The Bay State Monthly. Volume 2, No. 3, December, 1884

The great fire of 1872 brought loss to Mr. Lothrop among the many who suffered. Much of the hard-won earnings of years of toil was swept away in that terrible night. About two weeks later, a large quantity of paper which had been destroyed during the great fire had been replaced, and the printing of the same was in process at the printing house of Rand, Avery & Co., when a fire broke out there, destroying this second lot of paper, intended for the first edition of sixteen volumes of the celebrated $1,000 prize books. A third lot of paper was purchased for these books and sent to the Riverside Press without delay. The books were at last printed, as many thousand readers can testify, an enterprise that called out from the Boston papers much commendation, adding, in one instance: 'Mr. Lothrop seems warmed up to his work.'

When the time was ripe, another form of Mr. Lothrop's plans for the creation of a great popular literature was inaugurated. We refer to the projection of his now famous 'Wide Awake,' a magazine into which he has thrown a large amount of money. Thrown it, expecting to wait for results. And they have begun to come. 'Wide Awake' now stands abreast with the finest periodicals in our country, or abroad. In speaking of 'Wide Awake' the Boston Herald says: 'No such marvel of excellence could be reached unless there were something beyond the strict calculations of money-making to push those engaged upon it to such magnificent results.' Nothing that money can do is spared for its improvement. Withal, it is the most carefully edited of all magazines; Mr. Lothrop's strict determination to that effect, having placed wise hands at the helm to co-operate with him. Our best people have found this out. The finest writers in this country and in Europe are giving of their best thought to filling its pages, the most celebrated artists are glad to work for it. Scientific men, professors, clergymen, and all heads of households give in their testimony of its merits as a family magazine, while the young folks are delighted with it. The fortune of 'Wide Awake' is sure. Next Mr. Lothrop proceeded to supply the babies with their own especial magazine. Hence came bright, winsome, sparkling 'Babyland.' The mothers caught at the idea. 'Babyland' jumped into success in an incredibly short space of time. The editors of 'Wide Awake,' Mr. and Mrs. Pratt, edit this also, which ensures it as safe, wholesome and sweet to put into baby's hands. The intervening spaces between 'Babyland' and 'Wide Awake' Mr. Lothrop soon filled with 'Our Little Men and Women,' and 'The Pansy.' Urgent solicitations from parents and teachers who need a magazine for those little folks, either at home or at school, who were beginning to read and spell, brought out the first, and Mrs. G.R. Alden (Pansy) taking charge of a weekly pictorial paper of that name, was the reason for the beginning and growth of the second. The 'Boston Book Bulletin,' a quarterly, is a medium for acquaintance with the best literature, its prices, and all news current pertaining to it.

'The Chatauqua Young Folk's Journal' is the latest addition to the sparkling list. This periodical was a natural growth of the modern liking for clubs, circles, societies, reading unions, home studies, and reading courses. It is the official voice of the Chatauqua Young Folks Reading Union, and furnishes each year a valuable and vivacious course of readings on topics of interest to youth. It is used largely in schools. Its contributors are among our leading clergymen, lawyers, university professors, critics, historians and scientists, but all its literature is of a popular character, suited to the family circle rather than the study. Mr. Lothrop now has the remarkable success of seeing six flourishing periodicals going forth from his house.

In 1875, Mr. Lothrop, finding his Cornhill quarters inaquate [sic], leased the elegant building corner Franklin and Hawley streets, belonging to Harvard College, for a term of years. The building is 120 feet long by 40 broad, making the salesroom, which is on the first floor, one of the most elegant in the country. On the second floor are Mr. Lothrop's offices, also the editorial offices of 'Wide Awake,' etc. On the third floor are the composing rooms and mailing rooms of the different periodicals, while the bindery fills the fourth floor.

This building also was found small; it could accommodate only one-fourth of the work done, and accordingly a warehouse on Purchase street was leased for storing and manufacturing purposes.

In 1879 Mr. Lothrop called to his assistance a younger brother, Mr. M.H. Lothrop, who had already made a brilliant business record in Dover, N.H., to whom he gives an interest in the business. All who care for the circulation of the best literature will be glad to know that everything indicates the work to be steadily increasing toward complete development of Mr. Lothrop's life-long purpose."6

This man of large purposes and large measures has, of course, his sturdy friends, his foes as sturdy. He has, without doubt, an iron will. He is, without doubt, a good fighter—a wise counselor. Approached by fraud he presents a front of granite; he cuts through intrigue with sudden, forceful blows. It is true that the sharp bargainer, the overreaching buyer he worsts and puts to confusion and loss without mercy. But, no less, candor and honor meet with frankness and generous dealing. He is as loyal to a friend as to a purpose. His interest in one befriended and taken into trust is for life. It has been more than once said of this immovable business man that he has the simple heart of a boy.

