Page:History of the University of Pennsylvania - Montgomery (1900).djvu/127

Rh with great success, and we suppose will exceed five thousand pounds of our currency. We have bought for the Academy the house that was built for itinerant preaching, which stands on a large lot of ground capable of receiving more buildings to lodge the scholars, if it should come to be a regular college. The house is one hundred feet long and seventy wide, built of brick, very strong, and sufficiently high for three lofty stories. I suppose the building did not cost less than two thousand pounds; but we bought it for seven hundred seventy five pounds, eighteen shillings, eleven pence, and three farthings; though it will cost us three and perhaps four hundred more to make the partitions and floors, and fit up the rooms. I send you enclosed a copy of our present Constitutions but we expect a charter from our Proprietaries this summer, when they may probably receive considerable alterations.

With what gratification must he have written to Mr Eliot on 12 September following "Our Academy flourishes beyond expectation. We have now above one hundred scholars, and the number is daily increasing."

This large building, originally designed for one large audience room, or "great and lofty hall" as Franklin describes it, with two rows of windows as we see in many of our older churches, was divided into two stories, and rearranged substantially as we of our generation knew it before its complete destruction in 1844. The well known cuts of it in local histories afford a correct exterior view. The entrance opened into a large hall, on either side large class rooms, that to the north being occupied by the Charity School. The Western half of the first floor was occupied by the large school room, about ninety by thirty-five feet, in the centre of which was a platform whereon all the teachers from the unhappy Beveridge to the robust Crawford wielded their authority, from which however the latter would often descend to try his rattan on some heedless pupil who perchance had little thought then of commemorating the worthy Dominie in these pages. The hall here turned to the South between the large room and the front class