INAUGURAL EXERCISES 
 
 AT THE 
 
 ADELPHI ACADEMY 
 
 ON THE OCCASION OF THE INSTALLATION OF 
 
 Col. HOMER B. SPRAGUE, 
 
 AS PRINCIPAL. 
 
 UttARY Of 
 
 1 hie 
 
 C0J 3C 1329 
 
 university 
 
 0F ILLINOIS 
 
 BROOKLYN, OCTOBER 10, 1870. 
 
 |Hew yoi^K: 
 
 L H. BIGLOW & CO., PRINTERS AND STATIONERS, No. 13 WILLIAM STREET, 
 
 1870. 
 
. 
 
 .v.v:V,;v , \vriv--; 
 
 
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 ' 
 
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'oartl off §frmtees. 
 
 Rev. WM. IVES BUDINGTON, D. D. 
 
 ©teagum, 
 
 HAROLD DOLLNER, Esq. 
 
 j&wwtats, 
 
 ALFRED C. BARNES, Esa 
 
 Rev. WM. IYES BUDINGTON, D. D. 
 Rev. JOSEPH T. DURYEA, D. D. 
 Rev. CHARLES W. HOMER, 
 
 Rev. DAVID MOORE, D. D. 
 CHARLES PRATT, Esq. 
 
 JOHN FRENCH, Esq. 
 
 S. D. C. VAN BOKKELEN, Esq. 
 Gen. HENRY W. SLOCUM, 
 
 Hon. GEORGE G. REYNOLDS, 
 BUCKLEY T. BENTON, Esq. 
 JOSEPH C. HUTCHISON, M. D. 
 ENOS N. TAFT, Esq. 
 
 JOHN DAVOL, Esq. 
 
 CHARLES E. HILL, Esq. 
 CHARLES E. EVANS, Esq. 
 EDWIN BEERS, Esq. 
 
 ALFRED C. BARNES, Esq. 
 HAROLD DOLLNER, Esq. 
 HORACE D. WADE, Esq. 
 WILLIAM C. DUNTON, Esq. 
 
 L. W. SALTONSTALL, Esq. 
 EDWARD F. De SEEDING, Esq. 
 Rev. ALBERT S. HUNT, 
 ROBERT D. BENEDICT, Esq. 
 
ffncnltn off instruction 
 
 HOMER B. SPRAGUE, M. A., Principal, and Professor of English Literature and 
 
 Elocution. 
 
 T. J. ELLINWOOD, - - Professor of Vocal and Physical Culture and 
 
 Phonography. 
 
 WARREN T. WEBSTER, M. A., Superintendent of Collegiate Department, and Pro¬ 
 fessor of Latin and Greek. 
 
 CHARLES JEWETT, A. M., - Professor of Mathematics and Natural Science. 
 HENRY B. WETZELL, - Professor of Book-keeping and Penmanship. 
 
 ALB IN PUTZKER, - - - Professor of Modern Languages. 
 
 WASHINGTON CHOATE, A. B., Superintendent of Academic Department, and 
 
 Assistant Professor of Latin and Greek. 
 
 DAVID E. KOHLER, - 
 EDWARD L. RICE, 
 BENJAMIN BOWEN, - 
 LOUIS GRUBE, 
 CHARLOTTE MORRILL, 
 JANE W. CHANDLER, - 
 DANA McALPINE, - 
 MARY E. SHAW, - 
 BERTHA STERLING, - 
 ISABEL CAMP, 
 JEANNETTE L. COOMES, 
 MARIA A. LEGGET, - 
 STELLA HAYDEN, - 
 CHARLOTTE RAWSON, 
 SARAH P. SANBORN, - 
 ANNIE J. HAYDEN, - 
 
 English Grammar and Composition. 
 
 English Grammar and Composition. 
 
 Arithmetic and Geometry. 
 
 Professor of Drawing. 
 
 Secretary, and Instructor in Book-keeping. 
 Arithmetic. 
 
 Orthography and Composition. 
 
 Oral Instruction (Science). 
 
 Elocution. 
 
 Geography. 
 
 Geography. 
 
 Superintendent of Preparatory Department. 
 English Studies. 
 
 English Studies. 
 
 English Studies. 
 
 Music, and Piano Accompaniment in Calisthenics. 
 
Kmotpral 
 
 ADELPHI ACADEMY. 
 
 OCTOBER lO, 1870. 
 
 pPENING ^DDRESS BY j^EY. JD R. j3lJDINGTON, 
 
 PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen :—It has been devolved upon me by 
 my associates in the Board of Trustees to bid you welcome here 
 this evening, and to introduce the exercises of the Inauguration 
 by a few remarks. I do this with the utmost satisfaction; for 
 I feel that I never have had the opportunity of gathering with 
 my fellow citizens on any occasion which seemed to me more 
 fraught with interest to us, to our children and to the generations 
 that are to occupy this favored spot. 
 
 We are come together to inaugurate an institution by the first 
 public and solemn putting into his place of the Principal or Head 
 Master of the Academy. Men die, but institutions live on. 
 Workmen cease, but the work goes on. No man ever lives 
 beyond his petty hour who does not either originate, or enlarge 
 or perpetuate some institution. The fathers of our country are 
 living to-day in the Constitution that blesses the land; in our 
 churches, in our colleges and schools. And if we are to live after 
 we have been laid to rest, it will be because our wisdom and our 
 benefactions have entered, in some large and substantial manner, 
 into the institutions which are to bless our countrymen when we 
 are gone. Government is an institution. Governors change, but 
 
6 
 
 ADELPHI ACADEMY. 
 
 the government goes on. Churches are institutions. Ministers 
 fail, and their lips grow dumb, but the ministry continues on in 
 the administration of the light and charities of the gospel. And 
 so the schools of our land—our academies and our colleges—are 
 institutions. 
 
 I do not mean to ignore the work done by private teachers. I 
 believe there is no class of laborers among us deserving of more 
 honorable mention than those noble men and women who dedicate 
 their lives to the work of teaching. There is in the great work 
 of education a department for private schools and for private 
 teachers; and I believe there always will be. We have nothing, 
 then, but good words and blessings for those who are engaged in 
 private schools. But what we insist upon to-night is, that there 
 is something in the higher education of our youth to which indi¬ 
 vidual enterprise is altogether inadequate. The largest wisdom 
 and the greatest devotion of any one teacher are utterly ineffectual 
 in accomplishing the work which is to be done in our colleges and 
 academies. 
 
 Teaching has become a profession, and, like all professions, in 
 common with all the trades and arts of modern civilization, it has 
 developed itself into a great number of specialties. 
 
 One man has the ability to teach geography; he has such clear 
 conceptions, such an enthusiasm, that he fills the minds of the 
 young to whom he ministers with ardor for his pursuit, the whole 
 world puts on beauty under his instruction, and it becomes a 
 moving panorama of pictures before the eyes of a class. Another 
 has a gift for the teaching of grammar, and that science, which, 
 in some men’s handling, is abstract and repulsive, becomes by a 
 wondrouus transfiguration a delight even. So there are others 
 who have the faculty to teach mathematics. They make good 
 arithmeticians, algebraists, geometricians, surveyors, engineers. 
 Others have a specialty in the teaching of languages; God fitted 
 them by nature for their work, and when they are before a class 
 of bright minds they are enabled to infuse life into, Greek and 
 Latin, usually denominated “ dead languages,” so as to make these 
 vanished nations live their histories over again. 
 
 Now, in order to secure to our children teachers who are com¬ 
 petent thus not only to teach, but so to teach that the scholars 
 shall learn, there must be incurred an expense which is beyond 
 
INAUGURAL EXERCISES. 
 
 7 
 
 any private means. When an educator attempts to establish an 
 institution like this, which is designed to train up youth until 
 they are prepared for commercial or scientific pursuits, or are 
 graduated into our colleges and universities, and when he attempts 
 to do it thoroughly and so as to secure the best good of those who 
 are under his care, he will not have had long experience before he 
 is confronted either with bankruptcy on the one hand or the neces¬ 
 sity of superficial teaching on the other. He cannot secure the 
 ablest teachers, in sufficient numbers, to devote their whole time 
 to this work by the revenues derived from his scholars unless he 
 taxes them to a degree which they cannot endure—not even the 
 children of our rich men. Our colleges and our universities 
 would be closed, not only to the children of the middle classes and 
 the poor, but to the children of men whom we ordinarily call rich, 
 were they assessed a just proportion of the expense of maintaining 
 those institutions. Take any moderate estimate of the rent of the 
 land, of the value of the buildings, of the cost of apparatus, and of 
 the means of keeping them in repair; then add to the sum a 
 proper proportion of the expense of the principal and the several 
 professors and teachers, and you have an amount for each individ¬ 
 ual student which places the advantages of those institutions 
 beyond the reach of nine hundred and ninety-nine of every thous¬ 
 and in our most prosperous communities. 
 
 The oldest feature of our modern civilization is the establishment 
 of gratuitous endowments of schools, academies and colleges, 
 otherwise our civilization had perished on the very place of its 
 birth. The University of Paris and the great German universities 
 date back to the very dawn of modern European civilization; and 
 you all know that the foundation stones of our civil institutions 
 were laid by men who established the college and the school by 
 noble and liberal endowments in the very hour of their deepest 
 poverty, when they were building their own rude huts and were 
 standing to their arms in the corn fields and in the churches to 
 defend themselves from the incursions of the savage. 
 
 I call to mind the time when Cambridge, Mass., was so poor 
 that it had no money to give to Harvard College, and a peck of 
 corn was assessed upon each house. By that assessment this 
 institution was preserved, until now, with its magnificent endow¬ 
 ments and appurtenances, it is making itself felt throughout our 
 
8 
 
 ADELPHI ACADEMY 
 
 land, not only by its own direct influence, but by the influence of 
 sister institutions, which have grown up like it and after its 
 example. 
 
 The truth is, it is the very foundation of Christian civilization, 
 not to say of republican institutions, that there shall be no tax 
 upon knowledge. 
 
 It would be a curious inquiry, how large a part of our education 
 was paid for by men and women who have passed away generations 
 before us. I look back to my own education and think of the 
 paltry sum I was called upon to pay according to the requisitions 
 of the college. I paid I know not how small a proportion of the 
 expense of carrying on the institution whose advantages I enjoyed 
 during the four years of my collegiate training. 
 
