 Excerpt from Abstract of the Massachusetts School Returns for 1838-39 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Abstract of the Massachusetts School Returns by the Massachusetts Board of Education Middlesex County Acton 1. Population 1071 Valuation $212,691.0 Number of public schools, 5 2. Number of scholars of all ages in all the schools In summer 268 In winter 329 3. Average attendance in the schools In summer 179 In winter 265 4. Number of persons between 4 and 16 years of age in the town 317 5. Aggregate length of the schools 34 months 14 days In summer 19 In winter 1514 6. Number of teachers in summer Male blank Female 5 Number of teachers in winter Male 5 Female blank 7. Average wages paid per month including board To males $25.50 To females $10.70 8. Average value of board per month Of males $7.90 Of females $5.30 9. Average wages per month exclusive of board Of males $17.30 Of females $5.40 10. Amount of money raised by taxes for the support of schools Including only the wages of teachers, board and fuel $625 11. Amount of board and fuel if any contributed for public schools Blank 12. Number of incorporated academies Blank Aggregate of months kept Blank Average number of scholars Blank Aggregate paid for tuition Blank 13. Number of unincorporated academies, private schools and schools kept to prolong common schools 1. Aggregate of months kept 21. Average number of scholars Blank Aggregate paid for tuition Blank 14. Amount of local funds Blank Income from same Blank Books used Cummings's spelling book Walker's Dictionary Political Classbook And Introduction to the National Ditto Smith's Grammar Olney's, Parley's, Smith's and Malta Brun's geographies Smith's, Adams's, Colburn's and Emerson's Arithmetics Remarks The return states that a private school has been kept in one of the districts Quote For 10 weeks, tuition 25 cents per week End quote But does not estimate the number of scholars Selection from report In conclusion, the committee deem it proper to notice one important particular Which is deeply connected with the prosperity of the schools Their absences School committee Samuel T. Adams Isaac Brown Daniel Weatherby Jr Ashby 1. Population 1201 Valuation $266,285 Number of public schools 9 2. Number of scholars of all ages in all the schools In summer 342 In winter 441 3. Average attendance in the schools In summer 261 In winter 341 4. Number of persons between 4 and 16 years of age in the town 312 5. Aggregate length of the schools 43 months 21 days In summer 237 In winter 2014 6. Number of teachers in summer Male blank Female 9 Number of teachers in winter Male 7 Female 2 7. Average wages paid per month including board To males $22.67 To females $11.66 8. Average value of board per month Of males $6.81 Of females $5.30 9. Average wages per month exclusive of board Of males $15.86 Of females $6.36 10. Amount of money raised by taxes for the support of schools Including only the wages of teachers, board, and fuel $600 11. Amount of board and fuel, if any, contributed for public schools Blank 12. Number of incorporated academies Blank Aggregate of months kept Blank Average number of scholars Blank Aggregate paid for tuition Blank 13. Number of unincorporated academies, private schools, and schools kept to prolong common schools 1. Aggregate of months kept 10. Average number of scholars 26. Aggregate paid for tuition $325 14. Amount of local funds Blank Income from same Blank Books used Emerson's introduction to the North American Spelling Book Worcester's First and Second Parts Young Reader and Introduction to the National Ditto Smith's Grammar Parley's Smith's Multibroons and Olney's Geographies Emerson's First Part Colburn's Ditto and Adam's Arithmetic Goodrich's History Blake's Philosophy Comstock's Chemistry Watts on the Mind Colburn's Algebra Parley's History of the U.S. Remarks The estimates respecting private schools relate to one school only The return states that there are other private schools kept by females in some of the districts in the spring and fall between the town schools amounting to perhaps four months but does not estimate the number attending or amount paid for tuition. In addition to the amount raised by taxes the interest on the town's proportion of the surplus revenue is applied to the support of the public schools No report from school committee School committee Ruben Bates Abraham Haskell Bedford 1. Population 858 Valuation 186,888 dollars Number of public schools 5 2. Number of scholars of all ages in all the schools In summer 208, in winter 264 3. Average attendance in the schools In summer 157, in winter 184 4. Number of persons between 4 and 16 years of age in the town 216 5. Aggregate length of the schools 43 months 14 days In summer 257, in winter 27 6. Number of teachers in summer Male blank, female 5 Number of teachers in winter Male 2, female 4 7. Average wages paid per month including board To males 30 dollars To females 11 dollars 29 cents 8. Average value of board per month Of males 9 dollars Of females 5 dollars 46 cents 9. Average wages per month exclusive of board Of males 21 dollars Of females 5 dollars 83 cents 10. Amount of money raised by taxes for the support of schools including only the wages of teachers, board and fuel 600 dollars 11. Amount of board and fuel if any contributed for public schools blank 12. Number of incorporated academies blank, aggregate of months kept, blank average number of scholars, blank aggregate paid for tuition, blank 13. Number of unincorporated academies, private schools and schools kept to prolong common schools 4. Aggregate of months kept, 9 average number of scholars, 85 aggregate paid for tuition, 80 dollars 25 cents 14. Amount of local funds, blank income from same, blank books used, Worcester's Primer National Spelling Book Walker's Dictionary Young Reader National Ditto and Introduction to Ditto Political Classbook Testament Smith's Grammar Olney's Woodbridges and Parley's Geographies Emerson's First Part and Smith's Arithmetics Blake's Philosophy Goodrich's History Remarks The interest of the town's proportion of the surplus revenue is applied to public schools. No report from School Committee School Committee John W. Simmons Jonathan Levitt Cyrus Page Bolerica One Population 1498 Valuation 368,612 dollars Number of public schools 10 2 Number of scholars of all ages in all the schools in summer 337 in winter 386 3 Average attendance in the schools in summer 222 in winter 286 4 Number of persons between 4 and 16 years of age in the town 401 5 Aggregate length of the schools 67 months 7 days in summer 4521 in winter 2114 6 Number of teachers in summer male blank female 9 Number of teachers in winter male 6 female 3 7 Average wages paid per month including board to males 25 to females $10.81 8 Average value of board per month of males $9 of females $5.28 9 Average wages per month exclusive of board of males $16 of females $5.53 10 Amount of money raised by taxes for the support of schools including only the wages of teachers, board and fuel $1,000 11 Amount of board and fuel if any contributed for public schools blank 12 Number of incorporated academies 1 Aggregate of months kept 9 Average number of scholars 15 Aggregate paid for tuition $250 13 Number of unincorporated academies private schools and schools kept to prolonged common schools blank Aggregate of months kept blank Average number of scholars blank Aggregate paid for tuition blank 14 Amount of local funds $300 Income from same $18 Books used Cummings's National and Introduction to Emerson's Spelling Books American First Class Book National and Young Readers Introduction to National Ditto Easy Lessons Smith's Productive Grammar Malta Bruns, Parlies, Olneys and Halls Geographies Child's Book of Geography Smith's, Adams's, Emerson's and Colburn's Arithmetics Worster's Primer Parlies History History of the U.S. Pronouncing Testament Walker's Dictionary Remarks Some of the district schools have been prolonged by subscription but no particulars respecting them are ascertained. The income arising from the town's proportion of the surplus revenue and of the school fund has been appropriated to public schools. The fund mentioned is a schoolbook fund in one of the districts. Selections from report In district number 5 your committee were informed that a school was kept but at the same time was not visited by your committee as the instructors of said school never applied for a certificate as the law requires and therefore could not be considered as under any superintendence of your committee. No money has been drawn from the treasury of the town to defray the expenses of said school. There are important requisites that constitute a good teacher which are not to be learned by a personal examination and your committee would humbly recommend to the prudential committees to be careful in their selection of teachers, generally to prefer all