Library Collections: Document: Full Text

"And this the glad song of our Nation shall be,
Hurrah for John Tyler and liberty's tree."

As memory rolls back the curtain of the years I behold again the Institution, with its spacious halls that ring with mirth and song, its school-rooms filled with happy hearts and smiling faces; the chapel where at morn and eve and on Sabbath days we gathered for religious worship; and the beautiful playgrounds, from which the clear sound of the bell called us from our fun to our duty, -- but a shade of sadness steals over me, and I ask,

"Where are the friends of my youth,
Oh, where are those treasured ones gone?"

Instantly the names of Cynthia Bullock, Catherine Kennedy, Mary Mattox, Anna Smith, Imogene Hart, and Alice Holmes are on my lips. They were among my earlier associates and their voices come back mingled with sweet memories of the sunny past: the murmur of the afternoon breeze; the echo of the woodland; and the quietness of the twilight. And now I fancy that we are hastening from the school-room for a fifteen-minute recess; again we stand together in a group in some remote corner, repeating the lessons we have learned, and striving nut to forget any of them before tomorrow morning's class, when they will be reviewed. Thus does the past indeed blend with the present. Life in those years had few changes for us, and we trusted the many hopes for the future to a wiser guidance than our own. Of all this happy company of girls who were at the New York Institution before 1840, only Imogene Hart and Alice Holmes and I are living. Miss Hart possessed a deep love for music, inherited from her father, under whose judicious training she was able to sing from many classical authors before she was ten years old, and I am glad to know that her voice still retains its sweetness. Judging from the music and poems she sends me from time to time I am confident that she has not lost her old fondness for the "divine arts."

Alice Holmes was a deep thinker, and her genius for mathematics carried her far beyond most of her com-panions. She was also gifted with a poetic fancy, and has written two beautiful little volumes of poetry since she was with us at the Institution.

I well remember the day she came to us from her home in Jersey City. We were apprised of her coming and determined to give her as good a reception as we could, lest she should become homesick as many of us had been. She was to occupy a portion of my room, and it devolved upon me to make her feel at home; and very soon we were conversing about all sorts of things.

I found that she was a member of the Episcopal Church, while I was an adherent of the Methodist; and the con-trast between us in this respect suggested a bit of dog-gerel. Walking demurely toward her couch in the farther end of the room, just as she was about to retire, I said, "Alice, I have a piece of poetry, which I would like you to hear; and will you please tell me how it sounds?" Then I repeated my lines --

"Oh, how it grieves my poor old bones,
To sleep so near that Alice Holmes,
I will inform good Mr. Jones,
I can't sleep with a churchman."

In the course of five or six years our school increased rapidly. When I entered in 1835, I was the thirty-first pupil; before the end of ten years the number was more than one hundred; and in the old building we were packed away in close quarters, but were happy as the birds of a May morning. The new school edifice was completed early in 1841.

Thanksgiving Day was always one of peculiar interest to us, for besides a hearty dinner and reunion of the pupils in the morning, in the evening there was an enter-tainment to which the Board of Managers were also invited. At one of these social gatherings seven of us girls recited a dialogue that I had written for the occasion. The subject was "New England and New York," and it was dedicated to Mr. James F. Chamberlain, our superintendent, who was a native of Rhode Island. Part of the last chorus, as it was sung to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne," follows:

"Should ancient customs be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
In what our fathers loved so well
Can we no pleasure find?
They weave a charm around the heart,
That cannot pass away,
Thanksgiving Day, we love its name,
The dear Thanksgiving Day.

"A social band are gathering now
Around the blazing hearth,
And gaily rings their merry laugh
And songs of artless mirth.
Bright moments of unsullied joy,
Oh, could ye longer stay!
Thanksgiving Day, we love its name,
The dear Thanksgiving Day."

CHAPTER VII
THE DAILY TASK

NEW York City has grown wonderfully in many ways since 1835, and the advance in knowledge and education has been no less rapid than its material prosperity. I well remember the time when Kipp and Brown's stages were the sole means of "rapid transit" in the city; and they only went up as far as Twenty-sixth Street unless by special order. Our buildings were situated on Thirty-fourth Street and Ninth Avenue in the midst of a delightful suburban district in plain view of the Hudson River and the lawns and fields which gently sloped towards the river.