation of the Dagger Scene from “Macbeth.” Riddle became a professional reader later on, and I never missed an occasion to hear him recite. As an actor he had no success, with one great exception: his acting in “Oedipus Tyrannus”, at Harvard, was a notable dramatic achievement.

The chief figure at all public functions of Latin School was the head master, Francis Gardner, tall, thin, spectacled, with eyes that looked a boy through and through and an uncanny flair for mischief. It was said that he ruled “with a rod of iron and a cotton umbrella.” Though the boys feared, hated, and talked flippantly of him as “Old Gardner”, after they left school they were apt to confess to a sneaking fondness for their old master. When they had sons of their own, they have been known to declare that they loved and honored him. William Hunt’s portrait shows the man exactly as I remember him,—tall, gaunt, severe, lovable too, and at the first glance recognizable as a splendid specimen of the schoolmaster of fifty years ago. The modern educators, I know, have many qualities that he lacked; but they have lost something that Mr. Gardner possessed. They rule with the olive branch, where he ruled with the birch rod. Boston Latin School, under Francis Gardner, was a very different place from the Happy Valley of Rasselas schools, where to-day most of my young friends receive their education. These schools are delightful places for parents and aunts to visit; but are they not a trifle “soft” to fit a youth for the rough and tumble of the great world?

CHAPTER IV
Schools and Teachers

My first school was the pioneer Kindergarten of America, established and taught by Miss Elizabeth Peabody, in a house on Pinckney Street, near the corner of Joy Street. Miss Peabody was an enthusiastic follower of Froebel, and did much to introduce his system of education into this country. My fellow pupils were many, but I only remember Kitty Alger and Frankie Watson, later the distinguished surgeon, Doctor Francis Sedgwick Watson. We sat on tiny chairs, around a fascinating low table, where we modeled birds’ nests in clay and filled the nests with tiny eggs. Another useful art was the weaving of patterns with narrow strips of colored paper. My first lessons in arithmetic were had at the Kindergarten, with the help of a frame strung with red, green, and yellow beads. The system by which addition and subtraction were taught has passed from my mind, but the pleasure of juggling with the pretty colored balls remains.

My sister Flossie, trying to help me with my arithmetic, set me a simple sum, using as a textbook “Greenleaf’s Arithmetic.” After a stormy argument, the ink bottle was hurled against the nursery wall, with the passionate exclamation:

“Greenleaf is a liar!”

On leaving Miss Peabody’s Kindergarten, I went to Mr. Henry Williams’ school in Temple Place. The entrance was extremely mysterious to me. To reach the classrooms, we passed through a paved inclosed court and up a long flight of stairs, to a shadowy corridor that always depressed me. I was not exactly afraid of it, as of the passage outside my room inhabited by the foxes, nor did any hairy beast lurk there, as under the staircase at Number 13 Chestnut Street, but it was uncanny and I took care not to pass in or out alone.

I remember little of what I learned at the Temple Place School but a deal about Mr. Williams, a commanding figure, in spite of such personal defects, as a lump on his forehead and a missing forefinger. He had a musical voice and a sort of masterful sweetness that won the heart of every child. On Sundays he led the singing at the “Indiana Place Chapel”, the first home of the Church of the Disciples, where my mother’s beloved friend, James Freeman Clarke, was the pastor. The older girls were taught by Mr. Williams, but I was in the primary department, presided over by Miss Paul, a little lady who looked more like a brown wren than a schoolma’am.

For me, the school of schools was the Hilliards’ at Number 113 Mount Vernon Street, kept by Miss Julia and Miss Miriam Hilliard. Their mother, one understood, had met with “reverses.” Whatever their nature, they had left her dependent on her daughters. Mrs. Hilliard was super-stately, remote, kindly, and painstaking in her dealings with us. She wore stupendous corkscrew ringlets that must have taken hours every morning to arrange. She gave me music lessons. Half-past nine found me in the Hilliard “best parlor”, seated on an embroidered revolving stool before the square piano, with the metronome tick-tacking beside me.