DORMITORY life does not come into the early story of Abbot Academy, for the girls were at first taken care of by neighboring families in what were called in the catalogue "Seminary boarding houses", approved by the principal, at a cost of $1.75 to $2.50 a week, varying according to the accommodations furnished and the distance from the school. This sum included washing. Some of these homes afforded "privileges scarcely less than those of the school itself," according to a reminiscent letter from one of the pupils. In several of them boarded also Theological Seminary and Phillips Academy students. The brick house opposite the Academy on School Street (now called the Morton House) was one of the homes thus opened. Another was further down toward the South Church ---later " the Rev. Charles Smith house" (now the Seldens' home).

Even at this time the question of housing pupils was in the minds of the Trustees, especially as the number of girls from out of town was increasing. Five years after the founding, 1834, they worked out a plan which was to solve the whole problem. It was printed in circular form in answer to Miss Mary Lyon's general appeal for consideration of her project to secure education for young women of limited means. She had spoken of buildings for school purposes and for living quarters to be provided, together with furniture, by voluntary contributions and "placed free from incumbrance in the hands of trustees." In that case there need be no charge for rooms. The housework of the family would be done by the students, and the board and tuition would be placed at cost.

The response of the Abbot trustees to this plea was, in effect, that they would give up "free of charge, the spacious and splendid edifice" already built, and would change the methods of the flourishing school already established to suit requirements. With a board of wise and experienced trustees all at hand, nothing remained but to get the "buildings for commons and family arrangements, allowing one hundred rooms for dormitories and chambers for study," that is, one room common to two students and a bedroom for each. They estimated that this plan could be carried out for $10,000, one hundred dollars for a room, and assumed that ladies would quickly come forward, each with a hundred dollar subscription that would assure a room in perpetuity without cost to some aspiring student.

This seemingly simple proposition was not accepted by Miss Lyon's advisers and the matter was dropped. There is no doubt that the general idea was kept in mind, however, for when a few years later the venturesome Mr. Stone, then principal, rented the house next below the school and opened it as an experimental "commons" for girls, the Trustees showed their approval by soon adopting it and supplying furniture by degrees in default of the voluntary gifts dreamed of. The girls shared the housework, and the cost of food for each pupil did not exceed $1.50 a week and was sometimes even less! Full details of this undertaking are saved to be told later.

After a few years, Mr. Farwell bought the house and took the pupils into his family to board. On the upper side of the Academy was another house (afterwards South Hall) where girls lived with successive families not connected with the school.

On Mr. Farwell's resignation, late in 1852, the Trustees found the matter of housing presented a serious difficulty. Plans for a public high school in Andover were going forward and they realized what that would mean in the loss of Andover patronage. Greater efforts must be made to attract students from afar.

Peter Smith Byers, who was asked to be principal, reconsidered after his acceptance had been announced in the press in the spring of 1853, and decided not to take the risk of failure to secure enough pupils since there was no school home for them.

The Andover Advertiser, a little four-page sheet, which began its existence in 1853, just in time to present interesting contemporary sidelights on this critical period, prints in three successive August issues an advertisement of Abbot Female Academy. It states that Miss Nancy J. Hasseltine who is "extensively and favorably known", has been appointed principal, and that the next term will begin August 31 and continue twelve weeks. It is said that one condition in Miss Hasseltine's agreement with the Trustees was that different living arrangements should be made. She had had experience as teacher at Bradford Academy, where, though under different conditions, a dormitory had been found imperative twenty-five years earlier.

Various attempts were made by the Trustees to secure a house without the responsibility and expense of building. They tried to rent Mr. Farwell's house next below the school, which later became Davis Hall, also "the Rev. Charles Smith house", and the house on Main Street now numbered 111 where, long before, the first meeting of citizens was held to discuss "the establishment of a Female High School". Meeting with no success they were obliged to face squarely the question of raising what seemed a large sum of money.

In the Advertiser of December 31, 1853, an article headed "A Good Project" informs the world that "the friends of the Abbot Female Seminary are making an effort to raise $8000 for building a commodious and convenient boarding house in connection with that institution", described already, and speaks of the "vigorous manner in which the Trustees have taken hold of the matter and the great importance of the enterprise to the people of the vicinity". The emphasis placed on the reduction of expenses for students shows that it was meant to be as nearly as possible like the early plan of giving the rooms without cost.

A yellowed paper in the handwriting of Rev. Samuel Jackson, part of which has been quoted earlier, is another original source of information. This is evidently the rough draft of a speech made in 1854, reviewing the history of the building enterprise. In this he says out of his own experience that the Trustees have from the beginning felt the desirability of a boarding house, but have seen no way to secure it. Once, indeed, one of their number was selected to solicit money but "the whole result was that a lady offered, if a house was built, to furnish one room". It was then that the generous Smith brothers came to the rescue with funds and finally the big project was undertaken. The members of the building committee were Peter Smith, Nathaniel Swift and Edward Buck. Mr. Buck's fame in Abbot annals rests not on the abilities for which he was doubtless elected to the Board, but on his genial comradeship with the girls. In later years he would come out from his business in Boston in mid-afternoon and take a drive through the country-side. If he knew some girls by name he would come to Smith Hall and ask for them, otherwise he would fill his carriage with any he met on the road and take them, perhaps, to the West Parish for laurel. His quizzical merry talk and his interest in birds and woodsy things are still remembered. Sometimes he would take girls home to be welcomed to tea by his stately but hospitable wife. "The Journal of an Abbot Girl", by Harriet Chapell, 1876, contains a naïve drawing of Mr. Buck and his equipage. A Phillips alumnus of the class of 1863 is quoted as saying, "The Squire had an old horse, known in my time as 'Squire Buck's charger'."

The site of the new building was not under discussion. The only land available was in the rear of the Academy, as it then stood facing School Street. Andover contractors, Clement and Abbott, undertook the job under an architect, who, it must be conceded, had not much of a chance to use his professional skill with the financial conditions imposed. George L. Abbott, highly respected member of the building firm, who lived to fill many other contracts of a public nature, sent three of his daughters to the Academy, the oldest of whom marched at the head of the Centennial alumnae parade some seventy years later. The Hall was put up in short order in eight months at the outside, for the contract was taken in April, and the work finished in time for the beginning of the winter term, the second week in December.

Certainly there could have been no dissenting voice when the proposal was made in 1859 to name the new dormitory "Smith Hall ". It should be put on record that John Smith was asked to be a Trustee but declined.

Though the big house was getting done, there was certainly not enough money for furnishings. And now comes in the story of the courageous action of Andover women, partially told in the account of Harriet Beecher Stowe's connection with the town. Recent discoveries in the bound volume of little old newspapers of that year will perhaps give the reader a new sense of reality in these far-off events and justify further expansion of the narrative. Naturally enough, the first impulse toward succor came from those nearest to the prime movers. Mrs. Samuel Jackson saw no way open but consulted the person to whom all Andover had come to look for original ideas --- the resourceful and indefatigable Mrs. Stowe. She had her solution ready in a flash---" a festival."

The next scene is the conference held in the schoolroom of the old Academy building. The exact procedure, doubtless well planned in advance, is at hand as written by the secretary for the Advertiser, and is here quoted in full from the issue of September 23, 1854.

"A meeting of a number of the ladies of Andover was held at the Abbot Female Seminary on Tuesday, September 19th, for the purpose of taking measures for furnishing the new Boarding House. Said meeting being called to order by Mrs. C. T. Jackson. Mrs. W. B. Brown was chosen President and Mrs. C. D. Pratt, Secretary. Prayer was then offered by the President; after which Miss A. Hazeltine of Bradford [retiring principal of Bradford Academy] was introduced and made an address suggesting ideas to the ladies from her own experience. She was followed by Mrs. Stowe in remarks timely and appropriate.

"A vote was then taken to invite ladies from different parts of the town to act in concert with the ladies of the Trustees, as a Committee, to manage the entire business of collecting funds and furnishing the house."

It was also voted that this Committee be empowered to invite such ladies to assist them in the different departments of this work as they may deem expedient.

"The following ladies were then proposed and unanimously chosen: South Parish --- Mrs. Warren Richardson, Mrs. Nathan B. Abbott. North Parish --- Mrs. George Davis, Miss Sarah Kittredge. West Parish --- Mrs. C. W. Pierce, Mrs. Hiram French. In the Episcopal Society --- Mrs. Samuel Gray. Chapel Society --- Mrs. H. B. Stowe. Ballard Vale --- Mrs. Green.

"The above committee met on Thursday at 3 o'clock P.M. and voted (with other items of business) to make arrangements for a Tea Party; the time and place to be specified in due season in the Advertiser. C. D. Pratt, Secretary."

The officers were wives of Trustees and the others asked to serve on the committee were representative women of the town. Even now one can see the reasons for selection in most cases. At least three of them were alumnae.

An old letter of reminiscence contributes the fact that "some 35" were present at the first meeting. An item about the second gathering shows that Mrs. Stowe had not waited for discussions before beginning action. "Mrs. Stowe's carpets and curtains to sew." Various sources state that the furnishings of the parlors were her gift, amounting to about one hundred and fifty dollars.

Just ten days after the first meeting for consultation, the great event took place, having apparently been rushed through earlier than at first planned. Curiosity leads one to wonder why. Perhaps the engagements of the star performers had to be allowed for! Perhaps it was feared that early frosts would despoil the gardens of the flowers for decoration. At any rate, the affair came off on Friday evening, September 29. The sole reference to it in the Advertiser, issued on Saturday, was an isolated item, somewhat ambiguous and round-about in wording as if hastily prepared when somebody realized that a notice had been promised for this issue.

"Owing to unforeseen circumstances, it was thought desirable that the Tea Party, referred to in the last Advertiser, should occur before there would be time to announce it in the present number, as was intended."

Before the next Saturday there had been time to prepare a detailed account of the "levee" from which quotations will be made.

In the meantime, Mrs. Stowe was making another special contribution, this time in the way of publicity. Just two weeks later (October 21), there was a reprint in the Advertiser of a signed letter to the New York Independent about Andover and the schools, in general, including an animated description of the great event. After speaking of the need for equipping the new building, she writes:

"Last week the different parishes united in giving a grand tea-party in the seminary building to raise the needful for this object. All the different religious societies united freely and with the utmost cordiality and such an entertainment was the result as was never before seen in old Andover. In a trice the building was emptied of desks and benches, adorned with wreaths and garlands of mingled evergreens and autumn leaves. Tables were spread which glittered with the contributed silver and cut glass of our united china closets and were gay with flowers from every garden. Fruits, ice creams, oysters, cake, and all the good things of this life were sent in, in profusion. The trees in the yard were lighted with lanterns, hung by Phillips Academy boys, the porches were adorned with evergreens, and from the North and South and West parishes and from Frye Village [later called Shawsheen], Bradford, Haverhill and Lawrence, companies came flocking, looking their very best and determined to do the agreeable to each other and eat ice-cream and oysters for the good of the object. There were songs by the Lawrence Glee Club; there were sentiments and speeches and a poem that made a deal of sport.

"People who have thought of Andover only as a long street of houses with closed doors and window-blinds, inhabited by people with grave faces, would have wondered to find themselves in such a fairy palace as the academy seemed for that one night. And as the result of all this, a handsome sum was realized toward the object. More than that it is to be hoped that Andover, once waked up to the exhilaration and beauty of such social efforts for a good object will not go to sleep again; a new life is breathing in us and we shall go on from strength to strength."

Here Mrs. Stowe is extolling what in current parlance would be called "community spirit." Various incidents in her Andover life show that she loved to see people play as well as work together. One can hardly estimate the influence in the town of this cooperative effort and especially of the friendly part taken by the modest woman who had so recently been fêted by English nobility.

CAMPUS 1865-1889
SOUTH HALL	SMITH HALL	ACADEMY	DAVIS HALL
CAMPUS 1890-1903
ABBOT HALL	SMITH HALL	DRAPER HALL	DAVIS HALL
THE CAMPUS IN 1959
MERRILL MEMORIAL GATEWAY

Susan Jackson, 1852, at that time a young Abbot teacher, says, in writing of the celebration for Miss McKeen's History, that the tables spread in the large south room were free to all, that is, presumably, to those who had paid the price of admission, which was fifty cents. One of the smaller rooms, not now existent, was used for a tea-room and one for a coffee-room. Was it here, or in a more conspicuous place, at the head of the table, perhaps, that Mrs. Stowe presided, pouring coffee as pictured in the effective tableau in "The Years Between"? [This was in the Centennial pageant.] Frequent mention is made of the oysters and ice cream which were for sale in the small rooms then in the rear of the hall above. Was ice cream then common at such times?

Some other facts are added in the phrasing of the Advertiser account. "The doors were open at an early hour; but in a short time the spacious hall [meaning the schoolroom?] of the Academy and several other apartments were completely filled. . . After spending nearly two hours in partaking of the good things with which the tables groaned the company repaired to the large hall above where they enjoyed an intellectual feast."

No wonder the tables uttered a remonstrance at the weight of the eatables, for with all the crowds so much was left that as the story goes on to tell, quaintly: "On Saturday afternoon the children assembled in the same place to furnish such assistance as they were able in the disposition of the abundance of good things still remaining unconsumed."

