"Abbot Academy has real estate valued at forty thousand dollars. Its apparatus, library, furniture, etc., are valued at ten thousand dollars. Its productive and available funds are valued at $33,636. This valuation was made two years ago; and it is now safe to say that the whole property of the institution, including real and personal estate, amounts to no more than ninety thousand dollars. The number of books in its library is 2,630. The number of its books relating to the fine arts is 233. The number of its art illustrations is 3,284. Still it has no convenient rooms for its books, pictures, casts. They are highly valuable, but are scattered in different and obscure places. It has a good cabinet of specimens illustrating conchology. Where is the cabinet? A large part of it I have never seen. It is kept in the boxes in which it was sent to the academy. Where is the scientific apparatus? Where is it?
"The rooms for the pupils are not large enough. Two students live by day and by night in one small chamber. The passages between the rooms are too narrow. The recitation rooms are too small and not well ventilated. The teachers have no adequate support, and could readily obtain much larger salaries for far less work in other institutions. For such reasons the academy asks for an enlarged endowment. It needs $150,000 for its new buildings. Thus far it has received promise of only $36,000. If it receive a generous increase of funds it will flourish; if it does not, it will not flourish as it should. Other institutions will attract its scholars. We cannot expect that future instructors will have a spirit of self-denial equal to that of its present and past instructors.
"After his 7th of March speech, Daniel Webster said to the Bostonians, 'You have conquered your climate, you have now nothing to do but to conquer your prejudices.' He meant that New Englanders had overcome the laws of nature, which had provided them with little except ice and granite; and nothing was left for them to conquer except their prejudices against the system of slavery. Now the teachers of Abbot Academy have conquered themselves, and there is nothing left for them to subdue except the laws of nature. They cannot subdue these laws. They cannot resist the attractions which other institutions have received from large funds, commodious dormitories, and suitable lecture-rooms and halls. The two Misses McKeen have devoted a high degree of skill and energy to the upbuilding of this institution; but they have had a superior ancestry. They inherited strength and fortitude. They descended from the sturdy men and women who settled Londonderry, New Hampshire.
"James McKeen of Londonderry was connected by marriage with James McGregor, the first minister of that town, who was a remarkable man. He was asked to leave his New Hampshire parish and go to the First Presbyterian Church in New York city. He declined. Londonderry was a more promising field for usefulness than New York. Londonderry has since succumbed. By the aid of the Hudson River and the Atlantic Ocean, New York has gone ahead.
"A traveller walking through Fifth Avenue and then through the roads of Londonderry can detect the superiority of New York with the naked eye. Unless Abbot Academy receive a larger and richer endowment than it now has, it will be to other institutions what the New Hampshire township is to the commercial emporium of our land.
"Why not allow our academy to decline? What special reasons are there for giving a new impulse to it? We ask for our new buildings because our academy is the oldest incorporated institution in the land for the higher culture of young ladies exclusively. Its age gives it a title to support. The antiquity of a school is a rich treasure to it. Scores of matrons, teachers, missionaries, have been trained in this school, and have performed signal services in our Western settlements, in Constantinople, in Japan, and in other distant parts of the world. The affections of these pupils are still entwined around this ancient academy. Again, we need our new buildings as monuments to the past services of teachers who have adorned and honored the school. Their example of faithful work and of exemplary self-denial ought to receive a visible and fitting memorial.
"Still another reason is that the endowment for which we ask will encourage future instructors to imitate the example of their predecessors. I have been conversant with many schools, I have not known one in which the principles of mental and moral philosophy, of the English and the Latin language, and of the fine arts have been more thoroughly and faithfully studied than in Abbot Academy. We do not expect there will ever be a theatre or an opera in the neighborhood of our academy; but we do expect that if we can obtain the pecuniary aid which we need, our school will be the resort of ladies who will devote themselves with zeal and care to the study of science, and more than all to the study of the word of God."
Professor Churchill then spoke in a very forcible and interesting manner of the aims of Abbot Academy, its wish to emphasize the home as well as the school. In a second article upon the institution it is hoped his remarks will be given in detail in connection with a more extended consideration of the aim to which he referred. Mr. Hartwell, for Messrs. Hartwell and Richardson, then explained the principal points of their plans, drawings of which were hung upon the walls. He concluded by expressing the heartiest interest in the academy and a most earnest wish for the success of the good plans in its behalf. Mr. Porter read a letter from Dr. Cyrus Hamlin, a portion of which follows:—
Abbot Academy has no superior. Its graduates go forth fitted for life's true work. The education they have received has been admirably adapted to form both mind and heart. It has had the social, intellectual and spiritual elements in due proportion.... I have sent six daughters to Abbot Academy and do not fear to compare the result as seen in their training, with the results attained in any other institution of our land, provided the persons selected are of equal natural gifts. The missionary work of Abbot Academy has been wide in extent and noble in character, both at home and abroad; and should be understood by friends of missions. It cannot be spared; its work, its history, its example, make it one of our choicest schools for the education of women, and I pray God it may be abundantly, richly endowed.
Mr. Edwin Reed of Cambridge, who married an Abbot Academy graduate, after felicitous compliments to the school, made a graceful, sparkling speech, from which we quote,—"The wise, judicious, painstaking administration of affairs there goes always to the roots of character, and gives us:—