Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 7.djvu/155

 PROF. LUCIAN HUNT, A. M.

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��sixteen. In after years he often men- tioned the peculiar sensations of shame he experienced, when on a]-)proaching the school-house the first morning, he, a mere boy of slight stature, heard the startling exclamation from the scholars, some of them young men and women, " The Mas/er is coming." The honor seemed too great. He felt unworthy of so grand a title. And never before or since has such a sense of profound meekness possessed him, as when he entered that door and encountered the little sea of faces, upturned to his and silent as the grave. Doubtless other young pedagogues have had a similar experience on first assuming the duties of their office.

He taught the school a second win- ter, when he had an application to take charge of the centre district of the same town, then and for many years previous considered especially difficult. Though warned against the attempt, he nevertheless accepted the invitation, and taught that school three winters in succession with an urgent invitation to continue the fourth. The influence of those three winters on that humble school was by no means small in moulding its sixty members into the teachers, matrons, professional men and substantial farmers they afterward became, and whose reputation in many cases was not confined to their own town or state.

Mr. Hunt next taught at Natick, Mass., three winters, and at Kingston, one.

During all this time he was ardently prosecuting his studies. He had read Latin — his favorite study — far beyond the college course ; a suitable amount of Greek ; many volumes of French and German ; besides most of the English branches required by the col- lege curriculum.

He attained to this mostly by his own private efforts, without pecuniary assistance from any quarter, paying his way as he went along, for he always had a great horror of debt, unless he could readily and surely see the means to cancel it, and to the strict observ^-

��ance of this rule he attributes much of his success financially. His sympathy has ever been small for those students with energies so feeble that, instead of walking firmly and independently through their educational course on their own personal responsibility, with- out recourse to crutches, feel obliged to solicit the charity of some benevo- lent society or individual, or to discount the future by debt which may weigh upon them the remainder of their lives. When the funds from his winter's teaching gave out, he went to Boston in the summer and earned enough to float him over the rest of the year, so that when he was ready for business, he was at par with the world, with his learning for capital and no debts to harass or interest to eat up his earnings. This road to an education is longer, indeed, as it proved to be in his case, but it was sure and safe. He received his degree from the Wesleyan Univer- sity, Middletown, Conn., in 1863.

And now had come the time when that all-important question to young men of even a slight degree of energy or ambition must be decided, viz., the choice of a life profession. He in- clined to the law, but feared it might estrange him too much from literary pursuits. While in this state of doubt he was invited to take charge of the Marlow, N. H., Academy. This school had become much reduced ; in fact, it was now almost without life. The prospect was discouraging, and Mr. Hunt, with no expectation of any par- ticular success beyond placing a very few hard earned dollars in his exhausted purse, entered upon his first academi- cal work. At the start his pupils hardly amounted to twenty. The school, however, increased rapidly and steadily, till, at the close of the second year, it numbered above 140 members, mostly adults, as a large class of smaller schol- ars was necessarily refused admittance from the want of accommodations. These, if admitted, would have raised the total to nearly 200. The third year was also one of continued prosperity. Such and so rapid a revival of a run-

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