There was, moreover, no scantiness in the program provided, for speeches were made, says the Advertiser, by Professor Stowe, Rev. Dr. Jackson (a pencilled draft of whose speech has been referred to), J. L. Taylor (Trustee, father of Professor John P. Taylor) and Samuel Lawrence, Esq. (one of the founders of the city of Lawrence) of this town; Ex-Mayor Seaver of Boston; and Rev. Mr. McCollom and Preceptor Greenleaf (president of the board of Trustees of Bradford Academy) of Bradford. If the speakers came in the order named, no wonder that Mr. Greenleaf felt it necessary to encourage the audience by saying that he could tell all he knew on any subject in two minutes. Although he continued in humorous vein, he seems to indicate restlessness among his hearers in his reference to the "dialogues going on all over the room" which he attributed to the "young persons present". "The people dispersed at a late hour and will long remember with pleasure the interesting occasion."

Among the toasts were two which were appreciative of the help of the friends from "the stone cabin". One was: "The Stowes --- good at stowing our heads with ideas and our community with good words." The second alludes to a recent book by Mrs. Stowe. "The presiding genius of this occasion --- furnishing Sunny Memories not only of Foreign Lands, but around her own home and in the halls of this Seminary."

The poem "that made a deal of sport" contained many puns on prominent names and other local hits that may well have occasioned merriment. It was read by Professor Stowe, who did not divulge the name of the writer, but it was later known to be Samuel Gray, "Esq.", who was elected the next year, though possibly not altogether on that account, a Trustee of the school. A few selected stanzas follow:

"Thus learning, in this ancient town,
Did early take its stand;
The fruits now everywhere abound,
Throughout this wide-spread land.

"But while the males were thus cared for
The females were forgotten;
The boys of yore got all the lore;
The girls spun all the cotton.

"But later days have furnished friends
Of female education;
And it is found that most girls' heads
Improve by cultivation.

"This Seminary, where we meet
To spend this festive hour,
Is evidence of woman's love
For knowledge which is power.

"So long as Sarah's name is found
Upon the sacred pages;
So let the Donor's name go down,
To all succeeding ages.

"The friends of education here
Have reared a house quite neat;
Where girls who seek their minds to store
May find a still retreat.

"And there it stands, with fair outside,
But looking quite demure;
For like an empty headed girl,
'Tis void of furniture.

"But when the ladies take the field,
An object to obtain,
All opposition soon must yield,
For they their point will gain.

"And when our plans are carried out,
We think, in the solution,
The students of this school will vie
With any institution.

"Our daughters, nurtured in this school,
Like polished shafts will shine;
Long may they live to love and bless
Miss Nancy Hasseltine."

Whether it is simply indicative of the general retiring attitude of women at that time or due to some other reason, the curious fact remains that except for this pleasant little allusion to the first woman principal, Miss Hasseltine, there is absolutely no direct mention of her in any of the deliberations or the after accounts. There are references to the prosperity of the school and to the popularity of the "corps of Teachers" and a sign of Miss Hasseltine's influence in the presence at the first women's meeting of her aunt, the former principal of Bradford, but nothing more. Miss Mary Blair, then associate principal, in a letter written long afterward, was doubtless speaking of her when she says "Many a pleasant evening we spent at Mr. Smith's house, consulting about the plans for the new building."

Miss Hasseltine was a person of presence, a girl of the fifties has assured us. Remembered with especial pride was her dignified carriage as she stepped upon the platform to lead the morning prayer service. Written in pencil beside her name in an old catalogue is the one word "grand." It would be natural that Miss Hasseltine should be given a place of honor among the speakers and honorable guests. She would have had the companionship of one woman, at any rate, Mrs. Stowe, who would have thought little enough of the publicity of it.

No mention, either, is made of the pupils of the school. There was, perhaps, no way in which they could act as a unit. One has no doubt, however, after looking through the roll of students for that year, that there were at least plenty of "day scholars" running hither and yon on that memorable evening, helping to serve the "bounteous repast" or in the tea and coffee rooms or perchance selling "bouquets ", made perhaps from the "cut flowers from the conservatories of Mr. Peter Smith and Mr. Samuel Lawrence". Among these surely were Eliza, Harriet and Georgie Stowe, Helen Smith (daughter of John), the four Dove girls, Mary and Jennie Aiken, Lizzie Swift, Alice Buck and Amy and Charlotte Morton.

Others came probably from the Farwell house in which Mrs. Cheever had agreed to take care of students until the new dormitory was opened. There were only eighty-six scholars listed for the fall term. These dwindled to sixty-nine in the winter but increased to one hundred and twenty the next spring. There were, however, during the year one hundred and sixty-nine different pupils. The variations show how common it was for girls to attend school intermittently. It is hard to see how the teachers managed to hold the interest, though to be sure there was not so much competition for it then as now.

The general feeling in regard to the Academy proposition is expressed with evident sincerity though somewhat stiltedly by the press correspondent. He says: "It is thought that no cause has ever been presented to our people which has met with more favor or obtained such generous and hearty co-operation as the one under consideration and the presence of a large number of ladies and gentlemen from Boston and other places gave tangible evidence that this interest is not circumscribed within our own narrow limits. Almost everyone has manifested a desire to contribute at least a moiety, and many hands and purses have made comparatively easy work."

Some notable observances have been held in the years of the School's history but it may be questioned whether any of them were entered into by the people of the place more wholeheartedly than this or produced a more profound impression.

When the shouting was over and the dishes cleared away, the work of the valiant women was by no means ended. "Then", says Miss Jackson, "came the equally great task of fitting up the rooms. The ladies resolved themselves into a sewing society, meeting statedly, and carrying home work as their affairs would permit. Plain as every article was, we looked with affectionate pride upon our labors."

In a long closely-written letter of recollections to Susan Jackson, Mary Faulkner, 1836, an old scholar living in Frye Village, some bits evidently taken from her diary give an intimate touch. "October 27th. Lydia and I met at the Female Academy to sew." "Nov. 16th. Sea. Soc. [Seaman's Friend Society of the West Parish church?] invited to sew for our Academy. 14 present. Not able to attend." She says also, "At one of the meetings at the Academy I marked House-linen for the Hall. Others were tacking comfortables, and your little sister Mary, with other children, threaded needles." Mary Jackson (Mrs. Warren) graduated in 1867.

This homely long-continued work seems vastly more worthy of praise and gratitude than the exciting business of getting up a big festival in a few days. Here was real self-denial.

The Advertiser was probably quite willing to print the report of the Treasurer of the Ladies Committee, March 10, 185, in order that all the townspeople might see how the money they contributed had been spent. The treasurer was "M. M. Brown", evidently the wife of Rev. William B. Brown, Trustee, pastor of the Free Church. She says that the ladies "have completed the arrangements in a style so substantial, yet so neat and tasteful that they trust it will commend itself to the approbation of the friends and patrons of this Institution."

A great effort was made to secure the greatest possible return for the money expended. The whole amount spent for furnishings was $1770.80, some four hundred dollars of which remained to be raised. The sums for some definite purposes are too significant to omit.

For each student's room was allowed $31.33 for "bed stead, mattresses, bureau with swing glass, sink, table, chairs, towel-rack and bookcase; window curtains and valances extra."

For the music room was spent $41 for carpet, chairs, table and lounge, and for the dining-room carpet, chairs and tables, $90.

Acknowledgment is made of the "gift of crockery for the whole establishment" at a cost of $170 from Mrs. John Dove, Mrs. Peter Smith and Miss Helen G. Smith.

The Committee thanks also "all donors from abroad and the merchants who made such a liberal discount on their goods."

After these lines were written the treasure-box yielded two more manuscripts of interest. One is a single small sheet of paper bearing at the top, in a fine hand, the words, "The undersigned Ladies of Andover agree to give", etc., concluding with "Mrs. H. B. Stowe will furnish two parlors." Whose writing could this be? Mrs. Jackson's? Was there any way of finding out? Ah! could it by any happy chance be Mrs. Stowe's? Eagerly the name was compared with the autograph under her portrait. It was, it was indeed the same! Underneath on the paper in faint pencilling were the names, in another hand, of the three ladies mentioned above, with a sum of money after each, and the words "or the crockery ware for the House." No other subscriptions follow. Perhaps the solicitor felt she had done her part by securing these gifts.

The other find is a letter from one who was in the school during this period. "I wonder", she writes in 1879, "if the pupils of today know how to appreciate the Boarding House. They certainly cannot own it, and have the tender, loving regard for all its rooms and walls that we felt who wished for it, and then hoped, and then, from our crowded quarters in Mr. Farwell's house, saw it rising and taking shape. The rooms that we chose before they were formed will always be ours. If we sometimes declared that they were so small that we must take the chairs into the hall to turn them around, it was only an affectionate joking which would not allow any one else to call them limited."

Some idea of the appearance of the parlors, which so many friendly hands had helped to make ready, is given in a letter of reminiscence. "Well do I remember when I was first ushered into Smith Hall parlor one day in September. A green and white carpet was upon the floor, the windows were shaded by drapery of green chintz, and the lounges were upholstered with the same; there were some cane-seated chairs and one small black hair-cloth rocker; in one corner was a little 'what-not', with a few old shells upon it for ornaments; in the front parlor hung a likeness of Mrs. Stowe, and in the back room a smaller picture of Prof. Stowe, both in white painted frames; these, with some plaster brackets, were the only ornamentation and furnishing of the reception-rooms."

Here the long story pauses. During the years to come, a long succession of girls was to pass in and out of the doors of that plain building. Something of that spontaneous, voluntary outgiving of time and effort and enthusiasm on the part of many, many individuals lingered, surely, and was wrought into the life of the school to beautify and enrich it.

Sources Consulted

History of Abbot Academy, Vol. I, McKeen.
Bradford, a New England Academy, 1802-1928, Pond.
Memorial of Peter Smith, 1881.
The Journal of An Abbot Academy Girl, 1874-1876, Newcomb, 1927.
General Catalogue of Abbot Academy, 1913.
File of Andover Advertiser, 1853-18.
File of annual catalogues, Abbot Academy.
File of Abbot Bulletin.
Collection of reminiscent letters and papers from the Semi-Cenntenial period.

THE interesting "experiment" of "Commons" earlier referred to was begun in 1839. It would probably not have been undertaken at an earlier period, as it followed the cooperative plan instituted with some opposition by Mary Lyon in the new Mount Holyoke Seminary. It is certain that the school authorities were familiar with Miss Lyon's theories, for as has been said they had sent a representative to ask her to carry out her proposed project in Andover, promising to change the character of their institution to meet her views.

It was the progressive principal, Timothy D. P. Stone, who installed the scheme. For the purpose he rented the house below the Academy [near the site of McKeen Hall] facing School Street, which later became Davis or French Hall. Here girls who wished to economize could share the work of the household, and supply whatever was necessary for personal use. Board was thus reduced to $1.25 a week and was guaranteed not to exceed $1.50. The enterprise began with a meagre stock of furnishings, and much ingenuity was required to make them suffice. These difficulties caused only pleasant excitement.

Irene Rowley Draper, in her serene old age, used often to tell tales of these times. She was herself "Directress" for one year,

"I came into the house six weeks after it was opened. It had begun to be quite civilized by that time. They had a hard time at first. Olive Noyes was a pupil at that time. We had to go to her for leave etc., the same place that I had afterwards, being given our board for that service.

"We chose names for the girls; we made each girl go out of the room while we talked over what we should call her. There was Cheerfulness --- that was Lizzie Noyes. She was a bright happy girl [also said to be the best cook]. She met her fate there, you know, for Nathan Abbott used to bring the milk from his farm for the house. One day we were invited down there to spend the day, and we were taken into their fine, new barn. There was an outlook on it, which was quite a new thing in those days. I had on a thin muslin dress, and in the pocket was a little gold dollar. I lost it that day, and some little time after she found it on the steps that led up into the barn. Wasn't that curious? For if it had dropped anywhere else it would have been lost in the hay.

"We used to wash our clothes and hang them upstairs in the barn. We would open the big swinging door for air. Of course we washed our clothes for we did all our work. We did the cooking in turns, each a week. There was no fire in the parlor except when we expected visitors, then we made a fire in the little stove. Olive Noyes was the head and afterwards Martha Vose. Other names were Peace, Perseverence, Hope and they called me Patience. There was one girl who was very precise, and we called her Precision or something like that. We didn't know her as well as we did the others, because she used to go home Friday nights."

A manuscript story of "Six Months in Commons, 1840-41" was presented to the School in 1940 by Mrs. Frank Crandall, a relative of "Benevolence". This document, numbered "3", was evidently a copy made either by or for Jane Patterson from the original prepared by "Mercy" (Ellen Cutler) and "Calmness" (Mary Gage), two of the older girls. Others of the group apparently had to make their own copies. When the alumnae biographical catalogue was being prepared, one of the Damon sisters wrote, "We used to have a long letter about 'Commons', but it was packed away in the attic and I don't know what became of it." The only copy now known to be in existence was made evidently by a younger girl, careless in her spelling! It is certain that Miss McKeen had at hand a copy, if not the original, in writing about "Commons" in her History of Abbot Academy, for she not only refers to a description by a "pioneer", but quotes the exact wording.

