ar V, 
 [38230 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 OF 
 
 CTKU8-PEIECE, 
 
 FIRST PRINCIPAL OP THE FIRST STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 BY REV. SAMUEL J. MAY. 
 
 KEPRINXED FROM 
 
 BARNAED'S AMERICAN JOTJENAL OF EDUCATION 
 
 FOR DECEMBER, 1857. 
 
 HARTFORD :— P. C. BROWNELL. 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924032207510 
 

 ' e,:' y^CC^ 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 or 
 
 OTEUS PEIECE, 
 
 FIRST PRINCIPAL 01 FIRST STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
 IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 BY REV. SAMUEL J. MAY. 
 
 REPRINTED FROM 
 
 BARNARD'S AMERICAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION 
 FOR DECEMBER, 1857. 
 
 HARTFORD:— r. 0. BROWNELL, 
 
The following Memoir of Cykus Peiroe, the first Principal of the 
 first State Normal School in the United States, was prepared for Barn- 
 ard's American Journal of Education at the request of the Editor, and 
 is reprinted in pamphlet form for tlie gratification of the personal friends 
 of iVIr. Peirce, and the numerous graduates of the Institution which he 
 organized and conducted. 
 
I. MEMOIR OF CYRUS PEIRCE. 
 
 BY llEV. SAMUEL J. MAT. 
 
 Cyrus Pkircb, for fifty years a teacter in schools of different 
 grades, and, for eight years, a " teacher of teachers," as the first Princi- 
 pal of the first Normal School in the United States, was born Au- 
 gust 15th, 1790, in the town of Waltham, Massachusetts, the youngest 
 of twelve children of the same parents. He spent his boyhood at 
 home, on the retired farm, which his father and ancestors, for several 
 generations before him, had cultivated. His physical constitution, 
 hereditarily sound, was confirmed by the pure air, wholesome food, 
 genial sights and sounds, early hours of retirement and rising, and by 
 a due participation in the toils and the sports of country life. He 
 enjoyed the good influences of a well-ordered family, and of a steady, 
 judicious parental discipline. 
 
 At a very early age, he was sent to the district school, and went 
 through the dull routine then usually pursued with little children. 
 The only intimation we have been able to gather from his childhood, 
 that was at all prognostic of his manhood, is that, when only five or 
 six years of age, he thought his teacher was not judicious, was not 
 teaching him as much as she should, nor giving her instructions in 
 the best manner. He intimated that, at some future time, he should 
 himself keep school, and then he would show how it ought to be done. 
 Very probably, some impression, made upon his mind at that early 
 day, did give the direction to his course in life. 
 
 Perceiving his inclination to thoughtfulness and study, his parents 
 determined to give him a collegiate eduation. Accordingly he was 
 sent to Framingham Academy, and afterward was placed under the 
 tuition of Rev. Dr. Steams, of Lincoln, at that time reputed to be a 
 thorough scholar. 
 
 In 1806, Cyrus Peirce entered Harvard College. There he soon 
 gained, and, to the end of his course, maintained the reputation of a 
 pure, upright young man, a faithful, indefatigable student, and an 
 accurate, though not a brilliant recitation, scholar. One of his class- 
 mates has favored me with the following account of him at that 
 time: 
 
 The uniform success of Cyrus Peirce, in whatever he undertook, was owing 
 to his singular fidehty and perseverance. No one could have been more faithful, 
 
6 CYRUS PEIRCE. 
 
 patient, persevering, than he was. Whatever the subject of study might be, 
 his mind took hold of it with a tenacious grasp, and never let go, until he had 
 reached a satisfactory result. In this particular, I have never known his equal. 
 The action of his intellect was rather slow, but he investigated thoroughly and 
 reasoned soundly. I therefore always considered his statement of facts, un- 
 questionably true ; and his opinions as entitled to especial regard. His very 
 studious, as well as reserved habits, kept him much of the time- in his room. At 
 recitations, from which he was never absent, no one gave better evidence of a 
 faithful attention to the exercises, in whatever department they might be. He 
 always showed,* when " taken up," that he had " got the lesson." Tet, owing 
 to his great modesty, his slow utterance; his entire lack of the faculty of " show- 
 ing off," he did not pass for half his real worth as a scholar. He was thorough 
 in whatever he undertook. . He was inquisitive and candid. The exact truth 
 was his object ;, and he patiently removed every obstacle in the way of his 
 "attaining what he sought. 
 
 During his Sophomore year, in the winter of 1807-8, Cyrus 
 Peirce commenced his labors as a school-teacher, in the village of 
 West Newton, the same town, and not far from the very spot, to 
 which he came, nearly fifty years afterward, to close his career, and 
 crown his brow with the last of those unfading laurels, which encircle 
 it, in the eyes of all who have felt or seen his influence as a Teacher 
 of Teachers. 
 
 In order to appreciate duly the value of his services, one must 
 know what was the character of our common, especially our rural 
 district schools, fifty years ago. Those who commenced their edu- 
 cation since maj)s and globes were introduced ; since the exclusive 
 right of Dilworth's and Webster's Spelling Books, and Morse's 
 Geography, and Dabol's Arithmetic, to the honor of text- books, was 
 disputed ; since blackboards were invented, or belts of black plaster- 
 ing, called blackboards, ha,ve come to be considered indispensable in 
 our school-rooms ; those who commenced their education since Josiah 
 Hoi brook's, and such like simple apparatus, intimated to teachers how 
 much more intelligible and attractive, visible illustrations are than 
 verbal descriptions, — how much more easily any thing which is im- 
 derstood is grasped by the mind, and held in the memory; especially 
 those who have commenced their career since Warren Colburn made 
 so plain, so self-evident, " the recondite powers and mysterious rela- 
 tions of numbers," — showed how much of Arithmetic may be learnt 
 from one's own fingers, — how many problems may be solved without 
 having " learnt the rules," — solved by the intuitive deductions of any 
 mind that understands the premises ; those who did not live until 
 after Horace Mann, Henry Barnard, William Eussell, William A. 
 Alcott, Alonzo Potter, S. S. Eandall, Samuel Lewis, Warren Burton, 
 and their zealous fellow-laborers, had awakened the community 
 throughout New England, New York, Ohio, to the consideration of 
 
 * Throughout his college course, he made himself master of every lesson but one, at the 
 time : and that one he learnt afterward. 
 
CfKOS PEIRCE. 7 
 
 the inestimable importance of common schools ; of the indispensable 
 necessity of convenient, light, airy, warm, well-ventilated school-rooms, 
 comfortable seats and desks, suitable text-books and blackboards, 
 maps, globes, apparatus ; and, more than all, well-prepared, skillful 
 and amiable teachers ; in short, those whose " school days " began 
 within the last twenty-five yeai-s, can have little idea of the character 
 of our common, especially our country district schools, at the time 
 Cyrus Peirce commenced his labors. 
 
 Thanks to the gentleman last named in the above list of distin- 
 guished friends of education and school reformers, thanks to Mr. 
 Warren Burton, there has been preserved a most truthful and graphic 
 picture of " The District School as it was." In the volume bearing 
 this title, written by Mr. Burton twenty-five years ago, he has given 
 accurate, lively sketches of methods, scenes, and characters, that were 
 common in the schools, as they were when he was a child, and not 
 wholly extinct when he took his pen to delineate them. His book 
 has been republished several times in this country, and once in Eng- 
 land. It should never be out of print, nor be wanting in any of our 
 public or private libraries, but kept at hand, that the children of this 
 and coming generations may be informed, how many more, and how 
 much greater, are the advantages provided for them, than were 
 enjoyed by their parents and grand-parents, when young ; so that they 
 may be prompted to inquire who have been their benefactors, that 
 they may do them honor. Then, I am sure, few will be found to de- 
 serve a higher place in their esteem, than the subject of this memoir. 
 
 Immediately on leaving college, in 1810, Mr. Peirce accepted an 
 invitation, from an association of gentlemen at Nantucket, to take 
 charge of a private school. He taught there two years very success- 
 fully, and gained the entire confidence and sincere respect of all who 
 witnessed his impartial regard for those committed to his care, and 
 his scrupulous fidelity to every duty he undertook to discharge. But 
 at that time his heart was set on another profession. So, in 1812, he 
 returned to Cambridge, to complete his preparation for the Christian 
 ministry. For three years he prosecuted his theological studies, with 
 an assiduity not surpassed, it is believed, by any one, who ever dwelt 
 within the walls of Harvard. He seldom allowed himself more than 
 four hours out of the twenty-four for sleep; and he preserved his 
 health by strict attention to his diet and exercise. He never ate and 
 drank merely to gratify his appetite, but to keep his body in the best 
 condition to subserve the action of his mind. Every subject that came 
 up for consideration, in the course prescribed, he studied until he was 
 satisfied that he had arrived at the truth. Many of the dogmas 
 
g CYRUS PEIRCE. 
 
 taught in the churches before that day, he was led to distrust ; but 
 he rejected nothing hastily. If he, like most other young men, could 
 give no sufficient reason for the faith of his childhood, he dismissed 
 nothing from his mind, which he had been taught to believe, until he 
 could give a satisfactory reason for dismissing it. He was most 
 scrupulously conscientious. He was severe in his demands upon him- 
 self; and, wherever truth and right were concerned, not indulgent to 
 others. Yet am I assured by those who knew him best, that he was 
 cheerful, amiable, tender in his sensibilities, and very companionable. 
 
 After three years thus spent in theological studies at Cambridge, 
 Mr. Peirce was persuaded to return to Nantucket, and resume the 
 work of a teaoher. His former patrons had not found another, who 
 could adequately fill his place. During his previous labors in their 
 service, he had given them intimations of ability and skill in the 
 work of teaching, which they were anxious to secure for the benefit 
 of their children, even at a much greater cost. 
 
 Under this second engagement, Mr. Peirce continued at Nantucket 
 three years, laboring as the teacher of a private school, with great 
 success, and to tha entire satisfaction of most of his pupils, and all 
 of their parents. In 1818 he left, and commenced preaching. 
 
 Up to this period Mr. Peirce was not only strict in his government, 
 but severe in his disciphne. In the outset of his career, he very natur- 
 ally resorted to those instrumentalities that had hitherto been most 
 confidently relied on. Until after the first quarter of the present cen- 
 tury, corporal punishments of children, by parents and schoolmastere, 
 were matters of frequent occurrence. I could fill more than all the 
 pages that will be occupied by this memoir, with narratives stored in 
 my memory, or preserved in files of old newspapere, or in the Crim- 
 inal Court Records, of cases of cruel chastisement of children, — girls 
 as well as boys, — by ferules, rattans, cowhides, stocks, pillories, im- 
 prisonment, privation of food, and so forth. Little do they realize, 
 who have been born within the last twenty-five years, how much they 
 may have escaped of suffering, as well as of weariness at school ; and 
 how much they have gained from the greatly improved methods of 
 teaching and governing, that have been devised since the commence- 
 ment of that period. And it ought to be told them, that to no indi- 
 vidual are they, and the coming generations, more indebted for these 
 improvements than to Mr. Peirce. "When he commenced the work of 
 a schoolmaster, the idea of managing a school without corporal pun- 
 ishment had hardly dawned upon the mind of any one. On 
 Nantucket especially, the people were familiar, in the whaling service, 
 with severe bodily chastisements ; and the proposal to manage " a 
 
CYRUS PEIRCE. g 
 
 parcel of boys,'' without any thing of the sort, would have been 
 deemed preposterous. It was reasonable and proper that the young 
 pedagogue should begin with the regime then most approved. And 
 it was natural for Cyrus Peirce to try faithfully what he tried at all. 
 I can therefore believe that, in good faith, he did, when an inexpe- 
 rienced young man, inflict some chastisements that, at any time since 
 1830, ho would utterly have condemned. It is not easy for those, who 
 have only seen and enjoyed the excellent schools on Nantucket within 
 the last twenty-five years, to conceive of them as they were in 1810, 
 when Mr. Peirce first went there. His work was really that of a 
 pioneer. If he did any good there, it was done by first establishing 
 order, a regular and punctual attendance, prompt and exact obedience 
 to rules; and faithful, hard study as indispensable in a school. If he 
 effected this by means of severe appliances, uncalled for at the present 
 day, when better views prevail, they were then so much matters of 
 course, that most of his early pupils, from whom I have received 
 letters, have not alluded to his severity as censurable. Indeed, only 
 one has even mentioned it. They all bear witness to his exceeding 
 strictness, — but only one tells me of any inflictions of severe bodily 
 chastisements. 
 