 And what is true of training in colleges is true of training in 
 our endowed academies. 
 
 We need an educated people, the fit preservation of our institu¬ 
 tions. The strength of a people resides in their education and 
 character. And you cannot have a high-minded people without 
 you have an educated people. One of the causes why the Prussians 
 have been so successful in the war now raging is, that their sol¬ 
 diers, rank and file, are educated and know what they are doing. 
 
 To is said that when the Prussian army passed the boundary 
 into France, every private soldier carried in his vest pocket a map 
 of the provinces through which the army was making progress, 
 on which every hill and road and farm house was marked, and so 
 accurate is their knowledge of the topography of the country that 
 the French cannot account for it, except on the supposition that 
 every household among them has been penetrated by Prussian 
 spies. The consequence has been that any man who could not 
 speak good French was suspected of being a spy; and our country¬ 
 men in Paris were hunted down, in some instances, on the insane 
 idea that the Prussians were gaining their successes through 
 treachery. No ! Prussian success is due to the better knowledge 
 of the Prussian soldiers, received in the schools provided for them 
 by the State. And our strength as a nation will depend upon 
 the education of our children. A people that know what they are 
 fighting for can neither be defeated nor exterminated. 
 
 And here allow me to say that I do not think we have any 
 reason to sigh for European systems of education. It is my 
 
INAUGURAL EXERCISES. 
 
 9 
 
 deliberate conviction—a conviction which I have this autumn as 
 I had it not last spring—that our American institutions are better 
 calculated to give education to American boys than any other 
 institutions in the world. I do not deny that there are times 
 when it may be advisable for youth to go abroad to study. If a 
 person wants to learn a foreign language, he can best accomplish 
 his object by going where it is spoken. But that education which 
 the American youth needs is best acquired in an American school. 
 I went to an American consul, this summer, while in Europe, and 
 asked him what he thought of the comparative advantages of 
 European and American schools for young men of America. I 
 had not finished my question—I had only gone so far as to make 
 my meaning apparent—when that gentleman, our Consul, who is 
 a German by birth, though he prides himself on his American 
 citizenship, said, “ I have no question on that subject. German 
 schools are very good to make unquestioning subjects of German 
 monarchies, but they are not calculated to make self-respecting 
 American citizens.” 
 
 My friends, you are met to-night to assist in inaugurating the 
 Principal of an institution designed to train up the citizens we 
 need in all the walks of life.. Some twenty thousand dollars have 
 been contributed by those who deserve to be called founders of 
 the institution. They, together with those who shall hereafter 
 add their donations, may have the satisfaction of knowing that 
 they are laying the foundations of an institution which shall be 
 second to none in this city, or in any other city, if our efforts 
 shall be successful. 
 
 The Trustees have just fixed upon a plan for the enlaigement 
 of this edifice. It is proposed to build a wing for the smaller 
 children, who have hitherto been separated from the upper school 
 and gone to Adelphi St.; and also a suitable room for the accom¬ 
 modation of the girls during exercise hours in bad weather. It 
 has been determined, and I think wisely, to place all the pupils of 
 the Adelphi Academy under the immediate inspection and per¬ 
 sonal influence of the Principal; and, while we are to do this at 
 once, we propose, in addition, to call upon the citizens of Brooklyn 
 to carry out the full development of the institution in all its 
 departments. We wish to have this land free of debt, the buildings 
 also, as well as all the apparatus and libraries that belong to this 
 
10 
 
 ADELPHI ACADEMY 
 
 Academy. We wish, also, to have scholarships founded by the 
 liberal, so that children of the deserving poor, that come out from 
 our public schools with honor, shall be able to prosecute the 
 higher branches here. In one word, we aim at nothing less than 
 to bestow the largest and best benefaction possible upon this part 
 of Brooklyn—an institution for the training of our sons and 
 daughters which shall put a high education within the reach of 
 all; and, in the consummation of this design, the Trustees look 
 for, and confidently expect, the intelligent and strong-handed aid 
 of the liberal citizens of Brooklyn. 
 
 The founders of this institution—those who have already donated 
 largely to it, and those who shall do so hereafter, will take their 
 places among the founders of institutions that are longest to be 
 remembered. There are none in this land so honored as the men 
 who have given their names to our institutions. Harvard was a 
 poor minister who gave a large share of all he had to the institu¬ 
 tion at Cambridge; and, in its poverty, it took the name of that 
 poor man who, like the widow of old, gave what he had. Yale 
 College, likewise, commemorates the virtues of a noble man who 
 laid the foundation of that institution. So with Brown University 
 and its founder, whose name it bears. And there are numerous 
 institutions that have gone up under our own observation, founded 
 by our fellow citizens, whom we know and honor. 
 
 This institution is entrusted to the guardianship of twenty-four 
 trustees, who were selected by the gentlemen who gave the Acad¬ 
 emy to the public. They selected men of intelligence and known 
 public spirit, who came together, most of them strangers to each 
 other, and bound together by no other conceivable tie than their 
 love of the community in which they dwell, and their desire, by 
 the contribution of their time and zeal, to lay broad and deep the 
 foundations of an institute ol learning. And when you think that 
 those Trustees for the year past have been contributing no incon¬ 
 siderable portion of their time to the interests of this Academy, 
 I am sure you will recognize their claim alike upon your respect 
 and upon your confidence. Be assured, my friends, that if twenty- 
 four men, such as those whose names constitute the Board of 
 Trustees, are unanimously agreed upon any point of policy, it is 
 nothing more than good sense to conclude that there is some sub¬ 
 stantial reason for the action which they take, and that it will 
 meet with the sanction of the enlightened community. 
 
INAUGURAL EXERCISES. 
 
 11 
 
 Having attended most of the meetings of the Board, I am 
 bound to say that these gentlemen have given time and patience, 
 to a. very large degree, to this institution, and that they have 
 done nothing which they have not felt constrained to do by a 
 conscientious regard for the children of the institution. What 
 they have done in the past they will continue to do in the future. 
 They will be faithful in the guardianship of this institution, re¬ 
 solved at all costs to maintain thorough instruction, and bestow 
 upon your sons and daughters honest and faithful work in the 
 solemn business of educating them for life. I believe no greater 
 calamity can befall a youth, and no greater wrong be done a 
 youth, than to allow the early years of life to pass by without 
 solid instruction in fundamentals. When those years are gone 
 and their opportunities are lost, they are lost forever. 
 
 I will conclude these remarks, which are longer than I hoped 
 they would be, simply by saying that a young lady called upon 
 me this evening to know whether it would be possible for those 
 young ladies who are desirous of prosecuting their studies, and 
 who are unwilling to go down town, to avail themselves of the 
 advantages of this institution, studying at home and reciting under 
 the immediate supervision of the Principal. I have the authority 
 of the Principal in saying that such a proposition would be most 
 favorably received,.and we believe an arrangement of that kind 
 can be made not less advantageous to the institution than to the 
 young ladies who wish to pursue their stndies in this way. 
 
 And now, my friends, I have great satisfaction in calling for 
 the exercises which still await us upon the programme for the 
 evening. After the music, which will immediately follow, there 
 will be the delivering of the keys of the institution by the Bev. 
 Chas. W. Homer and the inauguration of the Principal, Prof. 
 Sprague. 
 
 Remarks by pHAs. ^ f . |4omer, 
 
 Prof. Sprague : It has been made my duty by this Board of 
 Trustees—and a more welcome duty I never was called upon in 
 my life to perform—to place in your hands, to-night, this Charter 
 
12 
 
 ADELPHI ACADEMY 
 
 and these keys, as tokens and emblems of the trust herein reposed 
 in you. You have come to us, sir, in a very critical period of our 
 history; and you have already succeeded in reducing, in a great 
 measure, the chaotic and disorganized state of things that existed, 
 to precision and harmony and order. You have come to this 
 young, vigorous and growing community; and you have been re¬ 
 ceived by them, and will be received still more largely in the 
 future, with open arms and warm hearts. You have come to us, 
 sir, with a brilliant reputation in the world of letters; and what 
 is of far more consequence to us, you have come with a reputation 
 for fidelity in every position of trust in which you have hereto¬ 
 fore been placed ; and we may thank God, sir, that we have found 
 in yourself a man who we believe will not dishonor the trust we 
 place in him. And now, I hand you these emblems, praying that 
 the Almighty God whose you are, and whom you serve, through 
 his blessed Son, whom you confess every time you open the pro¬ 
 ceedings of this institution with prayer, by the aid of his Holy 
 Spirit, may direct and sustain you in your arduous work, so that 
 you may be able to see these young minds growing up under 
 your eye and under your hand, who in the immediate future will 
 become ornaments to the church, to society, and to the common¬ 
 wealth, and at last prove monuments of your fidelity in the world 
 to come. 
 
INAUGURAL EXERCISES. 
 
 13 
 
 INAUGURAL ADDRESS 
 
 BY 
 
 Col. HOMER B. SPRAGUE, 
 
 PRINCIPAL OF ADELPHI ACADEMY. 
 
 To rightly educate a human being is a task of no small delicacy 
 and difficulty. He who works in metals or minerals, in gold or 
 diamonds, uses comparatively coarse tools on coarse materials and 
 for coarse ends. Aristotle tells us that “a statue lies hid in a 
 block of marble, and that the art of the sculptor only clears away 
 the superfluous matter,” and leaves the perfect form. Such is 
 education. In every human soul the true educator recognizes the 
 image of God; often sadly incrusted with folly and sin, marred, 
 distorted, paralyzed; but capable of being made symmetrical, 
 beautiful and strong. 
 
 The usual division makes education threefold: physical, intel¬ 
 lectual and moral. 
 
 Physically, no man has been faultless since Adam. Perfect 
 beauty, combined with perfect strength, all the forces complete 
 and in equipoise, no outward blemish nor hidden taint, no excess and 
 no deficiency—we hardly need a sculptor to tell us that this happy 
 union is nowhere to be found. There are so many inherited mala¬ 
 dies and weaknesses ; so many infelicities of climate, food, clothing, 
 shelter; so many transgressions of nature’s far-reaching and in¬ 
 exorable laws, that the mass of mankind cut but a sorry figure. 
 
