Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 6.djvu/369

 IN THE FOOTPRINTS OF THE PIONEERS.

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��admirably. The vices of our later civilization are sternly and severely prohibited, but those innocent accom- paniments that, unfortunately, attend them, as for example billiards, ginger beer, and cigarettes, are unnoticed.

The faculty has not lowered the school one whit by adopting a broad- guage code of rules and regulations. When there are no restrictions on doing certain things, the impulse to do them is speedily removed. This is in strong contrast to a majority of acade- mies, whose commands to the students are as long as the code of the two nations of antiquity, and serve about as useful a purpose.

Mr. Cunningham has gone into bio- graphical sketches of the alumni to a large extent, and it is by these that the reader has the best opportunity of judging for himself why Phillips Exe- ter academy has attained so much re- nown.

Beginning with Daniel Webster and ending with Robert Lincoln, with such men as Everett, Cass, Butler, Smith, Bancroft, Hale, and Sparks, interven-

��ing, why should not the famous old school hold her head high among the classic halls of the English-speaking nations?

In conclusion, this admirable work gives a history of the societies, the school paper, the course of study, in fact, every subject connected with the academy, is given to the public, even to the article of incorporation which in itself furnishes an interesting view of the purposes and sentiments of the founder concerning education and re- ligion.

The book contains several illustra- tions of the academy, the town, and also pictures of the eminent teachers whose labors have made the academy a lasting name in the history of educa- tion.

This unpretending sketch of the old academy, published in this, its centen- nial vear, is welcomed not alone to the graduates but to hundreds of others whose alma mater is not so favored as the venerable institution on the banks of the winding Swamscot.

��IN THE FOOTPRINTS OF THE PIONEERS.

��BY LEVI W. DODGE.

��One of the most pleasing parts of the historian's duty is to record the names and services of those who have acted a leading part in the events which make up the annals of any time or community. In fact, history is but the record of the lives, character and actions of leading men, for most of the stirring events, popular move- ments, and life's great changes, are originated and guided by the few.

Apparently trivial causes often pro- duce lasting and important effects. A much quoted writer has said : " The sources of the noblest rivers are *:o be sought in barren mountains or in wild and unknown tracts rarely visited."

Every humble and unpretentious hamlet has its passing and unrecorded

��events, trifling and unnoticed in their origin, and yet it may be great and im- portant in their influence, or in the making up of the great historic whole.

It is a pleasing pastime, this con- necting the events of the past with the records of the present, tracing the foot- steps of our ancestors, tracking the course of the mountain stream to its mysterious fountain.

The reader of these disconnected fragments, if, perchance, they find one, need not be told they are selec- tions from unpublished records and memories, and the writer thereof will be content if they interest the few of those for whom they were written.

The village of Whitefield is mostly located on lots two and three in the

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