 Mr. Peirce was careful to prescribe a reasonable task to his pupils, 
 one that would try their powers, as he thought they ought to be tried 
 in order to be improved ; and then he was unyielding in his demand 
 for the exact performance of it. Not partly right, but " wholly, pre- 
 cisely right," was what he always required. ^ " Study enough will 
 make a pupil master of any thing he is capable of learning," was one 
 of his maxims. " Boys who can study, but will not study, must be 
 made to study," was another. Order, " Heaven's first law," he deemed 
 indispensable in a school; and he enforced it : he would have it. He 
 excused no intentional deviation from it ; even accidental violations 
 were not readily deemed excusable. Carelessness was to be blamed, 
 punished. His pupils were sent to him to be improved ; to acquire 
 valuable knowledge, and to form good habits, mental, moral, physical. 
 He was determined their parents and the community should not be 
 disappointed through any remissness of his ; and that his pupils should 
 not be allowed, for the sake of any present self-indulgence in idleness 
 or fun, or through carelessness, to cheat themselves of that informa- 
 tion, or of those excellencies of character, which they ought, in child- 
 hood and youth, to secure for the benefit of their whole lives, here and 
 hereafter. He adopted, at first, the so-called "good, old method" 
 of governing a school, and making boys obey and learn ; the method, 
 which, it was taken for granted in that day, Solomon meant to 
 
r[0 CTTRUS PEIRCE. 
 
 commend, ■when he said, " He that spar^th his rod hateth his son." 
 
 And in this, as in every thing else, " whatsoever his hands found to do, 
 
 he did with his might." But corporal punishments were not then 
 
 the characteristic of his school. 
 
 One of the contemporaries of the gentleman, who alone has made 
 
 any mention of his severity, gives me the following account of the 
 
 commencement of her acquaintance with Mr. Peirce : 
 
 It was in 1815, that myself and another girl, each under sixteen years of age, 
 were wending our way to the academy, where Mr. Peirce presided, to become 
 his pupils. We had conceived a strong prej udice against the man, expeeting to 
 find him an austere, hard master, rigid and exacting ; who would not be satisfied 
 with our best efforts, and would be unmerciful to our failings. Under this strange, 
 very wrong impression, we strengthened each other, as we went ; and met him 
 well braced, — resolutely determined, if he did not suit us much better than we 
 expected, that we would leave his school, and that too, speedily. 
 
 In the course of that memorable forenoon, he questioned his new 
 pupil upon the branches of learning in which she presumed herself 
 to be quite a proficient ; and, without intimating that he meant to do 
 so, made her fully sensible of her ignorance. Coming, last, to the 
 subject of grammar, and finding her deficient in that also, he gave her 
 to parse the following sentence, — " What I know not, teach thou me." 
 She took the hint. She appreciated the delicacy, and began to love 
 the man, whom a few hours before she expected to hate ; and to rev- 
 erence one, " whose small head could carry all he knew." My corres- 
 pondent adds : 
 
 I shall always look back to the time passed in Mr. Peirce's school, as one of the 
 best and happiest periods of my life. He inspired me with new views, new mo- 
 tives, a new thirst for knowledge ; in short, he opened an almost new terrestrial 
 world to me ; and, over and above all, he was the one who awoke in my mind a 
 deep interest in religion. Exact, cheerful obedience to all the laws of God, he 
 made appear tome a most reasonable service. My understanding was convinced, 
 my feelings were enlisted, and, by j udicious management and careful nurture, he 
 led me onward and upward, until I sincerely think, I obtained, through his minis- 
 tration, " that hope which is an anchor to the soul, based upon the rock of ages." 
 I shall, therefore, always love and respect Cyrus Peirce, as my spiritual guide and 
 father. 
 
 Very similar to the above are the testimonies that have been given 
 me, in letters or orally, by hundreds of the pupils of Mr. Peirce, from 
 the beginning to the end of his career. He kindly, yet effectually 
 made them sensible of their ignorance, and of their moral deficiencies. 
 He satisfied them of his ability to teach them more than they knew, 
 and to lead them in the way to eternal life. He prescribed to them 
 tasks that they were able to perform ; he gave them rules of moral 
 conduct, to which it was right that they should conform themselves ; 
 and he never remitted any of his demands. He held them steadfast- 
 ly to the exactly true and right. Precision was the characteristic 
 of all his dealings, and all his roquirements. His methods of inducing 
 
CVRUS PEIRCE. 11 
 
 his pupils to study, to get their lessons and recite them well, changed 
 as he grew wiser by experience, and learnt more o"f the nature of the 
 human mind and heart. But the object he aimed at, and the spirit 
 that animated him, were the same, from the beginning. 
 
 About a year after his return to Nantucket, Mr. Peirce married 
 Miss Harriet Coffin, of that place. She had been for several months 
 one of his most distinguished pupils ; and everywhere, ever since, she 
 has been, his most inteUigent, devoted, effective helpmeet. He could 
 hardly have accomplished all he has, in the cause of education, if he 
 had not been blessed with such a wife. 
 
 In 1818, as has been already stated, Mr. Peirce left Nantucket and 
 commenced preaching. In the course of the following year, he was 
 ordained and settled as the minister of a church, in the town of 
 North Reading, Massachusetts. 
 
 Eight yeai's he lived there, faithfully discharging all his parochial 
 and social duties. He was universally acknowledged to be a man 
 of singular integrity and purity of life. His preaching was sensible, 
 earnest and direct. As in the school-room, so in the pulpit, his main 
 object was the discovery and the inculcation of the truth. He would 
 tolerate no violation of it in word or deed. He dwelt less upon the 
 dogmas of his sect than upon the precepts of Christ and his Apostles ; 
 always holding up the life and death — the character of Jesus — as the 
 illustration of that godliBess to which all men ought to aspire. 
 
 Mr. Peirce saw, and did not fail to show, how far the men of his 
 generation, even the most zealously professing Christians, fell short of 
 the stature of Christ. He deeply felt the need of reform, and that it 
 should begin in the so-called house of God. He was among the 
 first to embrace the opinions of the apostolic Worcester, respecting 
 the custom of war ; and he assiduously inculcated the pacific spirit of 
 the Gospel, which has been quenched by the ambition of Christian 
 nations. 
 
 So, also, the cause of Temperance, the principle of total abstinence 
 from intoxicating drinks, is indebted to him, as one among its earliest, 
 most consistent advocates. He was in advance of his generation, and 
 therefore shared somewhat in the unpopularity, the obloquy, the hard- 
 ships of the pioneers in the moral world. Not being an easy, attract- 
 ive public speaker, those who were annoyed by his uncompromising 
 demands of personal conformity to the example of Christ, could the 
 more easily divert from him the attention of many, whom he longed 
 to benefit. He came to feel, as very many faithful preachers have 
 been made to feel, that he was spending his time and strength to too 
 little purpose. He suspected that he was not called to preach, so 
 
22 CYRUS pEmcE. 
 
 much as to teach. Yet more was he persuaded that it would be 
 easier to prevent the children from becoming vicious, than he had 
 found it to reform those who had contracted bad habits of action or 
 thought. These considerations, operating together with some theo- 
 logical disagreements between himself and a portion of the people, 
 magnified, if not aggravated, by the heated controversies which were 
 so rife in that day, brought him to the determination to relinquish 
 his ministerial profession. At the expiration of eight years, there- 
 fore^ he resigned his charge in North Reading, and returned to 
 " school keeping," as that which should thenceforward be the business 
 of his life. 
 
 He was earnestly solicited to return again to Nantuciet, and resume 
 his labors there. But he was induced rather to unite with a relative, 
 Mr. Simeon Putnam, in the conduct of a school at North Andover. 
 His views of the true methods of teaching, and still more of govern- 
 ing pupils, had undergone some essential changes during the eight 
 years of his retirement, owing to the observations he was continually 
 making, all that while, as a diligent supervisor of the schools in 
 Reading. But his colleague adhered to the old methods and appli- 
 ances. Their discordance on these and other points was embarrassing 
 to them both. Therefore, after four years of arduous toil at North 
 Andover, he listened to the repeated and earnest solicitations of those 
 who had appreciated his former labors on Nantucket, and, in 1831, 
 removed once more to that island. I can not express the very high 
 esteem generally entertained for Mr. Peirce, throughout that commu- 
 nity, better than in the words, which I am permitted to quote from a 
 gentleman of great respectability, and long official standing. " There 
 has been no period," said he to Mr. Peirce, in 1830, " since you left 
 the island in 1812, when you could not have had a school here, of 
 any number of pupils that you would have undertaken to teach, and 
 at any price you would have thought it fair to charge." 
 
 This was not the exaggeration of a friend. His return was most 
 cordially welcomed. He immediately found himself at the head of a 
 large and lucrative school, in the instruction and management of 
 which, for more than six years, he was every way eminently successful. 
 During the whole of that period, he scarcely ever found it necessary 
 to apply corporal punishment of any kind. He had come to regard 
 it as the " last resort," and a very sad one, arguing some deficiency 
 of the requisite qualifications in the teacher, as well as uncommon 
 perversity in the pupil. He relied upon other means, higher persua- 
 sions, moral influences. How sincerely he was respected and loved by 
 his pupils of that period, the best of them, if not all, may be inferred 
 
CYRUS PEIRCE. _ I3 
 
 from the following extract from a letter I have received from a gentle- 
 man, now at the head of a most beneficent educational institution 
 in Massachusetts : 
 
 It is twenty-three or four years since I was one of Mr. Peiroe's pupils, on 
 Nantucket. His name has ever been, and ever will be, fragrant in my recollec- 
 tion. His was the first school that I really loved to attend ; and he was the first 
 teacher for whom I felt a positive affection. * « * Mr. Peiroe was eminent- 
 ly successful in discovering whether a pupil comprehended what he was endeavor- 
 ing to learn, or the language of the lesson he was reciting. Under his method 
 of teaching, I first began to understand what I was about at school. He would 
 not allow us to conceal our ignorance, or seem to know what we did not. He 
 would probe us through and through, and expose our superficialness. •Be- 
 cause I began to understand my text-books, I began to feel the exhilarating love 
 of learning for its own sake. I had been to school all my days - before ; but it 
 had been, until then, a mechanical work to me. I can distinctly recollect this 
 blessed change in my mental condition. It was a new birth. A dispensation of 
 intellectual and moral life and light came upon me. Mr. Peirce seemed to me to 
 see through a boy, — to read his thoughts, — to divine his motives. No one could 
 deceive him ; and it always seemed exceedingly foolish, as well as mean, to 
 attempt to deceive him, because he was so evidently the best friend of us all. I 
 can see him now, — moving rapidly but without noise about the school-room, always 
 alive to the highest good of every one ; quickening our pulses, every time he ap- 
 proached us, by some word of encouragement ; inspiring us with the determination 
 necessary to attain the object at which he pointed. 
 
 Mr. Peirce was very skillful in discovering the mental aptitudes of a pupil, and 
 drawing him out in the direction in which he was most likely to attain excellence ; 
 thus exhibiting a boy's powers to himself, making him conscious of the ability to be 
 somebody, and do something. I can not give you particular examples, nor narrate 
 to you any single events in the history of that part of my life, which was blessed by 
 his direct influence. The hours I passed in his school-room at Nantucket are the 
 sunniest in the memory of my school days. But the elements entering into the 
 enjoyment and profit of those days, blend together in my memory, and, lose their 
 distinctness, as the colors of the rainbow shade into each other. 
 
 This most excellent private school Mr. Peirce continued to teach 
 for six years ; assisted at first by his admirable wife, and afterward by 
 others, whom he had likewise educated and trained for the work of 
 teaching. It is said of General Washington, that " he evinced his 
 wisdom and skill not more in what he did himself, thap in his selection 
 of those, to whom he committed the execution of any important duty." 
 A similar praise is due to Mr. Peirce. He never would employ an 
 assistant, whom he did not know to be thoroughly competent and 
 heartily disposed to teach well. " No man," he would say, " can shift 
 off any of his responsibility. A teacher is bound to make it sure, that 
 all the instruction given in his school shall be thorough, exact : ' Qui 
 facit per alium facit perse,' " and he would doall the teaching himself, 
 unless he could find others, who would do a part of his work as well as, 
 or better than, himself. He was, therefore, always blessed with able 
 assistants, when he had any.- Among those who aided him, at the 
 time of which I am now writing, was Miss Maria Mitchell, who had 
 been his pupil, and who has since attained a world-wide fame as an 
 astronomer. 
 