 Now, to lay no stress upon the fact, weighty enough in itself, 
 that perfect health is a fountain of joy, making simple existence a 
 blessing, the intellectual and moral influences that flow from the 
 perfection or imperfection of this bodily machine are of transcend¬ 
 ent importance. 
 
14 
 
 ADELPHI ACADEMY. 
 
 You cannot make a violin of rotton wood. The finest fruits of 
 genius cannot spring from disease. Clearness, energy and keen¬ 
 ness of thought cannot long characterize the sick man. Who can 
 tell how wonderfully all intellectual processes would have been 
 quickened and broadened, what new heights of thought would 
 have been scaled, what new realms would have been wrested from 
 the unknown, had the great thinkers of the world enjoyed long 
 lives and perfect health; had Shakspeare lived eighty years in¬ 
 stead of fifty-two; had thirty active years been added to the 
 lives of such men as Bacon, Descartes, Milton, Mozart, Burns ? 
 
 One of the saddest records in the biography of genius is the 
 despairing utterance of the great Beethoven, who became deaf 
 at thirty. “At this early age,” he writes, “I must withdraw 
 from the world and lead a solitary life. How cruelly have I 
 been cast down by proofs of my defective hearing—a sense which 
 I ought to possess in a higher degree than others. For me there 
 can be no recreation in social intercourse, no joining in refined 
 and intellectual conversation, no mutual outpourings of the heart 
 with others. I am brought to the verge of despair. A little 
 more, and I had put an end to my life.” And we hear the sub¬ 
 lime lamentation of a greater than Beethoven, when blindness 
 had robbed him of half his power:— 
 
 ‘ ‘ Oh, dark! dark ! dark! amid the blaze of noon, 
 
 Irrecoverably dark; total eclipse, 
 
 Without all hope of day! 
 
 The sun to me is dark 
 And silent as the moon 
 When she deserts the night!” 
 
 Not only has there been no other destroyer of intellect half so 
 fatal as disease, but its effects have not been favorable on the 
 character. When the King has the gout, all the people limp. 
 When the governor has the dyspepsia, he signs no pardons. We 
 no longer wonder that John Calvin brooded on the stern decrees 
 rather than dwelt on the infinite love of God, when we read that 
 from youth he was afflicted with asthma, gout, stone, rheumatism, 
 and a dozen other diseases. 
 
 Undoubtedly this regard for physical culture may become ex¬ 
 treme. Ten years ago it was the fashion to boast of a “ muscular 
 Christianity.” A year ago all England and America went crazy 
 over a boat race between eight unfortunate students—four Ameri- 
 
INAUGURAL EXERCISES. 
 
 15 
 
 can and four English. A million men, women and children 
 thronged the banks of the river Thames to behold the spectacle. 
 Distinguished clergymen and editors said all beauty seemed taken 
 from the heavens when the Oxford boat came in ahead of the 
 Harvard. The excitement could hardly have been more general 
 or more intense if some principle had been at stake, or something 
 important had hinged on the result. But there was no principle, 
 nothing important, in issue—any more than when the rowdies of 
 two hemispheres were frenzied over the prize fight between Tom 
 Sayres and John C. Heenan. Alas, that I recollect these names 
 so well! 
 
 Something good, however, may come of this childish emulation. 
 The athlete has his uses. “ Out of the strong came forth sweet¬ 
 ness.” A whole nation has its attention directed for an hour to 
 the subject of physical culture. The art of living is getting to be 
 better understood. Already the average duration of life is in¬ 
 creased. The armor of five hundred years ago is too small for 
 the soldiers of to-day. 
 
 This assertion of progress must not be universally applied. 
 Whole races of men are visibly dying out. Farewell to the Sand¬ 
 wich Islander and the American Indian ! Travelers who visited 
 Borne thirty years ago tell us that the people there have perceptibly 
 declined in beauty within that period. The Gallic blood is out¬ 
 stripped by the German. The Prussian soldiers are larger and 
 handsomer than the French. When it comes to the bayonet, the 
 Frenchman goes down. 
 
 Medical and scientific men have gained something in their in¬ 
 vestigations of diet. They detect the solids and fluids that make 
 up the body—so much calcium in the bones, nitrogen in the tissues, 
 iron in the blood, phosphorus in the brain. Agassiz makes the 
 startling announcement that the intellect may be illumined by 
 eating food containing phosphorus—that owing to their diet of 
 fish, the dwellers on the New England coast are brighter thinkers 
 than those inland. If this be so, we could name folks who ought to 
 eat nothing but fish while the world standeth. But I fear it is too 
 good to be true! Bobert Montgomery, or Martin Farquhar 
 Tupper, not to name sundry poets nearer home, might eat phos¬ 
 phorus till his head shone like a boy’s pumpkin lantern—we 
 should get no poetry into him or out of him. 
 
16 
 
 ADELPHI ACADEMY 
 
 The soul shapes the body. The faces of aged couples, after 
 fifty years of harmonious union, often have grown strangely simi¬ 
 lar. You can distinguish at a glance between a congregation of 
 Episcopalians and one of Methodists, between Calvinists and Uni- 
 versalists. Years ago, in his address at laying the corner stone 
 of this building, the king of preachers said, “ I think if my eyes 
 were bandaged, and I were set down in Boston at night, without 
 knowing where I was, by looking on the faces of the people I 
 could tell what city I was in. I could tell it by what I call the 
 cerebral look—the look of brain in men’s faces !” 
 
 Accordingly, as the best brain-work cannot be secured without 
 bodily perfection, neither can bodily perfection be secured without 
 good brain-work. Close thought is healthful. Look at the tor¬ 
 rent of blood that rushes through the great carotid arteries. It 
 indicates cerebral activity. 
 
 Who knows what symmetry and vigor of body, as well as of 
 mind, may be the result of a long period of harmonious and 
 intelligent training? May there not be in the body, as in the 
 soul, a capacity of unlimited improvement ? Who shall say that 
 the days of antediluvian longevity may not return ? They that 
 obey all the laws of nature and of Grod, or, in the language of the 
 prophet, “ they that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; 
 they shall mount up on wings as eagles; they shall run, and not 
 be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” 
 
 If bodily education has been imperfect, mental has not been less 
 so. No subject has a greater number of unsolved problems than 
 education. Questions concerning the nature of the mind, its 
 faculties, its relations, its diseases, its food, its growth, its destiny— 
 the proper object to be arrived at in its training, whether the 
 attainment of knowledge or power, learning or discipline—these 
 and many other questions are still undecided. 
 
 What shall we study , and how much ? 
 
 This may be premised—that the field of knowledge has lately 
 been vastly expanded. The last ten years have witnessed the 
 miracles of spectrum analysis. The last three months have added 
 many pages of momentous history. 
 
 Five hundred years ago the feudal lord in Parliament subscribed 
 his name like Philip, King of the Wampanoags. “ His sign 
 manual,” says Carlyle, “ was the print of his iron hand, duly 
 
INAUGURAL EXERCISES. 
 
 17 
 
 inked and clapt upon the parchment.” “ He was most enviably 
 educated, though he had not a book on his premises.” Two 
 hundred and seventy years ago Francis Bacon could, without 
 presumption, write to his uncle, Cecil, “ I have taken all knowl¬ 
 edge to be my province.” Milton is supposed to have read all 
 that was then valuable in known literature. But now the horizon 
 of knowledge of matter alone, has so receded that not even 
 Humboldt, in his majestic life of ninety years, grows tall enough 
 to sweep with his eye the whole circumference. And when we 
 add literature, psychology, history, the most gigantic intellect 
 can but repeat the simile of Hewton, “ I am but a little child, 
 gathering a few pebbles on the shore, while the great ocean of 
 truth lies all unexplored.” 
 
 The branches of study in some schools have been alarmingly 
 multiplied, until, in the effort to grasp everything, the pupil too 
 often lays firm hold of nothing. Multiplicity is necessarily super¬ 
 ficiality. Every study has its special devotees, and, on the other 
 hand, there is no study but some think it useless. Within the 
 last three weeks one parent has told me he regarded arithmetic 
 as worthless; another told me the same thing of grammar; another 
 still, said the same of geography. “Anything but history,” said 
 a deep thinker, “ that must be false !” 
 
 We cannot please everybody, and therefore, except in certain 
 institutions which flatter themselves they have found a royal road 
 to learning, putting you through the whole circle of studies with 
 railroad speed, stopping five minutes at every Stamford for French 
 coffee, and twenty minutes at every Turner’s for scientific hash, 
 and two minutes at every station to drink from some fountain of 
 aesthetics, with literary prize candy and moral sandwiches and 
 the ethereal melodies of imported harpers and violinists all along 
 the route—except in these wonder-working universities for in¬ 
 fants—the American public seems to be settling down into the 
 opinion that a few solid branches of study ought everywhere to 
 form the basis of education : enough of grammar to enable one to 
 speak and write his mother tongue fluently and correctly; enough 
 of mathematics to enable him to manipulate figures with speed 
 and precision; enough of geography to avoid the error of Timothy 
 Dexter, who sent warming pans to the West Indies! 
 
 But, surely, he who stops with these rudiments, however well 
 he may be fitted to make money, or shine in a coal pit, or wriggle 
 
ADELPHI ACADEMY 
 
 18 
 
 into office, is not educated. We hear much of a business education , 
 meaning an education that trains simply to get money and keep 
 accounts. It is no education at all, and, as for business, it too 
 often deserves the stinging rebuke of honest, clear-headed old 
 John Jacob Astor, “They cheats one another, and they calls that 
 business .” A great mistake at the present time is the custom of 
 withdrawing boys from school at a tender age, that they may be 
 placed in trade. It arises from our American haste to get rich, 
 or from that spirit of enterprise which brings so many prematurely 
 into professional life. Parents like to see their sons established 
 in paying situations, and to feel that they can command incomes. 
 But is it dealing fairly with the mind of a boy a dozen years old ? 
 They train him to garner wealth, but deprive him of the culture 
 which is needed to enable him to enjoy it. When the inestimable 
 treasures of knowledge lie all around, and every day is increasing 
 them; when earth and sky are growing lustrous with riches that 
 shame El Dorado; when, with spectroscope and microscope and 
 telescope, crystals of thought are shooting further and further into 
 unknown deeps, and what were but now thin films of speculation 
 over a dark chaos, become firm bridges spanning transparent 
 seas—at such a time to dim the vision of the soul to all that is 
 grand and beautiful, to stop its ears to melodies that might sound 
 in his soul forever, to clip the wings that would serve him when an 
 angel, to cut off nine tenths of the sources of joy and inspiration, to 
 lower him towards the brute and teach him practically that he is 
 
 “ Born to eat and be despised and die, 
 
 Even as the beasts that perish, save that he 
 Hath a more splendid trough and wider stye!” 
 
 what is all this dwarfing and benumbing process but a kind of 
 soul-murder ? 
 