other things being equal a person of some age and experience as their choice rather than an inexperienced youth who never has tried his hand. Your committee were gratified defined at the closing examination of the several schools that the teachers had so generally complied with their directions in requiring great thoroughness in the elementary books in drilling their scholars thoroughly in that book which is the only sure guide to the acquisition of knowledge in all the branches of an education which book too is apt to be neglected by those who think they have advanced a little beyond it we mean the spelling book too much attention cannot be required of our scholars to this book of all school books punctuality in the attendance of scholars your committee deem of great importance let your efforts be what they may let your teachers be as good as they may be still it will be utterly impossible for your children to make desirable improvement unless they are kept at school punctually and constantly parents must look to it or their children will lose the golden opportunity for acquiring an education which the youth of New England have guaranteed to them in the establishment of our common schools and which is so indispensable to the permanency of our free institutions the registers required to be kept in our schools the past season show an almost culpable negligence somewhere for instance in one of our summer schools the whole number of scholars was 45 average attendance 23 in one of our winter schools whole number 71 average attendance 53 showing a loss in the district last named equal to 18 scholars deprived of the opportunity of 12 weeks schooling worse even than that many of our districts should be deprived of any school at all which would not be tolerated for a moment were it done through the instrumentality of others your committee believe that did parents consult more the true interests of their children the like cases would not occur again there is a topic to which your committee have taken the liberty to allude and about which they have some queries and they here introduce the subject that the same may be freely and fairly discussed by those interested and its merits or demerits established that is whether the practice of some of our districts many male teachers to keep their winter schools is on the whole a judicious arrangement your committee confess with all due deference to the opinion of others that they cannot but entertain some doubts about the expediency of the practice not however from any particular experience they have had the past season but from their general experience and observation most of our districts there are boys attending the winter schools from 12 to 18 years of age as there is an aptness and fitness to be consulted in this arrangement your committee do believe that such boys do require a male teacher a person of masculine understanding to command their attention and respect without which every effort of the teacher to instruct them would be in vain your committee in expressing these sentiments by no means wish to dictate to any district again your committee would recommend to parents the importance of seeing that their children employ their leisure hours during the vacations that occur between the winter and summer schools in reviewing their studies often that three or four weeks of their next school may not be wasted in acquiring the same acquaintance to the studies they possessed when they left their last school in this way scholars would be ready to make immediate advancement in their acquisitions otherwise they will sustain a loss of three or four weeks schooling if not more your committee in closing this report are happy to say in sincerity that in their opinion there has been a decided improvement in the condition of our schools during the past year that an increased interest in parents and scholars has been manifest school committee Marshall Preston Joseph Haven Boxborough one population 433 valuation $138,660 number of public schools four two scholars of all ages in all the schools in summer 108 in winter 136 average attendance in the schools in summer 72 in winter 103 number of persons between four and 16 years of age in the town 141 five aggregate length of the schools 24 months in summer 12 in winter 12 six number of teachers in summer male blank, female four number of teachers in winter male four female blank seven average wages paid per month including board to males $24 to females $9.25 eight average value of board per month of males $8 of females $4.50 nine average wages per month exclusive of board of males $16 of females $4.75 ten amount of money raised by taxes for the support of schools including only the wages of teachers board and fuel $400 11 amount of board and fuel if any contributed for public schools $208 12 number of incorporated academies blank aggregate of months kept blank average number of scholars blank aggregate paid for tuition blank 13 academies private schools and schools kept to prolong common schools too aggregate of months kept four one average number of scholars 46 aggregate paid for tuition $104 14 amount of local funds $57.96 income from same blank books used Cummings's Spelling Book Webster's Dictionary American First Class Book Young Reader Pierpont's Introduction to the National Ditto Smith's and Frost's Grammars Olney's and Smith's Geographies Adams and Smith's Arithmetics Remarks The answer to the inquiry respecting local funds their amount and income is there was the amount of which is $57.96 leaving it doubtful whether it refers to principal or income as however no funds so considerable as to produce this amount of interest appears previously to have existed it is presumed that the answer refers to the amount of principal no report from school committee school committee James W. Hayward Brighton 1. Population $1,337 Valuation $399,371 2. Number of scholars of all ages in all the schools in summer $156 in winter $238 3. Average attendance in the schools in summer $130 in winter $193 4. Number of persons between 4 and 16 years of age in the town $338 5. Aggregate length of the schools 42 months 14 days in summer $237 in winter $197 16. Number of teachers in summer male, blank, female, 4. Number of teachers in winter male, four, female, blank 7. Average wages paid per month including board to males $36.71 to females $15.50 8. Average value of board per month of males $50. A females $7.75 9. Average wages per month exclusive of board of males $24.21 of females $7.75 11. Amount of money raised by taxes for the support of schools including only the wages of teachers board and fuel $1,200 11. Amount of board and fuel, if any, contributed for public schools $12. Number of incorporated academies $12. Number of incorporated academies $12. Aggregate of months kept, blank average number of scholars $12. Aggregate paid for tuition $13. Number of unincorporated academies private schools and schools kept to prolong schools, 3 aggregate of months kept $26.1 average number of scholars $57 aggregate paid for tuition $867.50 $14. Amount of local funds blank income from same, blank books used National and Emerson's spelling books Testament American First Class Book Emerson's First, Second, and Third Class Readers Smith's Grammar Olney's, Parley's, and Child's Geographies Emerson's First, Second, and Third Parts North American and Smith's Arithmetic Goodrich's History U.S. and Emerson's Questions Watts on the Mind Blake's Philosophy Selections from Report Your committee have witnessed, with deep regret, the evils arising from the want of suitable apparatus of various kinds in the several schools. It is not expected of any teacher that he perform an impossibility and therefore the committee are unable to see what great benefit can accrue to pupils from the study of philosophy, chemistry, or history without the means of illustrating such parts of the sciences as require illustration. A few hundred dollars would be most profitably invested in procuring an apparatus that would seem to meet the exigencies of the case. There would be more pleasure in studying those subjects which at present are so repulsive to the pupils generally, and the schoolroom would be the place of real enjoyment. Your committee feel also there is too much indifference to the location and comfort and convenience of our schoolhouses. The best part of them is outside. The internal arrangement of every schoolroom is decidedly injurious and defective. In two or three instances the committee found the children dependent upon a thorough and constant bracing of the hands and feet to keep themselves in an upright position. Hence the children become wearied with school and uninterested in their studies. Hence too we find the cause of many diseases which Riper years disclose to our view. Your committee regret also that parents and guardians of children even so little interest