14 CtaUS PEIRCE. 
 
 All the while Mr. Peirce was conducting so beneficently and ac- 
 ceptably this private school,, he was exerting himself assiduously to 
 effect the better organization and appointment of the public schools of 
 Nantucket. Indeed he was alive to all the true interests of the com- 
 munity, iai which he then intended to spend the residue of his earthly 
 life. He suggested, or promptly encouraged and generously assisted, 
 various plans of social improvement. He took so active a part in 
 the temperance reform, as to incur the charge of fanaticism. Intem- 
 perance was then a very prevalent vice upon the island. Some use 
 of' intoxicating drinks was assumed there, as everywhere else, in that 
 day, to be a necessity ; and it was claimed that even a pretty free 
 use of it should be readily excused in those who were exposed to the 
 hardships and ennui of long whaling voyages. Mr. Peirce was 
 among the first to discover the utter delusion, that had got possession 
 of the people, respecting the use of ardent spirits. He satisfied him- 
 self that alcohol, in whatever form it might be disguised, contained no 
 nutritious qualities, imparted no enduring strength, but only stimu- 
 lated those who drank it to undue and therefore injurious efforts, 
 which impaired their vital energy. He therefore espoused the princi- 
 ple of total abstinence ; and not only commended it by his example, 
 but urged it with great earnestness upon all, in private conversations 
 and in public speeches. On one occasion, in a very large meeting, 
 surrounded by his fellow-townsmen, most of whom had been addicted 
 to the use of ardent spirits more or less, some of them excessively, 
 Mr. Peirce exposed, with the utmost plainness, the evils they had 
 biouight, and were then bringing u^pon themselves and their depend- 
 ents, by that indulgence ; and then declared that so deplorable were 
 the effeefe prodtieed everywhere throughout that community, and the 
 eouBtry, by spirituous liquors, that he could and would no longer give 
 his countenance to the use of them in anyi measure, on any occasion, 
 for any purpose. " No," said he, with an emphasis and solemnity 
 that made his audience tremble, " if my life could be saved by no 
 other instrumentality than that of spirituous liquor, I would forego it 
 and die, in testimony of my dread and abhorrence of this enemy of 
 the health, peace, and virtue of mankind." This was the noble, the 
 holy spirit, which animated the Apostle Paul in regard to the same 
 vice. Some scouted, mocked him as a fanatic; but others were 
 deeply impressed, lastingly effected by his words and his example. 
 
 Mr. Peirce, however, was known and made himself felt on the sub- 
 ject of education, more than on any other. He had come to be an 
 authority, on all questions pertaining to schools. In pursuance of his 
 urgent advice, in accordance with a plan devised mainly by hira, at 
 
CYRUS PEIRCE. US 
 
 length tte public schools of Nantucket were so arranged, in relation 
 to one another, that all the benefits of classification could be secured 
 in them. Primary, Intermediate, Grammar, and a High School 
 constituted the series. 
 
 So soon as the arrangement was completed, and the committee and 
 people looked about for the man fitted to fill the highest post, — to cap 
 the climax of their new system, — the eyes of all turned, with one ac- 
 cord, to Cyrus Peirce, as the only one to be found, on whom they 
 could rely to make sure the success of their great experiment. With- 
 out much hesitation, though at a considerable sacrifice, Mr. Peirce 
 relinquished his private school, which was much more lucrative and 
 less laborious, and became, in 1837, the Principal of the Nantucket 
 High School. It was to be made what it ought to be, — the "first 
 best of the series, and a model of its kind. In no respect was it a 
 failure. It was indeed an eminent success. From his high position, 
 he shed down his influence upon all the schools on the island. He 
 infused into most of the teachers much of his own spirit. And the 
 common schools of Nantucket have, ever since, been distinguished 
 among the best in our country. 
 
 A few passages from a very valuable address, delivered by him, 
 December 15th, 1831, will showwhat was Mr. Peirce's idealoi educa- 
 tion ; and what pains he thought should be taken, and what expendi- 
 tures incurred, by parents and by the State, to secure this greatest 
 blessing to all the children of men : 
 
 Education is the development of all man's powers— physical, intelleotual, and 
 moral. It is the drawing out of them all in their just harmony and proportion. 
 It regards the material frame, by which the mind manifests its operations. It is 
 the formation of character, the discipline of the intellect, and the building up of 
 moral principle, and moral power. Its aim should be to enable man to know, to 
 do, to enjoy and to be, all that his Creator intended he should know and do, enjoy 
 and be. The more nearly it approaches this point, the more nearly it will fulfill 
 its appropriate office ; and, when it shall have reached this goal, man will stand 
 forth again, as at first, the image of his Maker. • * » jf such is the objeet, 
 and such the power of education, it should be regarded as the proper business, — 
 the greatest end of life, — rather than as a means to something, higher and better. 
 It should fill a large place in the eye of the patriot, the code of the legislator, and 
 the heart of the parent, from neither of whom has it yet received one half of its 
 due consideration. * * * With all parents there rests an incalculable re- 
 sponsibility in this respect. It is time they knew, and felt it too, that they are, 
 without their own choice, their children's educators ; their own house is a school 
 room. * » * Provision for public instruction — the instruction of all the 
 children in the community — is the unquestionable interest and duty of every wise 
 government ; for the primary object of all wise governments should be to increase 
 the happiness of the people. And the highest quality of human happiness is that 
 derived from exalting the intellect and purifying the'heart ; to the end that men 
 may aim at objects worthy of their ambition, and their social intercourse be regu- 
 lated with all the satisfaction -of mutual love, honor and trust. * » * The 
 moral powers of man are his glory. They ally him to natures angelic. How, 
 then, can that education be regarded as complete, which passes over the moral 
 sentiments ? These, like the physical and intellectual faculties, can be perfected 
 and made to answer their full purpose, only by training and exercise. What an 
 
Ig OYRDS PEIRCE. 
 
 anomaly is that school in which moral cultivation finds no place ! We have de- 
 fended schools, on the gi'ound of public and private utility — as the palladium of 
 social virtue and civil liberty. Now the prosperity of a community is far more 
 dependent on sound moral sentiment, than on a high state of intellectual refine- 
 ment. Nothing is more true than that men may be great and learned, without 
 being good and useful. Men of high intellectual endowments, but destitute of 
 moral principle, are far from being the best materials to compose society. "We 
 want great men, we want learned men, but much more do we want good men. 
 On these must the community rely to carry forward the great work of human im- 
 provement. * « * How often has individual genius, that seemed angel-hke 
 in the loftiness of its aspirations, bowed before mean temptations, which timely 
 discipline would have enabled it to withstand ! Our own nation, though young, 
 has more than once been seen to tremble on the verge of ruin ; but, it is worthy 
 of remark, that such a crisis in no instance has been the result of ignorance, but 
 of the destitution of moral principle. If our union and liberties are ever ship- 
 wrecked, this is the rock on which they will split. We shall always have enough 
 great men ; the only danger is, that there will not be enough good men, — men of 
 disciplined passions, nice moral discrimination and active benevolence. * * * 
 A cultivated intellect, cast upon society, uncontrolled and unsanctified by moral sen- 
 timents, is but the scattering of an'ows, fire-brands and death. Therefore the edu- 
 cation of the moral sentiments should be a primary object with all, who have 
 any thing to do with instruction. If children are taught but one thing, whether at 
 home or at school, let it be — ^their duty. Let it be love of truth, sobriety, tem- 
 perance, order, justice, and humanity. If you make them anything, make them 
 good. * * * It is a fact, which does not speak to our praise, that almost eveiy 
 class-book adopted into our schools is prepared to teach how to read, or get, or 
 calculate ; to teach mere sciences, as though these were the great objects of life. 
 Let something more be put into the hands of children, to teach them how to 
 feel, to act, to live. * * * Health stands among the first of blessings. 
 Children would do well to learn something of the structure, laws and economy of 
 their own material frame ; what food, habits, attitudes, exercises and modes of 
 living, are consistent with, opposed to, or promotive of health. What an incalcu- 
 lable benefit might thus be rendered to children, by making them early the intelli- 
 gent guardians of a trust, to them of inestimable value ! Would it not be doing 
 them quite as great a service to demonstrate the natural consequences of inaction, 
 over-action, tight lacing, exposure, excess, or licentiousness, — to teach them what 
 are healthy attitudes and healthy diets, — how they may avoid a headache, a fever, 
 or a consumption, as to teach them the solution of a difficult problem in algebra, 
 or keep them eternally casting per oentage ? As connected with the subject of 
 health, as well as for the reason of aftbrding to children the means of suitable 
 amusement and exercise, every school should be furnished with some simple ap- 
 paratus for gymnastic purposes. Such provision might indeed be made auxiliary 
 to good manners and morals, as *ell as to sound health. • * * Why should 
 not the rising generation be regarded as a public trust, and their education be sus- 
 tained at the public charge ? Nothing exerts so great an influence on the charac- 
 ter of the present and the coming age ; nothing on public and private virtue and 
 happiness ; nothing on the prosperity and perpetuity of our institutions. Noth- 
 ing can better subserve the interests of liberty and the eqnalizatioli of rights ; 
 nothing will better enable the poor and the middhng interest to make an effectual 
 stand against the encroachments of power, of wealth and of title ; or the friends 
 of order and law to frustrate the designs of the Intriguing demagogue, or restrain 
 the outbreakings of popular phrenzy, than sound education. Here, here, fellow- 
 citizens, is the palladium of your liberties, — of all that is valuable in the social 
 fabric. It is not only connected therewith, but constitutes its very life. Why 
 then should not the public assume the education of the child ? » * • Then 
 every class of oitizensj and every individual, would feel a direct and immediate in- 
 terest and concern in the public schools ; and these would rise to an elevation of 
 character, which has yet hardly been reached by our best private establishments. 
 Our children would be educated together, without distinction of rank ; and this, 
 if it has no other recommendation, would certainly better comport with our repub- 
 lican habits and institutions. * * * If the children of the affluent go to one 
 school, and the children of mechanics and the poor to another, will not- the ten- 
 dency be to keep up a distinction of ranks in society? * * * To have good 
 
CYRUS PEIRCE. lY 
 
 schools, we must have good teachers, — ^teachers of the right temper and disposi- 
 tion, and of the proper scholastic attainments. * * * Where shall we get 
 them ? How and where shall they be qualified ? * * * Would it be any 
 thing more than a consistent carrying out and completion of the school system 
 already begun, — ^yea, would it exceed the limits of a judicious economy, to appro- 
 priate funds for establishing seminaries, in which teachers, themselves, may be 
 taught how to teach. * * * This, it seems to us, more than any thing, our 
 schools need ; and this the community should demand. 
 
 Quickened by the spirit and guided by the principles of this ex- 
 cellent address, the people of Nantucket were led to make many 
 improvements in their system of free schools. They enlarged the 
 number of them, and graduated them in relation to each other, from 
 the Primary to the High School; introduced improved desks and 
 seats, eflfective ventilators, better text-books, and took greater pains 
 to secure the services of well-qualified teachers. The private schools 
 were, to a considerable extent, relinquished ; and the children of all 
 classes came together, as they were able, to enjoy alike the common 
 bounty, — of all classes except that which had always been subjected to 
 the greatest disadvantages, and therefore needed assistance and enoour- 
 agementthe most. The colored inhabitants of the town were not allowed 
 to send their children into the public Grammar Schools ; but a pro- 
 vision was made to educate them by themselves. Against this decision, 
 Mr. Peiroe remonstrated and contended, with his wonted earnestness 
 and determination. But the " prejudice against color" was too 
 mighty for his appeals to prevail. He left his protest against this wrong. 
 It will be preserved ; and, in some future day, it will be read with 
 greater admiration than it would awaken now. 
 
 The address, from which we have just made liberal extracts, could 
 not escape the vigilant notice of those wise and earnest philanthro- 
 pists, who, at that time, were most intent upon the improvement of 
 our system of public instniction. In 1837, the Hon. Horace Mann, 
 (whose acceptance of the secretaryship of the then newly-created 
 Board of Education in Massachusetts, was an era in the progress of 
 Christian civilization,) visited Nantucket in the course of his thorough 
 investigations into the condition of the common schools of the state. 
 He found on that island the man who could construct, manage, 
 and teach a school, better even than he could tell how it ought to be 
 done. Mr. Peirce's school appeared to Mr. Mann an approach to his 
 own high ideal of what a seminary for the education of the young 
 should be. He clothed his appreciation of its excellencies in a nau- 
 tical fiigure, pertinent to the place and the community in which he 
 found it. " That school," said he — we quote from the memory of 
 another — " that school is as much superior to schools in general as a 
 strongly-built, well-equipped, ably-managed steamboat, propelled by 
 a powerful engine, within itself competent to ' keep its head,' let the 
 
jg CYRUS PEIRCE. 
 
