Page:History of the University of Pennsylvania - Montgomery (1900).djvu/128

124 room, and then to the West, opening out into the play ground, about one hundred feet by fifty, where many a happy half hour was spent during recess, and where Alexander Graydon, the new pupil, perhaps earned his first laurels in the art of self defense. We moderns when relaxing thus in the midst of school hours, had little thought of the worthy and venerable associations which clustered around the building; nor were John Beveridge's pupils a century before us any more mindful of these, when on a concerted signal a few hiding in the play ground closed the heavy wooden shutters to darken the room on his entrance, affording to the majority remaining within the fun of raising a Bedlam, from which the unlucky professor could only find refuge under a school form and escape from their missiles of books and rulers. In this side hall arose a heavy stair case with a solid balustrade which had stood the racket of hundreds of lads of all sizes and weights, and which on a turn opened into a large upper hall covering the width of the building and about ninety feet of its length. Across the south end, over the stairway, was a gallery, and the rostrum was against the north wall. Here were held the Commencements and all the public exercises, and on Sundays Divine service by Whitefield when he was in the city, by Dr Tennent with his new congregation, and by others who could subscribe the Creed recited in the deed of conveyance. Here we may picture Mr. Smith's first display of his pupils' oratorical accomplishments in the Christmas holidays of 1756 when they performed the Masque of Alfred, which they repeated the following spring before sundry of the colonial Governors then visiting Philadelphia. A space of perhaps eighty feet or more remained between the building and Fourth Street, the street being shut off by a high wall, in which was a modest gate. This front campus was devoted solely to the solemn entrance or the joyful exit of the pupils, and no play or pranks were here permitted. And even in our day there sat just outside of the gate the descendant of the old dame of Gabriel Thomas' time, vending "on any day in the week, tarts, pies, cakes, &c" which certainly were toothsome if not wholesome.