in their progress in knowledge while attending school. Scarcely a parent has visited the schools during the past year and but few, very few, have evened any particular sympathy for the teacher who has labored so unremittingly for the good of his pupils. Why so much apathy on this subject exists we will not say but they would inquire whether public education is sufficiently appreciated. While this town raised $1,200 for the support of the several schools therein about $900 was contributed to the different private schools. School committee Nathan Carruth Daniel Kingsley S. Lamson Burlington 1. Population 522 Valuation $127,220 Number of Public Schools 5 2. Number of Scholars of all ages in all the schools in summer 74 in winter 82 3. Average Attendance in the Schools in summer 44 in winter 61 4. Number of Persons between 4 and 16 years of age in the town 135 5. Aggregate Length of the Schools 23 months in summer 2014 in winter 222 6. Number of Teachers in Summer Male, Blank Female, Four Number of Teachers in Winter Male, One Female, Blank 7. Average Wages Paid Per Month Including Board to Males $33 8. Average Value of Board Per Month of Males $10 of Females $5 9. Average Wages Per Month Exclusive of Board of Males $23 of Females $5.87 10. Amount of Money Raised by Taxes for the Support of Teachers, Board and Fuel $250 11. Amount of Board and Fuel, If Any Contributed for Public Schools Blank 12. Number of Incorporated Academies Blank Aggregate of Months Kept Blank Aggregate Paid for Tuition Blank 13. Number of Unincorporated Academies Private Schools and Schools Kept to Prolong Common Schools 1. Aggregate of Months Kept 2. One Average Number of Scholars Blank Aggregate Paid for Tuition $20 14. Amount of Local Funds Blank Books Used Emerson's New National Spelling Book Worcester's Third and Fourth Reading Books Murray's Grammar Hall's and Blake's Geographies Smith's Arithmetic Walker's Dictionary Comstock's Philosophy Goodrich's History Remarks The number of scholars attending the private school is not estimated. There are no permanent funds, but the income accruing from the town's section of the surplus revenue is applied to the support of common schools. The return does not estimate the number of scholars or average attendance in one of the schools which accounts for the difference in those particulars between the present and the last abstracts. Selections from Report The want of punctual attendance in our schools is very much to be regretted in as much as it addresses great derangement in classes and impedes the progress of the schools. It will be seen here that the rising generation has enjoyed a greater length of schooling under the system that was adopted the last year than any one year before. Notwithstanding the many disadvantages which were experienced from the want of room in the winter school and the bad construction of the school houses, the committee are happy to say that in their visits from time to time they found very evident marks of improvement and also a very great improvement in the system of teaching. But in the opinion of the committee a far greater amount of good might have been done with better constructed school houses. The committee would further report that the summer school in the west quarter of the town was one of the largest in town and that very much inconvenience was felt in that school for the want of a house and as the comfort and progress of a school depend to a very considerable degree on the proper construction of school houses the board would invite the attention of the town on the subject. School committee Nathan Blanchard, Sylvainis Wood, Daniel McIntyre, John Marion. Cambridge 1. Population 7,631 Valuation 1,732,048 dollars 2. Number of scholars of all ages in all the schools in summer 1,083 in winter 1,136 3. Average attendance in the schools in summer 879 in winter 957 4. Number of persons between 4 and 16 years of age in the town 1,688 5. Aggregate length of the schools 175 months in summer 8814 in winter 8614 6. Number of teachers in summer female 12 number of teachers in winter male 5 female 11 7. Average wages paid per month including board to males $54.33 to females $19.48 8. Average value of board per month of males $14.20 of females $14.49 9. Average wages per month exclusive of board of males $40.13 of females $10.99 10. Amount of money raised by taxes for the support of schools including only the wages of teachers board and fuel $5,419.57 11. Amount of board and fuel if any contributed for public schools 12. Number of incorporated academies 1. Aggregate of months kept 11. Average number of scholars 36 Aggregate paid for tuition $2160 13. Number of unincorporated academies private schools and schools 11. 7. 1. 11. 1. 14. Amount of local funds 10. 11. 1. Works Used Introduction to Ditto New National Spelling Book Colburn's First, Second, Third, and Fourth Reading Lessons Emerson's Second and Third Class Readers Mount Vernon and National Readers American Popular Lessons Introduction to the National Reader Cheever's Commonplace Book of Pros and Studies in Poetry Bible Algiers, Murray's, and Ingersoll's Grammars Hall's Child's Book of Geography Olney's Geography and Atlas Worcester's Ditto Emerson's North American Arithmetic Colburn's First Lessons Ditto and Sequel Goodrich's History U.S. with Emerson's Questions Worcester's Elements of General History with Charts Colburn's Algebra Parker's Natural Philosophy Davis's Surveying Foster's Bookkeeping Abridgment of Weyland's Moral Science Paley's Natural Theology Remarks In answer to the inquiry respecting local funds the return states that the trustees of the Hopkins Fund instruct nine boys in Latin and Greek but gives no other particulars No Report from School Committee School Committee Artemis B. Muzzy John Owen J. W. Parker C. Gatton Pikman Walter M. Allen Carlisle Population 596 Valuation 155,333 dollars Number of Public Schools Five Number of Scholars of all ages in all the schools in summer 107 In winter 186 Three Average Attendance in the Schools In summer 91 In winter 142 Four Number of Persons between four and 16 years of age in the town 156 Five Aggregate Length of the Schools 21 Months, 7 Days In summer 821 In winter 1214 Six Number of Teachers in Summer Male, Blank Female, Four Number of Teachers in Winter Male, Five Female, Blank Seven Average Wages paid per month including Board To Males, $25.92 To Females, $8.70 Eight Average Value of Board per Month Of Males, $8.45 Of Females, $4.20 Nine Average Wages per Month Exclusive of Board Of Males, $17.47 Of Females, $4.50 Ten Amount of Money Raced by Taxes for the Support of Schools Including Only the Wages of Teachers, Board and Fuel $500 Eleven Amount of Board and Fuel, if any, contributed for Public Schools, Blank Twelve Number of Incorporated Academies, Blank Aggregate of Months Kept, Blank Average Number of Scholars, Blank Aggregate Paid for Tuition, Blank Thirteen Number of Unincorporated Academies, Private Schools And Schools Kept to Prolong Common Schools, $3 Aggregate of Months Kept, Six One Average Number of Scholars, $32 Aggregate Paid for Tuition, $28 Fourteen Amount of Local Funds, $500 Income from Same, $30 Books Used National Spelling Book and Introduction Testament American First Class Book National Reader and Introduction to Ditto Young Ditto Smith's Grammar Olney's Smith's and Malta Brun's Geographies Colburn's First Lessons and Sequel Smith's Adams and Emerson's Arithmetics Holbrook's Geometry Comstock's Philosophy Goodrich's History U.S. Remarks The number of scholars attending the private schools is estimated for two of the schools only. No Report from School Committee School Committee Preserved Smith Benjamin P. Hutchins Charlestown One Population Ten Thousand One Hundred One Valuation Two Million Four Hundred Forty One Thousand One Hundred Sixty Seven Dollars Number of Public Schools, $22 Two Number of Scholars of All Ages in All the Schools In Summer, $2,215 In Winter, $2,253 Three Average Attendance in the Schools In Summer, $1,952 In Winter, $1,968 Four Number of Persons between four and sixteen years of age in the town $2,400 Five Aggregate Length of the Schools, $259 Months In Summer, $131 In Winter, $128 Six Number of Teachers in Summer Male, Six Female, $24 Number of Teachers in Winter Male, $11 Female, $19 Seven Average Wages Paid Per Month Including Board To Males, $50.75 To Females, $17.51 Eight Average Value of Board Per Month Of Males, $10 Of Females, $8 Nine Average Wages Per Month Exclusive of Board Of Males, $40.75 Of Females, $9.51 Ten Amount of Money Raised by Taxes For the Support of Schools Including Only the Wages of Teachers Board and Fuel, $10,000 Eleven Amount of Board and Fuel, if any Contributed for Public Schools, $12 Number of Incorporated Academies, $1 Aggregate of Months Kept, $1 Average Number of Scholars, $1 Aggregate Paid for Tuition, $1 Thirteen Number of Unincorporated Academies, Private