It should be said in advance that the story as here told covers only two terms and the primitive conditions without doubt were improved in the following years. The supervision, at first in the hands of an older student, was afterwards given over to a teacher, and later Mr. Farwell, the next principal, and his wife lived in the house and took students into their family.

It has been customary from the earliest ages of the world for the founders & executioners of any enterprise to hand down to posterity the story of their trials & success. The greater the trials endured the greater has been the glory of the result. The history which is now about to be related is not to be submitted to the gaze of the public or pass through a printers hand. We write it not that the world may be made acquainted with what we have done, but for our own gratification. It may be a childish whim, but we wish to perpetuate the origin of an establishment calculated to benefit successive generations. The enterprise cannot host of illustrious founders, whose names will be registered in the book of fame; but still in our humble opinion it is of some importance having been attended with many trials & resulted in success.

"In the summer of 1840 the principal of the Abbott female seminary, conceived a plan to facilitate the education of young ladies by reducing the price of board. By this plan the school would be enlarged & many young ladies might enjoy the privilege of an education, which otherwise might be deprived of them. He applied to the trustees of the institution soliciting funds for the establishment of a boarding house. They considering his project a visionary one declined patronizing it Unwilling to relinquish his design after consulting with his friends, he succeeded in securing from the Granite & Bay states a sufficient No. to engage in this novel & adventerous enterprise.

"Melody & Cheerfulness were the pioneers in this undertaking. It was the 26 of Oct, a bleak cold day when they with a few articles of furniture left their quiet homes to take up their abode in the literary town of Andover Insted of being received into a well furnished house & welcomed to a cheerful fireside, they found it destitute of every comfort, but it afforded them a shelter. The whole stock of furniture consisted of a huge desk, which had served its time through at least one generation a copper kettle which served all purposes of pail & pan, & a brown mug. A fire was soon kindled & a substitute for andirons large stones were used, for tongs two sticks for shovel a slab a piece of paper for a brush &c A neighbor kindly lent a tea kettle, through not only heat but smoke would pass, two work stands which they brought from home served them for a table, one covered with a towel & the other with a waiter. In this style they partook of their first meal. Melody's father spent the night with them, Breakfeast was served up in the same style, that tea was the night before. Soon Temperance, Mercy, Music & Calmness arrived. When we arrived there was a little fire, in the oven. A man was engaged in setting up a stove & being in want of brick or a fire board rough stones were substituted the funnel of the stove was of farious sizes plastered together, & sent forth more smoke than heat, our whole stock of chairs consisted of four, we wither stood or set upon huge benches that had been procured for us.

"From the kitchen our attention was directed to the study room there stood in all its majesty, a large cooking stove which from its appearance one would suppose it had not only been subjected to the elements of fire but water from time immemorial. We then proceeded to set up our beds & install ourselves in our rooms The day wore away & some benches & chairs were brought from the Academy for our study room. At the close of that memorable day, things began to be a little more settled. The rusty stove was found inadequate to our wants & was therefore transferred to a more congenial situation & a comfortable airtight substituted. We were furnished with a table, & bench insted of chairs. Thus the day passed & had it not been for music on the piano, with which we were favoured by Melody we should have been ready to have returned home the next day.

"In the morning we made our appearance in school, much curiosity was manifested by other scholars, to know if we were fitted to become kindred spirits. While those of us who had been here before were greeted with smiles & kisses, others were treated with indifference & neglect. & our ears were constantly assailed with questions, & remarks on Commons. Soon we welcomed Sister Sympathy. Saturday came & with it all the various duties of washing, baking, &c, &c With our utensils which consisted of a smoky stove, leaky boiler, a rusty kettle, a pump from which water could be raised hardly fast enough to satisfy our thirst, one tub & pail, half a dozen of girles derived but little pleasure from the labors of Saturday. Surely we welcomed a day of rest (if such it might be called) for at church a seat was selected for us in the gallery, both uncomfortable & conspicuous, & so near the orgon the music could be felt as well as heard. Sabbath evening brought with it the recollections of home.

"Sister Affection soon arrived & entred upon the duties of Directress. During the week nothing very remarkable occured except smokey bread & half cooked pies sometimes formed part of our meal. Saturday brought with it the routine of duties, with the additional labor of bringing our water from the cellar, which we were obliged to draw from the well by means of a kettle attached to the end of a pole, with our jumping rope. Our circle was soon enlarged by the arrival of sister Prudence & Presicion. Another week wore heavily away & we gladly welcomed sister Benevolence & the many articles she brought with her. Time passed very slowly away & Thanksgiving arrived when some of the sisterhood were permitted to visit their homes rendered dearer dearer by absence while sisters, Benevolence & Mercy were left to wile away the time the best way they might. Between this & Christmas Sister Patience arrived. Our old stove proveing wholy inadequate to our wants a new Log Cabin was substituted.

"Christmas arrived & with it joys and sorrows, Some spent the day happily with their friends & others attended the Episcopal church. Things went on their wonted course until New Years eve. The occupations of that evening are perhaps wothy of notice We were not in the ball room surrounded with splendor & gaiety nor were we in the parlor beguilling the hours with social chat, but sweeter, far sweeter literally were our enjoyments. 'A molasses candy scrape' had been proposed & we entred heart or rather mouth & hand into it.

"From time to time till the end of the term our hearts were gladened by an accession of several articles furniture. First a table than a bread trough then a pair of shovels & tongs & even a pudding stick was hailed with delight. When the term closed Sisters Sympathy & Precision left us. & Sisters Peace & Firmness arrived to fill their places. The second term of study has nearly closed & we have lived in Andover, instead of staid, as we did last term. All being Whigs we welcomed the Hero of Tipecanoe on the 4 of March by the rining of bells all the bells the house afforded & 3 hearty cheers, We are now provided with comfortable furniture---Instead of benches we have chairs, our flatirons has increased from one to eight, tubs & pails are now plenty, the old pump exchanged for a good one, but the stone wall still remains a lasting monument of former days. Our water has been so bad for weeks that horses would turn from it in disgust. The hamering of carpenters & the soft notes of the piano have made strange discords sometimes. We have had occasional visits from Grandfather & Grandmother personified by two of our number. We have heard of emigrants to the west who have lived in this style but never in the literary & wealthy town of Andover did the like happen.

"We have now given as briefly as possible a sketch of our trials & enjoyments. The time has nearly come for us to bid adieu to these scientiffic hills, the school & sisterhood. While here friendship that cordial of the human breast has entwined the golden chord of love around our hearts, which will not soon be broaken, No never can we forget the happy days spent to gether, the meeting at the social board, the family alter the clustering round the piano & uniting our voices in the same sweet notes, last though not least the many happy hours spent in our quiet study room silently endeavoring to climb, science rugged hill. Affection has taught us to practice that love which worketh no ill to our neighbor Sympathy has striven to heal every wound to solve every care & has shared eaqually the joys & sorrows of us all Benevolence has shed a broad her benignient rays & all have felt her enlivening influence. Cheerfuilness Melody & Music, have combined to drive dull care away & add fresh plumes to the rings of time, Patience & Peace have taught us to obey the golden rule Prudence, Temperance and Firmness have taught us a lesson in their peculiar Characteristics. These combined have made our circle a happy one & when hill & valley intervene fond memory will love to linger around these scenes.

[Signature] MERCY AND CALMNESS IN BEHALF OF COMMONS

"Cheerfulness, E. L. Noyes, Windham; Melody, M. C. Clifford, Pelham; Temperance, M. A. Damon, Reading; Music, E. Hall, Pelham; Calmness, M. T. Gage, Pelham; Mercy, E. Cutler, Windham; Sympathy, S. Carter, Wilmington; Affection, O. L. Noyes, Windham; Prudence, P. Jaquith, Andover; Benevolence, J. D. Patterson, Londonderry; Patience, I. Rowley, Wrenthem; Firmness, L. Anderson, Windham; Peace, E. M. Merriam, Grafton.

We all agree to read this once a month
"if it is in the power of possibles"

How Abbot Academy came to have a home center has been described. Smith Hall was finally ready for occupancy in time for the beginning of the winter term, December 13, 1854. Miss Hasseltine, a "delightfully vigorous and breezy" person, must have started things off in a happy manner.

Her two sisters were also on the staff. Miss Rebecca taught Latin, and was "amiable, cheery and gentle, the mother for the little ones of the household, a bright attractive friend for the older ones. To her room the wilder pupils gravitated and were charmed back to loyalty." What startling deviations from the moral law constituted wildness is not divulged!

Besides this reference to the "little ones", an old letter from a pupil of this period says that the Principal "had one of the most care-requiring children in school for a room-mate." The instruction of young children, stressed a good deal in the earlier years of the Academy and then discontinued, had shortly before this time been restored. Charlotte Swift, in some charming reminiscences prepared for the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the Alumnae Association in 1921, recalls her own happy experiences as a little girl. She says, "I entered the Academy [in 1850] at the tender age of eleven years. About this time my father became a trustee of the school, and a primary department was opened which admitted the younger girls. The first teacher, Miss Susan Jackson, boarded in the family of Mr. Farwell, the Principal, who occupied the house later known as Davis Hall. The small Class Room, No. 3, was given up to our use, and here assembled several little girls like myself on a memorable morning. Miss Jackson was accustomed to come over from the house, and enter the building on the ground floor [then the basement] from which a flight of stairs led to the school room. At a given time there was a general stir among the girls who crowded to the door, and as she appeared we all greeted her with a good morning kiss."

There is no way of knowing how many of these very young girls were boarding pupils, but probably there were only a few. There were four sisters from San Francisco named Stowell, remembered by Miss Swift, one of whom was only ten years old. According to the catalogue they all stayed for five years.

Miss Ellen Hasseltine was "house superintendent." One of the girls wrote afterwards of her, "There was another marked genius who belonged to those days --- Miss Nellie Hasseltine, the queen of housekeepers. Her beautiful presence alone was a crown to the establishment. Her advent brought taste and 'style' and good living and I have understood that by her remarkable skill and economy the boarding department was made a financial success."

This reference to economy is interesting to note, because the Trustees had only a short time before taken over the financial responsibility of the school. From the beginning the Principal had been obliged to take his own risks, paying teachers' salaries and other expenses out of the sums received from pupils. Mr. Farwell, by taking girls into his own family to board, was able to promise a home to a certain number of scholars, and may possibly, even with the meager sums paid, have made a small profit. Upon his resignation in 1852 the Trustees found it impossible to find a successor who was willing, under the existing conditions, to take such a risk, without any accommodations for housing the students. The result was that the Board not only went seriously to work to provide a dormitory, but took over the financial risk, thereby, of course, ensuring the permanence of the enterprise.

It appears from Miss McKeen's History that in Miss Hasseltine's time much of the practical work of running the institution was still done by the Principal, "receiving all the monies for tuition and board, paying the house-bills and passing her surplus to the Treasurer for general expenses."

A good idea of the expenditures at Smith Hall at this time may be gained from the summary of "Expenses of the Boarding House" for the summer term of 1856, carefully prepared by the conscientious treasurer, Nathaniel Swift. He had come into office in 1852, which was probably the time of the change in policy. The report covers only about half a page of foolscap paper.

The amount received for board for the term was $1817. Each girl paid $2.50 a week! For the fourteen weeks this would therefore mean a household of about fifty. Of this total --- $1817 a little over $1000 was spent for groceries, meat and fish. "Four girls for housework" were paid $94.50 (or $1.68 a week) and "John (Irishman) $35." The account shows a surplus for the boarding department for that term of nearly $200!

In 1855, there came, as assistant matron, Miss Angelina Kimball, whose motherly face and ways made a link between succeeding generations of girls for a period of nearly forty-five years. She lives again in Miss Kelsey's appreciative story in the "Sketches".

To show how strongly the natural beauty of the surroundings of the new school home impressed at least one of the students, a description written years afterwards is quoted here. "That cupola! I will share its ownership with no human being. It belonged to myself and to the sunrise. There was no law against early rising then. Those were choice minutes for quiet retirement in the morning twilight up there away from the reminders of every day life. Then came clear, fresh hours for study while the sun was tipping Wachusett and 'the grand Monadnoc', and lifting the foamy line of mist from the Shawsheen valley, and rousing all the warblers of the grove close by. Sitting there with the broad surrounding of beauty, and no other brain thinking close to your own, lesson after lesson seemed clear and simple, and when there came faintly up the summons of bells, and the first notes of the patient pianos, and the stir of girl life, the thinking of the day had been completed and nothing was left but to go through the more mechanical processes while you 'kept study hours'." The independence of thought here indicated was characteristic of the writer, Elizabeth Emerson, even when she first entered Abbot as a child of twelve and in consequence she had been given unusual privileges. At the time when she thus sought isolation for concentrated work, she was nearly ready to graduate. Her class, 1856, was the second to receive diplomas for completing a course of study.

Even as early as 1856, the Andover Advertiser, giving a cross section of Andover thought of the time, inserts intimations of disturbing questions in the body politic. The Stowes were of course deeply interested in the slavery question, and Professor Stowe's name heads a committee mentioned in a paragraph on the "Kansas Movement in Andover". A little later a meeting is reported of Phillips Academy students "to express indignation at the recent cowardly assault on Charles Sumner."