 It should be the business of parents and teachers to keep alive 
 the ardor of youth. The child naturally loves knowledge as it 
 loves sunlight. A boy without enthusiasm, without a deep and 
 intelligent interest in anything, without inquisitiveness and with¬ 
 out zeal, may grow up into a tolerable Indian, or calculating 
 machine, or talking automaton, but will never be very useful to 
 himself or others. On the other hand, the enthusiasm of child¬ 
 hood, if united with a fixed purpose and fair common sense, and 
 the power of patient thought, constitutes the very essence of 
 
INAUGURAL EXERCISES. 
 
 19 
 
 genius. “ Genius,” says Coleridge, “ is the carrying of the feel¬ 
 ings of youth into the powers of manhood.” These are remarkable 
 words of one of the profoundest of thinkers. Whipple incredu¬ 
 lously asks, “ did Napoleon conquer at Austerlitz by carrying the 
 feelings of youth into the powers of manhood ?” To which it may 
 be answered, that the contagious enthusiasm of Napoleon, filling 
 the breasts of all French soldiers, won Austerlitz, Jena, and forty 
 other battles. A gifted poet sings— 
 
 “ Who is the happy warrior ? who is ho 
 That every man in arms would wish to be ? 
 
 It is the generous spirit, which, when brought 
 Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought 
 Upon the plan that pleased its childish thought.” 
 
 Youthful ardor is a sacred thing. Wordsworth finds in it 
 unmistakable intimations of the soul’s immortality. It is the first 
 business of the educator to recognize it, cultivate it, guide it in 
 the right way, and, above all, never to stifle it. “ Diligent in 
 business, fervent in spirit,” is the apostolic injunction. Fervent 
 in spirit! Never a sadder sight than he whose fervor is all gone; 
 the flashing fountains of intellect stagnated; the blooming chari¬ 
 ties shriveled; the conscience seared ; the sensibilities benumbed; 
 the joyous inspiration that filled the soul and lifted it as on wings 
 and made it strong to do or to suffer— 
 
 “ Whither is fled the visionary gleam ; 
 
 Where is it now, the glory and the dream ?” 
 
 Mournful, indeed, and unnatural as mournful, yet among the 
 commonest of experiences, is this dying out of the Promethean 
 
 fire. 
 
 We must cultivate, too , the habit of close and patient thought. 
 To this power of patient thought, Newton attributed all his 
 amazing discoveries. The Germans have a proverb, “ Nothing is 
 so fruitful as a little, well learned.” Our fathers, with all their 
 disadvantages, had this superiority in their education—that they 
 were not compelled to scatter their intellectual energies in a 
 hundred directions at once. German scholarship, German art, 
 and German science are pre-eminent to-day, because of this habit 
 of long, patient, unflagging concentration of thought and work. 
 A few studies, thoroughly mastered, multum, non multa, should 
 be our aim. What a political opponent said of a certain presi¬ 
 dential candidate might be affirmed of a man who spreads his 
 
ADELPHI ACADEMY 
 
 20 
 
 thought over fifty subjects of study, “ He was a large man up in 
 Concord ; but when you come to spread him over this whole nation, 
 he is mighty thin !” 
 
 We must be catholic in our views of education , avoiding narrow¬ 
 ness and bigotry, recognizing the value of all truth, and shunning 
 the temptation to make our own pet science or specialty the 
 nucleus of a little mutual-admiration society. We hear much at 
 this day from a class of scientists to the effect that “ the study of 
 nature,” meaning the material world, “is the worthiest study.” 
 It is, indeed, a magnificent field—a field that most richly repays 
 the explorer; and if we recognize in material objects a divine 
 plan and the presence of a divine shaping power; if we feel in the 
 study of physical science that we but think over again His 
 thoughts, then the study of nature becomes the entrance into the 
 very presence of the Most High. But how happens it that so 
 many scientific men are losing faith in everything but what they 
 can see with their eyes, or feel with their hands, or test with their 
 crucibles? More than a hundred years ago, Goldsmith, in his 
 Chinese letters, laughed at those who set up for savans because 
 they had studied for twenty-five years some such object as the 
 proboscis of a flea, or had written huge volumes on the dissection 
 of a caterpillar. And well do some of them deserve ridicule, or 
 pity, rather; not for the littleness of the subject they investigate, 
 but for their utter lack of appreciation of the lessons it conveys. 
 Here, in the humblest insect, are clear traces of divine fingers—a 
 skill, a delicacy, a wisdom so amazing, a chemistry so subtle, a 
 mechanism so complicated and exquisite, that none but a modern 
 scientific fool could gaze upon it without unutterable admiration 
 of the intelligence that made it what it is. Well may we study 
 nature, but let us endeavor to gain some clear view of what lies 
 beyond matter, and feel that 
 
 “ Sense sublime 
 
 Of something far more deeply interfused. 
 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 
 And the round ocean, and the living air, 
 
 And in the mind of man.” 
 
 After all man is the real Shekinah. Wonderful are the infinite 
 forms of life in the vegetable and animal worlds; grander still are 
 the vast convulsions whose records are written on mountain 
 heights and in ocean depths; grandest of all are the huge worlds 
 
21 
 
 INAUGURAL EXERCISES. 
 
 that are spinning and plunging through the skies. 
 
 “ But though the giant ages heave the hill 
 And break the shore, and evermore 
 Make and break and work their will; 
 
 Though world on world in myriads roll 
 Round us, each with different powers 
 And other forms of life than ours; 
 
 What know we greater than the soul ?” 
 
 Dr. Samuel Johnson says, “ The first requisite in education 
 is the knowledge of right and wrong; the next is an acquaintance 
 with the history of mankind and those examples that may be said 
 to embody truth.” The study of nature does not furnish this 
 knowledge nor these examples. Last winter I heard a scientific 
 man, a professor in a college, lecture in favor of the moderate 
 drinking of alcoholic liquors, and he utterly ignored all the 
 moral and social aspects of the question, and based his argument 
 wholly on the physiological effects of liquor ! Surely, we need an 
 education that shall bear on the conduct of life—that shall make 
 our hearts cheerful and brave, our minds clear, active, patient, 
 industrious, comprehensive; our sympathies just, our consciences 
 keen. 
 
 Every individual should have a specialty in mental labor . It 
 should be one object of education to discover and develop the 
 natural fitness which each mind has for some branch of science, 
 language, literature, philosophy, art, morals, or other intellectual 
 work. Having acquired some taste and skill at school lit such 
 specialty, the leisure hours of after life would be happily spent in 
 prosecuting that study. The infinite diversity of tastes in a city 
 like Brooklyn would lead to an infinite diversity of mental pur¬ 
 suits. How multitudinous and how brilliant the salient points 
 which such a society would present! How rich, beyond expres¬ 
 sion, in men and women who would each contribute something to 
 the general good! 
 
 A high ideal is indispensable to be formed in education. Until 
 this is clearly conceived the youth has hardly begun to live. 
 Nothing noble can be achieved without steady, earnest effort, and 
 such effort will not be made without some fascinating object. 
 This ideal must be unselfishly pursued, must include others’ wel¬ 
 fare rather than his own. If, at the end of the career he marks 
 out, he sees only himself, however robed and crowned, his aim is 
 
22 
 
 ADELPHI ACADEMY 
 
 low. Yet self-abnegation and self sacrifice, the first principles in 
 Christianity, seem the last lesson we learn. A sound mind in a 
 sound body is not education : it is only the basis of a good educa¬ 
 tion. To make the lamp of truth shine brighter or farther, to lift 
 men higher in the scale of being and to honor God—these are the 
 legitimate objects to be sought. But so long as children are 
 taught by precept or example that the great end of a boy’s life is 
 to get rich, and the great end of a girl’s life is to get married, we 
 must look for frauds in the counting room and shams in the parlor. 
 
 What is success in life? In London, in 1848, two special- 
 policemen were sworn in. One of them had set his heart on 
 riches, fame, power. Steadily he pursued that object. No ob¬ 
 stacle daunted nor scruple of conscience withheld him. Deception, 
 perjury, murder, he counted as nothing. He reached his goal, 
 became immensely rich, had an income of fourteen million dol¬ 
 lars a year, was recognized by many as the first business man iji 
 Europe, the head of the foremost nation; in the eyes of the world, t 
 the most successful man living. 
 
 “ The Greeks said grandly, in their tragic verse, 
 
 Let no man be called happy till his death.” 
 
 Where is Louis Napoleon to-day? 
 
 The other of our London special-policemen chose a life of self- 
 sacrifice, of earnest labor for the cause of learning. He strove to 
 ameliorate the political and social condition of the British masses. 
 He became professor of history in a great English university. 
 The Prince of Wales was his pupil; but neither the patronage 
 nor the sneers of the British aristocracy could turn him from his 
 purposes of philanthropy. When liberty and civilization in America 
 were at stake, his voice rang out loud and clear in behalf of union 
 and freedom. To arm himself more fully to defend our cause, he 
 visited this country and studied the political and military situa¬ 
 tion. Returning to England, he was everywhere recognized as 
 the modest but invincible champion of the American republic in 
 its darkest hours. Two years ago he identified himself with a 
 new American university, giving it a library worth many thous¬ 
 ands of dollars, giving his services, without compensation, as 
 professor of history, and, in a secret way, giving liberally in 
 charity. In the hearts of a great people, and in the warm love 
 of those whom his beneficence has blessed, he has his unspeakable 
 
INAUGURAL EXERCISES. 
 
 23 
 
 reward. Which of these two special-policemen of twenty years 
 ago has been most successful—Louis Napoleon or Goldwin - 
 Smith ? 
 