Schools And Schools Kept to Prolong Common Schools, $4 Aggregate of Months Kept, $48 Average Number of Scholars, $260 Aggregate Paid for Tuition, $300 Fourteen Amount of Local Funds, $5,400 Income from Same, $324 Books Used Emerson's National Spelling Book and Introduction Worcester's First, Second, and Third Books Pierpont's Young Reader American First Class Book Young Ladies Ditto Algiers Murray's Grammar Worcester's Geography Boston's School Atlas Emerson's First, Second, and Third Parts Arithmetic Bailey's Algebra Blake's Natural Philosophy Wilbur's Astronomy, etc. Remarks With respect to Incorporated and Unincorporated Academies, the answer is not sufficiently definite to determine the distinction between them. As the answer states the amount of expense without distinguishing between them, the estimates are placed in the statement of Private Schools. The answer is made to both inquiries but there are, quote, One Female Seminary, and, quote, and, quote, Three Private Schools, and, quote, but whether the First is an Incorporated Institution or not is not distinctly stated. In addition to the permanent funds, the whole of the income amounting to $1,153.76 of the town's proportion of the surplus revenue is applied to the public schools, making, in the whole, the sum of $11,477.76 for a population according to the last census of 10,101. Selections from Report The teacher insisted upon thoroughness from all his pupils. He introduced one uniform practice worthy of particular notice. It was this. Whenever a pupil made a mistake in recitation, he was compelled afterwards to repeat that part of his answer correctly. Thus, if a word in spelling was given out and it should almost go around the class, yet everyone who had missed that word was obliged to spell it afterwards as corrected, no matter how much time it might take up. And this is going upon a correct principle. Whenever a matter is to be learned, however simple it may be, the teacher should go no farther than he sees each pupil in the class to understand him. And when a mistake is made, though slight in itself, the one who made it should himself repeat the correction. It is not enough that the teacher should make the correction. The right answer should always come from the pupil at last. This establishment was therefore doing no good during the summer, except that it furnished in miniature to the whole town a felicitous and well-timed illustration of the decided disadvantages of putting these district schools under a constant change and succession of teachers, so that a child who attends upon one of them from the age of four up to 16 years will have been placed under the plastic form and guidance of perhaps 24 different teachers. And when he grows up, he may know more instructors than he has cousins or family relations. As each new teacher, if he has thought enough of the nature of his vocation to mature any system at all, has a system peculiar to himself, the children living in this portion of the town are subject to many disadvantages from the alterations of the classes and from the various modes of teaching. Add to this the great inconvenience arising from having the children of all ages from four to 16 years in one school and from obliging the master or mistress to give instruction in all branches and to teach the letters of the alphabet besides, and it is not surprising that these schools have been stationary. It is necessary that the teachers should themselves be good readers so that they may teach their pupils to read naturally, intelligibly and with energy. The right culture and command of the voice so that it may express in the proper intonation and accent the meaning and spirit of what is to be read in the same distinct and natural manner as it is uttered forth in conversation may under skillful instruction be easily acquired in early childhood. But if careless habits are then suffered to be formed, if the mere calling out of the words in one monotonous tone in a blundering manner and without regard to the sense be then allowed to pass for reading, the child, when grown up, will never be able to master this accomplishment without great hardship and struggle. The pupil should have pieces assigned to them adapted to their comprehension and should often hear them well read by their teacher. After the reading of the lesson, she should then ask familiar questions concerning it so as to ensure their attention to the subject and such is the course generally pursued in these schools. It is in the power of these teachers also to communicate orally much interesting and agreeable information upon various common though important matters. It is not to be expected that children from four to eight years of age will spend all their school hours in studying the book. The youngest children should not, for some time, even pretend to hold a book for if they did, they could only play with and abuse it. They learn the letters and short simple sentences from large printed cards held by the teacher or hung upon the side of the room. But they may learn much more by listening to her who, in an agreeable and impressive manner, may interest them with a variety of oral instruction. But she should always be careful to question them afterwards upon the things she has told them. It is well known that adults can remember any fact or suggestion communicated to them by a friend in a pleasant interview much longer than if they read it in the same words from a book. It is more true of young children. In this way, these teachers can be of more service than by making the youngest pupils hold constantly before their eyes books adapted for children. But it requires greater resources on their part and a constant exercise of thought. It is also a matter of considerable discrimination to impose the necessary restraints upon these children so that the school room, filled as it is, may be the scene of order and of quiet and yet not injure their tender forms by keeping them too long in one position or by any too rigorous confinement. To obviate this danger, the teachers have introduced various manual exercises and bodily movements by which both physical and mental relaxation is afforded. These movements are performed with regularity and precision to the delight and benefit of the pupils and are the aids rather than the hindrance of good discipline. The beautiful exercise of singing too has been generally introduced into these schools and those who will take the trouble to visit one of them and witness the children whose countenances are beaming with gladness, joining their pleasant voices in some appropriate song will be convinced that in no better way could a portion of the school hours be occupied. These happy influences, combining together, have the effect to render the school room a pleasant place of resort to the young who go there with minds more willing and in more suitable state to receive instruction. The Board are therefore happy to report to the town that this large class of our public schools is in so flourishing a condition and that those who have them in charge are so generally devoted to their calling. They have learned with pleasure that these teachers have associated together for the sake of mutual assistance and improvement to qualify each other more fully for the discharge of their duties and that many of them have, in various other ways, devoted much of their leisure time to this great purpose. The Board have also observed another good omen in the fact that the unpretending examinations of these humble schools, which here too, for were attended only by them, are now witnessed by many visitors. With such efforts and such encouragement, our primary schools cannot be stationary and in proportion as these are improved, the upper schools will be essentially benefited. In these upper schools, the teachers rely chiefly upon moral influences to preserve good discipline. They have recourse to a system of marks expressing merit or demerit to promote allotable emulation and proper behavior. In each of the schools for boys, a juvenile association has also been formed for mutual preservation from vicious habits and for mutual improvement. These societies are managed by the boys under the supervision of the masters and have had a direct salutary influence upon the condition of the schools. To use a common phrase, the boys have taken hold of the same end of the rope with the masters and they pull together. In both of these schools, as also in the Harvard, a well-selected library has been furnished chiefly by the exertions of the pupils. Singing also has its charms and its improving power here as in the schools of the lower grade. The board have been inclined to encourage to a proper degree the introduction of these new influences. They believe it to be their duty and the duty of the teachers to do everything in their power consistent with the great object of