By the time of the presidential election in the fall of 1860, there was unusual excitement, even in quiet Andover. Tuesday, November 6, was the deciding day and Lincoln was elected. The only known reference to this event in Abbot annals is in a letter written the next day by one of the girls to her family. By that time there was definite news of the Republican victory, for she says: "We are going to illuminate tonight. The Theological Seminary have purchased 1200 candles to illuminate." That is all! Such a tantalizing bit!

But now comes in the good old Andover newspaper to complete the story. The issue is of Saturday, November 10. "The most brilliant display ever witnessed in Andover and in fact almost the only attempt ever made at a general illumination took place on Wednesday evening, November 7." It was under the charge of the "Wide Awakes", a local military organization. The procession, led by six mounted police and the Andover Brass Band, included a cavalcade of about thirty-five horses and the "carriage belonging to the Mansion House [then an inn] filled with some of the guests of the House and brilliantly ornamented with lanterns and the horses decorated with flags." This imposing parade was greeted by "enthusiastic cheers from hundreds of people all along the route and by waving of handkerchiefs from the ladies who filled the windows and piazzas of many of the residences."

Passing from the center of town down Chestnut Street to Central, the procession advanced to the accompaniment of brilliant and elaborate fireworks, round through Abbot Street to School. The approach must have been very exciting to the Academy onlookers, for there must have been an excellent view from the front and the north end windows of Smith Hall. Moreover, at each house in the vicinity of the School Street corner "there was a display of fireworks, consisting of Roman candles, Bengal lights, rockets, etc." Also "a small cannon was discharged several times." As the company marched up School Street, "there was a continual series of brilliant displays from windows filled with lamps at Smith Hall (Abbot Female Seminary) and from the residences of Judge Morton [across the way], Rev. Mr. Turner [site of present Art Gallery], Rev. J. L. Taylor [Mr. Flagg's residence], and Edward Buck [on the opposite side of School Street, just above Morton Street]."

The procession then passed on to "Phillips Square" on the Hill, "which carried off the palm in the way of illuminations." In the windows of Bartlet and Phillips (now Foxcroft) Hall the lamps were so arranged as to form letters, one in each window. In one hall the words thus spelled were "Veritas vincit" and in the other "Lincoln and Hamlin."

And now the shadows of the great war period were gathering. There were "ominous predictions" and the girls gathered in Miss McKeen's room to talk about them. She was hardly established in her new position --- a young woman then to bear the responsibility of a crowd of girls in troublous times. "Spirited" meetings and formal flag raisings are reported in the little old newspaper. In the issue of May 18, 1861, a brief paragraph brings the school into public view. It is noted that Mr. Draper was responsible for publishing news in the Advertiser. His keen-eyed little wife, who was not then an old lady, would naturally have brought to his attention such important occurrences as the following: "We notice that the flag upon the Abbot Female Seminary, which was rent by the wind, has been raised again in its original beauty. Its brilliant coloring renders it conspicuous among the numerous flags in town and does credit to the good taste of the ladies."

How scanty, after all, are the records of the every-day life in those days, counted now as history. Of course the routine school work gave full occupation, and it was better so. The girls made comfort bags for the soldiers on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons, so someone recalls in the History. They doubtless did more than this, for they were surely not forgotten by the ladies of the different churches and later of the Soldiers Aid Society who were packing boxes and barrels to send to the "boys". The need for such help was probably not felt as a remote thing, for almost every girl must have had some direct touch with the war through brothers or cousins or friends. Home letters must have been eagerly watched for and often cried over, and the newspaper lists of wounded and missing may sometimes have been messengers of sad tidings. In the town, soldier boys were going off in squads and coming home one by one, wounded or on furlough.

The Phillips "Cadets", or "Guards ", in this Civil War period are said to have had daily drill on the "Square" or "Park", that is, the old Revolutionary training field which today surrounds the Memorial Tower erected in honor of the Phillips boys who fell in the Great War. Was there ever, perchance, a public drill when the girls from School Street, properly chaperoned, might have had the thrilling experience of watching these military manoeuvers?

Much firsthand material for this story of Smith Hall has come in reply to letters of inquiry sent to a few "old girls" of different periods. One writes: "I remember distinctly the morning when Mr. Downs came with the morning paper and announced the assassination of Pres. Lincoln. There was sobbing all through the room, but Miss McKeen led the morning devotions very helpfully." It is said that the girls wore crepe badges.

Other memories are in regard to a precious photograph that pictures the celebration at the end of the war. "Margie" Duncan Phillips, 1868, said at the time that she was one of the three girls standing on the cupola. This statement, however, was not written down at the time or thought much of until after her death. This was later confirmed by the only person, probably, in the world who would remember. Annie Bradley (Mrs. Winstead), of Franklin, Tenn., says that she and Abby Hamlin (Mrs. Anderson), 1866, were the two other girls. She adds the information that "the girls have on their 'gym' suits, because they wore them every morning and then dressed for midday dinner." She says also that the two ladies at the front door are, as would be guessed, Miss McKeen and Miss Phebe.

Another contributor writes: "I remember the day and its activities very well, but not in detail. It was as I remember quite impromptu --- Miss McKeen gave us the day and the girls did the celebrating as they pleased. Everyone was in good spirits. There was a picnic at Indian Ridge in the afternoon. One result of the day's celebration was injury to the roof, which caused quite a deluge in some of the rooms on the third floor the next time it rained."

To these fragmentary reminiscences it is possible now to add a contemporary account, which gives a livelier picture than any found in the sedate pages of Miss McKeen's History. The Advertiser says in part: "The news created the greatest excitement among the young folks in town. The Phillips Academy adjourned and the boys formed a procession headed by one of their number ringing a dinner bell, while the whole crowd cheered and shouted as only schoolboys let loose know how. All, however, within the bounds of youthful propriety. They proceeded to the houses of several gentlemen, who addressed them on the all absorbing theme, and finally called upon the ladies of the Female Academy. Here both schools were in the best possible humor, and seemed to enjoy themselves highly. The ladies sang patriotic songs and practiced their gymnastic exercises in their costumes upon the flat roof of ' Smith Hall'. In the evening the Phillips boys formed a torch-light procession, with appropriate transparencies and mottoes. After listening to addresses by Dr. Taylor [the Principal] and others, they again visited the Fem. Sems. One of the number addressed the ladies of the Academy and they replied by singing a new [popular] song to the tune of John Brown."

A delightfully intimate glimpse into the feelings of a schoolgirl in the period immediately following the close of the war is given by Harriet Abbott Clark, 1868, who writes:

"I have only two vivid memories of Smith Hall which stand out clearly, for, as you know, I was a day scholar.

"The first is the time of the big blizzard, though we did not call it a blizzard then, and I don't believe we had ever heard the word. I wonder when it was invented. I went to school in the morning in my gymnastic suit, expecting to go home at noon. But when noon came it was too stormy, and I waited till afternoon, and then it was impossible, and I with several other day scholars had to stay all night. One of the girls lent me a dress and whatever I needed for the night.

"I remember when it came time for 'half-hours', the girl with whom I was to room went down stairs to study, letting me have the first half-hour and I was left alone to spend that time in devotional reading and meditation and prayer. I did not just know what to do with all that time. I did not know how to meditate (I was only sixteen, and young for my age) and I could not pray for half an hour, so I spent much of my time reading my Bible, and thinking of many things, sometimes of myself and my own shortcomings, but it was a very long half hour, and I was glad when it was my turn to go down, and let my roommate have her turn. However, I think that half hour did me good, and I wish I had had more of such seasons, as did the girls who lived in Smith Hall.

"That evening, while the snow still fell, and the wind roared around the house, Miss McKeen let us make it a sort of a festival, and in all sorts of costumes we had charades, and games and a very good time, and I don't believe any of us knew how to play 'Bridge' or wanted to.

"My other memory of Smith Hall was some time later. On Tuesday evenings at the close of school we always had short class prayer meetings, and Miss Phebe, after leading in prayer herself, generally called on three or four of the girls to follow her. One afternoon she called on me, and I did not pray. I simply knelt there with the rest and said no word, and after an awful silence Miss Phebe offered a short prayer, and the meeting closed, and I went home sorry and ashamed, but I felt that I did not know how to pray in public. I was the youngest in the class; I never had done such a thing, and I thought I just couldn't.

"A few days later Miss Phebe sent for me to come to Smith Hall to see her, and it was a very timid and troubled little girl that walked over to the Hall. But Miss Phebe was very kind, and she gave me such a friendly and helpful talk that I think it has done me good all the days of my life. I believe now that that was one of the best things that ever happened to me at Abbot Academy."

Very likely this girlhood experience may have helped to prepare Mrs. Clark for these later years, when, as the wife of the leader of the Christian Endeavor movement, she was called upon to speak and offer prayer before large audiences.

In the meantime, even during the war, the number of pupils was increasing. A graduate of 1864 says in the History of her three-year stay: "As an indication of the growth of the school, when I entered, one long table in the dining room at Smith Hall seated the whole number of boarders; in a short time, two long tables were needed; before I graduated, a colony was lodged, for a term or so, at Mrs. Hervey's and, later, another at Mrs. Fay's."

In view of these conditions, two cottages (to use current parlance) were added to the school plant in 1865, one by gift, avis Hall, one by purchase, South Hall. These became homes for modern language students. Smith Hall, though still looked upon as the center, and having prestige as the abode of the principal, was no longer the only official school home.

Besides the new accommodations thus provided, an addition was made to the Smith Hall ell. The improvements at this time included the enlargement of the dining room with resulting increase of window space, the introduction of bathrooms with hot and cold water, and two new piano rooms. A piece of the grove and some grass land was bought out of the "earnings of the school."

A graduate of 1872 was asked what she remembered about Smith Hall. Quick came the answer, "Oh, those funny little rooms!" Yet, when the next question implied that she had spoken of them as a disadvantage, she replied just as quickly, "Why, I had such a beautiful time that it seems to me now it was all 'ins' with no 'outs' whatever!" "I have been thinking," she added, "that the system of reporting 'exceptions' was a kind of student government --- self-government, though, as it was by the individual, not by a group. I was so absorbed in the daily school life, I really don't remember much else. Amusements were not planned for us that I recall. I know when my sister was at school, a coasting party was formed and she enjoyed meeting some of the Theologues. She married one. I remember our class being invited to Mrs. Draper's for a candy pull. [This was only four years or so after the 'Homestead' was built.] Life was very serious and simple, but we were happy. I wonder now that we didn't do more."

In connection with the subject of "exceptions", the confession of a graduate of this decade is recalled. A very conscientious person she was. She said that when she came to Abbot she really thought she might for once have a little freedom, and not be too particular about rules, but when she found she must report her own infringements, she gave it up and resigned herself to becoming a law-abiding citizen. [Research shows it was a common custom in seminaries for each girl to report her own misdeeds, and the same historian found that in such institutions for many years "half-hours" for religious meditation were strictly observed.]

Charlotte Swift says that once when she had reluctantly obeyed a summons from Miss McKeen to take the place of a sick teacher, she didn't understand why the girls followed her to the music room after dinner. "I soon learned that it was the custom to report delinquencies at that time. Then followed a confession of small deviations from rules. My role was to inquire, was it 'avoidable'? Whatever the answer was, the offences appeared to me so trivial, that I pardoned them all, and sent them away happy."

That music room! It flits in and out of the stories even more often than the dining room. It was used for a study room during "half-hours." According to one of "Hattie" Chapell's drawings in the Journal, there was a student lamp on the table by which some girls could sit to study, and there were also lights on the wall to serve others. Electric bells had just been introduced but not electric lights! The music room was behind Miss McKeen's rooms, at the right of the hail that went through the house from front door to back door.

In the amusing sketch referred to, two or three girls are posing as studious on the unexpected advent of the Principal. "In half-hour we were all having a nice lively time in the music room, dancing --- squarely --- like mad, when Miss McKeen opened the door and read us one little lecture, about the exercise, must be confined to the Gym --- and the daytime, etc. L. stood behind her and made up all sorts of faces and gestures. I do think she is just as jolly and splendid as she can be, though I know she can be awfully cutting if she chooses. H. too is full of the old cat if she wants to be." The piano used to accompany the dancing was a square one. The first grand piano owned by the school was obtained in 1876.

The music room was used also for an assembly room, it seems. One Sunday in April, the Journal says, there had been a heavy fall of snow and the wind blew so hard that the girls did not go out, and a service was held there. That spring of 1874 was a cold season, apparently. The week before there had been a "grand dramatic entertainment by Harvard Sophs. Of course we all went in spite of the three-inch snow." This attitude toward bad weather would seem truly mediaeval to the girl of today.

One word more about the music room. Those "Harvard Sophs" came down later in the evening to serenade the girls, who were under orders not to respond. "But," the story reads, "it was fun enough to sit up in our wrappers at the music room window and hear the goings-on below without taking any part in them."

Other instances are recorded, one, "a firework serenade that frightened most of us half to death and gave Cornelius work to clean the burnt papers from the grass the next morning." At another time, when the boys "sang divinely", the writer and her roommate slept through the whole affair.