 Ah, friends, the truest success, the truest heroism, is not always - 
 that which blazes widest or is sounded farthest. The wave of 
 Lethe veils as pure and fair—too pure and too fair to love to her 
 gazed at, and pointed out, and crowned with laurels that grow on 
 earthly soil. On the other hand, that life is a terrible failure 
 which has no better results to show than a heap of gold, though 
 the miserable man be clothed in purple and fine linen and fare 
 sumptuously every day. 
 
 Le Sage tells of two Spanish students dismounted for lunch by 
 a country cemetery on the road from Penafiel to Salamanca. 
 When they had finished their meal, the younger began to read the 
 epitaphs. On one stone was inscribed, “ Here lies buried the 
 soul of Pedro Garcia.” “A good joke!” he exclaimed, “A rich 
 joke ! ‘ Here lies buried the soul of Pedro !’ A soul buried ! I 
 
 think I’ll leave this place where they bury souls !” He rode 
 away. The other, shrewder, after a little reflection, began dig¬ 
 ging, to find what this buried soul of Don Pedro might be. His 
 search was rewarded by disinterring a pot of money, bearing this 
 inscription : “ Whoever thou art, that hast had the wit to find me, 
 welcome to this treasure. See to it that thy soul be not trans¬ 
 formed, like Pedro Garcia’s, into a pot of money.” But the 
 subject is too serious to be dismissed with a smile. “ Nature,” 
 says Carlyle, “ when her scorn of a slave is divinest and blazes 
 like the blinding lightning against his slavehood, often enough 
 flings him a bag of money, silently saying, 1 That! Away! Thy 
 doom is that!’ so that all through the eternities he shall have no 
 soul, nor manful trace of ever having had a soul, but only for cer¬ 
 tain fleeting moments shall have had a money bag.” We are 
 brought back to the solemn question of Scripture, “ What shall it 
 profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” 
 
 But let us not decry wealth. It is a good thing in good hands. 
 Large capital is required before Agassiz can explore South 
 America, Hayes penetrate to the open Polar Sea, Leverrier 
 feel his way to an unseen planet, Vassar start a college, Cornell 
 a university, or the world rejoice in Atlantic cables, Pacific rail¬ 
 road's or Suez canal». We complain that property drifts like- 
 
24 
 
 ADELPHI ACADEMY. 
 
 snow into a few great heaps, leaving too much bare ground.. 
 Granted—but let us not forget that these are not always av¬ 
 alanches to crush, but often the feeders of a thousand springs, 
 diffusing fertility and health far and wide. This very Academy 
 owes its existence as a public institution, and will owe much of its 
 growth hereafter, to the liberality of gentlemen who, by sweat of 
 brow or brain, have accumulated large resources, enabling them 
 to become almoners of divine bounty—men who do not forget 
 that riches are a means and not an end, and who have the dis¬ 
 position as well as the ability on a large scale thus to honor God 
 and bless mankind. 
 
 Lastly, it is needful that we be educated to be governed by 'prin¬ 
 ciple rather than sentiment. An ardent, emotional nature, with¬ 
 out clear conceptions of right, is a steamer all engine and no 
 rudder. We need the calm clear light of duty shining ever upon 
 us, untinged by the many-colored media of sentiment, undistorted 
 by the lenses of emotion. Our Christianity should be an im¬ 
 penetrable shield against temptation. The amiable weakness, the 
 accidental goodness of Whittier’s Andrew Kykman is not 
 enough— 
 
 “ Doubtful, when I fain would rest, 
 
 Frailest, where I seem the best, 
 
 Only strong for lack of test. 
 
 Rich alone in favors lent, 
 
 Virtuous by accident.” 
 
 Our morality should be strong enough, not merely to defy 
 temptation, but to take the offensive, to carry the war into the 
 enemy’s territory. God’s truth is aggressive —or it is nothing ! 
 
 Gentlemen of the Trustees :—We are witness, and this 
 community is witness, to your unselfish zeal in the cause of 
 education. With no prospect of pecuniary reward or special 
 worldly advantage to yourselves, you have given freely and faith¬ 
 fully of your time, your skill, your best efforts, and some of you, of 
 your property, to this institution. May it stand while Brooklyn 
 stands, and be recognized through all time as a noble monument 
 of your wisdom, your liberality, your fidelity. 
 
 Gentlemen, you have committed to us a vast responsibility— 
 the education of hundreds of children from early youth to man¬ 
 hood and womanhood—each an immortal being, existing here 
 
INAUGURAL- EXERCISES. 
 
 25 
 
 only in the' germ, as the oak exists-in the acorn, but capable of; 
 endless growth. Soon the cares and labors of mature life will be 
 upon them, and these young hands and hearts and brains will be 
 busy with the burdens and the problems of the hour. Shall they 
 carry forward the standard of civilization and Christianity ? 
 Shall they live nobly and lift mankind higher ? I know with 
 what anxiety you ask these questions in regard to those you 
 love. 
 
 You have shown your confidence in us by committing them to 
 our care; for your own children are among these pupils. With a 
 trembling hand we take this trust. We pledge ourselves- as 
 teachers to spare no pains, to shrink from no toil, to be daunted 
 by no obstacles, in the delicate and difficult process of training 
 these immortals. In this work we ask your co-operation, your 
 sympathy, and your prayers. 
 
 Fellow Teachers :—You see your calling. It is the calling of 
 Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Pestalozzi, Arnold, Milton— 
 a vocation as much more vital than painting or sculpture as mind 
 is more precious than matter. Slowly it is coming to be esti¬ 
 mated at its true worth, and the teacher stands higher now 7- than 
 ever before; but it is still, in many cases, missionary work. 
 Only by a firm faith in Grod and in the great hereafter, and by 
 the love of those committed to his care, can the teacher find his 
 best support and reward. Look forward, then, to that not dis¬ 
 tant day, when many stations of honor and usefulness shall be 
 filled by those whom you shall have given a deeper insight into 
 logic, history, philosophy, life ; or made keener to discern the 
 meaning hid in tree and flower, in tinted woods, in the flush of 
 the evening sky, in the silver spangles that tremble in the infinite 
 blue; or quicker to catch the divine melody that ripples from birds, 
 murmurs through pines, gurgles in rills, thunders in ocean, or 
 whispers in the still voice of Him who is ever kind and ever near. 
 Think sometimes of the coming ages, when this chrysalis state shall 
 be ended, and the celestial inhabitant shall be in full career of 
 endless improvement—a symmetrical soul! Never did a more 
 glorious vision light the picture galleries of poet’s or painter’s or 
 sculptor’s brain. 
 
 Oh! fortunate, if you but know your own blessedness ! Lead 
 
26 
 
 ADELPHI ACADEMY. 
 
 these youths and maidens into that career; form in their minds 
 a bright ideal; foster in them an undying purpose; guide and 
 guard them in the path that is fenced by eternal principles ; make 
 them strong for life and duty. 0 brothers, sisters, respect 
 your calling! The chord you strike in these young hearts may 
 vibrate through eternity. Your lightest finger touch on these 
 plastic minds may leave its print forever. Your work is humble, 
 yet sublime— 
 
 “ A work that, like the moonbeam, rests 
 
 One end on earth and one amid the stars !” 
 
 Pupils of the Adelphi Academy :—All this is for you. 
 tl All the care of the dear parent centres in Ascanius.” Parents 
 love their children more than children love their parents. What¬ 
 ever may be done for you by kindness, diligence and care, will be 
 done. But remember, God helps those who help themselves. 
 There is no good education that is not chiefly self-education. 
 Cherish a high ideal. Seek to make the most of yourselves, to 
 perfect your bodies in order that you may perfect your minds 
 and hearts. Seek not pleasure. Happiness is the bright shadow 
 of him who toils in the sunlight of duty : never turn your back 
 upon duty to chase this shadow. Be not anxious about the 
 future : be only anxious always to do present duty. Find, if 
 possible, a joy in your work. Think how splendid is the career 
 before you, if faithful, in the wondrous age in which you live, the 
 nation of which you are a part, the city which is your home. 
 Seek not chiefly riches, fame or power; but to diminish suffering, 
 to promote purity, to make man more manly and woman more 
 womanly, and all more saintly; to increase the sum of human 
 happiness. Sooner or later, by unerring instinct, such as guided 
 the choice of young Achilles, or by such a clear conception of 
 duty as left St. Paul no alternative, choose a life-work of philan¬ 
 thropy ; some noble cause to which all the currents of your being 
 may set; some zenith of achievement towards which all the auroral 
 flashes of hope may tend. There live and work, ever higher and 
 higher, with new inspirations and aspirations, neither seeking nor 
 shunning unpopularity, never anxious for death nor yet stingy of 
 life—till pain lose its sting and wasting toil seem like a glorious 
 revel, and the hardest struggles but the exultant play of limbs 
 that feel immortality 1 God be with you. 
 
INAUGURAL EXERCISES. 
 
 27 - 
 
 Fellow Citizens :—This Academy is for you and your chil¬ 
 dren. Help us to build up in this lovely quarter of Brooklyn an 
 institution in which there shall be no shams—an institution that 
 shall make it unnecessary to send your sons and your daughters 
 away from their homes to obtain a thorough education. Second 
 the efforts of these trustees and these earnest men, who have given 
 time and labor and money that they might establish, not for 
 themselves, ‘but for you and for posterity, an institution that 
 should be a perpetual blessing to this city and the state. 
 
 Brooklyn is already the metropolis of religion in America. It 
 should be the metropolis of learning. Unite the two, and in the 
 world-conflicts that impend, this city will be the chief centre and 
 stronghold of the coming civilization. The coming civilization! 
 for through the lurid smoke of European war glimmers the white 
 dawn. 
 
 “We may not live to see the day, 
 
 But earth shall glisten in the ray 
 Of the good time coming,” 
 
 when the little stone, cut from the mountain without hands, 
 rough, unsightly, rejected of the builders, a stone of stumbling 
 and a rock of offense, yet ever moving irresistibly onward, break¬ 
 ing him that falls upon it and grinding to powder him on whom 
 it falls, shall be seen by all men to possess eternal fitness and 
 beauty, and shall be made the corner stone of the great temple of 
 the world’s civilization. 
 