 ■winds blow and the waves roll as they may, is superior to a ship, that 
 must shift its sails to suit every breeze, and furl them when it storms, 
 and that is withal unseaworthy, leaking at many a seam, poorly 
 manned, and commanded by a captain who does not understand 
 navigation." 
 
 Mr. Peirce kept the Nantucket High School nearly two years. It 
 comprised between fifty and sixty pupils of both sexes, and of the 
 usual variety of ages and characters. He succeeded, however, in es- 
 tablishing and preserving uncommonly good order ; in securing 
 remarkable tegularity and punctuality in the attendance of his pupils ; 
 and induced them to be diligent and faithful in their studies, and to 
 make improvement in all respects greater than ever before. And yet 
 he struck not one blow, nor inflicted any other corporal punishment. 
 
 The friends of the new system were more than satisfied. The 
 opposers were silenced. It was made apparent to all, that public 
 schools of every grade, having boys and girls together, if well classed, 
 as they may be where there is a proper series, furnished with suitable 
 rooms, text-books and apparatus, and committed to the management 
 of competent teachers, may be conducted with exemplary order, and 
 be led to make greater progress than common, in all the learning 
 taught in our schools, without any inflictions of bodily suffering, or 
 the stimulus of any other emulation than that which will be natur- 
 ally awakened, wherever numbers are brought together to pursue the 
 same high object. Excellence, in whatever they undertook to learn 
 or to do, excellence was always kept before Mr. Peirce's pupils, as 
 the mark to which they should aspire, — excellence, rather than to ex- 
 cel a competitor. Thoroughness, exactness, fidelity in all things, 
 intelligence in every exercise, and an exalted tone of moral sentiments, 
 were the admirable characteristics acknowledged to be conspicuous in 
 Mr. Peirce's school. 
 
 These were precisely the excellencies which ought to be conspicuous 
 in every school ; but they must be extant in the teacher, or they can 
 not be infused into pupils. Therefore, to unfold these excellencies, if 
 possible, in all who would be teachers of the young, had come to be 
 regarded by the enlightened friends of education as the greatest 
 desideratum ; and, to keep the schools out of the hands of those who 
 were devoid of these excellencies was felt to be a necessary precaution. 
 Mr. Mann and his co-laborers had been brought to the conclusion, that 
 seminaries, especially for the training of teachers, must be established. 
 And they were confident that Mr. Peirce was the man who could 
 show what a normal school should be. 
 
 When, therefore, the munificence of the late Hon. Edmund Dwight 
 
CYRUS PEIRCE. jg 
 
 induced the legislature of Massachusetts to make the needful appro- 
 priation, and so soon as a local habitation had been provided, the 
 Board of Education unanimously elected Mr. Peiree to commence the 
 enterprise. 
 
 It was with no little difficulty that the people of Nantucket could 
 be persuaded to relinquish him ; nor was it easy for him to persuade 
 himself to leave his happy home in their midst, where he was so 
 much respected and loved ; and where he was so well established at 
 the head of a system of schools, which he had mainly devised, and 
 which was working so satisfactorily under him. But no one was more 
 fully aware of the defects of common schools than he. No one ap- 
 preciated more profoundly the necessity of the especial preparation 
 of teachers for their work. He was not the man who would refuse, 
 from any personal considerations, what it was made to appear his 
 duty to undertake for the benefit of the rising generations. He had 
 admired, from the beginning, Horace Mann's generous consecration 
 of himself to the improvement of the common schools. He discerned 
 the wisdom of his plans, and the unsparing pains he took to carry 
 them into operation. And, when that enlightened, devoted friend of 
 humanity besought his help, with the earnest assurance that he knew 
 no other man to whom he could so confidently intrust the com- 
 mencement of that part of his improved system of schools, on which 
 the success of the whole depended, Mr. Peiree could not withhold 
 himself. He accepted the appointment, saying, " I had rather die 
 than fail in the undertaking." 
 
 On the 3d of July, 1839, he entered upon his labors at Lexington, 
 as principal of the first Normal School on this continent. 
 
 What a Normal School was to be, most persons could not divine. 
 Conjectures were various ; some of them ludicrous. Then, a few 
 teachers seemed to feel that the rearing of such an institution was a 
 derogatory imputation upon their whole fraternity. Some academies 
 looked with an evil eye upon a seminary, founded in part by the 
 Commonwealth, to do what they had hitherto assumed to be their 
 especial work. Moreover, the admirable qualifications of Mr. Peiree 
 to be a teacher of teachers were not much known off the Island of 
 Nantucket, excepting to the Board of Education, (itself a novelty,) 
 and a few zealots in the cause of reform. Not a note of congratula- 
 tion welcomed him to his post. The aspect all around was cold and 
 forbidding, except the countenance of Mr. Mann, and the few enlight- 
 ened friends of education who regarded his coming as the dawning 
 of a new day. 
 
 At the opening of the school, only three offered themselves to 
 No. 11. [Tol. IT., No. 2.]— 19. 
 
20 CYRUS PEIRCE. 
 
 become his pupils. The contrast between the full, flourishing establish- 
 ment he had just left at Nantucket, and the "beggarly account of 
 empty boxes," which were daily before him for the first three months, 
 was very disheartening. He could not repress the apprehension that 
 the Board of Education had made a fatal mistake, in intrusting the 
 commencement of the enterprise to one so little known as himself 
 throughout the Commonwealth ; and he feared that Normal Schools 
 would die at their birth, for want of something to live on. However, 
 he had put his hand to the plough, and of course the furrow must be 
 driven through, aye, and the whole field turned over, before he would 
 relinquish his eflfort. He set about his work, as one determined to " do 
 with his might what his hand found to do." He soon made his three 
 pupils conscious that there was more to be known about even the 
 primary branches of education than they had dreampt of; and better 
 methods of teaching reading, spelling, grammar, arithmetic and 
 geography, than were practised in the schools. Their reports of the 
 searching thoroughness and other excellent peculiarities of the Normal 
 Teacher attracted others to him. The number of his pupils steadily 
 increased from term to term, until, at the expiration of his first three 
 years of service, there were forty-two. In the course of those years, 
 more than fifty went out from under his training, to teach, with certifi- 
 cates of his approbation; and the obvious improvement in their 
 methods of governing children, and giving them instruction, demon- 
 strated the utility of Normal Schools. His immediate successor, in 
 1842, in order to satisfy himself and the public on this point, sent a 
 circular letter to every district in the Commonwealth, where a pupil 
 of Mr. Peirce's was known to have been employed as an instructor, 
 making the inquiries adapted to elicit the desired information. In 
 every case, but one or two, testimonials were returned, setting forth the 
 marked superiority of teachers from the Normal School. It became 
 then a fixed fact, that such a seminary was needful, — that it would 
 efiect the improvement in common schools, which was of first im- 
 portance — namely, the better qualification of teachers. Normal 
 Schools have been multiplied ; their usefulness is no longer questioned ; 
 ample provisions are made for their support ; they have come to be 
 regarded as an essential part of the improved system of public 
 instruction in New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and several other 
 states, besides Massachusetts. Is it, then, small praise, to have It said 
 of any one, that we are indebted for the establishment of Normal 
 Schools to him, more than to any other individual ? If to Horace 
 Mann belongs the honor of having made the need of such institutions 
 so apparent, that private and public bounty was directed toward them. 
 
CYtLVS PEIRCE. 21 
 
 it IS due to Mr. Peiroe to record that it was his inflexible perseverance, 
 which overcame the obstacles that well-nigh precluded their com- 
 mencement, and his admirable fidelity and skill which settled the 
 question of their usefulness. One of the earliest and most devoted 
 promoters of the educational improvements wliioh have been intro- 
 duced within the last twenty years, the gentleman who framed and 
 set in operation the excellent school system of Rhode Island, and 
 has done more than any body else to regenerate the school system 
 of Connecticut, (the editor of this Journal is the only person who 
 would be displeased should we name him,) the gentleman whose 
 knowledge of the history of this revival of education is more exten- 
 sive and thorough, and whose judgment of its causes and effects is 
 more to be relied on, than that of any other man, — hardly excepting 
 even Horace Mann, — that gentleman has more than once been heard 
 to say, — "Had it not been for Mr. Cyrus Peirce, I consider that the 
 cause of Normal Schools would have failed, or have been postponed 
 for an indefinite period." 
 
 Let it, then, be added here, the selection of Mr. Peirce to commence 
 this signal improvement, was not a matter of mere accident, or good 
 fortune. It was the result of Mr. Mann's thorough appreciation of 
 the nature of the undertaking, and profound insight into the quahfica- 
 tions of the one who should be trusted to commence it. He might 
 have selected one of many gifted teachers, more widely known, and 
 of more popular, attractive mien, — one who would, at the outset, have 
 gathered about him a host of pupils. He might have found a. few 
 who could have taught some things, perhaps, better than Mr. Peirce. 
 But there was no other man, within the sphere of his careful search, 
 who combined so many of the qualities demanded, so many of the 
 elements of certain success. If we should name another as compara- 
 ble to him, it would be the late lamented David P. Page, the first 
 principal of the New York Normal School, who excelled Mr. Peirce 
 in popular gifts, and almost equaled him in all the fundamental 
 requisites. Still, the preference was wisely given. 
 
 Mr. Peirce's profound reverence for truth is the basis of his charac- 
 ter as a man and a teacher, — truth in every thing, — the whole truth, 
 the exact truth. Never have we known another so scrupulous. His 
 reverence for truth was ever active, ever working in him, and renewing 
 itself, day by day, in some higher manifestation, or some deeper ex- 
 pression. Although he frequently, if not every day, closed his school 
 with the admonition, — " my pupils, live to the truth," — yet it never 
 seemed like a vain repetition ; it always appeared to come fresh from 
 his heart, as if it were a new inspiration of his longing for them to 
 become all that God had made them capable of being. 
 
22 CYRUS PEIRCE. 
 
 To pupils of a facile, temporizing, slipshod disposition, Mr. Peirce 
 was tedious, because of his particularity. Not partly, almost, very 
 nearly right, would ever satisfy him. Each answer that was given 
 him to every question that he put, must be wholly, exactly correct ; 
 so correct as to make it self-evident that the one who gave it fully 
 appreciated the truth expressed by the words he used ; and used such 
 woi'ds as made the truth luminous to others, who were capable of re- 
 ceiving it. This intellectual and moral conscientiousness soon capti- 
 vated those of a kindred spirit, and, in due time, impressed the most 
 heedless as an admirable, a divine characteristic. Surely it is so. It 
 can not be too conspicuous in those, to whom may be intrusted the 
 forming of the mental and moral habits of the young. For the 
 divergence of " almost right," from '' exactly right," may, in the course 
 of time, be greater than any, except the Infinite mind, can estimate. 
 
 Attention to one thing at a time, and the thorough, complete 
 understanding of every thing antecedent and preliminary, before at- 
 tempting to advance in any branch of science, were principles on 
 which Mr. Peirce insisted, until it was found to be futile to attempt 
 to get forward under his tuition, if they were slighted. All shamming 
 was detected by him ; and skimming the surface of any subject made 
 to appear silly. It was settled that nothing could be well taught to 
 another, unless the teacher thorougly comprehended what he set 
 about to communicate. Therefore, much of the time of his pupils in 
 the Normal School was devoted to the careful study of each branch 
 of learning expected to be taught in the primary and grammar 
 schools, — the primary being always accounted by him prior in im- 
 portance, as well as in time. On nothing, except only moral culture, 
 did Mr. Peirce dwell with more particularity, than on the first elements 
 of Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. He insisted that whenever a 
 child has been put in full possession of these, he will be able to attain 
 any degree of proficiency in each of the branches, and their depend- 
 dents, that he may take pains to seek. But, if these elementary 
 parts have not been thoroughly learnt by any one, imperfection will, 
 at some time, somewhere, show itself, and embarrass subsequent 
 attempts at learning, with or without an instructor. 
 
 Next to thinking and expressing one's own thoughts, the most 
 wonderful power given to man is that by which we may receive from 
 the written or the printed page, and communicate audibly, the 
 thoughts of another. Yet this power is in most cases very imperfect- 
 ly unfolded, and very shabbily exercised. The number of good 
 readers, within any one's acquaintance, may always be counted in a 
 trice. 
 
CYRUS PEIRCE. 23 
 
 " To hear some parsons, how thoy preaoh, 
 How they run o'er all parts of speech, 
 And neither rise a note, nor sink ; 
 Our learned Bishops, one would think. 
 Had taken sehool-boys from the rod 
 To make embassadors to God." 
 
