Lawrenceville School

“ The boys at Lawrenceville are arranged according to size, and are taught how to play, and thus it is plain that in the course of a year or two the Captain of the school team has plenty of good material to pick from. The first and second teams have the additional advantage of being coached by some of the instructors who were star football players in their college days, and the benefit of whose experience goes largely toward making the Lawrenceville eleven the successful one that it usually is. ”

“ There was at first some trouble in getting the proper men fitted into the several open positions at Lawrenceville, but the team has been pretty well settled upon now, and the men who lined up against the Princeton Freshmen last week will in all probability represent the school in the Andover game. ”

“ Without losing the ball, some sixty yards were covered by the Lawrenceville backs plunging through the line.
Mattis of Lawrenceville outkicked the Hill full-back, Monypenny; and the Hill right guard, Mills, played an excellent game. Cleveland, Lawrenceville's left half, played a very good game, considering his short experience. The Hill School has an excellent team this year, most of last year's players being back, and they consequently put up an unexpectedly strong game against Lawrenceville's green team. ”

“ The Hill School used a very aggressive sort of back field-work, which against lighter teams this fall scored readily. Lawrenceville's stout line, however, was able to withstand it at all points of the game.
The one point of superiority Lawrenceville's team shows this year over last year's team is her defensive work. Her ends were a trifle superior, breaking up the Hill School's interference successfully, except once, when the full-back, protected by the two halves, ran twenty yards, and would have made a touch-down had not Kafer broken up the interference and downed the man with the ball. ”

“ He felt the urge of duty too strongly at Lawrenceville to allow himself to be diverted. For many years he has been Archdeacon of Southern Virginia, and the most conspicuously wise leader among the 400,000 Negroes of the Diocese.
As a deacon, he opened a school in the vestry-room of the little church built by his own efforts. Mrs. Russell and himself were the teachers. The population was 88 per cent illiterate, and correspondingly prejudiced and superstitious. The story of the transformation is a romance of absorbing interest. ”

“ The half-backs are noted more for the strength of their running than for swiftness, and the linemen are models for quick play and sharp following of the ball.
Lawrenceville's victory over the Hill School was somewhat of a fore-gone conclusion, but in spite of the advantage the Jerseymen had from the start, the game was a most exciting one. Twelve points were scored by Lawrenceville in each half, and as the ball was but a few inches from the Hill's line when time was called, the score came near being 30-0. The home team was much the lighter, [Pg 142] but they played good football. ”

“ As for the team-play in general, there is room for improvement at the present writing, but I feel sure good work along that line will be done during the last few days previous to the 14th. In the recent game with Pennington Seminary, one of Lawrenceville's oldest and greatest rivals, Lawrenceville won by 40-0, but only four points were made in the first half. During this time the school team was kept continually on the defensive. Pennington's players, of course, are much older men, and at the start-off showed superior strength. ”

“ In the second half, however, the Lawrenceville players put up an exceedingly fast game, virtually using up their opponents. Pennington had the ball but once during the half. This kind of work is the best kind of proof of the excellent system of training which prevails at this New Jersey school, and which this Department has on more than one occasion commented upon.
At Andover the team-play of the eleven has been perhaps more fully developed than at Lawrenceville, and the P.A. eleven has had the advantage of playing against a set of stronger teams, as an average, than the Jersey men. ”

“ Now the point of this recital is to show that Lawrenceville has at present on its pedagogic staff representatives of five large college teams, each one of whom is known as well for the honesty as for the quality of the game he played on the field. I believe that the future of our college athletics rests with the schools that are this year, and next year, and so on, sending out to the larger institutions men who will control the athletic organizations. ”

“ But with the conditions at Lawrenceville I am familiar.
Several years of experience there have shown the authorities that the sports of the students can be kept in better condition if expert players are detailed to manage the coaching and the games, but yet they do not believe in hiring a man for the football season regardless of his character and career in college. ”

“ She had six weeks still before going to college. In this time she nervously read over some Latin and some botany, and fitfully worked at some mathematics. She was going into college as a teacher, for her training. But, having already taken her matriculation examination, she was entered for a university course. At the end of a year she would sit for the Intermediate Arts, then two years after for her B.A. So her case was not that of the ordinary school-teacher. She would be working among the private students who came only for pure education, not for mere professional training. ”

“ Although supported by Sir Joshua Reynolds, his election was much opposed by several academicians. Shortly before Lawrence’s return in 1820 from Rome, where he had been engaged on the great work of painting the Allied Sovereigns, Benjamin West, the President of the Royal Academy, died full of honours. Lawrence was unanimously chosen to succeed him, and the King, in approval of the choice, added a superb gold chain and medal of himself. ”

“ From Hampshire the family came to Oxford where Lawrence went to the City of Oxford School. Of his boyhood at Oxford there are stories that show that he began being the person Lawrence early. He took an interest in archæology which elder people thought unwholesome in a boy, and when old buildings were pulled down or excavations made was always on the spot. He had a secret arrangement with the city workmen to give him any pieces of pottery or other finds that they made and was soon an actual expert on the pottery of the Middle Ages. ”

“ Lawrence, as the eldest son of a Virginia planter, would inherit the bulk of his father's estate. He was therefore sent to an excellent school in England, to receive the training which would fit him to be a gentleman and a leader in social life. For learning was not held in such high esteem as ability to look after the business of a large plantation and take a leading part in the public life of the county and the colony. ”