communicating knowledge to render the school room inviting and to make it serve in reality to the young as a second home. The design intended to be pursued in these upper schools is to give to all the pupils thorough instruction in all the common branches and as they are well grounded in these to give additional instruction in the higher branches. It has been the prevalent mistake of academies and other seminaries that exclusive attention was paid to the higher branches to the neglect of the common studies. Our free schools should never fall into so fatal an error. In them, the solid foundation of the common studies should be preferred to a superficial overlaying of the sciences. The scholars should be occasionally obliged to review the arithmetic, the geography, the grammar, the spelling and the reading book as long as they remain under tuition. It is desirable that those parents who here too for have been remiss in allowing their children to be irregular in their attendance upon the privileges of public instruction should take a more correct view of the obligations they are under to the community and to their families in this regard. The laws of the commonwealth say that, quote, it shall be the duty of the resident ministers of the gospel, the select men and the school committees in the several towns to exert their influence and use their best endeavors that the youth of their towns shall regularly attend the schools established for their instruction, end quote. And the board feel as if they had a right to call upon those filling these responsible offices to join with them in the effort to bring about this result. The board entertain the hope that the time is fast coming when the inhabitants of all classes will send their children to the public schools and cause them to be punctual and regular. Then all the children will be equally sure of having the best education which those schools can be made to impart. School committee, George W. Warren, E. P. McIntyre, Thomas Brown, Jr. End of excerpt from Abstract of the Massachusetts School Returns for 1838-39 by the Massachusetts Board of Education. Chapters 2 and 8 of Aspects of Modern Oxford by Alfred Dennis Godley. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information on to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org recording by Chad Horner. Chapter 2 of Undergraduates from Aspects of Modern Oxford by Alfred Dennis Godley. In the sad and sodden street to and fro, flit the fever-stricken feet of the freshers as they meet, calm and go, cue. Whatever the theory of their founders, it is at no late period in the history of colleges that we begin to trace the development of the modern undergraduate. It was only natural that the gentle natures and studious habits of a select band of learners should undergo some modification as college after college was founded and comparative frivolity would from time to time obtain admission to the sacred precincts. The university became the resort of wealth and rank as well as of mere intellect and the gradual influx of commoners, still more of gentlemen commoners, once for all determined the character of colleges as places of serious and uninterrupted study. Probably the Civil War, bringing the court to Oxford, was a potent factor in relaxation of the older academic discipline. Deans or sub-wardens of the period doubtless finding some difficulty in adapting their rules to the requirements of undergraduates who might from time to time absent themselves from chapel or lecture in order to read a parliamentary outpost. But perhaps the most instructive picture of the 17th century undergraduate is to be found in the account book of one wilding or of Wadham published by the Oxford Historical Society. Apparently a reading man and a scholar of his college destined for holy orders. The number of his books, and he gives a list of them shows him to have been something of a student while repeated entries of large sums paid for wigs on one occasion as much as 14 shillings more than his battles for the quarter would seem to suggest something of the habits of the gay young sparks alluded to by Hearn in the next century. On the whole, master wilding appears to have been a virtuous and studious young gentleman. Now and then the natural man asserts himself and he treats his friends to wine or cafe or even makes an excursion to Abington for shillings. Towards the end of his career, a gaudy costs two shillings, six pennies after which comes the two suggestive entry for a purge one shilling then comes the clues. Outstanding bills are paid to the alarming extent of seven shillings, 10 pennies a wig which originally costs 14 shillings is disposed of at a ruinous reduction of six shillings. The prudent man does not give it away to his scout and J. Wilding B.A. E. Cole Wadham retires to his country of personage having first invested six pence in a sermon evidently a person of methodical habits and punctual payments that had two bigs and everything handsome about him and that probably grumbled quite as much at the 10 shillings fee for his tutor as his modern successor does at his eight ponds, six shillings and eight pennies. But on the whole, collegiate and university fees seem to have been small after this description of the by-in-time of an undergraduate at Wadham, history is reserved on the subject of the junior members of the university which is the more disappointing as the historic news is not only gory-less but exceedingly scandalous in recounting the virtues and the aberrations of 18th century dawns. Here and there we find an occasional notice of the ways of undergraduates. Here a private memoir, there an academic brochure. We learn incidentally how Mr. John Pottinger of New College made themes in prose and verse and eventually came to a tolerable proficiency in colloquial lamb and Mr. Medocourt of Merton got into serious trouble, was prevented in fact from taking his degree for drinking the health of his Majesty, King George I and how Mr. Carty of University College suffered a similar fate for profaning with mad intimbrance that day on which he ought with sober cheerfulness to have commemorated the restoration of King Charles II. This was in 1716. How Mr. Shenstone found at Pembroke College, both sober men who amused themselves in the evening with reading Greek and drinking water and also a set of jolly, springingly young fellows who drank gale, smoked tobacco and even honed at how Lord Shelburne had a narrow-minded chitter from which we may gather that university life was not so very different from what it is now. Our forefathers were more exercised about politics for which we have now substituted a perhaps extreme devotion to athletics but for the most part the undergraduate is not prominent in history, seeming in fact to be regarded as the least important element in the university. On the other hand, his successor of the present century, the era of the examination skills occupies so prominent a place in the eyes of the public that it is difficult to speak of him lest happily one should be accused of frivolity or want of reverence for the raison d'etre of all academic institutions. His own reason of existence is not so obvious. It was as we have said tolerably clear that the medieval student came to Oxford primarily for the love of learning, something at any rate, but the student found a siècle. It's one of the most labyrinthine parts of a complex civilization. Of the hundreds of boys who are shot on the GWR platform every October to be caressed or kicked by Alma Mater and returned to due time full or empty, it is only an insignificant minority who come up with the obstensible purpose of learning. Their reasons are as many as the colours of their port-manteaus. Brown has come up because he is in the sixth form at school and was sent in for a scholarship by a headmaster, Isari, an advertisement. Jodes because of his thought by his friends that he might get into the university 11. Robinson because his father considered a university career to be a stepping stone to the professions, which yet fortunately is not as yet. Mr. Sangozier is going to St. Boniface because his father was there and Mr. J. Sangozier Smith, well probably because his father wasn't. Altogether they are a motley crew and it is not the least achievement of the university that she does not somehow or other manage to impress a certain stamp on so many different kinds of metal. But in this she is only an instrument in the hands of modern civilisation, which is always extinguishing eccentricities and abnormal types. And even Oxford, while her sons are getting rid of those interesting individualities which used to distinguish them from each other, is fast losing many of the particularities which used to distinguish it from the rest of the world. It is an age of monotony. Even the freshman, that delightful creation of a bygone age is not by any means