 Upon nothing, excepting moral character, did Mr. Peirce bestow so 
 much pains as upon the Art of Reading. And he was singularly suc- 
 cessful in teaching it — especially the reading of our Sacred Scriptures. 
 Yet was he lacking in what would seem to be the sine qua non of a 
 fine reader, namely, a clear, sonorous voice. His deficiency in this 
 respect, however, was triumphed over by the force of his intellect, 
 and the depth of his emotional nature. It was forgotten, as one 
 listened to his luminous, forcible reading of choice passages from the 
 Bible, or other favorite books. His hearers caught the inspiration of 
 his soul ; so that, never has reading seemed to us so high an intel- 
 lectual efibrt and treat, as when we have been listening to some of 
 his pupils. 
 
 His method of teaching reading, from the beginning, is set forth in 
 his lecture before the American Institute of Instruction, in 1844, 
 which may be found in the volume published by the Institute that 
 year. In order to save children from acquiring a monotonous, or 
 drawling, or nasal tone, which it is so difficult afterward to coiTCot, as 
 well as to make reading, from the first, a more intelhgible, intelligent, 
 and agreeable exercise, Mr. Peirce, in that lecture, recommends, what 
 he had tried with excellent success in his Model School, heginning 
 with words rather than letters. We fear this method has not been 
 faithfully tried in our schools generally ; and we would take this occa- 
 sion to commend it again to all who are about to commence teaching 
 any children to read, at home, or in the primary schools. Try this 
 method, as it- is explained in the lecture just referred to. We com- 
 mend it, not only on the high authority of Mr. Peirce, but on our 
 own observation of its much better results. 
 
 In Arithmetic, Mr. Peirce was among the first to welcome and 
 apply Mr. W. Colburn's method of teaching the relations and powers 
 of numbers, — a method which can never be superseded, and the 
 application of which has never been surpassed, if equaled, by any sub- 
 sequent authors, excepting those who have built on his foundation. 
 Mr. Colburn's method, however, may be abused, as it has been, by 
 teachers who have not thoroughly understood it, or have been care- 
 less in applying it. Mr. Peirce taught his pupils in the Normal 
 School how to teach Arithmetic exactly in the manner indicated by 
 
24 CYRUS PEIRCE. 
 
 Mr. Colburn. In this he preceded, though he never surpassed Mr. 
 Tillinghast ; and we take this occasion to add, neither of them quite 
 equaled Miss Caroline Tilden, the favorite pupil of the one, and one 
 of the favorite assistants of the other. 
 
 But we have not here room to specify any further. In every de- 
 partment of teaching, Mr. Peirce was, and taught his pupils to be, 
 thorough, intelligent, and intelligible. He impressed it, in the first 
 place, upon all whom he was preparing for the work, that, whatsoever 
 they would communicate to others, they must first themselves thor- 
 oughly understand. The text-book, however excellent, may be of 
 little avail to his class, unless the teacher knows more than the mere 
 words of that book. And, secondly, the teacher can not help his 
 pupils to acquire any part of any science, excepting so far as he may 
 lead them clearly to comprehend it. Mr. Peirce continually detected 
 and repudiated the substitution of memory for understanding ; and 
 earnestly enjoined it upon his pupils to do likewise, when they should 
 become teachers. 
 
 As soon as practicable, after opening the Normal School at Lexing- 
 ton, Mr. Peirce instituted the Model Department, — a school composed 
 of the children of the neighborhood, just such as would be found in 
 most of our country district schools. In that he led his normal 
 pupils, seriatim, by turns, to apply and test for themselves, the 
 correctness, the excellence of the principles of teaching, which he 
 was laboring to instil into them. This was the most peculiar part of 
 the institution. In the management of it, he evinced great adroitness 
 as well as indomitable perseverance, and untiring patience. In that 
 Model Department, the future teachers, under his supervision, practised 
 the best methods of governing and instructing children, so that each 
 one, when she left the Normal School, carried with her some experience 
 in the conduct of a common school. 
 
 Thus Mr. Peirce wrought three yeai-s at Lexington, performing an 
 amount of labor, which, should we give it in detail, it might lessen, in 
 the estimation of our readers, our credibility as a biographer. He 
 fully justified the confidence which Mr. Mann and the Board of Educa- 
 tion had reposed in him. And he gained continually the reverence and 
 the love of his successive pupils. Strict as he was, uncompromising, 
 exacting as he was, he was yet so just, so true, so faithful in his atten- 
 tions to each individual, — so kind and sympathizing to all, even the 
 least successful and most unlovely, — ^that he conciliated the hearts of 
 all, not wholly excepting even the very few who were untractable in 
 his hands. It was so obvious that he desired their highest good, so 
 obvious that he was truly paternal in his regard for their personal 
 
CYRUS PEIRCE. 25 
 
 welfare and future usefulness, that ^'■Father Peirce" soon came to be 
 the title given him with one accord. 
 
 His labors and cares were too much even for his powers of attention 
 and endurance. They were such, that he seldom allowed himself 
 more than four hours for sleep, out of each twenty-four. He slighted 
 nothing. Not the least thing was out' of order, that he was respon- 
 sible for. He gave personal attention to every exercise of each one 
 of his pupils — especial consideration to the case of every one who 
 needed. He kept a watchful eye upon the deportment of all, out of 
 school as well as in, and had a care for the comfort and especially for 
 the health of all. It was more than he could longer endure. 
 
 In 1842, therefore, at the end of three years, he was obliged to re- 
 sign his charge. " It was," we quote from the Sixth Annual Report 
 of the Board of Education, "the ardent desire of the Board to 
 secure the further services of that gentleman in a place, which he 
 has filled with such honor to himself and such usefulness to the com- 
 munity ; but, owing to the state of his health and to other circum- 
 stances, he felt obliged to tender his resignation, which the Board most 
 reluctantly accepted. Never, perhaps, have greater assiduity and 
 fidelity distinguished and rewarded, the labors of any instructor. Mr. 
 Peirce has retired from the employment of teaching ; but the models 
 of instruction which he has left, and his power of exciting an enthu- 
 siasm in the noble cause of education, will long remain as a blessing 
 to the young." 
 
 He left Lexington, regretted by all, and returned once more to his 
 loved home on the Island of Nantucket, under the painful apprehen- 
 sion that his labors as a teacher were ended, and that the rest of his 
 life must be spent as an invalid. But the entire repose of body and 
 mind which he was there permitted to enjoy, recruited him more and 
 much sooner than was expected; and, at the end of two years, he 
 was ready to engage again in the work of teaching. 
 
 His successor, at Lexington, gladly resigned the place in his favor. 
 He was at once reelected by a unanimous vote of the Board of Educa- 
 tion, and resumed the charge of the Normal School in August, 1844; — 
 not, however, in Lexington. The number of pupils had so greatly 
 increased that much larger accommodations were needed than could be 
 furnished in Lexington. A building of suitable dimensions, but erected 
 for another purpose, had just then been purchased in West Newton. 
 All arrangements necessary for the school were to be made in it. 
 The devising and superintending of these devolved upon Mr. Peirce ; 
 and he soon showed, so far as the limits within which he was required 
 to work would permit, that he knew how a school-room ought to be 
 
26 CYRUS PEIRCK. 
 
 constructed, arranged, furnished, warmed and ventilated, as well as 
 how those who should be gathered into it, ought to be instructed. 
 Every one who came to view the work, when completed, acknowledged 
 that he had made the best possible use of the premises and the funds, 
 that had been put at bis disposal. 
 
 In that somewhat new and much enlarged sphere, he labored yet 
 five years more, with his wonted fidelity, skill and success. He had 
 now very able assistants, those on whose faithfulness as well as ability, 
 he could implicitly rely. Yet was his attention unremitted. He was 
 mindful of every thing. His pupils were not regarded merely as 
 component parts of their several classes. Each of them was an indi- 
 vidual. Each might have peculiar difliculties to contend with, peculiar 
 obstacles to success. He, therefore, sought to know each one person- 
 ally, that he might render the aid, and suggest the discipline applica- 
 ble to each. True, as he never spared himself, so he rigidly exacted of 
 his pupils all that he knew them to be able to perform. Yet, he 
 sympathized with every one of them. He was as a father to them 
 all. The discovery of any serious faults in any of them only made 
 him more solicitous for their improvement, more tender in his manner ; 
 although never indulgent, never remitting what it was right to require. 
 
 It was during this second connexion with the Normal School that 
 Mr. Pierce laid the foundation of a disease that will probably cause 
 him much discomfort, it may be severe suffering, so long as he abides 
 in the body. 
 
 It was his unvarying determination to have every thing pertaining 
 to the school-house so carefully arranged, and in such perfect order 
 betimes, that not one minute of the houi-s appropriated to school 
 exercises should be lost. All his pupils were females. He, therefore, 
 could not call upon them for assistance in some of the " chores" that 
 needed to be done every day and night, especially in the winter season. 
 Neither could he hire the service of any man, who would "never fail 
 to do every thing that needed to be done, at the right time, and 
 in the best manner. Furthermore, he was unwilling to increase the 
 expenses of his pupils, many of whom were poor, by swelling the 
 amount of incidental charges, which devolved upon them. During 
 each of the winters at West Newton, as he used to do while at Lex- 
 ington, when the night was very cold, threatening an unusually severe 
 morning, he would go, at eleven or twelve o'clock, and replenish the 
 furnace, to insure a comfortable room at the opening of the school. 
 He would always go, at 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning, attend to the 
 fires, sweep off the snow from the steps, shovel paths around the house, 
 bring water enough from a neighboring well to supply the demands 
 
CYRUS PEIRCE. 27 
 
 of the day, and then, returning home, would devote himself to study 
 until school time, carefully preparing himself upon every lesson which 
 he was about to teach. It may seem to some of our readers that we 
 are condescending too much in making mention of such matters ; but, 
 it is in faithful attention to small matters that the depth and strength 
 of a man's principles are evinced* And the feet that it was these 
 things which brought upon him a malady that will be life-long, gives 
 them no little importance in the memoir of this excellent man. 
 
 In the summer of 1849, he was compelled again to resign the 
 charge of the Normal School, which might almost be called a thing 
 of his own creation ; to the welfare of which every power of his soul 
 and of his body had been consecrated for eight years. And now he 
 must leave it, with the sad consciousness that health and strength 
 were so seriously impaired that he was no longer able, and never 
 again would be able, to discharge, as he had been wont to do, the 
 duties of the place he had filled so long. Yes, literally filled. No 
 one but himself could recount any of Father Peirce's shortcomings. 
 His measure of performance had run over rather than come short. That 
 was a day of sore trial to his feelings, and the feelings of the many 
 who revered and loved him. Yet was it an occasion of joy, of gener- 
 ous exultation. He was to receive an honorable discharge from an 
 arduous post, the duties of which had been excellently well fulfilled. 
 
 The highest commendations of his fidelity and success were be- 
 stowed by the Board of Education and others, who had been most 
 cognizant of his labors. His pupils, in great numbers, gathered about 
 him, to testify their respect and aflfection. The Normal School-rooms, 
 which he had constructed, and had permeated with his earnest, devoted 
 spirit, every day of every term for five years, were tastefully and perti- 
 nently decorated ; and there, in the presence of as many of his normal 
 children, and tried friends, and generous patrons of the institutiou, as 
 the rooms would admit, he was addressed by the Hon. Horace Mann, 
 who had selected him for that high place, had persuaded him to ac- 
 cept it, and who could, more justly than any body else, appreciate the 
 exceeding value of his sendees. It was a valedictory honorable alike 
 to him who gave and him who received it. 
 
 A purse, containing about five hundred dollars, contributed by his 
 pupils and other friends, was then presented, to induce and enable 
 him to accept the appointment, tendered to him by the American 
 Peace Society, to go as one of their representatives to the World's 
 Peace Congress, to be held shortly in the city of Paris. 
 
 * Mr. Peirce required nothing of his pupils, tl)at he did not himself practise. During the 
 fifty years of his school-keeping, he never absented himself in a single instance for the sake 
 of any recreation. Arid he was tardy only twice. 
 
28 CYRUS PEIRCl!. 
 
 This was almost the only recreation he had allowed himself to think 
 of taking since he left college, in 1810. 
 