“ During the month of February, an appeal was made to the citizens of Boston in behalf of the famished population of Ireland, and resulted in the sending to that country a large quantity of food and clothing. Mr. Lawrence contributed himself towards the object, and, [237] as was often the case, endeavored to interest others equally with himself. On the 24th of that month, he addressed a note to J. A. Stearns, Esq., Principal of the Mather School, at South Boston, for the pupils of his school composing the Lawrence Association. ”

“ Mr Lawrence is certainly one of the young men, not a member of a school, for they have no formal school, and can have none if they are of any value, but a partner in their tendencies and an exponent of their outlook. He has all the unruliness of the small group that is rising up against the threatening State, its rules and its conventions, proclaiming the right of the individual [Pg 91] to do much more than live—namely, to live splendidly. ”

“ The thousand dollars handed to you is a first payment of six thousand that she will give to the college in aid of the fund now in progress of collection; and she directs that the Lawrence Academy, at Groton, may be allowed to send one scholar each year to Bowdoin College, to be carried through the four years without charge for instruction; and that, whenever the trustees of the academy do not supply a pupil, the college may fill the place. ”

“ The little Methodist college, with its high-sounding 206 title of Lawrence University, is an excellent institution, and said to be growing; it gives a certain scholastic tinge to Appleton society, which might otherwise be given up to the worship of Mammon, for there is much wealth among the manufacturers who rule the city, and prosperity attends their reign. ”

“ When Lancaster first hired the large hall in Borough Road which later became an important training-college, and opened it as a mutual- instruction school, he announced: "All that will may send their children, and have them educated freely, and those who do not wish to have education for nothing, may pay for it if they please." ”

“ There was intelligent interest in Lowville, its streets, schools, trees, houses, and business interests; there was, too, an interest, expressed among the neighboring farmers, in the wonderful strides of agriculture; furthermore, men and women were anxious to discuss political and social happenings in other parts of the world.
What more natural than that the school be converted into a center of interest and education for Lowville and the surrounding territory. Adults, as well as young folks, needed school help. Adults as well as young folks should then be accommodated in the Lowville schools. ”

“ Eighteen months of foreign travel did much for him; he brought a wider mind and a bigger intelligence home with him; to say nothing of a collection of gifts from European rulers and honours from many academies of art. From the social standpoint it is hard to [Pg 57] believe that life could have given more than it gave in 1818-19.
Lawrence was able to visit several Italian cities, and returned to London at the end of his eighteen months’ sojourn in the country, to find that Benjamin West had just died, and that he had been elected to succeed him as President of the Royal Academy. ”

“ Never more, and never more would she give herself as individual to her class. Never would she, Ursula Brangwen, the girl she was, the person she was, come into contact with those boys. She would be Standard Five teacher, as far away personally from her class as if she had never set foot in St. Philip's School. She would just obliterate them all, and keep herself apart, take them as scholars only. ”

“ Lawrence remained at Halifax school till he was eighteen years old. His wit and cleverness appear to have acquired the respect of his master here: for when the usher whipped Lawrence for writing his name on the newly white-washed school-room ceiling, the pedagogue in chief rebuked the under-strapper, and said that the name should never be effaced, for Sterne was a boy of genius, and would come to preferment. ”

“ In an address [10] delivered at the jubilee celebration [223] of the Lawrence Academy, held in Groton, July 12, 1854, the Rev. James Means, a former preceptor of the Institution, thus speaks of the benefactions of the two brothers:
"It was my good fortune, after becoming the preceptor, in 1845, to have frequent intercourse with them in this particular regard,—the interests of the school. ”

“ The Lawrence Scientific School, established in 1847, was practically abolished in 1907-1908, when its courses were divided between the College (which thereafter granted a degree of S.B.) and the Graduate School of Applied Science, which was established in 1906 and gives professional degrees in civil, mechanical and electrical engineering, mining, metallurgy, architecture, landscape architecture, forestry, applied physics, applied chemistry, applied zoology and applied geology. A school of veterinary medicine, established in 1882, was discontinued in 1901. ”

“ Runciman was really solicitous that there should be an improvement in the quality of the teachers at work in the schools. There were also many young persons termed student teachers whose academic training was unexceptionable. They were really apprentices, but the Board of Education had regarded each of these young people, who might never have been in an elementary school before, or done a day’s teaching anywhere, and who were away one day out of every five, as an efficient teacher equal to educating 45 children on every occasion on which the school was opened. ”

“ I will hold myself responsible to make good Mrs. L.'s intentions, should she be deprived in any way of this privilege before the work is done."
Early in the summer of this year, the Hon. Abbott Lawrence made his munificent donation of fifty thousand dollars to Harvard College, for the purpose of founding what was afterwards called, in honor of the donor, the Lawrence Scientific School. After reading the letter accompanying this donation, Mr. Lawrence addressed to his brother the following:
"Wednesday morning, June 9, 1847. ”

“ Born and educated in Groton, in the County of Middlesex, in said Commonwealth, and deeply interested in the welfare of that town, and especially of the Lawrence Academy, established in it by my honored father, Samuel Lawrence, and his worthy associates, and grateful for the benefits which his and their descendants [222] have derived from that institution, I am desirous to promote its future prosperity; trusting that those charged with the care and superintendence of it will ever strive zealously and faithfully to maintain it as a nursery of piety and sound learning. ”