what he was. He is still young but no longer innocent. The bloom is off his fragility. You cannot play practical jokes upon him anymore. Now and then a young man will present himself to his college authorities in a gown of which the superfluous dimensions and unusual embroidery betray the handiwork of the provincial tailor. Two or three neophytes may annually be seen perambulating the high and academic dress with a walking stick, but these are only survivals. Senior men have no longer their old privileges of ragging the freshman. In ancient times, as we are informed by the historian of Merton College, freshmen were expected to sit on a form and make jokes for the amusement of their companions on pain of being tucked or sacrificed by the thumbnail applied under the lip. The first Earl of Shasbury describes a detail that's rather barbarous just as practised at Exeter College. Amber Dates High, aided by sub-freshmen of unusual size and strength, he himself had it a mutiny which led to the eventual abolition of tucking. Again on Candlemass Day, every freshman received notice to prepare a speech to be delivered on the following through of Tuesday when they were compelled to declaim in undress from a form placed on the high table being rewarded with coddle if the performances were good, with coddle and salted drink if it were indifferent and with salted drink and tucks if it were dull. This is what American students called hazing and the German folks is subjected to similar ordeals. But we have changed all that and treat the fresher now with the respect he deserves. Possibly the undergraduate of fiction and the drama may have been once a living reality, but he is so no more. And modern realistic novelists will have to imagine some hero, less crude in colouring and more in harmony with the compromises and neutral tints of the latter, half of the 19th century. The young oxonian or cantab of 50 years back as represented by contemporary or nearly contemporary writers was always in extremes. When he was good, he was very, very good, but when he was bad, he was horrid like the little girl of the poet. He was either an inimitable example of improbable virtue or abnormally vicious. The bad undergraduate defied the Ten Commandments, all and severly, with the ease and success of the villain of transmutine melodrama. Nothing came amiss to him from forgery to screwing up the Dean and letting it be understood that someone else had done it. But retribution generally came at last and this compound of manifold vices was detected and rusticated and it was understood that from rustication to the gallows was the shortest and earliest of transitions. The virtuous undergraduate wore trousers too short for him and supported his relations. He did not generally join any athletic pastimes, but when the stroke of his college ate, fainted from excitement just before the start, the neglected Tsar threw off his thread bear coat, leapt into the vacant seat and won his crew at once the proud position of head of the river by the simple process of making four bumps on the same night, explaining afterwards that he had practiced in a dinghy and saw how it could be done. Then there was the admirable Christian of university life, perhaps the commonest type among these heroes of romance. He was invariably at Christchurch and very often had a background of more or less tragic memories from the faraway days of his je ne sais pas. Nevertheless, he unbent so far as to do nothing much during the first three and a half years of his academic career, except to go to a good many wine parties where he always wore his cap and gown, especially in female fiction and drank more than anyone else. Then when everyone supposed he must be plowed in grates, he sat up so late for a week and wore so many wet tiles that eventually he was announced at the insignia amid the plaudits of his friends and the approving smiles of the vice chancellor as the winner of a double first, several university prizes and a fellowship, after which it was only right and natural that the recipient of so many coveted distinctions should lead the heroine of the piece to the altar. Possibly the Oxford of a bygone generation may have furnished models for these brilliantly colored pictures or as is more probable, they were created by the license of fiction. At any rate, the man of modern times is a far less picturesque person and picturesque even to the verge of becoming ordinary. He has seldom eccentric or alter in externals. His manners are such as he has learned at school and his customs knows of the world he lives in. His stress would excite no remark in Piccadilly. The gorgeous waistcoats of leeches, pencils and Calvary's crurum non inarabiliteg mean belong to ancient history. He is on the whole inexpensive in his habits as it is now the fashion to be poor. He no longer orders in a tailor's whole shop and his clubs are generally managed with economy and prudence. If however the undergraduate occasionally displays the virtues of mature age, there are certain indications that he is less of a grown-up person than he was in the brave days of old. It takes him a long time to forget his school days. Only exceptionally untrammeled spirits regard independent reading as more important than the ministrations of their tutor. Past men have been known to speak of their work for the schools as lessons and in their first term to call the head of the college the headmaster. Naturally too, school life has imbued both past and class men with an enduring passion for games, probably rather a good thing in itself although inadequate as the be-all and end-all of youthful energy. Even those who do not play them can talk about them. Cricket and football are always as prolific a topic as the weather and nearly as interesting as many a perfunctory fresher's breakfast can testify. The undergraduate in these as in other things is like the young of his species. With him, after all, he has a good deal in common, taking short the ordinary provincial young man at a dash of the schoolboy and just a touch of the bush and you have what Mr. Hardy calls the normal undergraduate. It used to be the custom to draw a very hard and fast line of demarcation between the rowing and the reading man, rowing being taken as a type of athletics in general and indeed being the only form of physical exercise which possessed a regular organization. Rimmer has it that a certain tutor now defunct laid so much emphasis on this distinction that men whose circumstances permitted them to be idle were regarded with disfavour if they took to reading. He docked fresh men as reading or non-reading men and would not allow either kind to stray into the domain of the other. However, the general fusion of classes and professions has levelled these boundaries now. The rowing man reads to a certain extent and the reading man has very often pretensions to athletic eminence. It is in fact highly desirable that he should. Now that adversity blue proves an assistant master in a school with at least as good a salary as does a brilliant degree. Yet although the great majority of men belong to the intermediate class of those who take life as they find it and make no one occupation the object of their exclusive devotion, it is hardly necessary to say that there are still extremes. The brittle athlete at one end of the line and the bogus recluse often though wrongly identified with the smug at the other. The existence of the first is encouraged by the modern tendency to professionalism in athletics. Mere amateurs who regard games as an amusement can never hope to do anything. A thing must be taken seriously. Every schoolboy who wishes to obtain renown in the columns of sporting papers has his record and comes up to Oxford with the express attention of cutting somebody else's. And the athletic authorities of the university know all about Jones's bowling average at Eden or Brown's form as three-quarter back at Rugby long before these distinguished persons have matriculated it. Nor is it only cricket, football, and drawing that are the objects of our worship even so staid and contemplative at past time as gulffrancs among athletics and perhaps in time the authorities will be asked to give a blue for crooked. These things be so on the whole perhaps we should be grateful to the eminent athlete for the comparative affability of his demeanor so long as he is not seriously contradicted. He is great, but he is generally merciful. Thieves and sinews have probably as much admiration as is good for them and nearly as much as they want. On the other hand, the practice of reading has undoubtedly been popularized. It is no longer a clique of students who seek honors. Public opinion in and outside the university demands of an increasing majority of men that they should appear to be improving their minds. The past men, pure and simple, diminishes in numbers annually. No