Mr. Lothrop's summer home is in Concord, Mass. His house, known to literary pilgrims of both continents as "The Wayside," is a unique, many gabled old mansion, situated near the road at the base of a pine-covered hill, facing broad, level fields, and commanding a view of charming rural scenery. Its dozen green acres are laid out in rustic paths; but with the exception of the removal of unsightly underbrush, the landscape is left in a wild and picturesque state. Immediately in the rear of the house, however, A. Bronson Alcott, a former occupant, planned a series of terraces, and thereon is a system of trees. The house was commenced in the seventeenth century and has been added to at different periods, and withal is quaint enough to satisfy the most exacting antiquarian. At the back rise the more modern portions, and the tower, wherein was woven the most delightful of American romances, and about which cluster tender memories of the immortal Hawthorne. The boughs of the whispering pines almost touch the lofty windows.

The interior of the dwelling is seemly. It corresponds with the various eras of its construction. The ancient low-posted rooms with their large open fire-places, in which the genial hickory crackles and glows as in the olden time, have furnishings and appointments in harmony. The more modern apartments are charming, the whole combination making a most delightful country house.

Mr. Lothrop's enjoyment of art and his critical appreciation is illustrated here as throughout his publications, his house being adorned with many exquisite and valuable original paintings from the studios of modern artists; and there is, too, a certain literary fitness that his home should be in this most classic spot, and that the mistress of this home should be a lady of distinguished rank in literature, and that the fair baby daughter of the house should wear for her own the name her mother has made beloved in thousands of American and English households.

New England Conservatory of Music

By MRS. M.J. DAVIS

One of the most important questions now occupying the minds of the world's deepest and best thinkers, is the intellectual, physical, moral, and political position of woman.

Men are beginning to realize a fact that has been evident enough for ages: that the current of civilization can never rise higher than the springs of motherhood. Given the ignorant, debased mothers of the Turkish harem, and the inevitable result is a nation destitute of truth, honor or political position. All the power of the Roman legions, all the wealth of the imperial empire, could not save the throne of the Cæsars when the Roman matron was shorn of her honor, and womanhood became only the slave or the toy of its citizens. Men have been slow to grasp the fact that women are a "true constituent of the bone and sinew of society," and as such should be trained to bear the part of "bone and sinew." It has been finely said, "that as times have altered and conditions varied, the respect has varied in which woman has been held. At one time condemned to the field and counted with the cattle, at another time condemned to the drawing-room and inventoried with marbles, oils and water-colors; but only in instances comparatively rare, acknowledged and recognized in the fullness of her moral and intellectual possibilities, and in the beauteous completeness of her personal dignity, prowess and obligation."

Various and widely divergent as opinions are in regard to woman's place in the political sphere, there is fast coming to be unanimity of thought in regard to her intellectual development. Even in Turkey, fathers are beginning to see that their daughters are better, not worse, for being able to read and, write, and civilization is about ready to concede that the intellectual, physical and moral possibilities of woman are to be the only limits to her attainment. Vast strides in the direction of the higher and broader education of women have been made in the quarter of a century since John Vassar founded on the banks of the Hudson the noble college for women that bears his name; and others have been found who have lent willing hands to making broad the highway that leads to an ideal womanhood. Wellesley and Smith, as well as Vassar find their limits all too small for the throngs of eager girlhood that are pressing toward them. The Boston University, honored in being first to open professional courses to women, Michigan University, the New England Conservatory, the North Western University of Illinois, the Wesleyan Universities, both of Connecticut and Ohio, with others of the colleges of the country, have opened their doors and welcomed women to an equal share with men, in their advantages. And in the shadow of Oxford, on the Thames, and of Harvard, on the Charles, womanly minds are growing, womanly lives are shaping, and womanly patience is waiting until every barrier shall be removed, and all the green fields of learning shall be so free that whosoever will may enter.