 “ For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see; 
 
 Saw the vision of the world and all the wonders that should be; 
 
 Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, 
 
 Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales; 
 
 Heard the heavens fill with shoutings, and there rained a ghastly dew 
 From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue. 
 
 Far along the world-wide whisper of the south wind rushing warm, 
 
 With the standards of the peoples plunging through the thunder storm; 
 
 Till the war drum throbbed no longer, and the battle flags were furled 
 In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.” 
 
 Dr. Budington : — We have among us, to-night, some of the 
 most distinguished educators of the land. We have here repre¬ 
 sentatives of two most celebrated institutions in this city, which\ 
 have been founded for the generations to come, and which have. 
 
ADELPHI ACADEMY 
 
 28 ' 
 
 been doing some of the best work that is done anywhere. We 
 have with us, also, representatives of the learned professions and 
 men who represent the various interests of the community. It 
 was expected that an opportunity would be given for these gentle¬ 
 men to express what, I am sure, pulsates in every one of our 
 breasts—the. disposition to give Prof. Sprague the assurance that 
 he will have our sympathy and co-operation in his endeavors to 
 realize the magnificent plan which he has just laid before us. 
 
 We shall now be favored with some music, after which we shall 
 have the pleasure of listening to Dr. Cochran, Principal of the 
 Polytechnic Institute. 
 
 j^EMAF^KS BY JDr. pOCHF^AN. 
 
 Mr. President, Members of the Board of Trustees, and 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: —We have not forgotten the good old 
 lady who said of her son, “ John is rather a weakly boy, not able 
 to work upon the farm ; he is too honest altogether to be a lawyer, 
 and he is not quite peart enough for a doctor; so, I think the 
 Lord designed him either to preach or to teach.” 
 
 How, if I entertained this good lady’s opinion of teachers, I 
 should be ready to welcome almost any person to the teachers’ 
 ranks; but twenty-six years spent in association with teachers 
 have convinced me that there are very few teachers fitted either 
 by nature or by culture to meet the requirements of their high 
 vocation. I therefore rejoice most sincerely to welcome one whom 
 I believe to be a real acquisition to the teachers’ ranks in the 
 city of Brooklyn. Teaching, at best, involves a great deal of 
 drudgery. It is a weariness to the flesh, and at times a sore trial 
 of temper and patience. A man or woman who engages in the 
 teachers’ vocation without a taste and a fitness for the calling, will 
 go through its daily duties with inward weariness and disgust, 
 and, sooner or later, will ignominiously- fail. Good teachers , are 
 scarce. Great teachers, such as Dr. Arnold, of Bugby, appear 
 only once or twice in a century; for such a teacher must unite 
 gifts and attainments which are rarely found combined in the 
 same individual. To intellectual force and penetration there 
 
INAUGURAL EXERCISES. 
 
 29 
 
 must be added rare tact—I might say a genius—for his work. 
 He must have a fresh, lowly, loving heart, in sympathy with God, 
 and nature, and humanity. And above all, he must be in active 
 sympathy with childhood. He must be himself a child in heart. 
 He must have kept up the continuity of his inner life, so that no 
 chasm of sin and remorse and worldliness shall separate his present 
 from his boyhood consciousness. He must be able in a moment 
 to travel back again to that hour of u splendor in the grass, of 
 glory in the flower.” He must have the power, from his own 
 experience, to reproduce in his own mind those processes which 
 are going on under a boy’s cap and jacket. And yet, he must 
 not fail to look beyond, and recognize the fact that the true busi¬ 
 ness of education is to move and exalt; to awaken the heart to 
 the consciousness of the glory and grandeur of God’s universe, 
 and to prompt to adoration and awe. He must remember that 
 he lays, as it were, his hand upon the soul of the child, and forms 
 and fits it for some future towards which it is advancing: shapes 
 its views, aims, feelings and actions. He thus makes it not only 
 right or wrong intellectually , but good or bad morally and 
 religiously. We cannot escape the responsibility of these results ; 
 for the boy will leave school with some character developed; and 
 with whomsoever he has been in contact the responsibility rests. 
 
 Mr. President, and Gentlemen of the Board of Trustees, I sin¬ 
 cerely congratulate you in having secured a gentleman whom we 
 believe to unite, in an eminent degree, the qualities of the 
 true teacher; and it becomes your duty to support and sustain 
 him in every effort he makes to advance the cause of sound educa¬ 
 tion in our midst. I believe you are resolved, throwing aside all 
 clap-trap and flummery, to recommend your institution to the 
 confidence of the public by the character of its work. And if, in 
 applying the test of rigid scholarship and excellence, you lose 
 some pupils and the patronage of some who care more for the 
 name of education than for the reality, you are not to be fright¬ 
 ened ; because, for every pupil you lose from this reason, sooner 
 or later you will gain five. 
 
 Prof. Sprague, I most earnestly welcome you to our fraternity 
 of teachers. I gladly extend to you the right hand of fellowship ; 
 and I promise you, so long as you are true to yourself, and true 
 to the course of sound education, you shall have the hearty sup¬ 
 port and sympathy of every true teacher. 
 
30 
 
 ADELPHI ACADEMY 
 
 Dr. Budington —God be thanked for the Polytechnic. God 
 be thanked, also, for the Packer, which is the twin sister of the 
 Polytechnic. I have the pleasure of introducing to you Prof. 
 Eaton. 
 
 of 
 
 Mr. President, Members of the Board of Trustees, and 
 Ladies and Gentlemen : —The first thing I have to say is, that 
 I am not the “ Packer;” I am neither the Principal nor the 
 pupils, and to-night I scarcely know what I am. I feel very sure 
 that I am not a good teacher, according to the high standard 
 which has been raised here to-night. I feel utterly to sink 
 beneath it. I have, however, a great admiration for a good 
 teacher—a teacher good and true to the great cause of humanity; 
 to the great cause of religion; to the growth of the human soul. 
 And I am very glad indeed to know, by the earnestness of that 
 address to which we have listened to-night, that we have among 
 us not only a good teacher but a true man and an earnest worker; 
 a man who knows what true education is, and what it demands of 
 both teacher and pupil. He has evidently studied its great prob¬ 
 lems not only in the light of metaphysics but of common sense; 
 and, better yet, has moulded his own character into that full, 
 rounded form which makes the true man, and yet, as has been 
 intimated by my predecessor, appreciates the boy. 
 
 My dear friends, it is a pleasure to witness this uprising in 
 Brooklyn of an appreciation of true education. There is a great 
 deal of quackery in the world. We find it in almost every pro¬ 
 fession. But the greatest quackery in education at the present 
 day lies in the use of that little adjective, practical . We boast of 
 practical education , and what is called 'practical education is 
 practically no education. Take, for instance, our boys—but we 
 have no boys! Professor Sprague, I beg to inform you, boys are 
 out of fashion among us! Our population is made up either of 
 babies or men. There is very little of that good old transition 
 state which we used to call boyhood. The boy, as soon as he is 
 fairly out of babyhood, buckles on his armor for the strifes of 
 business, and is ready for the great struggles of Wall street! 
 
INAUGURAL EXERCISES. 
 
 31 
 
 And you know how it is with girls. I do, at any rate; and I 
 say that it is entirely true, as was intimated in the address, 
 that the chief aim of a boy is to get rich, and of a girl is to marry 
 a rich boy. 
 
 Poor boys are of no account. The chief end of man, according 
 to the popular catechism, is to get rich. Hence this haste to enter 
 business. 
 
 How, my friends, I know that this man (Prof. Sprague) be¬ 
 lieves in no such practical education as that which consists in 
 picking out a profession for a man while yet a boy, and training 
 him for that profession only. I see in his address a keen sense of 
 the importance of a broad foundation. And as in this nineteenth 
 century trees do not grow any faster than they did a thousand 
 years ago, neither do boys. The growth of mind requires the 
 same nourishment—the same patient, persevering effort that it 
 has in all the ages past. And the idea which is going to prevail 
 in later days—in the good time coming—is, that education, to be 
 truly practical, must not be special, but general. It must consist 
 of a careful, consistent, thorough discipline of ihe whole mind. 
 It therefore becomes the first duty of the u teacher to study care¬ 
 fully the individual characters of his pupils and learn their power ; 
 then place before them such difficulties to be overcome, and such 
 problems to be solved as shall best develop their powers and 
 strengthen the mind.” 
 
 Our object is to lay a deep, broad foundation that will fit a boy, 
 not for one profession, but for any profession or business of life. 
 It matters not what a man is going to be; he needs to have that 
 mind of his expanded, strengthened, educated by a thorough dis¬ 
 cipline. What I mean by discipline now, is hard, earnest thought. 
 And so it is with young ladies. No education is truly practical 
 that does not lay the same deep, broad foundation for future 
 character and future work. Parents have often said to me, “ I 
 do not care to have my daughter study algebra, and geometry and 
 things of that sort. It would be all well enough if she were to 
 be a teacher, but she can dress and receive company well engugh 
 without them.” 
 
 But I tell you, my friends, that if a young lady can con¬ 
 quer a problem in algebra, she will conquer a problem in 
 the kitchen when the servant leaves. She becomes, by sur. 
 
32 
 
 ADELPHl ACADEMY 
 
 mounting such difficulties, a practical woman in the highest sense 
 of the term, and not a mere lady of fashion or girl of the period. 
 This idea of selecting for a boy a certain profession, and training 
 him for that, comes from the false notion that education is knowl¬ 
 edge. It is not so. The object of education is not to get infor¬ 
 mation simply, but to employ prodesses that shall reach certain 
 results. And this conscious power of wielding truth and of con¬ 
 quering difficulties will send a boy out into the world fitted to en¬ 
 gage in the great battle of life, and to achieve that victory which 
 comes from a thorough discipline like that to which the Prussian 
 soldiers have been subjected. 
 
 And now, Professor Sprague, I too, give you my hand. I 
 welcome you most heartily to our city. God bless you, sir, and 
 bless the school under your care. 
 
 Dr. Budington.— We have heard from the teachers. We 
 have here, also, of the clergy, Rev. Drs. Duryea, Hunt and 
 Moore. Then we have distinguished members of the Judiciary 
 with us. And I see my friend, Gen. Slocum, who represents the 
 great arm of the nation which has made us what we are. We 
 will now T listen to Dr. Duryea. 
 