doubt in time, he will be a kind of pariah. Colleges compete with each other in the schools. Evening papers proved by statistics the immorality of an establishment where a scholar who obtains a second is allowed to remain in residence. The stress and strain of the system would be hardly bearable were it not decidedly less difficult to obtain a class in honors than it used to be, not perhaps, a first or even a second. But certainly the lower grades are easier of attainment. Then the variety of subjects is such as to appeal to everyone. History, law, theology, natural science, in all its branches, mathematics, all invite the ambitious student whose relations wish him to take honors and will be quite satisfied with the fourth. And eminent specialists compete for the privilege of instructing him. The cheater who complained to the undergraduate that he had 16 pupils was meant by the just retort that the undergraduate had 16 cheaters. The relation of the university to the undergraduate is twofold. It is kept as a witty. Scholar Dublin is fabled to have inscribed over the door of his dean for his amusement and instruction. And if the latter is frequently formal, it is still more often and in a great variety of ways informal and not communicated through his cheater. Not to mention the many college literary societies. Every college has one at least and they are all ready to discuss any topic from the origin of evil to bimetalism. There are now in the university various learned societies modeled and sometimes called after the German seminar which are intended to supplement the deficiencies of tuition and to keep the serious student abreast of the newest erudition which has been made in Germany or anywhere else in the continent. Then there is the union as a school of eloquence for the political aspirant or the privileged business of his college debating society where a vote of censure on ministers is sometimes emphasized by their rejection into the quadrangle may qualify him for the possible methods of a future house of commons. Chapter 8, the university as a place of learned leisure. I had been used for 30 years to no interruption, save the tinkling of the dinner bell and the chapel bell, essays of Pysymus Nox. Standing with one foot in the middle ages and the other in a luxuriously furnished common room such as Oxford Life as summarised by a German visitor who appears to have been a good deal perplexed like the outer world in general by the academic mixture of things ancient and modern and a host who wore a cap when going over his evening dress. Certainly the university is a strange melody of contraries. It never seems to be quite clear whether we are going too fast or too slow. We are always performing something yet are continually reproached with irrational conservatism. Change and permanence are side by side, change that looks as if it could defy time. The form it remains, the function never dies and yet all the while the change is rapid and complete. Men go down and are as if they had never been. As is the race of leaves, so is that of undergraduates and so transiently are they linked with the enduring existence of their university that except in the case of the minority who had done great deeds on the river or the cricket field they either pass immediately out of recollection or else remain only as a dim and distant tradition of bygone ages. An undergraduate's memory is very short. For him the history of the university is comprised in the three or four years of his own residence. Those who came before him and those who come after are alike separated from him by a great gulf. His predecessors are infinitely older and his successors immeasurably younger. It makes no difference what his relations to them may be in afterlife. Jones who went down in 74 may be an undistinguished country person or a struggling junior at the bar. And Brown who came up in 75 may be a bishop or a QC with his fortune made, but all the same Brown will always regard Jones as belonging to the almost forgotten heroic period before he came up. Whatever may be his respect for Brown's undoubted talents must always to a certain extent fail the paternal interest of a veteran watching the development of youthful promise. So complete is the severance of successive generations that it is hard to see how undergraduate custom and tradition and college characteristics should have a chance of surviving. Yet somehow they do manage to preserve an unbroken continuity. Once gave a college a good or a bad name and that name will stick to it. Plant a custom and it will flourish. Define statutes and royal commissions. Conservatism is in the air. Even convinced radicals in politics cannot escape from it and are sometimes Tories in matters relating to their university. They will change the constitution of a realm but will not stand any tampering with the Hebdom-Middle Council would ever be the reason whether it be environmental or hereditary universities go on doing the same thing only in different ways. They retain that indefinable habit of thought which seems to cling to old gray walls and the shades of ancient elms which the public calls academic when it is only contemptuous. Explaining the word as meaning provincial with a difference when it is angry. There is the same kind of unalterableness about the few favoured individuals to whom the spirit of the age has allowed a secure and permanent residence at Oxford. A happy class which is now almost limited to heads of houses and college servants. You scarcely ever see a scout bearing the outward and visible signs of advancing years. Age cannot whether them nor it should be added can custom steal their infinite variety of miss serving their masters. Perhaps it is they who are the repositories of tradition and even fellows contrived to retain some of the characteristics of their more permanent predecessors whom we have now learned to regard as abuses. Hard work though they are and precarious of tenure they are nevertheless in some sort imbued with that flavour of humanity and Dulce for 90 which continues to hunt even a common rim where fellows drink nothing but water and only dine together once a fortnight. For times are sadly changed now and the fellowship is far from being the haven of rest which at once was and still is to a few. Look at that old fellow pacing with slow and literally steps beneath Magdalene or Christchurch Elms. Regard him well for he is an interesting survival and presently he and his kind will be nothing but a memory and probably the progressive spirit of democracy will hold him up as an awful example. He is a link with a practically extinct period when he was first elected versus Ed Perpetus socius of his college without examination. The University of Oxford was in a parlous state. Reform was as yet unheard of or only limited dimly in the distance. Noble men still wore tufts. Think how that would scandalise us now. And gentlemen commoners came up with the declared and recognised intention of living as gentlemen commoners should except for the invention of the examination system and the demon of the schools was satisfied with only a mouthful of victims then. Oxford of the forties had not substantially changed since the last century since the days when Mr. Gibbon was a gentleman commoner at Magdalene College where his excuses for cutting his lectures in the morning were received with a smile and where he found himself horribly bored by the private scandal and dull and deep rotations of the seniors with whom he was invited to associate in the evening. Not much has changed since those days. Lectures were still disciplinary exercises rather than vehicles of instruction and the Vispersonal port was rarely, if ever, interrupted in its circulation by the man he comes at nine. Many holders of fellowships scarcely came near the university. Those he did reside were often not much concerned about the instruction of undergraduates and still less with intercollegiate competition. Perhaps it was not their life's work. A fellowship might be only a stepping stone to a college living when a sufficiently fat beneficence should fall vacant and allow the dean or subordinate to marry and retire into the country. And even the dawn. Who meant to be a dawn? All his days put study or learned leisure first and instruction second. The world not yet believing in the spoon feeding of youth. Very often, of course, they did nothing. After all, when you pay a man for exercising no particular functions, you can scarcely blame him for strictly fulfilling the conditions under which he was elected. But what do they do? Inquired quite recently a tourist pointing to the fellow's buildings of a certain college. Do replied the Oxford Ciceroan. Do why them's fellows? But if there was an activity, it is only the more credit to the minority who really did interest themselves in the work of their pupils. Not