A look back into the far past --- to the year 1828--- shows a Harvard junior, Phillips Academy class of 1825, revisiting Andover and remarking, as recorded by Dr. Fuess, historian, "They are going to have a high school for girls at Andover [Abbot Academy!]. What a pity it was not instituted when we were there; there are very pretty walks and very shady groves in the place."

The name of this young man? Oliver Wendell Holmes, the poet!

To return to the descriptions in the Journal, it is plain to see that they have great value as contemporary expressions. In reminiscences, the feelings of later years will creep in and obscure the youthful point of view.

The Abbot annalist, while living at South Hall, was invited with her roommate to tea by one of the girls at Smith Hall. "We had quite a fine time altogether. They do have gay times over there, the halls are full of girls and noise the whole time. I am crazy to get over there to live." When this desire was realized, she tells with a natural schoolgirl frankness of pleasant experiences in the dining room. "Miss McKeen is away, and we had a real jolly time at the table tonight in consequence."

In her senior year she and her friends were showing some ingenuity in their table talk. "We have the nicest times at our end of the table . . . One day we each described what kind of old ladies we would all make, and how we would tell our children about Andover and the girls at our table. We have read Prudence Palfrey [by T. B. Aldrich, published in 1874], naming the characters and making me Prue. Now we are at work on Pickwick Papers till we get something else. I am enjoying this term more than I hoped I should, for I am not much in my room, and the table talk is so pleasant."

One Wednesday morning, a few years later, some girls in mischievous mood put sugar in their individual salt shakers. As luck would have it, that table was not needed at noon because of absences for the holiday, and the salt cellars happened to be transferred to Miss McKeen's table. She discovered the substitution, and turning quickly to a girl at her side, said, "Julia, remind me to speak of this 'in hall '." Suffice it to say, Miss McKeen was not reminded and the matter passed into oblivion.

The Journal delineation of one of the "funny little rooms" in Smith Hall looks more spacious than the descriptions warrant, though indeed "poor little Lizzie is dreadfully condensed ", as if there were not room for a life size portrait. The attention given to detail in the furnishings makes the sketch historically important! The bed and its covering, the lamp on the wall, the bureau with its accessories, even to a suggestion of the pink ruffled cover that is described in the text by the artist-author, the mirror with its decorations of visiting cards or billets-doux --- there they all are, immortalized.

Only a year later, in the fall of 1875, when a girl first arrived with her older sister, "there was great excitement among the old girls as we drove up to the Hall because they could see that there was new furniture in the bedrooms. Some of the rooms were lighted and they could see the tall bureaus. They had had just small bureaus and those spool beds! They were all delighted."

By a series of Sherlock Holmes deductions, the date of the reproduced photographs of the dining room, the public parlors and Miss McKeen's rooms has been determined as the fall or winter of 1876. They probably remained substantially the same through the next decade, the characteristic black walnut furniture---the haircloth chair and marble-topped table---the "tidies" and the panelled wallpaper. To the left is the very sofa, sketched in the Journal, where the author of the Journal entertained one of her callers. The armchair in the front of the picture, changed only in upholstery, belonged to a later generation of girls who knew it as a natural and essential part of Miss Kelsey's room. In the back parlor the girls gathered after breakfast for morning prayers, on Wednesdays and Saturdays when there were no chapel exercises. There were the étagère and on it the marble Pudicitia --- and the long mirror. What a satisfactory view that would have given of a full toilette, if any one had dared to enter the sanctum for such a frivolous purpose!

The parlors were on the left of the front entrance. To the right were Miss McKeen's rooms, which echoed in general the mid-Victorian note. The Brussels carpet, one informant ventures to say, had green in it, and chairs and sofa were upholstered in green velvet. The sofa pillows were embroidered in cross-stitch and the afghan was said to be maroon and white. The arched frame under the mantel contained a crayon copy, probably by Miss Phebe herself, of a "Rogers group", patriotic in subject. Miss McKeen's big desk stood at the left as one entered, and there was a bookcase at the right. In the background is the bedroom, which was shared with Miss Phebe. One graduate recalls the agony of trying to recite "Butler" while helping Miss McKeen make her bed! Seniors were sometimes summoned for this purpose, perhaps to give them fluency in repeating the arguments which they found so difficult. When girls came to visit in Sunday afternoon "quarters ", Miss McKeen received in the front room and Miss Phebe in the bedroom. Smith Hall life during the next decade was so like the preceding in daily routine that a student belonging to either period would understand all the allusions. The old traditions still held. This fact will explain some overlappings and repetitions in what follows. The story of the eighties up to 1887, when the building was moved to make way for Draper Hall, will be told by different alumnae who have freely given time and thought to contribute descriptions and incidents.

"A room 12 by 12 was not a spacious domain when the furniture and possessions of two girls surrounded them in it. On our regular Wednesday 'room-work' day we tried repeatedly to put back the furniture from the corridor in some new arrangement, but it positively could not be put in in any other way. Double bed, bureau, washstand, desk, short couch, chairs ----they hugged each other all the way around in order to leave a chance for the closet-door to open. But every Sunday night ten girls, comfortably perched within for Senior prayer-meeting, and nobody knows how many could on a pinch get in for more exciting times, such as lunching on 'Centuries' spread with some good mother's jelly. ('Centuries' were round split-crackers kept on the dining room tables at all times so that hungry girls might not have to beg boxes from home.) Cornelius hated to have an open window, winter nights, in those small rooms, grumbling that the wind blew down the furnace pipes till the whole house was cold.

"The stairs at Smith Hall opposite the main entrance were front-stairs and back-stairs, both arriving at about the same point on the second floor corridor. We were expected always to use the back-stairs unless going down to receive a parlor caller. Occasionally a girl slipped down the front stairs by way of bravado thrilling deed! What the penalty was, if caught, memory fails to register. It would have been hard to classify it under 'exceptions --- avoidable or unavoidable?' which we used to report daily. The exciting thought was 'What if Miss McKeen's door should open just as one was halfway down!' The girls often lingered conveniently near the upper, balustrade when the bell rang for evening callers. It was remarkable how necessary it was to go fill a waterpitcher and glance down at the front door."

Another alumna writes: "Anything about Smith Hall is inadequate without some reference to Miss McKeen as a permanent resident there. Miss McKeen of Smith Hall was a less formal personage than the Miss McKeen who presided over the entire school in the Academy Hall, for Miss McKeen was Smith Hall. This strong, serene head of our matriarchy to whom we confessed our sins against established rules had a remarkable opportunity to know each one for what she really was. She certainly was very keen to detect subterfuge or untruth and equally just in commending honesty. Smith Hall was her only home and we were her family, in whom she was constantly striving to awaken and develop Christian womanlinesss. As I look at it now I can not see that individuality was at all encouraged, rather we were influenced to conform to a standardized type, but be that as it may, that same type has proved itself a most beneficent center in hundreds of different communities. Every senior received from her a little black book of scripture quotations with certain verses underscored in blue pencil that fitted the individual's need."

First impressions are almost always interesting reading, and one writer has been generous in recording hers.

"As I read in the BULLETIN about 'Sports Models' at the end of the 'gay nineties,' and looked back over my school days, the 'quaint eighties' was the combination that occurred to me to designate that decade. Nothing could be quainter, as I see it now, than my reason for going to Abbot. All my short life I had read New England writers, until my own Empire State seemed illiterate; and a sentence about Andover, in one of Emerson's essays, had given that place an iridescent glow in my mind. So later, when two former schoolmates had gone to Abbot and brought back a favorable report, I kept the 'iridescent glow' for personal consumption, and used the favorable report in an appeal to my family, who had been considering other schools.

"When I reached the Andover station, the first forerunner of Abbot Academy was the carry-all, known (I learned later) as the 'Black Maria' by the Phillips boys. Through a misunderstanding I was taken to Davis Hall, where Miss Maria Merrill [in whose memory the Gateway was erected] welcomed me with a sincere kindliness that I have never forgotten. Though she had a houseful of girls on her mind, she went with me to Smith Hall. As we set out I spoke enthusiastically of the Academy building, for I admired its look of classic antiquity and I was trying to disguise my lonely feeling at the first sight of Smith Hall. I must say at once that I soon learned to love the old building; and I have never gone back to the beauty and convenience of the new setting, without a twinge of homesickness for Smith Hall and the old days.

"But as I stood on the threshold of my room that was to be, it looked appallingly inadequate for two occupants. The floor, of unpainted pine boards, was bare; but a kind neighbor told me that I could find 'Cornelius' in the basement, and rent a carpet which he would put down. But it was late in the afternoon and the carpet had to wait until the next day, when I picked out a red and yellow 'ingrain', the best one remaining after the foresighted 'old girls' had made their selections. Anyhow, the carpet was neatly in place before my room mate arrived.

"Evidently something had happened to the bookcase provided [with the other articles of furniture] by the self-sacrificing efforts of the Andover ladies; but another kind neighbor told me that I could rent furniture from a shop down town. So I rented a desk and bought hanging bookshelves and a few other things.

"I hope this does not sound like disparagement of 'rooms and walls' so tenderly loved by those who wished for them, and hoped for them, and finally saw them rise and lived in them. For it is the same love that is trying to make Smith Hall visible to the' mind's eye' of those who have never seen it. And I have no doubt that the necessity of 'setting up housekeeping' in a small way made me more quickly at home, and more devoted to the memory of Abbot, than if everything had been done for me in advance.

"Even in those days we could be proud of the Smith Hall parlor and of Miss McKeen's room, which were made attractive by pictures, bronzes, and other interesting objects, many of them brought home from Miss McKeen's trips abroad. The parlor, presided over by Pudicitia with her perfect poise and her long straight lines of drapery, was sacred to those who had visitors. But the rest of us could venture for an occasional moment into the sedate room to sit on upholstered chairs and look about at the trophies of art.

"In the beginning Miss McKeen's room was even more awe-inspiring. At first sight her impressive personality made me feel that I was about to be weighed in the balance, found wanting, and sent home. But I soon discovered that she was not only wise and just, but kind and tolerant. It soon became a pleasure to enter the long room, with its windows looking toward the Academy building, and its comfort and distinction, which seemed an appropriate setting for Miss McKeen's culture and kindness."

Another of the chroniclers has quite evidently regaled herself as much as she will her readers with this rare little story about the fearsome "inspections".

"On certain days there would be telepathic conditions, forewarning that rooms were about to be inspected. This was confirmed by a peculiar tap on the door --- Miss [Carrie] Hall's tap---instantly recognized by all who had ever heard it. It was not a rap with all the knuckles, nor with just a single one --- it was nothing as ordinary as that --- the tips of the fingers ran along the panel in quick light succession, very much as a musician might try four or five notes on the piano.

"Miss Hall was very merciful, but her first test was to sweep her fingers around the rim of the wash bowl to be sure it was thoroughly clean. After that came bureau drawers. I can see now a very small girl with teary eyes after Miss Hall had inspected her room, taking to the laundry a little travelling bag full of soiled collars and cuffs that had been found in her upper drawer.

"I can hear Miss Frances Kimball's voice, as she stepped out of her door at the end of the hail on the second floor of Smith Hall. Occasionally, in a free interval, we forgot that we were grown up and chortled with collective glee in the hall, which played the part of a megaphone. Then Miss Kimball [later Mrs. Harlow] would say, 'Girls! Girls! Girls!' in an imploring tone, smiling and frowning at the same time in the conflict between sympathy with our lightheartedness and antipathy to the ear-splitting noise. That was all we needed, for we loved her devotedly.

"The music room was the family gathering place for Smith Hall. There we went each day after dinner to have our 'exceptions excused', and on Sundays to report the sermon and ask permission for 'quarters'. After we left the music room on Sunday, we were expected to be in our rooms until five, when an hour was divided into four periods in which we might visit teachers or girls, who had invited us or been invited by us. The electric bell was rung to indicate the 'quarters,' and at the end of the hour came supper. After supper were 'half-hours,' when one roommate had a silent period in her room, while the other had a visiting half-hour, as in the 'quarters'.

"As a newcomer I found those quarters and half-hours an enjoyable way of becoming acquainted. In suitable weather, especially in the spring term, we could sit on the back steps or around the Old Oak, or stroll about the grounds and down the maple walk to the grove. But at other times it seemed cosy to go to the different rooms, with the prospect of beginning pleasant friendships.

"On week-day mornings the roommate who was 'out' walked for half an hour with a 'walker' engaged in advance, while the 'in-mate' had a silent half-hour.

"We had picnics on various occasions, such as a funeral pyre, for an author whose life and works we had 'taken'. After that mournful event and an elaborate spread, we walked back single-file in our long black 'gossamers' with the hoods over our heads, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left. But as we went along we could see the staring faces of petrified children, standing in gateways or behind picket fences to watch the procession. And in later years they must have said: 'We know there were witches in Andover when we were little, for we saw them!'

"Afterward, and on other occasions, we went to Lawrence for souvenir tin-types. We made various expeditions to Boston on Wednesdays, to the Art Museum, to the dismal old Public Library (but Raphael's Cartoons were there), to Doll-and-Richards' or Shreve-Crump-and-Low's to see pictures of bronzes, and at other times for shopping and to have photographs taken.

