Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB

positions who gave true service and are gratefully remembered.

Looking back upon the Seminary at this period, there are but two adverse criticisms that could be made, i. e., the buildings and their equipment were inadequate to the growing demands of the public, and the rules of the school were in some directions too chafing for the expanding and selfdirecting girl of the approaching twentieth century. But the work was broad and delightful, the social life charming and intimate, and the guidance of Miss Stanton so based on integrity and tempered by graciousness and refinement, that I felt too many could not be brought under the Wheaton influences of that time.

As we have seen that back of the eminent corps of teachers for which Wheaton has so long been noted, there stood a principal who was responsible for their selection and for the quality of their work, so back of teachers and principal was the board of trustees, and, most important of all, Mrs. Wheaton, who was, as it were, the cornerstone of the institution.

Among the trustees I must mention the name of that benignant Christian gentleman, Dr. Plumb, whose long term of service has been a constant blessing to Wheaton Seminary.

Mrs. Wheaton, in her simple and dignified

dwelling opposite the Seminary, for seventy years worked out plans for the welfare of the school, gave it her love, her intellect, her fortune. In my period she was not personally known to the pupils till they became seniors and passed on into the Alumnæ. Years later I realized that with full power to help or hinder, in the ultimate analysis, Mrs. Wheaton had always been the force that advanced the school. She it was who guided and upheld the able lieutenants in the field. In final results, the Seminary was what Mrs. Wheaton willed it to be.

For many years she was in closest contact with the beloved institution, hearing daily from the principal and head assistant every detail of life and work at the Seminary. So close was Mrs. Wheaton's union with these beloved instruments of her bounty that she could not bear the long separation entailed by the summer vacation, but made Miss Stanton and Miss Pike her guests during hot weather, season after season, at the Isles of Shoals, where she spent her days planning for and brooding over the future of the Seminary.

Few patrons have lived to see such full fruitage from the seed they planted as did Mrs. Wheaton. The alumnæ, as Mrs. Julia Ward Howe has remarked, are “notable for their solidarity." Many of them have returned to the Seminary as teachers,

and made high records in educational work there and elsewhere.

[NOTE BY THE EDITOR. Miss Osgood's paper here included a list of some of the leading alumna who have distinguished themselves in various ways. But, as any such list must necessarily be very incomplete, it has been thought best to omit it, though it is fully recognized that the final value of the school and the real result of the work to which Mrs. Wheaton gave so much of her life, must consist in the character and usefulness of the women who were educated at the Seminary. The record is a fine one, and not less so for the undistinguished women who have put their best energies into the making of beautiful homes than for those whose names are known to the public.]

I have spoken briefly of the noble patroness, of the able principals and teachers, and of the unique methods of teaching. The main points I want to make are these: that Wheaton has stood for more than half a century for the highest educational ideals; that she has led her students to original sources in nature, and to first-hand authorities in history and literature; that she has trained her children to abandon sentimentalism and inherited prejudice, and to seek deep and just foundations for their beliefs; that she has fostered independence of thought; that development of character has been regarded as inseparable from proper development of intellect; that the instruction which led to these results was given by a band of women of rare ability and nobility, whose methods were in advance of the period; that they took the ordinary

girl and so wisely and lovingly directed her that she was no longer ordinary or commonplace, but had control of her own powers, had rich sources of pleasure and usefulness at her command, and knew where to look for further help and development. It is not too much to say that Wheaton women are very earnest in their lives, and that they centre in the community rather than in themselves. Finally it appears that Wheaton was a school of life on a broad and natural scale, that it was so because Mrs. Wheaton was the informing power that sustained and directed it, and to her I again, and more publicly than has before been possible, give my profound salutation of love and gratitude for the gifts I received through her from Wheaton Seminary.

CHAPTER X

TOWN AFFAIRS

THE interest that Mrs. Wheaton always showed in the town of Norton is brought out clearly in the two following papers written for the Wheaton Memorial Meeting in 1906.

PAPER OF MRS. DAVID A. LINCOLN (MARY J. BAILEY), Class OF 1864

I was quite young when I knew Mrs. Wheaton, and have met her but few times in the nearly forty years since I left Norton. At first thought it would appear that her life had had no direct influence on mine. But I can see now that but for her I might never have been a pupil at Wheaton Semi

nary.

[ocr errors]

Soon after the death of my father,1 Dr. Blodgett a dear friend of ours supplied the pulpit at Norton, and asked Mr. Wheaton if he knew of any opportunity there for a widow with three young children to support and educate. Mrs. Wheaton reminded her husband of his desire to find some capable woman to take charge of his 1 Mr. Bailey was a minister.

« AnteriorContinua »