 /lddi^ess by JDr. JD up^yea. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen : — I shall be very brief, because I 
 come after several speakers, and you will probably have to hear 
 some more. 
 
 I wish simply to say that during the absence of the President 
 of the Board of Trustees, I have endeavored to occupy a portion 
 of the chair that he customarily fills; and I have noticed the 
 interest and fidelity of those Trustees through all the hot weather. 
 I believe we have not failed to have a quorum at any call of a 
 meeting. We have gone through the entire docket, and have 
 endeavored thoroughly to discharge all the duties imposed upon 
 us as members of the various Committees. There are some mem¬ 
 bers of this Board who would laugh at a check of five thousand 
 
INAUGURAL EXERCISES. 
 
 33 
 
 dollars as recompense for their work in behalf of the institution. 
 With their power, with their position, with their pecumary 
 advantage, they would make that money in less time than they 
 have given to the interests of this Academy. I have not found 
 anything that strikes me as selfish, in any aspect of the plan or 
 the action of these Trustees. I believe that they are thoroughly 
 unselfish. I think they have proved it. They, therefore, must 
 have acted generously in all the past, however much they may 
 have been misunderstood. They certainly have acted with abund¬ 
 ant charity to all with whom they have sustained relations in this 
 place; and only that generosity was more due to th$ young than 
 to officials, were they willing at last to surrender charity to justice. 
 They are willing to give, also, as well as to work. They now 
 stand before this community simply as the voluntary servants, as 
 the spontaneous benefactors, of the community. This will be 
 sooner or later understood. We can trust this Board to the dis¬ 
 cernment of the community when attention shall be called to their 
 work. As for the Academy itself, from this hour we have no 
 anxiety whatever. It is necessary that all gold should be proved 
 when there may be counterfeits. There are those who prefer 
 counterfeits that lie on the surface to gold that lies in the veins. 
 There are those who cannot tell the difference between the two 
 when they are put before them. There are those who will spite 
 their children, perhaps, through a partisan attachment to an en¬ 
 terprise. We must be patient through all this. The Academy 
 stands in no relations to the troubles of the past. It stands here 
 upon a new foundation, committed only to the work of the future. 
 It intends to make its way in the estimation and in the affection 
 of the community by the presentation of specimens of its work 
 when it has had time to accomplish that work. We shall stand 
 at the door of the treasury and see that the box is full until the 
 work is done. 
 
 We believe that there is a better work even than this which 
 we have described before us in the future—namely, the work of 
 endowing this institution, and presenting it to the community 
 entirely independent in its resources, so that it may lift its aim 
 as high as’possible, and pursue its work as self-sacrificingly as 
 possible, seeking only to bless the community and the church 
 with cultured men and women. 
 
34 
 
 ADELPHI ACADEMY 
 
 I have to-day ; in traveling, been touched upon the shoulder by 
 a stranger, asking if he were sure that he identified me, and ex¬ 
 pressing deep regret that his town of Ithaca had lost the man 
 that Brooklyn to-night rejoices to have gained; and from his 
 spontaneous testimony, I have not the slightest hesitation in ac¬ 
 cepting and endorsing all that our worthy President has said 
 concerning him who now stands at the head of this institution. 
 We have the record of the past, and not an empty prophecy of 
 the future, for our assurance. We must stand by him. I shall 
 put down in the calendar of this year, as sacred, the time that 
 belongs to this Board of Trustees; and for the year to come I 
 have been cutting loose from other engagements, and putting 
 aside other work, that I may always be in my place in this insti¬ 
 tution. The best thoughts of my mind, the warmest impulses of 
 my heart, and some of the best hours of my week, I intend to give 
 to this institution. 
 
 Dr. Budington.— The minister has always stood by the teacher. 
 And the remarks of my distinguished brother, I am sure, ali the. 1 
 ministers on this platform will echo. The Principal of this insti¬ 
 tution will find, not less in these other ministers than in Dr. 
 Duryea, faithful Sympathizers and friends. 
 
 I am now going to call upon Bev. A. S. Hunt, who represents 
 the denomination which has of late been doing incomparable 
 wonders in the cause of Christian education. 
 
 j^EMAI^KS BY j^EV. y^LBEPT jS. j^UNT. 
 
 After a few introductory remarks, Dr. Hunt enlarged upon 
 two thoughts: 
 
 First —That it was an occasion for gratitude that such em¬ 
 phasis had been given in Prof. Sprague’s address, and, indeed, 
 in all the addresses of the evening, to the vital distinction between 
 education and information. He quoted Kobert Hall’s words: 
 “ Education is measured not merely, or mainly, by the amount of 
 
INAUGURAL EXERCISES. 
 
 35 
 
 knowledge it brings in, but by the amount of power it brings 
 
 out.” 
 
 His second thought was one suggested, as he said, by Dr. Bush- 
 nell. In his admirable address concerning “ Pulpit Talent,” he 
 names, as one of the gifts of ministerial power, that mysterious 
 something which we call a man’s atmosphere. What is true of 
 the preacher is equally true of the teacher. 
 
 Dr. Arnold, Dr. Nott, Dr. Olin and President Hopkins were 
 named as illustrations, and he concluded by saying: “ I think I 
 am expressing the conviction of this entire Board of Trustees 
 when I say that a kind Providence has given us a man to preside 
 over this institution who has not only culture and experience, but 
 an atmosphere which will be potent for good. May God bless 
 him and the institution now committed to his care !” 
 
 Dr. Budington.—I have called upon practical teachers, and 
 also upon practical preachers, to speak. I now call upon a 
 preacher and teacher in one— my honored friend and neighbor— 
 Dr. Moore. 
 
 Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : — Alter having sat 
 at such a board as this, for two hours, spread so generously with 
 the choicest viands, I am persuaded you do not wish for Mo(o)re. 
 I .wish to congratulate you, friends and myself, upon our good 
 fortune in having secured for the Principalship of this Academy 
 one who, by years of devoted and successful labor in the cause of 
 education, has won for himself so eminent a place among the 
 foremost educators of the country. He comes to us not with un¬ 
 fledged notions to try upon us and our youth some new theories, 
 but with a cultivated brain, a large and loving heart and earnest 
 purpose, and a large fund of experience, to employ tried methods 
 of systematic and thorough education. The one thought and the 
 only one which I wish to impress upon your minds is, the import¬ 
 ance of appreciating the responsibility which devolves upon him 
 and the immense difficulties of the task assigned him. This is 
 the point at which we shall be tried—whether we so far appreciate 
 
36 
 
 ADELPHI ACADEMY. 
 
 this work as to be patient and yield that measure of sympathy 
 and co-operation which shall secure the happy results we desire. 
 Dr. Arnold, of Eugby, was accustomed to speak of his pupils as 
 “ an awful charge,” and well he might. Every true teacher feels 
 it. These co-workers with Prof. Sprague feel it. When I was 
 asked to come and take charge of the Washington Avenue Baptist 
 Church, I said to the Committee, “ Will your people be willing to 
 wait patiently for results by legitimate means? by honest Christian 
 work ?” My friends, this teacher may ask us a similar question— 
 whether we will be sufficiently patient to wait for results by true 
 methods of education. Trust much to him. He has referred to 
 some who thought it useless to study arithmetic and geography. 
 I advise you to leave all such questions to him. My watch gets 
 out of order sometimes, and I take it to the watchmaker. He 
 understands watches; I do not; so I allow him to do with it what 
 he thinks best. When I am sick I send for a physician. He 
 understands medicine; I do not; I put myself under his care and 
 submit to his regimen. How, these teachers understand the mat¬ 
 ter of education ; therefore leave much to them. Trust to their 
 judgment as to what is best for your boys and girls to study. 
 One other thing. Be willing that your children should do hard 
 work. Eeference has been made to shams in education. There 
 are plenty of shams in the world, and, as a practical teacher, I tell 
 you that all systems of “ education made easy” are shams. There 
 is no royal road to learning. If you are dissatisfied because your 
 children do not get over ground rapidly, ask yourselves not how 
 many things they have learned but how much thought they have 
 bestowed on what they have learned. 
 
 How, dear friends, I trust 1 may assure Prof. Sprague that we 
 do in some good degree, appreciate the responsibility devolving 
 upon him and the difficulty of the task assigned him ; that we 
 will continue to cherish a lively interest in this institution and in 
 its work ; that we will be ready with helpful sympathy and active 
 co-operation, and do what we can, with him, to make this Adelphi 
 Academy worthy of this fairest portion of our goodly city—a 
 fountain of blessing, whence perennial streams shall go forth to 
 gladden generations to come. 
 
 And now, sir, believing that the friends of this institution will 
 do more and better than I have spoken, I bid you God-speed in 
 your work. 
 
INAUGURAL EXERCISES. 
 
 37 
 
 Dr. Budington. —We have heard from the others; now let us 
 hear from the heavy battalions. Gen. Slocum, tell us how edu¬ 
 cation looks from the halls of Congress. 
 
 BY 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen :— I came here for two purposes this 
 evening. One was, to testify my friendship for this institution 
 and the interest that I feel in its success. The other was, to 
 listen to the addresses that you were informed were to be delivered. 
 And I have been amply paid for coming. 
 
 The Doctor now requests me to bring on the heavy battalions. 
 That requires energy, I can assure you; and I am too good a 
 general to get up at half past ten o’clock at night and attempt to 
 follow such gentlemen as have preceded me. I have too much 
 sense to engage in any work of that kind. 
 
 In this day and age of the world, the sight of thirty or forty 
 gentlemen assembling together to promote an interest where they 
 can reap no profit, no benefit but that which they will get in com¬ 
 mon with all their neighbors, is a sight so rare that it seems to 
 me it should attract public attention and command public sym¬ 
 pathy. That is the sight which this community beholds here. 
 We all remember that a little over a year ago, forty or fifty 
 gentlemen assembled in this room to discuss the propriety of pur¬ 
 chasing this property. We all remember how disinterested every 
 one was, and how at that, and all subsequent meetings, no feeling 
 and no thought but that of an ^earnest desire to benefit this com¬ 
 munity, and to benefit this school, was ever entertained. When 
 the discussion came up as to whether this should be taken as pri¬ 
 vate property, or endowed and given to the public, there was not 
 a single dissenting voice among the whole number. All favored 
 endowment. And from that day to this these gentlemen, having 
 already given money, have since given their time—some of them 
 a large portion of it—and, as I said before, with no hope of 
 reward. And I do think, should this effort fail, aside from the 
 loss the community would experience in losing the school, it would 
 suffer another great and even more severe loss. The failure of 
 
38 
 
 ADELPHI ACADEMY 
 
 any attempt of this kind is disheartening. When men labor from 
 such pure motives, with no desire but that of benefiting the pub¬ 
 lic, they ought to succeed; and I believe that in this case they 
 will. I have full faith. We are passing through a crisis, but I 
 believe that when this community and the citizens of Brooklyn 
 come to understand fully the motives that have prompted the 
 gentlemen who have been engaged in this enterprise, and the 
 fairness with which they have treated everybody, they will take 
 hold and sustain them. 
 