"I remember a candy-pull at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Draper, and other entertainments or musical programmes in Andover. The delightful reception given by Prof. and Mrs. Churchill was the great social event of the year, the one occasion on which we were permitted to meet and talk and walk with Phillips boys. The Theological Seminary reception, disrespectfully called the 'stand-up-starvation-party,' was very entertaining, though it was the proper pose to pretend that it was a bore!

"As to group activities, there was a literary society, meeting in the evening, once a month, perhaps, of which I recall, only, that early in the year I was a monitor with the painful task of criticising the pronunciation and diction of those who took part; and that at another time I was handed a folded slip of paper, requesting me to rise and speak for three minutes on the subject therein contained. And all I know about that is that my voice shook and my knees knocked together.

"It never occurred to us that there was any lack of activities, for there was always something to do. Once a week we did 'room-work,' mending, and whatever else was necessary, which filled up a good part of 'recreation' day. We were endlessly wishing that we had more time to 'talk,' but the days ran away from us.

"Our Senior class had permission for a prayer meeting every Sunday evening, in the room of our president and vice-president. I have an impression that with us it was a new idea, but I have never verified it. At any rate, it was a good prayer meeting, and much more that was valuable, for we could talk over our plans and problems from every point of view, serious and humorous. And if we had not already discovered that a sense of humour is a first aid in many emergencies, we had learned it from Miss McKeen."

One reason for the larger numbers during and after the war is plainly suggested in a letter from the daughter of an 1866 graduate who says: "Mother has often told us how the high price of apples during Civil War days enabled her father to send her to Abbot, because his orchard yielded very heavily during those years."

Two girls of that period add further details. One writes: "I was much interested in the picture of the girls on the roof of Smith Hall. I was there, and remember the day well. We had made a flag out of strips of white cotton cloth, and turkey red calico, sewing fast to have it ready for the occasion. A strong wind tore it into fragments, and the Phillips boys laughed much over the 'Fem Sem rag', which hurt our pride. We bought a real flag at once." The other one tells of an incident showing the intensity of feeling in the North at the time. "How well I remember the morning we heard of Lincoln's assassination. We were assembled in the Hall as usual for morning prayers. Miss McKeen came with a newspaper in her hand --- Miss Phebe and the other teachers followed --- all in tears. We looked at one another in consternation. Miss McKeen tried to speak but could not, so she handed the paper to Miss Phebe, who read the sad news in a trembling voice. Down went one head after another on the desk in front and the sobbing continued till we were dismissed --- the grief was contagious."

Strangely enough, remarks were made about the food in those days! The same writer says: "I remember some of the menus, as they were alike each week. I think Saturday was the day we had boiled rice with raisins for desert, and we did not like it, or plain boiled potatoes. I do not recall being troubled about it myself, but some complained loudly."

The story of Smith Hall comes now to the upheaval of the summer of 1887, heralding a new epoch at Abbot Academy.

The need for enlarged quarters to care for increased numbers during the sixties had been met by the purchase of two "cottage" dormitories as hereinafter described, but the condition of the whole plant at this time (1887) was such as to cause the Trustees much serious thought and discussion. A rather elaborate plan of development was worked out, and Miss McKeen herself, with much reluctance, was sent afield to raise money. As a preliminary step in the process of change, the great Hall was moved from its original site to the higher ground now occupied by the Infirmary. This was a "more commanding location ", according to the naive comment in the History, and "gave the young ladies of that family freedom in out-door life, and choice of a sunny lawn or a shady retreat."

Compare with this quiet picture the busy scene on any fall afternoon when the playing fields are full of girls at their vigorous sports! The euphemistic comment of the press on the appearance of the big old house should also be preserved. "With the grove for a background, it looms up in fine proportions." According to the Courant, "The old hall has really renewed its youth and seems to know it."

So bravely Smith Hall settled down to the second era of its existence, still for a little while to be the head stone of the corner. As buildings did not then run about and change places overnight with the nonchalant Puss-in-the-Corner ease of the present Andover mode, the turning about of the Academy building to face the "quadrangle", and the moving of South Hall to Abbot Street to become Sunset Lodge, as well as the construction of the new Draper Hall, kept the grounds in a chaotic state for a prolonged period.

The vision of the Trustees included, besides the new "English hall", more adequate homes for French and German students to replace Davis and South Halls. To raise money for one or both of these by small donations, even while the campaign for the main building was going on, seemed not an unreasonable hope, when the canny "A B C" or chain letter plan, then just coming into vogue, was enthusiastically explained by Miss Merrill at the Alumnae Association annual meeting in June, 1887. A was to get eight B's to give ten cents, each B was to get four C's, each C was to get four D's ---and so on to a point agreed upon. This way it ran, a way that is now frowned upon, not only by the postal authorities, but by all reputable concerns!

To the scoffing reader, it may be boldly said that the impracticable, unwieldy scheme did really work ---to the sum of over one thousand dollars, though not to that of thirty thousand! As the dignified new building progressed and began to be furnished, Smith Hall looked more and more shabby until legal judgment was called upon to authorize the use of this precious nest egg for refurbishings. This was perfectly legitimate, because French conversation was again to be heard within the walls which had heard similar attempts earlier, before Davis and South Halls took up the language work.

Here the Courant takes up the tale with a lingering touch of sentiment.

"When the scattered members of the last year's French family returned in September from their summer wanderings, they found that certain remarkable changes had been made in their venerable but well-beloved Smith Hall.

"When the first warm greetings were over, and they had time to realize where they were, their delight knew no bounds. Where was the staircase that used to greet one at the very entrance? It was actually gone, together with its companion flight, now replaced by a handsome walnut staircase in the rear. The walls are covered with terra-cotta cartridge brown. The long strip of rubber cloth is banished, and a large Brussels rug nearly covers the hard-wood floor.

"Upon entering the parlor one feels as if a fairy had laid her wand on the dismal hair-cloth furniture and ugly carpet. For behold, a room daintily decorated in soft brown and yellow tints, with here and there a touch of dull blue or Indian red in both carpet and upholstery. Several pretty wicker chairs and a polished table, on which lie a few well chosen books, give grace and variety to the furnishings. The creamy wallpaper lights up the room, and makes a fitting background for the cast of Mino da Fiesole's fair Madonna, whose beauty is enhanced by her surroundings. Altogether the room is a delightful place, and the members of the French family take great satisfaction in receiving calls there."

A real Smith Hall "fan" has willingly consented to add her impressions of the ensuing years.

"When the English speaking family moved into the new Draper Hall in the autumn of 1890, leaving Smith Hall to be occupied by the French group, I was the only survivor of the exodus. As everybody from Miss McKeen to old Johanna, including Miss Angelina Kimball, the teachers, students and domestics, all departed to the new and sumptuous quarters, I naturally felt rather like Cassabianca and very much at home --- to say the least, in Smith Hall. The new regime under Miss Merrill brought with it an entirely different atmosphere, partly due to her gay friendliness and partly to the frantic attempts we were all making to express ourselves in French, whether we were conversing politely at table or chattering down in the laundry on Wednesday mornings over our weekly washing of handkerchiefs. Every Saturday genial M. Morand was our guest at luncheon, which gave quite a cosmopolitan flavor to the meal. 'Saturday Review' was our name for a volcanically hot pudding invariably served on those occasions. Buxom Irish Bridget was the cook and would often sneak up the back stairs with a piece of pie or cake for some favorite. Perhaps she thought we had to eat too many 'Centuries'---round dry crackers which we used to toast over the lamp chimneys before electricity was installed. I well remember the daily procession of Wise Virgins carrying their lamps to the filling station maintained by Cornelius down at the far end of the corridor.

"Each girl had a room to herself for the first time and room-mates could enjoy the luxury of a sitting-room which lent itself to elaborate social functions such as the 'pink tea' we once gave, when the already overcrowded room was overwhelmed with pink crepe paper decorations and the only jarring note in the symphony of color was my roommate's new bright red dress! One great feature of Tuesday evening was being allowed an exchange of guests from one hall to the other, and the Smith Hall girls felt their distinct advantage as hostesses when we all gathered in the back sitting-room after dinner to hear Miss Merrill sing and to let our friends share this unusual treat in which we took such a personal pride.

"When the year for the French play came, Smith Hall rocked to its foundations with excitement and for weeks beforehand rehearsals in groups, and pairs, and solo were the order of the day, while we all got into the way of using apt quotations for our daily conversations. The plays went off with flying colors and we settled back reluctantly to private life after one taste of the footlights."

Another alumna has been good enough to contribute memories of the same period. (A NAME="MissM">

"Smith Hall certainly 'lives again' for me; in fact, when I think of the school, the old barn-like building is in place, and the Infirmary vanishes like a dream! I am sure I could make a diagram of the music room and everything in it; the old black sofa, the picture of Mrs. Stowe hanging at the end, the windows looking out on the grove, which really was a grove then, the piano, the case of French books, the chairs sitting against the wall so that there might be room for waltzing by as many as three or four couples --- and then Miss Merrill, without whom I never think of Smith Hall.

"She somehow made us feel, though not by words chiefly, that we were living together as friends, and each of us had something to contribute to make life interesting. She liked us to be often together in the music room, and she was a lively hostess, knowing both how to be entertaining and how to draw out others. She was always ready to sing to us and the ever obliging Mary B. was ready to play solos, accompaniments or dance tunes for any length of time. Miss Merrill liked to read aloud, and in the year I was there she read two or three novels and various shorter things. At one very thrilling point in 'The Little Minister', I remember, she read till the stroke of ten! She liked to start a discussion, to get people telling funny stories, in short, to do almost anything that would keep things moving mentally and bring in as many as possible. It never struck us as remarkable that she should give us all that time; we thought she was just enjoying herself, and I think we were more than half right.

"Life is much more varied and luxurious now, but perhaps the essentials haven't changed so much. We didn't of course have organized athletics in my time, but we did take many long walks and enjoyed them. I think I knew about all the roads and woods within a radius of three miles. I remember one lovely spring Wednesday when Elsie and I started out right after breakfast with four bananas and Wordsworth's Poems. When we found a particularly lovely spot, we sat down on a log in the middle of a violet bed and read for the first time the poem on Tintern Abbey. No one asked us to do it; we just did it for fun, and when I saw the real Abbey last summer it was one of the memories that came back."

This incident of Miss Merrill's disregarding bells on a certain occasion was characteristic. She was never afraid to set aside regular traditions, knowing that she could depend upon the members of her group not to abuse the privilege. Sometimes, as Miss Kelsey related, when Miss Merrill had guests to "tea" whom she wanted the girls to enjoy, she would change ---not omit --- the hours of study. She believed, more and more perhaps as the years went by, that a greater elasticity might be allowed in the smaller families, and this Miss McKeen quite understood.

A brief note from a faculty member living in Smith Hall expresses her lasting indebtedness to Miss Kelsey. She writes: "How well one young teacher remembers her introduction to Sidney Lanier's poetry through the interest of Miss Kelsey, then just fresh from college! Doubtless that was not the only good literature they enjoyed in leisure moments, but Lanier more than any other lived again and has never died out of her world of immortals."

One night in May, 1894, shortly after midnight there was a cry of "Fire" heard at Smith Hall. "Judge of our consternation", wrote the Courant representative, rather ponderously, "when upon hastening to the corridors we found a somewhat confused state of affairs and with horror learned that our own building was the scene of conflagration." Finding that the fire was confined to one room in the rear, Miss Kelsey's sister, Miss Molly, then in charge of the housekeeping affairs, told the girls quite calmly that they might take time to dress and get their belongings together.

Miss Kelsey recalls some of the amusing things that happened that night. One girl threw a glass vase or something out of the window and carefully brought down stairs a large pincushion. Another, who had brought back from vacation a pretty new suit and hat, appeared in the front hall all dressed to kill, only to be met with the quick shout, "Oh, Mary, you forgot your veil! " There was more excitement than damage, and in spite of disorder and confusion in the kitchen, breakfast was served in the dining room as usual.

The long story of the old building is now nearly told. In the fall of 1897, Smith Hall was abandoned, and the students of French were received into the Draper Hall household, where girls of the German department had made their home, under Fräulein Schiefferdecker's guidance, ever since the removal of South Hall. It was ten years later, in 1907, at the beginning of Mr. Flagg's management as treasurer, that the building was demolished --- leaving a perfectly good site all ready for the new infirmary when it became a reality a few years later. Smith Hall was a pioneer and in spite of inadequacies it served the school, in its day and generation, nobly and well. The years of its active life were forty and three. It has had its reward.

It is perhaps suitable that the story of Smith Hall should have been told in such great detail since the Victorian flavor was soon to be lost in the many changes that came so rapidly in the years that immediately followed. There were fashions in thought and wording that must seem unbelievably remote and strange to a generation used to the snap and speed of modern life.

Sources Consulted

History of Abbot Academy, Vol. I, McKeen.
The Journal of an Abbot Academy Girl, 1874-1876, Newcomb, 1927.
General Catalogue of Abbot Academy, 1913.
File of Andover Advertiser, 1853-1865.
File of annual catalogues, Abbot Academy.
File of ABBOT BULLETIN.
Collection of reminiscent letters and papers.