 He went to Europe in company with a long-tried friend, — one of the 
 same ripe age with himself, of similar tastes and character, — the Rev. Dr. 
 Joseph Allen, of Northborough, who, like himself, had well-earned a 
 respite from care and toil. Both of them were disciples of the vener- 
 able Worcester, the Apostle of Peace, and had, for many years, incul- 
 cated and practised the principles of the Gospel, which that holy man 
 labored to redeem from neglect. It was, therefore, with i^o common 
 interest that they went to a convention of persons, called from all 
 parts of the world, to meet in the metropolis of the most belligerent 
 nation of modern Europe. The meeting convened on the 22d day of 
 August, 1849. There they saw, heard and communed with many of 
 the pure. Christian men of Christendom, who, in tl^e midst of the clash 
 of armies, the shouts of victory, the lamentations of defeat, had long 
 seen and deplored the folly as well as the wickedness of war, and had 
 been earnestly inquiring for some other modes of adjusting the differ- 
 ences which must needs arise between nations, similar to those that 
 are relied upon in cases that arise between individuals. 
 
 They afterward spent some months, traveling in England and on 
 the Continent, enjoying all the gratification that the time and their 
 opportunities allowed them, and their abundant stores of historical and 
 classical knowledge qualified them to partake of. 
 
 In a letter lately received irom Dr. Allen, he says of Mr. Peirco : 
 
 I never fully appreciated his merits, until he became connected with the Nor- 
 mal School. There, as all know, he was not only principal but princeps. There 
 he exhibited the abundant fruits of his patient, faithful labors, continued, without 
 intermission, through the years of his youth and manhood ; and there he gained a 
 name that will live and be honored by future generations. * * * It was my 
 good fortune to be his fellow-traveler in a tour through some parts of England and 
 the Continent, in the summer of 1849. We went in the same packet, rode in the 
 same oars or carriages, lodged at the same inns. This close and long-continued 
 intercourse served to cement our friendship, and greatly to increase my high 
 respect for him as a scholar, and a man of integrity, honor and purity, — an 
 Israelite, indeed, in whom there is no guile. 
 
 Soon after his return from Europe, in 1850, partly because of his 
 pecuniary need, but mainly because of his love of teaching, he became 
 an assistant in the excellent school opened by Mr. Nathaniel P. Allen, 
 in the premises lately of the Normal School, which was removed to 
 Framlngham ; and there, like the Hon. John Q. Adams in Congress, 
 he has for several years been discharging, with exemplary fidelity, the 
 duties of a subordinate, in the very place where he had so long presided. 
 
 If there be one excellence which, more than another, has character- 
 ized the schools kept by Mr. Peirce, from the beginning of his long 
 career, it is the especial attention he has paid to the moral culture of 
 
CYROS PEIRCE. 29 
 
 his pupils. He early perceived that the development of the intel- 
 lectual forces of the children of men, and the bestowment upon them 
 of large stores of literary and scientific knowledge, without a corres- 
 ponding unfolding of their moral natures, fitted and often would rather 
 dispose them to vice more than to virtue. It has long been obvious 
 that " knowledge is power " for evil as well as for good. Mr. Peirce 
 was fully persuaded that those instructors were conferring a question- 
 able benefit upon society, if nothing worse, who were sending out 
 children, enabled to run well on any of the various courses which 
 might be thrown open to their political ambition, their love of money, 
 or desire for social distinction, unless they have taken all necessary 
 pains to fortify them against temptation, by awakening in their hearts a 
 profound reverence for all the laws of God, and an unfeigned, impartial 
 respect for the rights and feelings of their fellow-men. 
 
 His views on this fundamentally important matter were fully exhib- 
 ited in a carefully prepared Essay on " Crime, its cause and cure," 
 which he presented incognito to the committee of the American 
 Institute of Instruction on Prize Essays, in 1853. Each member of 
 that committee by himself examined it, and formed his decision with- 
 out conference with the other members. They all concurred in 
 awarding to his essay the premium oflfered. And yet, when the essay 
 came to be read before the Institute at New Haven, it was misunder- 
 stood, misrepresented, vehemently opposed, and finally forbidden a 
 place among the pubhcations of the Institute. Seldom has there 
 been such an instance of hot haste in a deliberative assembly of wise 
 and good men. The essay was soon after published, just as it had 
 been read to the Institute. It vindicates itself against the decision 
 of that body. And it has also the endorsement of such men as George 
 B. Emerson and Solomon Adams. The essay does not, as was 
 alledged, charge upon the schools of New England that they teach im- 
 morality, or that they are the productive cause of the increase of crime 
 among us. It only asserts and maintains what was seen to be true by 
 the most careful observers, and has since become more and more 
 apparent to all who take any notice, — 1st, that merely intellectual 
 education is no security against immorality or crime, ; 2d, that facts 
 show that crime may increase at the same time with increased atten- 
 tion to education, — the common education of the school ; — that this is 
 the case, to some extent, in our own New England ; and for the 
 reason, in part, that the common education of our schools has in it 
 too little of the moral element. "We cultivate the head more than 
 the heart. And 3d, that there is, hence, a call upon teachers, commit- 
 tees, parents, and all friends of true education, to make a larger outlay 
 
30 CYRUS PEIRCE. 
 
 for moral instruction, assigning to it in our schools the high place its 
 importance demands. No propositions respecting our schools could 
 have been announced, that were then, and are now, more easily proved 
 than these. Could Mr. Peirce's essay be read again to the Institute, at 
 this day, it would meet with a very diflferent reception. The eyes of 
 many more men, here and in Europe, have opened since 1853, to dis- 
 cern what he then saw. While we are writing these pages, a grave 
 amount of testimony, exactly to the point in question, is brought to 
 us in a contemporary journal. The Religious Magazine, as follows : 
 
 Education in New England has not been receding these dozen years. Schools 
 have been multiplied ; universities have been enlarged ; the standard of scholar- 
 ship has been raised. Yet the grosser kinds of iniquity have been spreading too. 
 A careful examination of the records of penitentiaries and criminal dockets, has 
 shown that this growth of lawlessness is just as great, in proportion, among those 
 classes that instruction reaches, as with the abject and illiterate. Joseph Fletcher, 
 one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools, in a careful work on the moral statis- 
 tics of England and Wales, shows that crime is not according to ignorance. 
 Similar returns from France indicate, in fact, that the most highly educated dis- 
 tricts are the most criminal districts. A series of able articles in the " Morning 
 Chronicle," for 1849 and 1850, go to establish the same strange and almost para- 
 doxical conclusion respecting different parts of Great Britain. The testimony 
 of many chaplains of prisons is brought to confirm it. The ingenious treatise of 
 Herbert Spencer, entitled " Social Statistics," adduces much parallel evidence. 
 There may be some element in such data to modify an inference of the full 
 breadth of the apparent facts. Yet is it a most impressive result. Ought it not to 
 satisfy us that mental cultivation and moral principle are two things, — ^meant, no 
 doubt to be harmonized and to help each other, but easily separated, and even 
 made perversely hostile ? 
 
 Horace Mann took the true ground, in his late address at Antioch 
 College, in maintaining that colleges ought to be held responsible for 
 the moral as well as the intellectual character of its graduates ; and 
 that diplomas should either contain, or be accompanied with, a dis- 
 criminating certificate of moral character. 
 
 We think the American Institute of Instruction owe it to them- 
 selves, and to their committee on prizes, not less than to Mr. Peirce, 
 to reconsider their action in 1853 respecting his essay, and to give it 
 the honorable place among their publications to which it is entitled. 
 
 In accordance with the conviction declared in that essay, and ani- 
 mated by the spirit which breathes through it, Mr. Peirce, from the 
 first, has given his chief attention to the moral conduct and principles 
 of his pupils. No violation of the truth, in act or word, no obliquity 
 of language, or feeling, or motive, would he pass lightly over. Any 
 thing of the kind revealed to him that there was unsoundness at the 
 very basis of his pupil's character ; and he had no heart, until that 
 should be remedied, to go on building upon a foundation that he 
 knew might at any time give way, and leave the superstructure a 
 moral ruin, — all the more unsightly and pitiful if decorated with the 
 
CYRUS PEIECE ^1 
 
 ornaments which learning, genius and taste may have entwined 
 around the fallen columns. 
 
 Of course, it was in the preparation and recitation of their lessons, 
 for the most part, that he was led to the discovery of his pupil's faults, 
 or weaknesses, — was brought into conflict with the evil that was 
 in them. He never punished, he never reproved a pupil for failing to 
 do what he was unable to do ; but only for negligence, for inattention, 
 for not having made the effort he was bound to make. This he 
 justly accounted an immorality. It was unfaithfulness to one's self; 
 a fraud upon the teacher ; ingratitude to one's parents ; impiety 
 toward God. No one could have been more tender, sympathizing, 
 than Mr. Peirce always was, to one in difficulty. He would explain 
 what was obscure. He would remove all obstacles out of his way, 
 excepting that which the pupil alone could remove, — the obstacle in 
 his own will, — his indisposition to make the needful effort. That the 
 pupil must make himself. And Mr. Peirce never released him ; 
 never qualified a demand that it was reasonable to enforce. 
 
 Any artifices at the time of recitation, any promptings by word 
 or sign, any sly lookings to discover what ought to have been learnt 
 before, if detected, (as they were very apt to be by his vigilant eye 
 or ear,) were sure to bring upon the culprits severe reprimands, it 
 may have been some more enduring punishments. He could not 
 look upon such as light offences, — merely roguish tricks, pardonable in 
 thoughtless boys. They were frauds — attempts to make things and 
 persons appear to be what they were not. And, if boys and girls did 
 not appreciate the iniquity of such things, it ought all the more care- 
 fully to be exposed to them, and impressed upon them. 
 
 So, too, unnecessary tardiness and absence from school, playing or 
 whispering during the hours assigned to study, were denounced and 
 treated as grave offences against the little community, (which every 
 school is,) no less than against one's self. Each and all of these things 
 were reproved and punished, not so much because they were contrary 
 to the laws which he had enacted, as because they were wrong in 
 themselves, contrary to the eternal laws of right. He was careful to 
 make the morality of all his requirements apparent to his pupils. 
 His was not an arbitrary government. His laws were not matters of 
 his own invention. They were the principles of righteousness applied 
 to the conduct of children. 
 
 We have already stated that, at the outset of his career as a teacher, 
 Mr. Peirce resorted to the then common expedients for insuring order, 
 obedience, and attention to study ; to wit, corporal punishments, 
 appeals to emulation, offers of premiums. By these he did, for the 
 
32 CYRUS PEIRCE. 
 
 most part, obtain good recitations. He kept what was accounted a 
 good school. He got to himself a high reputation. He could always 
 have as many pupils as he saw fit to receive. For, behind all these 
 things, there were accuracy, thoroughness, untiring assiduity, and im- 
 partial fidelity. It would seem, too, from the letters we have received, 
 that, with the exception of the few very perverse, ill-disposed ones, he 
 was generally beloved as well as respected by his pupils. They were 
 all satisfied that he desired to promote their highest welfare ; and 
 that he was able as well as willing to te^ch them all they were willing 
 or able to learn. Goldsmith's description of a country schoolmaster, 
 might be taken as quite a correct likeness of him in that day, and of 
 the regard in which he was held by the parents and their children. 
 
 But it was not long before he came to distrust the common 
 appliances, and, at last, long ago, utterly to abandon and discounte- 
 nance the use of them. He has been so successful in the manage- 
 ment of his schools for the last twenty years, without corporal pun- 
 ishments, premiums, or artificial emulations, and withal has been 
 so prominent an advocate of the new doctrine of school government, 
 that it may be instructive, as well as interesting to our readers, to be 
 informed of the .process of the change, which took place in him, and 
 the reasons for that change. 
 
 Our account will be taken mainly from a letter, which he wrote to 
 
 a very particular friend, — wrote without the expectation that any 
 
 part of it would be given to the public. It will speak for itself. It 
 
 will call forth responses from the hearts of many, who have had, or 
 
 may have, much experience in school-keeping. 
 
