The City Hall, a large building also of gray stone with brown stone trimmings, is similar to the old town halls of Brussels, Bruges, and others of mediæval times. Its high tower can be seen at a great distance.
The other important gift to Cambridge from Mr. Rindge is a manual training-school for boys. Ground was broken for this school in the middle of July, 1888, and pupils were received in September. The boys work in wood, iron, blacksmithing, drawing, etc. The system is similar to that adopted by Professor Woodward at St. Louis. The boys, to protect their clothes, wear outer suits of dark brown and black duck, and round paper caps.
The fire-drill is especially interesting to strangers. Hose-carriages and ladders are kept in the building, and the boys can put streams of water to the top in a very brief time. Mr. Rindge supports the school. The instruction is free, and is a part of the public-school work. The pupils may take in the English High School a course of pure head-work, or part head-work and part hand-work. If they elect the latter, they drop one study, and in its place take three hours a day in manual training. The course covers three years.
Mr. Rindge inherited his wealth largely from his father. He made these gifts when he was twenty-nine years of age. Being an earnest Christian, he made it a condition of his gifts that verses of Scripture and maxims of conduct should be inscribed upon the walls of the various buildings. These are found on the library building; and the inscription on the City Hall reads as follows: "God has given commandments unto men. From these commandments men have framed laws by which to be governed. It is honorable and praiseworthy to faithfully serve the people by helping to administer these laws. If the laws are not enforced, the people are not well governed."
ANTHONY J. DREXEL AND HIS INSTITUTE.
The Drexel family, like a majority of the successful and useful families in this country, began poor. Anthony J. Drexel's father, Francis Martin Drexel, was born at Dornbirn, in the Austrian Tyrol, April 7, 1792. When he was eleven years old, his father, a merchant, sent him to a school near Milan. Later, when there was a war with France, he was obliged to go to Switzerland to avoid conscription.
He earned a scanty living at whatever he could find to do, but his chief work and pleasure was in portrait painting. When he was twenty-five, in 1817, he determined to try his fortune in the New World, and reached the United States after a voyage of seventy-two days.