Davis Hall

The building below the Academy as it used to stand facing School Street appeared often on the Abbot stage in an important role before ever it actually belonged to the school. Some of the early history has been already told, but may be briefly referred to here. The exact date of construction is not now known, but, whereas, in the first picture extant, of unknown origin, but looking like a candid shot of 1959, the Academy stands alone in its grandeur, the fine engraving inserted in the catalogue a few years later shows a house on each side.

The ambitious plans of the Trustees for erecting a boarding house to be attached to the Academy having come to naught, pressure from patrons must have brought about the definite effort, expressed after a while in the annual catalogues, to emphasize the supervision of the school over the homes where out-of-town students lived. The resourceful Timothy D. P. Stone, arriving as principal in 1839, began by promising to "receive pupils under his immediate care, providing for board, etc., in the Seminary boarding-houses." Almost at once he rented this house for a "Commons dormitory," the co-operative housekeeping scheme already described, spoken of as "the Boarding House connected with the Academy."

Youthful exuberance of good spirits enlivened the labor and made light of the privations. The management of the household seems to have passed into more mature hands after about three years. A matron is somewhere mentioned, but when the History speaks of the marriage, in 1845, of Mr. Farwell (principal 1842-52) to one of his teachers, Miss Hannah Sexton, it is said that she was "directress of Commons." Mr. Farwell purchased the place and with his wife made a home for students during the rest of his administration.

After his resignation, Mr. Farwell still kept the ownership of the property, which he rented. In the spring of 1854, the Trustees voted to give to the occupant, Mrs. Betsey Cheever, the sum of seventy-five dollars to help her with the rent if she would "accommodate the teachers and pupils of the Academy with board to the extent of the capacity of the house for such part or all of the year that the Trustees may require it." The next thing, it was crowded full of girls. From there they watched with excited joy the new building go up, and there, according to Sarah Barton, the girls made too much noise at the oyster supper in October of that same year, which Miss Hasseltine had given them permission to have for the "new girls." This was, then, temporarily a real school dormitory, with Mrs. Cheever as housekeeper. Indeed, if the Trustees could have persuaded Mr. Farwell to sell them the place, they would probably have postponed the erection of a new building.

In December, 1854, when the permanent "Boarding house connected with the Academy", named five years later Smith Hall, opened its doors to all boarding pupils, the house in question fades out of the picture for a time. It reappears during the prosperous period, about ten years later, when, according to the account of a graduate of 1864, the Hall overflowed and "a colony of girls was lodged for a term or so at Mrs. Hervey's." Mrs. Hervey had had the said house full of Phillips boys.

Early in 1865, the house became officially part of the school plant by gift of George L. Davis, of the Board of Trustees, who had purchased it for $4500 from the Farwell estate. It was named at once for the donor. Under date of July 6, an item in the records of the Board reads "Voted: That the clerk notify Mrs. Hervey that she vacate Davis Hall at the end of this term." The term closed on July 12, and the fall term began August 31. Not a long summer vacation!

As early as the year 1863-64, the catalogue referred to an opportunity at Smith Hall "for those who study French to sit with their teacher at table, where they converse in that language only." This teacher was really still an undergraduate who was so proficient in the language as to be listed regularly among the faculty.

An alumna of that time writes: "Miss Caroline Hamlin [1866] was our teacher of French, and had a special table in the dining room, where I am sure our mispronunciation must have tried her patience." This practice was spoken of at intervals in the catalogues of the years following. By the year 1870-71, Davis Hall became definitely the center for students of French, continuing as such until 1890, when the erection of Draper Hall left Smith Hall free for this purpose.

An incident recorded in the "Journal of an Abbot Academy Girl" will show how the French family was regarded in the seventies by their neighbors in South Hall. "The Davis Hall girls had a sleigh-ride yesterday: --- started off for Haverhill in a rain and the snow melting as fast as it could. The driver telegraphed to know how he should get them back, and was told to have them come in the train; so about ten o'clock they rode up from the station in the omnibus and a sleigh and came around to serenade the Smith Hall guests. [The seniors were having a party that night.] They were pretty damp, I believe, but still I know they had a gay time, for they are all real gay girls."

There is a touch of mystery in an incident which occurred a few years later, as related by Kate Buss Tyer, 1877, an eyewitness. "When I was sitting in my room in the ell of Davis Hall one afternoon, I looked out the window and saw some Academy boys coming from the grove, gravely carrying a sort of bier on which was the school skeleton, with leaves arranged about it. This had been missing for three months and no one knew what had become of it. They proceeded up the steps at the back of the Academy building, laid their burden on the piazza and solemnly dispersed."

Mrs. Tyer tells with relish how, one Wednesday morning, the day before Phillips Commencement, when the girls were changing their beds, they stepped out, sheets in hand, on the side porch toward the boys' boarding house on the opposite Abbot Street corner, and showed their grief at the approaching exodus by using the sheets to wipe their eyes and then ostentatiously wringing them dry. Gay girls, indeed! The teller of the story carefully adds, "We were usually very discreet." This "discreet" young woman later became the President of the Alumnae Association and the honored wife of an Abbot Trustee.

"In some respects", she continues, "we had more leeway in Davis Hall, because the family was small. My room was over the kitchen and when I smelled doughnuts frying I used to go down and Mrs. Lowell, the matron, would have one waiting for me. Once in half-hours, another girl and I wanted to ask Miss Phebe something, so we ran over to Smith Hall without going to our rooms for any wraps. Miss Phebe reproved us for it, and when we excused ourselves by saying we thought we oughtn't to break our roommates' half-hours, Miss Phebe, her black eyes snapping, returned quickly, 'Better break your roommates' half-hours than break the laws of God.'

"The practice in French conversation was of distinct value to me. It stands by me yet. When I was in Paris I could at least make my wants known in French. The course was a good stiff one, especially in literature. How we did dread the oral examinations at Commencement! They were public, you know. I remember being out in the grove the day before, studying my French literature with such a scared feeling. Yet, even so, I look back to those days as a happy time."

A different point of view is expressed by the author of an account of school life in the early eighties. She was a mature student, irked by the restrictions and routine planned for younger or less responsible girls. "It was a good school ", she writes,

"with some excellent teachers, but it was not the place for a student, whose time was cut into patchwork by bells and regulations. It was chance that put me first in the attic of South Hall, the German dormitory, and then in the first floor front of French [Davis] Hall. And very unlike they were, though each was a small and well-conducted family.

"Both were old-fashioned dwelling houses not intended for dormitories, and not remodelled unless by extending the ells to take on more bedrooms, and entirely without any modern convenience except hot-air furnaces; the average servant of today would scorn to live in such quarters, without baths or hot water or anything but kerosense lights. We were expected to provide our own carpets and whatever of the furniture was above the bare bed-room necessities, and a girl from a city home of wealth might find herself assigned to an attic chamber, heated by a stove which entered a chimney standing in the middle of the floor and so low even in the center of the sloping walls that the ceiling was easily touched by one's hands, while the windows were not much above the floor. Patrick was supposed to bring up the wood and build the fire in the morning. This was in French Hall; how South Hall was heated in winter I do not know, as mine was only spring term occupancy, when the attic was stiflingly hot, especially when the lamp was lighted.

"I must have been assigned to the first-floor front in French Hall because Miss McKeen knew that I was so good. (This being anonymous, contrary-minded cannot vote!) She knew that I would not entice Phillipians under my window, nor pass out notes from girls who lived one or two floors higher up. I was a model of discreet behavior: never a Phillipian came in sight when I was out walking, but I turned around and walked backward until well past him. (This, being anonymous, some will not believe it.)

"For these reasons I must have been given this ground-floor room. It had its advantages, to be sure. I could see who came to the front door! It might be Miss McKeen walking down the middle of the icy road, escorted by tall Prof. Park, whose impressive height was accentuated by a tall, slim 'stove-pipe' hat. There was a story, no doubt apocryphal, that once when they were thus walking together down the road, a double-runner, skillfully steered between them by a humorous Phillipian, carried off one of them without bodily injury. (This story must not be believed, it was merely current gossip in retaliation for what we deemed oppression.) Or, almost any day in the better seasons, as soon as the boys got out, one could see a long line of them mounted on the high 'bikes' with the little wheel behind, legs thrown over the handle-bars, coasting down the hill and taking the right-angled corner below at a fearful slant, threatening a bad spill. It took skill and nerve to manage one of those high bicycles.

"The disadvantage of the first-floor-front was something which only those who have lived in it can understand fully. It was the 'back-stairs rule'. Almost fifty years have not wiped out that grievance. It was Miss McKeen's idea that we should be trained to be mistresses in our own homes, an orthodox parsonage being the type in mind. 'In your own homes, young ladies, you will not use the front door and the front stairs upon ordinary occasions', she declaimed in chapel hail on those Saturday afternoon assemblies which mingled wholesome instruction and mild entertainment. This explained the interdict upon the front stairs in the dormitories, which incidentally saved the carpets, the back stairs being bare. Now to most of the girls it was more convenient to use the back stairs, but my room was just below Miss Maria Merrill's, and when I needed permission to break a half-hour or to have something equally portentous adjudicated by authority instead of using my own common sense, I could not slip up the front stairs near my door and knock on her door just above, but must go through the front hail and the sitting room and I forget how much back hall and back entry and ell, and then take the route in reverse, arriving perhaps just after a bell had rung demanding that I instantly do something else. And returning, the whole series had to be unwound like a may-pole. Even my infantile mind saw that this was a waste of time, and the grudge I held against that backstairs rule has long outlasted the material building it applied to.

"For many, retrospect probably has softened the outlines, but at the time I think that most of the more thoughtful and dependable girls secretly resented the domination of bells and half-hours and the rigorous ordering of our ways by an outside control. For my own part, born to the freedom of a wild bird and not intending to misuse my liberty, I hated the idea of being shut up to compulsory goodness. Any virtue accumulated to my credit for my austerity towards the boys on the hill was certainly cancelled off by Saint Peter for my rebellion against the pressure of authority. No sooner was one immersed in study, working out a difficult subjunctive or an especially pretty dative by the aid of half a dozen Latin grammars, than there came a bell which spoiled the hunt. If they would only have let one study when one wanted to study! But it was always time to do something else, until one felt like the parrot who pulled the cuckoo-clock to pieces because it domineered over the family. 'You can't have any fun here,' mourned one of the most irreproachable girls of my time, 'for if you do, you have to go and report on yourselves.' That system of 'avoidable and unavoidable exceptions ' still seems to me like a relic of the Inquisition. My year in Andover was interesting. The atmosphere of old-time culture diffused itself over the town like an autumn haze, coloring and softening all. It may not be so now, for the times have changed; but then it was a part of the education of a New England girl who went there, absorbed, departed, but gratefully remembered much outside the lesson books."

These reminiscences were from one who was looking back at life at Abbot in the middle eighties. She gave facts and described conditions, analyzed her remembered feelings and philosophized about them.

The next contributor has direct contemporary evidence to offer --- the impressions of a "new girl," culled from her letters written home in the year 1888-89. Her reaction to the story as it comes thus out of past, not to be gainsaid, is both amusing and natural. She writes, "Reading over these letters has been a frightfully upsetting occupation. Although I recall the circumstances, I judge them now so differently that I have a 'this-is-none-of-I' feeling about the whole thing. To jump into a forty years' reverse gives one a tremendous jolt."

"September 17 (four days after school opened). I like the girls very much, and the teachers are lovely. I had a very pleasant call on Miss Kelsey yesterday. Her room is directly over mine. Some of the girls think that is dreadful, but it does not matter at all to me. Clara has two nice pictures in carved wooden frames, also a plush violin and a satin banjo . . . Martha is in my class in physics. This morning Miss Kelsey asked what substance there was that was between a solid and a liquid, and she jumped up and shouted, 'Oatmeal mush.' Miss Kelsey had to laugh.

"October 7. Miss McKeen's lecture this afternoon was on eating, and it made us mad. She said we ought not to eat between meals at all, except just before or just after a meal. She said our moral condition and spiritual life were lowered by the pickles we ate. Said we would not be permitted to go to other rooms if we went to eat and drink. Then she said we reminded her of the Israelites in the wilderness, longing for the something and onions they had in the land of Egypt. Quite a pat illustration, only I don't long for onions. She reminds me of the headings of some of the pages in Exodus, viz. 'Divers laws and ordinances.'

"When it rains the electric bell, which rings for 'hours' of all kinds, does not always strike here --- it is struck from Smith Hall. Today it did not ring for sermon reports so we did not give any. I was glad, for I hardly knew a thing he said.

"Miss McKeen (or P. Mc --- pronounced Peemuck, as the girls call her) charged us all to keep accounts and send home a list of our expenditures. We owed it to our fathers to tell them how we spent the money they gave us. So I enclose a list of my September expenditures in justice to my father.

"December 12. Yesterday P.M. I was in Alice's room, and she said, 'Oh, wouldn't some lemonade be nice!' I said yes and that I was going to hunt up a lemon. So I went to Ma Bullard [Mrs. Martha Bullard, Matron, 1881-89] and she got me one. I said, 'How much?' and she said, 'Two cents.' I paid her, and we had our lemonade --- Alice had some sugar. When any girls came along, Alice would say, 'Come and have a drink of lemonade made of Ma Bullard's two-cent lemon.'