 The change was gradual, the work of time, and arose from various considera- 
 tions. 1st. I could not, at least I did not, always administer corporal punishment, 
 without awakening, or yielding to emotions of a doubtful character. I began to 
 suspect that the effect upon myself was not good ; and I could see that it often 
 shocked, disturbed, but did not exalt the moral sentimentof the school. In a word, 
 to both parties, it seemed to me, to work spiritual death rather than life. 2d. 
 Often, after having inflicted it, I was visited with very troublesome doubts ; such 
 as, that possibly 1 had been too severe, even where I had no doubt that the 
 offender deserved some chastisement ; sometimes with a query, whether I could 
 not have gotten along quite as well without any blows at all. This last query 
 was pretty apt to arise the next day, after all the excitement of the occasion had 
 subsided. 3d. Then again I was often troubled with the thought, that possibly I had 
 not made sufficient allowance for the circumstances, and considerations, which 
 pleaded in behalf of the culprit, such as natural temperament, inherited disposi- 
 tion, his previous training, surrounding influences, and peculiar temptations. 4th. 
 Moreover, when I witnessed the blessed, the heavenly effects of forgiveness, and 
 encouragement, I would almost resolve forthwith to put away the ferule and strap, 
 and rely on moral suasion alone. 5th. As I lived longer, and observed, and 
 experienced more, if I grew no wiser in other respects, I did in the knowledge of 
 myself. I saw more of my own imperfections and faults, and self-conviction made 
 me more compassionate and forgiving toward others. In fine, I came to the belief, 
 thatthe natural laws and their penalties, to which all men, and the children of 
 men, alike, are subject, from the beginning of their existence, were founded in love. 
 
CYRUS PEIRCE. 33 
 
 as well a? wisdom ; yea, that our Bufferings, (the oonseqnenoes of transgression,) 
 were, equally with our enjoyments, evidences of the wisdom and benevolence of 
 the Heavenly Father. I thought, too, that I could discern a connexion between 
 the transgression committed and the penalty etidured, — an adaptation of the one 
 to the other, in the divine discipline, the like of which I could not see in my own 
 artificial inflictions. The punishments I was wont to apply, began to seem to 
 me harsh, far-fetched, arbitrary, having no relation to the offences committed. 
 4.nd ought we not, said I to myself, in our discipline of children, to strive to imitate, 
 as closely as possible, the Divine administration ? On philosophical principles, too, 
 it seemed to me, the educator of the young could not be justified, in appealing to 
 fear and force. Hope is a higher, nobler principle than fear. Hope, chefers, 
 quickens, awakens aspiration, excites to effort and sustains it. Fear addresses 
 itself to selfishness ; depresses and debases the snbj eot of it. Moreover, it seemed 
 to me, as the Creator had adapted the human mind to seek, apprehend and enjoy 
 the truth, that, whenever truth was rightly presented, it would be apprehended, 
 embraced, enjoyed, as naturally as the stomach receives, and relishes its appro- 
 priate food, without the extraneous and ill-adapted stimulus of blows. He, whose 
 inspiration gave understanding to man, did not so fashion it as to render blows 
 necessary to enable it to receive and appreciate knowledge. I came to see less 
 and less clearly the loving kindness, or wisdom of such appliances. 
 
 God, creation, man, human relations, indeed all things began to put on a new 
 and more beautiful aspect. Under the rule and quickening influence of love, 
 the school-room wore a new and brighter face, — brighter prospectively, when I 
 entered it in the morning ; brighter retrospectively, when I left it at night. 
 
 The above, I trust, will serve to hint to you the leading considerations that 
 wrought with me a change of views and of practice, in regard to the whole sub- 
 ject of school discipline ; in regard to the means and motives to be resorted to, in 
 the great work of education. The persons chiefly instrumental in bringing about 
 this change in me, quite unconsciously it may have been to themselves, were the 
 Rev. Mr. Mottey, late of Lynnfield, Mass. ; the Rev. Dr. Damon, late of "West 
 Cambridge, and Lucretia Mott. The conversations of each of these excellent per- 
 sons, helped to bring me to the result I have attempted to describe. I think it 
 was after listening to a conversation from Mrs. Mott, at Nantucket, in 1827, that 
 I definitely formed the resolution to attempt thenceforward to keep school without 
 the intervention, (for I can not say aid,) of blows. 
 
 In the same communication, of whicli the foregoing is an abstract, 
 Mr. Peirce, says : — " The book to which, after the Bible, I owe most, 
 is that incomparable work of George Combe, ' On the Constitution of 
 Man} It was to me a most suggestive book ; and I regard it as the 
 best treatise on education, and the philosophy of man, which I have 
 ever met with." 
 
 Whatever may have been his methods of teaching and governing, 
 Mr. Pierce, from the beginning to the end of his career, has made the 
 impression upon his pupils, that he was able to give them all the 
 instruction they were disposed or able to receive ; and that it was 
 his unfeigned desire, and constant endeavor, to lead them to become 
 truly wise, and truly good. 
 
 The highest tribute that could be paid to his excellence, as a man 
 and a teacher, would be a compendium of the very numerous testi- 
 monials which lie before us, from his earliest and his latest pupils. 
 We have already given several from those of the former class. A few 
 from the latter must suffice, and will appropriately close our memoir. 
 
 One, who was a member of his first class at Lexington, in 1839 and 
 1840, writes thus: "I soon learnt to respect him, for his untiring 
 
3 4 CYRUS PEIRCE. 
 
 watchfulness, his uncompromising integrity, and his unceasing faith- 
 fulness — ' instant in season and out of season.' To these I can hear a 
 most grateful testimony." 
 
 Another, who was one of his pupils at West Newton, in 1849, says : 
 " As an earnest, thorough, and. effective teacher, I believe him to he 
 unequaled. Endeavoring, as he mainly did, to rear the education of 
 his pupils upon a true, solid basis, he dwelt especially upon the ele- 
 ments of every thing to be taught ; aiming constantly to give that 
 thorough, mental discipUne, which puts the pupil into possession of 
 his powers of acquisition and preservation. But Father Peirce's 
 crowning excellence, was his moral power. I have never known a 
 person who wielded so palpable an influence in this respect. Few 
 natures could long withstand it. And I believe the good he has done 
 in this, the highest, most essential, but most neglected part of human 
 development, will never be duly estimated in time. * * * He 
 combines, it seems to me, all the gentleness, tenderness, delicacy of a 
 refined woman, vdth all the manliness of a true man." 
 
 An excellent young man, who became one of his pupils, soon after 
 his return from Europe, has sent us the following testimony. " To 
 Mr. Peirce, under God, I owe the knowledge I have acquired, and the 
 moral character I have formed. I went to his school with strong pro- 
 clivities to dissipation, and an utter distaste for study. With great 
 forbearance, and by skilful, as well as kind management, he has en- 
 abled me to overcome both. He exerts quietly a very powerful influence 
 over those who are intrusted to his discipline. He at once commands 
 their respect ; and, in due time, engages their affection." 
 
 But we must close ; — and we close in the words of one, who was 
 first a very favorite pupil, and afterward, for yeare, a most devoted 
 and effective assistant, — ^Mrs. E. N. Walton : 
 
 I do not now recall any striking incidents, that would illustrate Father Peirce's 
 character, either as a teacher, or as the pioneer in the great struggle which has 
 resulted in the life and acknowledged necessity of Normal Schools. His life was 
 uniformly so tme, and his labors so unremitted, that, as I look back upon them, I 
 discern no points that were strikingly prominent above others. The impression is 
 rather that of a beautiful whole. * * * Every hfe has its lesson for human- 
 ity ; and this, it seems to me, is taught by his. The almost omnipotence, within 
 maa's sphere, of a strong, inflexible will, and of patient, unremitted effi>rts in 
 striving for the truth, and obeying one's convictions of right. His energy, nnited 
 with his conscientiousness, made him what he was, and enabled him to accomplish 
 what he did. What he undertook, he would do. Attempting was with him, so 
 far as human efforts could make it, a synonym of succeeding. At first, I won- 
 dered at the results he accomplished ; but an occurrence, which happened while we 
 were at West Newton, showed me so fully his peculiar temperament, that I never 
 afterward doubted that he would perform any task he set himself abont. What- 
 ever he could do, and had shown to be practicable, he insisted should be attempted 
 by others. His pupils generally were real workers. They did not dare do 
 otherwise than strive, and keep stiiving to the end. They felt, when they set 
 about teaching, that there must be no failure ; the whole normal enterprise rested, 
 
CYRUS PETRCE. 
 
 35 
 
 for the time being, upon their shoulders, and they must bear it, though they were 
 crushed beneath it. 
 
 His power of example was immense. Those pupils, upon whom his seal is 
 deepest set, are remarkable for their energy, their faithfulness, their zeal and their 
 attention to the little things. 
 
 " Learn first that which comes first." " Attend to one thing at a time." " Do 
 thoroughly what you attempt to do at all." " Nip evil in the biid." " Bo faithful 
 in small matters." " Be firm, and yet be mild." '' Be yourselves what you would 
 have your pupils become." These maxims he repeated'again and again to those 
 he was training to be teachers, in view of their prospective duties. And " Live 
 to the Truth," — "Live to the Ti'uth," was so ingrafted into our normal being 
 that, should the mere walls of Normal Hall be tumbled to the earth, the last sound 
 that would come from them, to our ears at least, would be, " Live to the Truth." 
 
 The following letter, addressed in 1851, by Mr. Peirce, to Hon. Henry- 
 Barnard, then Superintendent of Common Schools in Connecticut, cm- 
 bodies his own yiews as to the aims of his labors as Principal of the Nor- 
 mal School at Lexington, and West Newton. 
 
 " Dear Sir; — ^You ask me 'what I aimed to accomplish, and would aim to 
 accomplLsh now, with my past experience before me, in a Normal School.' 
 
 I answer briefly, that it was my aim, and it would be my aim again, to make 
 better teachers, and especially, better teachers for our common schools ; so 
 that those primary seminaries, on which so many depend for their education, 
 might answer, in a higher degree, the end of their institution . Yes, to make 
 better teachers ; teachers who would understand, and do their business better ; 
 teachers, who should know more of the nature of children, of youthful devel- 
 opments, more of the subjects to be taught, and more of the true methods of 
 teaching; who would teach more philosophically, more iu harmony with the 
 natural development of the young mind, with a truer regard to the order and 
 connection in which the different branches of knowledge should be presented to 
 it, and, of course, more successfully. Again, I felt that there was a call for a 
 truer government, a higher training and discipline, in our schools; that the ap- 
 peal to the rod, to a sense of shame and fear of bodily pain, so prevalent in 
 them, had a tendency to make children mean, secretive, and vengeful, instead 
 of high-minded, truthful, and generous ; and I wished to see them in the hands 
 of teachers, who could understand the higher and purer motives of action, as 
 gratitude, generous affection, sense of duty, by which children should be influ- 
 enced, and under which their whole character should be formed. In short, 1 
 was desirous of putting our schools into the hands of those who would make 
 them places in which children could learn, not only to read, and write, and 
 spell, and cipher, but gain information on various other topics, (as accounts, 
 civil institutions, natural history, physiology, political economy, &c.) which 
 would be tiseful to them in after life, and have all their faculties, (physical, 
 intellectual and moral,) trained iu such harmony and proportion, as would re- 
 sult in the highest formation of character. This is what I supposed the object 
 of Normal Schools to be. Such was my object. 
 
 But in accepting the charge of the first American Institution of this kind, I 
 did not act in the belief that there were no good teachers, or ^ood schools 
 among us; or that I was more wise, more fit to teach, than all my fellows. On 
 the contrary, I knew that there were, both within and without Massachusetts, 
 excellent schools, and not a few of them, and teachers wiser than myself; yet 
 my conviction was strong, that the ratio of such schools to the whole number of 
 schools were small ; and that the teachers in them, for the most part, had grown 
 up to be what they were, from long observation, and through the discipline of 
 an experience painful to themselves, and more painful to their pupils. 
 
 It was my impression also, that a majority of those engaged in school-keep- 
 ing, taught few branches, and those imperfectly, that they possessed little fit- 
 ness for their business, did not understand well, either the nature of children or 
 the subjects they professed to teach, and had little skill in the art of teaching or 
 governing schools, I could not think it possible for them, therefore, to make 
 
.16 
 
 CYRUS PEIRCfi. 
 
 their instructions very intelligible, interesting, or profitable to their pupils, or 
 present to them the motives best adapted to secure good lessons and good con- 
 duct, or, in a word, adopt such a course of training as would result in a sound 
 development of the faculties, and the sure formation of a good character. I 
 admitted that a skill and power to do all this might be acquired by trial, if 
 teachers continued in their business long enough ; but while teachers were thus 
 learning, I was sure that pupils must be suffering. In the process of time, a 
 man may find out by experiment, (trial,) how to tan hides and convert them into 
 leather. But most likely the time would be long, and he would spoil many be- 
 fore he got through. It would be far better for him, we know, to get some 
 knowledge of Chemistry, and spend a little time in his neighbor's tannery, be- 
 fore he sets up for himself In the same way, the farmer may learn what 
 trees, and fruits, and seeds, are best suited to particular soils, and climates, and 
 modes of culture, but it must be by a needless outlay of time and labor, and 
 the incurring of much loss. If wise, he would first learn the principles and 
 facts which agricultural experiments have already established, and then com- 
 mence operations. So the more I considered the subject, the more the convic- 
 tion grew upon my mind, that by a judicious course of study, and of discipline, 
 teachers may be prepared to enter on their work, not only with the hope, but 
 almost with the assurance of success. I did not then, I do not now, (at least 
 in the fullest extent of it,) as.sent to the doctrine so often expressed in one form 
 or another, that there are no general principles to be recognized in education ; 
 no general methods to be followed in the art of teaching ; that all depends upon 
 the individual teacher; that every principle, motive and method, must owe its 
 power to the skill with which it is applied; that what is true, and good, and 
 useful in the hands of one, may be quite the reverse in the hands of another; 
 and of course, that every man must invent his own methods of teaching and 
 governing, it being impossible successfully to adopt those of another. To me 
 it seemed that education had claims to be regarded as a science, being based on 
 immutable principles, of which the practical teacher, though he may modify 
 them to meet the change of ever-varying circumstances, can never lose sight. 
 