that the relation to your thorny undergraduates was ever. Then what it has since become, whether the change be for the better or the worse. Few attempts were made to bridge the chasm which must always yawn between the life of teacher and taught. Perhaps now the attempt is a little over-emphasized. Certainly things are done which would have made each particular heir to stand on end on the head of a fellow of the old school. In his solemn and formal way, he winked at Rowan considering it rather fast and on the whole an inevitable sign of declining morals. He wore his cap and gown with the anachronistic persistency of Mr. Till in the dawn and sighed over the levity of a colleague who occasionally sported a blue coat with brass buttons. Had you told him that within the present century college tutors would be seen in flannels and that a head of a school could actually row on the river in an eight albeit the ship in question be manned by comparatively grave and revered seniors who I clipped the ancient mariners. He would probably have applied in the formula ascribed to Dr. Dunson. Let me tell you sir that in order to be what you consider humorous it is not necessary that you should also be indecent but there is a lower depth still and grave indignatories of the university have been seen riding bicycles. All this would have been quite unintelligible to the yiffle days of our friend whom we see leisurely approaching the evening of his days in the midst of a generation that does not know him indeed but which is certainly benefited by his presence and the picture of academic repose which he displays to his much troubled and harassed successors a peaceful cloistered life soon to leave nothing behind it but a brass in the college chapel a few common room anecdotes and a vague tradition perhaps of a ghost on the old familiar staircase far different is the lot of the fellow Fendi Sekel by many names men know him whether he be the holder of an official fellowship or a prize fellow who is entitled to his emoluments only for the paltry period of seven years and what emoluments verily the mouth of democracy must water at the thought of the annual division of the spoils which used to take place under the old regime spoils which were worth dividing to in the days when rents were paid without a murmur and colleges had not as yet to allow tenants to hold at half a crown in the acre lest the farm should be unled all together but now if a prize fellow receives his two hundred pounds a year he may consider himself lucky and after that if he is not blessed with this world's goods the grim humours of the last commission at least allowed him the inestimable privilege of marrying on two hundred pounds a year after all it is not everyone who receives even that salary for doing nothing the official variety of fellow or the prize fellow it chooses to be a college cheater is a skill master with a difference he has rather longer holidays if he can afford to enjoy them and a considerably shorter purse than the instructors of youth at some great skills he is so far unfortunate in his predecessors that he has inherited the reputation of the fellows of old time everybody else is working the fellow is still a useless stone as a matter of fact the unfortunate man is always doing something working vehemently with a laudable desire to get that and do eight weeks which should properly take twelve or taking his recreation violently riding forty miles on a bicycle with a spurt at the finish so as not to miss his five o'clock pupil sitting on interminable committees everything in Oxford is managed by a committee partly perhaps because boards are very often screens or sitting upon a disorderly undergraduate on the whole the kicks are many and the half-pins comparatively few he has a long vacation of course but then he is always employed in writing his lectures for next term or compiling a skill edition or a handbook or an abridgment of somebody else's skill edition or handbook in order to keep the pot boiling more especially if he has fallen a victim to matrimony and established himself in the red brick part of Oxford it is true that there is the prospect on paper of a pension when he has passed his work but in the present state of college finances that is not exactly a vista of leisured opulence altogether there is not very much proposed about him college tutors in these days are expected to work it is on record that a tourist from a manufacturing district on saying fortune or snatching a brief or at long tennis remark I suppose there's another shift working inside such are the requirements of the age in the manufacturing districts nor are beer and skittles unadulterated the lot of the undergraduate either whatever the impression that his sisters and cousins may derive from the deities of the aides and common for the spirit of the century and the sturm and drying of the restless world has got hold of the man too and will not suffer him to live quite so peacefully as the verdant greens and fighters of old everybody must do something they must be up and doing or else they have a good chance of finding themselves sent down I do not speak of the reading man who naturally finds his vocation in a period of activity but rather of the man who is by nature non-reading and has to sacrifice his natural desires to the pressure of public opinion acting through his jitter perhaps he is made to go in for honors but even if he reads only for a pass the skulls are always with him he's always being pulled up to see how he is growing or at least he must be serving his college in one way or another if not by winning distinction in the skulls by toiling on the river or the cricket field then he is expected to interest himself in all the movements of the last quarter of the 19th century he must belong to several societies he cannot even be properly idle without forming himself into an association for the purpose if he wants to make a practice of picnicking on the share well he finds a share well lunch club with meetings no doubt a possibly an organ to devote his highly meritorious views an excellent and a healthy life no doubt but yet one is tempted sometimes to fear that the loftier may become extinct and then where are our poets to come from for it is a great thing to be able to live well it's often some manners and does not allow them to be fierce and there is no place for it like the streams and gardens of an ancient university if a man does not learn the great art of doing nothing there he will never acquire it anywhere else and it is there and in the summer term that this laudable practice will probably survive when it is unknown even in government offices for there is a season of the year when even the sternus scholar or athlete and the most earnest promoter of movements yields to the genius loci when the summer term is drawing to a close and the May east winds have yielded to the warmth of June and the lilacs and labyrinums are blossoming in college gardens when the shouting and the glory and the bonfires of the aides are over and the invasion of commemoration has not yet begun then if ever is the time for doing nothing then the unwilling victim of lectures shakes off his chains and rebels in a temporary freedom not unconnected with the fact that his cheater has gone for a picnic to Nunham perhaps he has been rowing in his college eight and is entitled to repose on the laurels of six bumps perhaps he is not in the skulls himself and can afford to pity the unfortunates who are and how many are the delightful ways of loafing you may propel the object of your affections if she is up as she very often is at this time in a punt on that most academic stream the sharewell while Charles your friend escorts Chumperon in a dinghy some little distance in front he may lie lazily in the sun in Worchester or sit John's gardens with a novel or a friend or both you may search Magley a powder hill for late bluebells and fancy that you have found high on its heafy ridge the tree known to Arnold and Glove or Clough or if you are more enterprising you may travel further afield and explore the high beach woods of the Chiltern slopes and the bare breezy uplands of the Berkshire Downs and this perhaps demands more energy than belongs to the truly conscientious loofer well let the idle undergraduate make the most of this time now it is not likely that he will be able to loaf in afterlife nor for the matter of that will his successors be allowed to take their ease here in Oxford even in the summer in those happy days when the university is to be turned into an industrial school and a place for the education no longer of the English gentlemen but the British citizen will that day ever come the spirit of the age is determined that it shall but perhaps the spirit of the place may be too much for it yet end of chapters 2 and 8 of Aspects of Modern Oxford by Alfred Dennis Godley