"March 17. Yesterday morning we had the dress rehearsal for the French play. The dresses are beautiful. Jean has a salmon India silk trimmed with copper braid. Edie wears a pale green cashmere. Elizabeth wears a white silk. It is very low in the neck and is as sleeveless as mine."

The dramatic critic of the Courant remarks that "the effect of the stage, costumes and acting was very graceful and pleasing." Girls accustomed to the more elaborate equipment of later days would look with some interest to see how the small platform was made to serve. Manipulating wires are visible, and a curtain at the right which must have provided a stage entrance. The difficulties of changing scenes were many, but girl audiences were not as sophisticated or critical as now. No doubt the accent of these beautifully dressed ladies would suffer not at all if compared with that of present-day participants in French plays.

To return to the letters:

"April 15. I went to Cambridge this week, and Aunt H. and I went to Brookline in an electric car. Uncle H. said I would not like the electric cars when I found my watch out of the way. I said I guessed it would not hurt it, but what do you think! When I got there my watch was over an hour out of the way. I set it, and it has gone all right ever since. It was the electricity, of course, for it had been running exactly right. C. says electricity affects watches in which the works are of soft metal, and now and then others. We came back in a horse car, so I could not try it again. June 16. Miss McKeen said to us yesterday, 'I want you in walking today to keep away from the ball game.' We all laughed. She said she saw no reason why we should laugh, for it was not proper to hang around near a game, etc. etc. The reason we laughed was that the game was not here but at Exeter."

A photograph of a room with its manifold adornments might easily have harbored a plush violin or a satin banjo. An interior of that time when shown to a modern girl always brings out the same comment, "What a mess! " Will the next period bring back bows and throws and clutter along with fluted lampshades and afghans? In a group picture taken at about the same time on Davis Hall steps, basques, overskirts, and bustles, "revers" and ruffles, "blazer" stripes and polka dots could all be found.

Davis Hall was used one year after South Hall was removed, and in 1890 was given up as a school home. The building was taken down to make way for the long-desired recitation hall, erected as a memorial to the McKeen sisters. Through the wish of George G. Davis to give tribute to his Trustee father, George L. Davis, the assembly-room perpetuates for successive generations the honored name of Davis Hall.

South Hall

South Hall, though less closely connected with the school in early years than Davis Hall, was apparently often used as a boarding place for Abbot pupils as well as Phillips boys and theologues. In a small notebook of pencilled jottings about Andover houses obtained many years ago from old residents, this item was recently deciphered, "South Hall house, built by Flagg, a carpenter." Fortunately for the historian, some early memories of the place were recalled by Professor Gulliver, of Andover Theological Seminary, for the Courant and published in the issue of January, 1890. He says the house was built for Rev. Horatio Bardwell, who had been a missionary to India. As he had married Miss Forbush, a "very talented and devoted young lady" of the West Parish, it was natural that he should settle in Andover, when on account of her health he was obliged to return to this country. Mr. Bardwell was elected a member of the Board of Trustees in 1834. The account goes on as follows, referring to his return from the Orient:

"He built the house in question---or had it built---at that time [probably in 1832]. The rear building was built for a stable, and was connected with the house by a wood-shed. In those days locomotion was confined to wheeled vehicles under horse power. Dr. Bardwell was a skillful horseman, and always kept a superior animal, and of course built a good barn, which could very properly be turned into a house. My mother and Mrs. Bardwell were very intimate friends during their girlhood. This friendship induced my father to pass a summer here soon after the Bardwells became established in their new home They boarded in a brick house opposite, then occupied by a Mr. Turner, while I stayed with Dr. Bardwell, and occupied one of the attic rooms in the 'German Hall' for a number of months . . . Major Barton then occupied the house south of us, next above Prof. Taylor's [now Mr. Flagg's], with a troop of some thirty academy boys, with whom we held telegraphic communication by means of a fine twine extending from our chamber windows, and telephonic communication by means well known to boys of healthy lungs. I am rather ashamed to say that I cannot recall any similar arrangements for conversation on the other side of the house. Perhaps the reason was that a very rigorous gentleman then presided over the school; but I am afraid that our tastes were rather rude and inclined us to the woods and streams, rather than to more quiet pleasures. I do not remember, however, that there were any restrictions put upon the boys and girls of those days. I remember that Mrs. Bardwell had young ladies boarding with her, attending Abbot Academy, and the truth of history compels me to testify that I never knew any harm to come from it."

The next occupants on record were the family of Rev. Henry B. Holmes, also an Abbot trustee, serving from 1848 to 1855. During this time he had three daughters in the school for varying periods.

When Rev. Josiah W. Turner bought the place is not recorded, nor whether this was the same Mr. Turner who lived in the "brick house opposite." At any rate the house was again used for students, as is casually mentioned in the History.

In July, 1865, there was advertised for sale in the Andover Advertiser the "real estate situated on School Street in Andover, next above the Female Academy. The house contains 14 finished rooms very conveniently arranged, with barn and woodshed adjoining. Connected with the buildings is about an acre of excellent land, on which are a variety of fruit-bearing trees. As a desirable residence this is scarcely excelled by any one in the town. It is in an excellent neighborhood, near the schools and churches, and but a few moments' walk from the post office and depot. J. W. Turner."

This opportunity came at a very favorable moment for the Abbot trustees, who found that even the addition of the newly acquired Davis Hall did not provide accommodation for all the girls who were thronging to Andover for an education. They also thought it "exceedingly desirable to own and control the lot of land which by its close proximity to our boarding house and Academy building might possibly hereafter (in other hands) occasion our institution annoyance and injury."

The purchase was made possible by a loan from George L. Davis, generous trustee, who took a mortgage on the place. The price paid was $3600. The name "Trustee Hall," voted by the Board, seems never to have been used. Not much time was allowed for repairs, for it was given over when the term closed, November 21, and on December the winter term opened.

Much of the routine of daily life in South Hall in the middle seventies is incidentally covered in the "Journal," along with mild pranks and gaieties. "I have had a real good time this term," the girl author writes, "more like what I came to school for, to have a jolly, carefree life aside from the school duties. I had not expected to be cooped up in sober South Hall, but we four have made it lively here, I tell you. And here another term has gone away and I am more in love with boarding-school life than ever." Later, however, she looked back from the vantage ground of the larger Smith Hall family with a fine scorn. "I do not see how we ever lived over there at stupid old South Hall."

A new bond of unity and interest was probably given the South Hall group in 1878, with the introduction of German conversation into the family life. With the exception of one year, 1868-69, when French was spoken at table, there had till then been no foreign language specialty in the house. Miss Kendall and Miss Brownell, both Vassar graduates, and Miss Ellen Wilbur, successively had supervision of the family as well as of the department, imparting, doubtless, to the girls something of their own knowledge of life and study in Germany.

A decade after the "Journal," with its entries of romantic incidents, girls had very similar excitements, it appears from reminiscent glimpses in a letter of that time.

"Entering the school out of turn, in the spring term, when everyone else was established, I was stowed away in South Hall on the attic floor, where Jane and Annah had the room across the hall and Alice was my roommate. It was a choice company, and though Jane and Annah were senior middlers of high standing, they took in the waif, yes, even let me stand on one of the trunks in the hall late, late in the night, with my head out of the skylight, listening to the Brown Glee Club serenading. They sang, 'I see my love at the window,' but we knew that they never could see as far over the roof as that skylight.

"There are many memories of many things, curiously mixed up --- Irish Mary cleaning lamps at the table at the foot of the stairs, Mrs. Gorton's black cat, 'Pert,' poor Kate, her red plaid shawl hanging from her shoulders, dragging across from class, too ill to gather it about her --- a brave and cheerful soul, never forgotten; many, so many little pictures. One that always holds is of warm spring afternoons in the little library back of the 'Hall,' where, instead of using the recreation time in walking, I found Darwin's 'Close and Cross Fertilization of Plants,' and Plato's 'Phaedo,' which was what ended my career at Abbot; for after that I had to have Greek and college."

Mrs. Gorton was a real "house-mother," never sparing herself in her desire to make the girls comfortable. Once, when a girl's illness just before vacation proved to be diphtheria, Mrs. Gorton, with the help of daughter Mary, prominent and active later in the Abbot circle, stood by and nursed her through it.

This is a story largely made up of trivial happenings, remembered in after years, perhaps, because the big things that really matter become part of the very self, and cannot be told. Yet something of the lasting influence of Abbot instruction on one student in the very last years of life in South Hall is concretely shown in the spontaneous opening of the next communication.

"Three months in Germany, this summer, with no day which did not owe debt to old German Hall! There are many memories of my three years there. Dignified Mrs. Mead [later President of Mount Holyoke College] was the Head in those days. How vividly one recalls the surprised and slightly bewildered expression with which she looked up on Wednesday night when we came down to her room for prayer-meeting, and she had forgotten what night it was. That first supper when we were told to ask to be excused in German, what an ordeal it was!

"Fräulein Adelheid Bodemeyer was charming, with her red-gold hair and lovely color. We were unduly interested, of course, when Mr. James Howard came to see her. With what embarrassment he conducted prayers after supper for a tableful of girls, and how the color would mount in Fräulein's cheeks! Fräulein Bodemeyer was greatly distressed to find that our edition of the book we were studying had not been expurgated, and with a red pencil she carefully enclosed the objectionable phrases with brackets that they might be omitted. The result, of course, was that we learned those phrases at once. I still know a few mild curses in German. But Fräulein was a real teacher.

"After Mr. Howard carried Fräulein Bodemeyer away, Fräulein Heitmuller came, also most attractive, also a good teacher. I have great admiration for these two young women who could instil such a lasting interest in the language that I read Werther, the Second Part of Faust, and still more of Goethe, the first year after leaving Abbot, and created some kind of a German Club every year of the next ten. When Fräulein Heitmuller, in her turn, was carried away by a young American, there came good Fräulein Shiefferdecker, but she was not a part of German Hall tradition. Her gay picnics, however, are described later.

"There are other memories of German Hall: of the room so tiny that N. used to say that when she or her roommate turned around the other had to climb up on the bed in order to give space enough. It was in that room that a midnight spread took place with smuggled-in escalloped oysters, and with toasts and menus. This was before the days of student leadership, and there was, strange to say, a great thrill in thinking how shocked stately Mrs. Mead would be if she only knew.

"Permanent friendships started in that intimate group in German Hall; friendships that have lasted through the years. We left it with regret, and hold its memory with deep affection."

Developments connected with the expansion of the school plant required, as has been stated, a general rearrangement of buildings. South Hall or "German" Hall, as it had come to be called familiarly, was fairly pushed out of its place when, in the summer of 1888, the "Academy" was brought up behind it into its present position. For the benefit of latter-day alumnae, it may be explained that South Hall stood on the site of John-Esther Gallery, extending forward nearer the street. For a whole year the two remained in uncomfortable juxtaposition, the dormitory shutting off light from recitation rooms. Then, after the fall term of 1889 began, the long building was cut asunder and moved, the rear portion to upper Morton Street to be made into a dwelling, the house itself to Abbot Street. The route across the grounds was evidently between the Academy and the still gaping cellar from which it had been moved, down the slope between the excavation for the Draper Hall to-be and Smith Hall (then standing where the Infirmary is now) and on over to its present place.

Three years later, upon the retirement of Miss McKeen, South Hall was made into a home for her and named by her, Sunset Lodge. There amid her cherished possessions, many of them souvenirs of travel or gifts of pupils, she spent the remaining six years of her life in happy serenity. She was very hospitable and delighted in entertaining Andover friends, and "old scholars" when they came back to visit the school. She liked to have the house all bright with lights (that meant oil lamps, too) and was pleased when a Phillips boy said to her, "Oh, yours is the house that looks as if you were having a party every night." She usually had with her either a niece attending the school or some other student.

Every two weeks during the winter season, the parlor was turned into a lecture room, when the ladies of the Art Department of the November Club gathered to receive instruction from their leader, Miss McKeen, and to study the photographs which were always displayed for their use. Many of them had been her pupils in years past and took pleasure in carrying on the thorough work which she still required. On Miss McKeen's part, it was a joy to keep on with her teaching, especially in this subject so much to her taste, which she, as a pioneer, had introduced into the school curriculum.

After the death of Miss McKeen in 1898, the house was for twenty years occupied by families who rented it from the Trustees. Then after the war period, just as in the sixties, it was pressed into the service of the school because of crowded conditions in the other buildings. In January, 1919, and at several other times, Sunset Lodge was again filled with young girls, successors of the first occupants, if with less material in their skirts, yet with just as much gray matter inside their heads and just as different withal from one another in the outward expression of secret fears and hopes and ambitions.

Those two "attic" rooms again became little home places and were loved as such. Sometimes one was a study and the other a bedroom, and sometimes there was one girl in each. A room with sloping ceiling on the second floor bore the name Miss McKeen gave it, the "tent room". The sleeping porch was a treasured addition made during the rental period. This belonged to the two girls who lived adjacent to it, but at times a third was admitted. Sunset Lodge girls always made a loyal little family.

Now a new life begins for the old building. On Alumnae Day, May 2, 1959, the exciting announcement was made that it is to become the long-desired center --- an Alumnae House---with plenty of room for the routine work of the Office, and a welcome for alumnae.