 That the educator should watch the operations of nature, the development of 
 the mind, discipline those faculties whose activities first appear, and teach that 
 knowledge first, which the child can most easily comprehend, viz., that which 
 comes in through the senses, rather than through reason and the imagi- 
 nation ; that true education demands, or rather implies the training, strength- 
 ening, and perfecting of all the faculties by means of tlie especial exer- 
 cise of each; that in teaching, we must begin with what is simple and 
 known, and go on by easy steps to what is complex and unknown ; that for 
 true progress and lasting results, it were better for the attention to be concen- 
 trated on a few studies, and for a considerable time, than to be divided among 
 many, changing from one to another at short intervals ; that in training chil- 
 dren we must concede a special recognition to the principle of curiosity, a love of 
 knowledge, and so present truth as to keep this principle in proper action; that 
 the pleasure of acquiring, and the advantage of possessing knowledge, may be 
 made, and should be made, a sufficient stimulus to sustain wholesome exertion 
 without resorting to emulation, or medals, or any rewards other than those 
 which are the natural fruits of industry and attainment; that for securing order 
 and obedience, there are better ways than to depend solely or chiefly upon the 
 rod, or appeals to fear ; that much may be done by way of prevention of evil ; 
 that gentle means should always first be tried ; that undue attention is given to 
 intellectual training in our schools, to the neglect of physical and moral; that 
 the training of the faculties is more important than the communication of 
 knowledge ; that the discipline, the instruction of the school-room, should bet- 
 ter subserve the interests of real life, than it now does ; — these are some of the 
 principles, truths, facts, in education, susceptible, I think, of the clearest de- 
 monstration, and pretty generally admitted now, by all enlightened educators. 
 
 The old method of^ teaching Arithmetic, for instance, by taking up some 
 printed treatise and solving abstract questions consisting of large numbers, 
 working blindly by what must appear to the pupil arbitrary rules, would now 
 be regarded as less philosophical, less in conformity to mental development, 
 than the more modern way of beginning with mental Arithmetic, using practi- 
 cal questions, which involve small numbers, aid explaining the reason of eva- 
 ry step as you go along. 
 
CYRUS PEIRCE. 
 
 3Y 
 
 So in the study of Grammar, no Normal teacher, whether a graduate or not, 
 of a Normal School, would require his pupils to commit the whole text-book to 
 memory, before looking at the nature of words, and their application in the 
 structure of sentences. Almost all have found out that memorizing the Gram- 
 mar-book, and the exercise of parsing, do very little toward giving one a 
 knowledge of the English language. 
 
 Neither is it learning Geography, to read over and commit to memory, sta- 
 tistics of the length and breadth of countries, their boundaries, latitude and lon- 
 gitude, &c., &c., without map or globe, or any visible illustration, as was once 
 the practice. Nor does the somewhat modern addition of maps and globes 
 much help the process, unless the scholar, by a previous acquaintance with ob- 
 jects in tne outer world, has been prepared to use them. The shading for 
 mountains, and black lines for rivers on maps, will be of little use to a child 
 who has not already some idea of a mountain and a river. 
 
 And the teacher who should attempt to teach reading by requiring a child to 
 repeat from day to day, and from month to month, the whole alphabet, until he 
 is familiar with all the letters, as was the fashion in former days, would de- 
 serve to lose his place and be sent himself to school. Could any thing be more 
 injudicious 1 Is it not more in harmony with Nature's work, to begin with sim- 
 ple, significant words, or rather sentences, taking care always to select such as 
 are easy and intelligible, as well as short 1 Or, if letters be taken iirst, should 
 they not be formed into small groups, on some principle of association, and be 
 combined with some visible object's 
 
 Surely, the different methods of teaching the branches above-mentioned, are 
 not all equally good. Teaching is based oti immutable principles, and may be 
 regarded as an art. 
 
 Nearly thirty years' experience in the business of teaching, I thought, had 
 given me some acquaintance with its true principles and processes, and I deem- 
 ed it no presumption to believe that I could teach them to others. This I at- 
 tempted to do in the Normal School at Lexington ; 1st. didactically, i. e. by 
 precept, in the form of familiar conversations and lectures f 2d. by giving every 
 day, and continually, in my own manner of teaching, an exemplification of my 
 theory; 3d. by requiring my pupils to teach each other, in my presence, the 
 things which I had taught them ; and 4th. by means of the IVIodel School, 
 where, under my general supervision, the Normal pupils had an' opportunity, 
 both to prove and to improve their skill in teaching and managing schools. At 
 all our recitations, (the modes of which were very various,) and in other con- 
 nections, there was allowed the greatest freedom of inquiry and remark, and 
 principles, modes, processes, every thing indeed relating to school-keeping, was 
 discussed. The thoughts and opinions of each one were thus made the proper- 
 ty of the whole, and there was infused into all hearts a deeper and deeper inter- 
 est in the teachers' calling. In this way the Normal School became a kind of 
 standing Teachers' Institute. 
 
 But for a particular account of my manner and processes at the Normal 
 School, allow me to refer you to a letter which I had the honor, at your request, 
 to address to you from Lexington, Jan. 1, 1841, and which was published in 
 the Common School Journal, both of Connecticut 'and Massachusetts, (vol. 3.) 
 
 What success attended my 'labors, I must leave to others to say. I acknowl- 
 edge, it was far from being satisfactory to myself. Still the experiment con- 
 vinced me that Normal Schools may be made a powerful auxiliary to the cause 
 of education. A thorough training in them, I am persuaded, will do much to- 
 ward supplying the want of experience. It will make the teachers' work easier, 
 surer, better. I have reason to believe that Normal pupils are much indebted 
 for whatever of fitness they possess for teaching, to the Normal School. They 
 tmiformly profess so to feel. I have, moreover, made diligent inquiry in regard 
 to their success, and it is no exaggeration to say, that it has been manifestly 
 
 freat. Strong testimonials to the success of many of the early graduates of the 
 .exington (now W. Newton) Normal School, were published with the 8th Re- 
 port of the late Secretary of the Board of Education, and may be found in the 
 7th vol. of the JMassachusetts Common School Journal. 
 
 But it is sometimes asked, (and the inquiry deserves an answer,) Allowing 
 that teaching is an art, and that teachers may be trained for their business, 
 have we not High Schools and Academies, in which the various school branch- 
 es are well taught t May not teachers in them be prepared for their work 1 
 
38 
 
 CYRUS PEIRCE. 
 
 Where is the need then of a distinct order of Seminaries for training teachers t 
 I admit we have Academies, High Schools, and other schools, furnished with 
 competent teachers, in which is excellent teaching ; but at the time of the es- 
 tablishment of the Normal Schools in Massachusetts, there was not, to my 
 knowledge, any first-rate institution exclusively devoted to training teachers 
 for our common schools ; neither do I think there is now any, except the Nor- 
 mal Schools. And teachers can not be prepared for their work anywhere else, 
 so well as in seminaries exclusively devoted to this object The art of teach- 
 ing must be made the great, the paramount, the only concern. It must not 
 come in as subservient to, or merely collateral with any thing else whatever. 
 And again, a Teachers' Seminary should have annexed to it, or rather as an 
 integral part of it, a model, or experimental school for practice. 
 
 Were I to be placed in a Normal School again, the only difference in my 
 aim would be to give more attention to the development of the faculties, to 
 the spirit and motives by which a teacher should be moved, to physical and 
 moral education, to the inculcation of good principles and good manners. 
 
 In conclusion, allow me to recapitulate. It was nly aim, and it would be my 
 aim again, in a Normal School, to raise up for our common schools especially, 
 a better class of teachers, — teachers who would not only teach more and better 
 than those already in the ' field, but who would govern better ; teachers, who 
 would teach in harmony with the laws of juvenile development, who would se- 
 cure diligent study and good lessons and sure progress, without a resort to emula- 
 tion and premiums, and good order from higher motives than the fear of the rod or 
 bodily pain ; teachers, who could not only instruct well in the common branch- 
 es, as reading, writing, arithmetic, &c., but give valuable information on a va- 
 riety of topics, such as accounts, history, civil institutions, political economy, 
 and physiology ; bring into action the various powers of children, and prepare 
 them lor the duties of practical life ; teachers, whose whole influence on their 
 pupils, direct and indirect, should be good, tending to make them, not only good 
 readers, geographers, grammarians, arithmeticians, &c., but good scholars, 
 good children, obedient, kind, respectful, mannerly, truthful; and in due time, 
 virtuous, useful citizens, kind neighbors, high-minded, noble, pious men and 
 women. And this I attempted to do by inculcating the truth in the art of teach- 
 ing and governing, — the truth in all things; and by giving them a living exam- 
 ple of it in my own practice." 
 
THE 
 
 l^mrrifait Icttnid of €l)ucat,i0tt. 
 
 No. XI. — DECEMBER, 185T. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 FAQE. 
 
 PoBTiuit OF Grgns Feikci 273 
 
 I. MEMom OF Ctkus PEIsce 275 
 
 n. CcLTiTATioN OF IHE Befleotivs FACULTIES. By William Russell. Contiimed. .. 309 
 
 III. INFIIJESOB OF FEBTALOZZI OH THE POFULAE SOHOOLB OF GeEMANT 341 
 
 lY. The Hieboktsuanb, or Brethren of the Common Life. Trom the German of 
 
 Karl Ton Eatuner , 357 
 
 V. National £iiincATioH in Iselahd 361 
 
 YI. IiAURA Bridguan. By S. G. Hove, Superintendent of Perkins Asylum for the 
 
 Blind 381 
 
 ■ YII. Eduoationai. System of Jobs Sthbm. From the German of Karl Von Raumer. 
 
 Concluded / ,' 401 
 
 Yni. New York State iKSTrruTioH for Idiots. \ 416 
 
 Illustration^ PerspectlYe of Building ■. .... 416 
 
 IX. BpooATiOKAi YiEWS OF Marwh Luther. By Karl Yon Raumer. ,...". 421 
 
 1. Home GOTemment, and Tndning of Children 421 
 
 2. Bad Training 424 
 
 3. MonMsh Training of the Young 426 
 
 4. Offence given to Children 226 
 
 5. Degenerate Childien 428 
 
 '6. Lawful Disobedience. 429 
 
 ' 7. Schools — Address to the Town Councils of Germany 430 
 
 8. Duty of School Attendance of Children 440 
 
 9. Dignity and Difficulty of the work of Teaching 441 
 
 10. Plan for School Organization 442 
 
 II. XJniTersiMes 442 
 
 12. The Bible .-, 443 
 
 13. LanguageB.fV. 444 
 
 14. Natural Sciences 445 
 
 16. History...! 445 
 
 16. Logics. , ,. 445 
 
 17. Uathematios 448 
 
 18. Physical Exercise 448 
 
 19. Music ..'. 449 
 
 X. Urabhus on Classical CntrnsE. From the German of Earl Yon Raumer. ..... 450 
 
 XI. Montaigne on Leabnino and Education. By Karl Yon Raumer . 461 
 
 XII. Public Instruction in Sardinia. By Prof. V. Botta. Concluded 479 
 
 XIII. Catechibh of Methods of TEAoniNO. Continued.. 505 
 
 9. Geography. By Abberrode... 505 
 
 10. History. By Abberrode 612 
 
 XIY. Woodward City High Sohool of CiNoiNNi&i.'., .' 620 
 
 lUustrationa '. , 522 
 
 XY. Cooper Institute— or Union of Art and Science— New York 526 
 
Cornell University Library 
 arW38230 
 
 Memoir of Cyrus Pelrce first principal 
 
 3 1924 032 207 510 
 oiin.anx