 Looking upon this effort merely in a pecuniary point of view, I 
 believe the citizens of Brooklyn could well afford, if from no other 
 consideration, to clear this institution from debt. As Dr. Buding- 
 ton has said, the Prussians have achieved their successes in a 
 great measure by reason of the intelligence of the common 
 soldier. 
 
 I remember, about two years ago, listening to an address by 
 Dr. Stokes’ in the Academy of Music—one of the most eloquent 
 addresses that I ever listened to—in which he spoke of the Prus¬ 
 sian common school system as being ahead of any other on earth. 
 When the first tidings came to us of the successes of the Prussian 
 armies, this recurred to my mind. I believe that Prussia owes 
 more to her common schools than to her military academies. 
 
 The statement made by the Doctor relative to the Prussian 
 soldiers reminds me of what I have witnessed a hundred times in 
 our own army. Sherman’s army was, I believe, as intelligent a 
 body of men as ever moved on a battle field, and I had more 
 opportunity than I ever had with any other troops of observing 
 their habits. Almost every day, on the march to the sea, when 
 they stopped to take their lunch at noon, I rode through the 
 whole line. The men would be seated along the road, extending 
 often some ten or fifteen miles, and I passed through between 
 them. I have seen a hundred men at a time studying their little 
 maps. When they started they had the good sense to supply 
 themselves with pocket maps, which were published and sold 
 very cheaply in New York. And, as they sat along the road-side 
 studying these maps, I have heard private soldiers discuss as in¬ 
 telligently as a body of officers could do what would probably be 
 the movements of the morrow. And the strength of our army, 
 like that of the Prussian army, lay in their intelligence. 
 
INAUGURAL EXERCISES. 
 
 39 
 
 Build up common schools, then, and you have the best standing 
 army that you can have. If you want to reduce your taxes, 
 bring up a generation of men who can understand a tax budget. 
 
 I thank the doctor for calling on me, for I want to be recognized 
 as a friend of the Adelphi Academy. 
 
 Remarks by JDr. ptuTCHisoN. 
 
 Dr. Hutchison, being called upon, said: 
 
 Public speaking, as you are aware, Mr. President, is very far 
 from my appropriate sphere; but I am glad, in responding to 
 your call, to have the opportunity of expressing to this community 
 the fullest confidence in the present management of the Adelphi 
 Academy. The success of the institution is beyond a peradven- 
 ture if it continues to pursue, quietly and assiduously, its 
 substantial course of instruction, looking neither to the right nor 
 to the left, but seeking the favor of the public by the only avenue 
 which is permanently available in this common sense country— 
 that of assiduous attention to the honorable interests of its pupils. 
 
 In introducing the next speaker, Judge Pratt, the President 
 said, “How the Judges end the strife.” 
 
 y4:DDRESS BY jJuDGE pRATT. 
 
 Capt. Marryatt, in one of his novels, describes a triangular 
 duel, in which the combatants were placed each at the angle of a 
 triangle: A fired at B, B at 0, and C at A, and thus it proceeded 
 until all parties were satisfied. How, I have always noticed that 
 when teachers and ministers—experts in speech-making—catch a 
 lawyer out of court, with no client or fee, -and hence unarmed, 
 there is always a “triangular duel,” with this difference, however, 
 from the one described by Marryatt : The lawyer is placed at 
 the apex of the triangle, and the other two, from their respective 
 corners, blaze away at him. 
 
 I was assured by my friend upon my right that if I would 
 come with him upon this stand, under no circumstances should I 
 
40 
 
 ADELPHI ACADEMY 
 
 be called out. Now, to “ end all strife,” I adjudge him guilty of 
 a “ contempt ” towards you, Mr. Chairman, and a “fraud upon 
 the Court.” 
 
 But, notwithstanding the disadvantages under which I am 
 placed, and the reprehensible conduct of my friend, the General, 
 who has manoeuvred me into this position, I am proud to have an 
 opportunity of paying a tribute of respect and admiration to the 
 character and talents of the gentleman whose services you have 
 secured for this institution. 
 
 I recollect well, some sixteen or eighteen years ago, when he 
 came to the city ctf Worcester. Although quite young in years, 
 a reputation for ripe scholarship, fine talents and strict integrity 
 preceded him. He studied law with remarkable industry and 
 commenced practice with marked success. 
 
 I cannot concede that it was for the same reason assigned 
 by Dr. Cochrane why another young man could not be a lawyer 
 that Professor Sprague left the legal profession, and it certainly 
 was not a want of success, for no man at that day had a more 
 brilliant future before him as a lawyer. It must be attributed 
 not to the fact that he loved the law less but that he loved teaching 
 more. 
 
 He did leave the law and took charge of the Public Academy 
 at Worcester. The loss sustained by the bar has been gain to 
 the cause of education, and to hundreds, nay, thousands of youth, 
 who have been instructed by him. The success he has achieved 
 as a teacher is well known to the Trustees who have employed 
 him here. All I have to say to the patrons is, you have secured 
 a prize. From this inauguration you may date assured success. 
 Take my word for it, under his administration this Academy will 
 be all its most ardent friends can wish. 
 
NDOWMENT AND 
 
 
 NCORPORATION, 
 
 In the summer of 1869, the Adelphi Academy, which had hitherto 
 existed as a private school, was purchased by the donations of the follow¬ 
 ing named citizens of Brooklyn: WilliamS. Woodward, Buckley T. 
 Benton, Alfred S. Barnes, Alfred C. Barnes, William H. Wal¬ 
 lace, Charles H. Noyes, Charles Evans, Gen. Henry W. Slocum, 
 Samuel M. Mills, Thomas Vernon, Joseph C. Hutchison, M D., 
 Charles E. Hill, Enos N. Taft, Rev. William Ives Budington, 
 John Davol, Charles Pratt, Samuel Crowell, Peter M. Dingee, 
 Joseph B. Elliott, M. D., Samuel Wright, T. J. Ellinwood. 
 
 This was not for the purpose of continuing it as private property, but 
 with a view to its incorporation and the gift thereof to the community as 
 a public institution forever. 
 
 In August, 1869, the donors petitioned the Regents of the University 
 for such incorporation, and nominated a Board of twenty-four Trustees 
 pursuant to the ordinances of the Regents and the Statue of the State. 
 
 This petition was granted, the charter was issued by the Regents, and 
 the institution became duly incorporated with the Board of Trustees thus 
 nominated by the donors. 
 
 All the property pertaining to the Academy was thereupon duly con¬ 
 veyed to and became vested in the corporation so created, and henceforth 
 no private interest whatever remained, but the same, with all its revenues 
 and increase, was forever donated, and by the sanction and binding force 
 of law, dedicated to the public . 
 
 The Trustees. 
 
 The Trustees so nominated and appointed, and their successors, are 
 bound by law to administer the trust reposed in them, and apply all the 
 property of the Academy, and its revenues, in such manner, under the 
 laws of the State, as they shall conscientiously deem most conducive to 
 the objects of the trust. 
 
 They serve without reward, and have no other personal interest in the 
 institution than belongs to any other citizen But as the duty of dis¬ 
 charging a trust is reposed in them by law, so long as they serve as 
 Trustees, they must perform that duty by the free exercise of their own 
 
 best judgment. 
 
42 
 
 ENDOWMENT AND INCORPORATION. 
 
 This obligation they freely acknowledge, and will exert their best 
 endeavors to perform. 
 
 Future Donations. 
 
 It being known that this institution is now established upon the new 
 foundation of a pure public trust, there is good reason to believe that 
 further and liberal donations will, from time to time, be bestowed upon 
 the Academy by public-spirited citizens, until not only the incumbrances 
 now upon its property shall be wholly removed, but its means of useful¬ 
 ness be largely increased. 
 
 The public are asked to remember that this institution and all its property 
 are exclusively for them and for their children; that no one person has in 
 law any greater interest in it than another, and all may take a just pride 
 in promoting its growth and prosperity. 
 
 Buildings. 
 
 The building appropriated to the Preparatory Department, in Adelphi 
 Street, contains six excellent school rooms and one large and commodious 
 calisthenic hall. It is provided with Robinson ventilators and is well, 
 furnished for school purposes. 
 
 The new Adelphi building on Lafayette avenue is, in many respects, 
 a model edifice. It is one hundred and twenty-one feet in length by fifty- 
 three in breadth. It is handsomely and solidly built of brick, with all the 
 modern improvements. The rooms are light and pleasant, and adequately 
 provided with separate cloak and toilet rooms and water closets adjoining. 
 The furniture is convenient and elegant. The Calistheneum is a spacious 
 and beautiful hall, fifty feet by sixty-seven, with twenty-four feet ceiling^ 
 affording exercise for seventy pupils at once. The adjoining play-grounds 
 are ample. 
 
 Nature of the Institution. 
 
 The Adelphi Academy is not a private speculation, but a public bene¬ 
 faction. It belongs to no one man or set of men, but to the whole com¬ 
 munity. Should the receipts be greater than the expenditures, the 
 community alone will be the gainers. The controlling purpose of the 
 gentlemen who made this gift to the public was to advance the cause of 
 education and the common welfare by bringing hundreds of our most 
 promising children and youth under influences that should foster in them 
 a nobler manhood and womanhood; to lay broad and deep the foundations 
 of their usefulness and happiness; and so, to plant in the heart of this 
 great city an institution that should 'go on e&]oanflinj^ arid blessing long 
 after its founders should have passed away. 
 
 j|M!VERS'T v OF ILLINOIS