Among the foremost of the great educational institutions of the day, the New England Conservatory of Music takes rank, and its remarkable development and wonderful growth tends to prove that the youth of the land desire the highest advantages that can be offered them. More than thirty years ago the germ of the idea that is now embodied in this great institution, found lodgment in the brain of the man who has devoted his life to its development. Believing that music had a positive influence upon the elevation of the world hardly dreamed of as yet even by its most devoted students, Eben Tourjee returned to America from years of musical study in the great Conservatories of Europe. Knowing from personal observation the difficulties that lie in the way of American students, especially of young and inexperienced girls who seek to obtain a musical education abroad, battling as they must, not only with foreign customs and a foreign language, but exposed to dangers, temptations and disappointments, he determined to found in America a music school that should be unsurpassed in the world. Accepting the judgment of the great masters, Mendelsshon, David, and Joachim, that the conservatory system was the best possible system of musical instruction, doing for music what a college of liberal arts does for education in general, Dr. Tourjee in 1853, with what seems to have been large and earnest faith, and most entire devotion, took the first public steps towards the accomplishment of his purpose. During the long years his plan developed step by step. In 1870 the institution was chartered under its present name in Boston. In 1881 its founder deeded to it his entire personal property, and by a deed of trust gave the institution into the hands of a Board of Trustees to be perpetuated forever as a Christian Music School.

In the carrying out of his plan to establish and equip an institution that should give the highest musical culture, Dr. Tourjee has been compelled, in order that musicians educated here should not be narrow, one-sided specialists only, but that they should be cultured men and women, to add department after department, until to-day under the same roof and management there are well equipped schools of Music, Art, Elocution, Literature, Languages, Tuning, Physical Culture, and a home with the safeguards of a Christian family life for young women students.

When, in 1882, the institution moved from Music Hall to its present quarters in Franklin Square, in what was the St. James Hotel, it became possessed of the largest and best equipped conservatory buildings in the world. It has upon its staff of seventy-five teachers, masters from the best schools of Europe. During the school year ending June 29, 1884, students coming from forty-one states and territories of the Union, from the British Provinces, from England and from the Sandwich Islands, have received instruction there. The growth of this institution, due in such large measure to the courage and faith of one man, has been remarkable, and it stands to-day self-supporting, without one dollar of endowment, carrying on alone its noble work, an institution of which Boston, Massachusetts and America may well be proud. From the first its invitation has been without limitation. It began with a firm belief that "what it is in the nature of a man or woman to become, is a Providential indication of what God wants it to become, by improvement and development," and it offered to men and women alike the same advantages, the same labor, and the same honor. It is working out for itself the problem of co-education, and it has never had occasion to take one backward step in the part it has chosen. Money by the millions has been poured out upon the schools and colleges of the land, and not one dollar too much has been given, for the money that educates is the money that saves the nation.

Among those who have been made stewards of great wealth some liberal benefactor should come forward in behalf of this great school, that, by eighteen years of faithful living, has proved its right to live. Its founder says of it: "The institution has not yet compassed my thought of it." Certainly it has not reached its possibilities of doing good. It needs a hall in which its concerts and lectures can be given, and in which the great organ of Music Hall, may be placed. It needs that its chapel, library, studios, gymnasium and recitation rooms should be greatly enlarged to meet the actual demands now made upon them. It needs what other institutions have needed and received, a liberal endowment, to enable it, with them, to meet and solve the great question of the day, the education of the people.

SKETCH OF SAUGUS

By E.P. ROBINSON

Saugus lies about eight miles northeast of Boston. It was incorporated as an independent town February 17, 1815, and was formerly a part of Lynn, which once bore the name of Saugus, being an Indian name, and signifies great or extended. It has a taxable area of 5,880 acres, and its present population may be estimated at about 2,800, living in 535 houses. The former boundary between Lynn and Suffolk County ran through the centre of the "Boardman House," in what is now Saugus, and standing near the line between Melrose and Saugus, and is one of the oldest houses in the town. It has forty miles of accepted streets and roads, which are proverbial as being kept in the very best condition. Its public buildings are a Town Hall, a wooden structure, of Gothic architecture, with granite steps and underpining, and has a seating capacity of seven hundred and eighty persons. It is considered to be the handsomest wooden building in Essex County, and cost $48,000. The High School is accommodated within its walls, and beside offices for the various boards of town officers; on the lower floor it has a room for a library. The upper flight has an auditorium with ante-rooms at the front and rear, a balcony at the front, seats one hundred and eighty persons, and a platform on the stage at the rear. It was built in 1874-5. The building committee were E.P. Robinson, Gilbert Waldron, J.W. Thomas, H.B. Newhall, Wilbur F. Newhall, Augustus B. Davis, George N. Miller, George H. Hull, Louis P. Hawkes, William F. Hitchings, E.E. Wilson, Warren P. Copp, David Knox, A. Brad. Edmunds and Henry Sprague. E.P. Robinson was chosen chairman and David Knox secretary. The architects were Lord & Fuller of Boston, and the work of building was put under contract to J.H. Kibby & Son of Chelsea.

The town also owns seven commodious schoolhouses, in which are maintained thirteen schools—one High, three Grammar, three Intermediate, three Primaries, one sub-Primary and two mixed schools, the town appropriating the sum of six thousand dollars therefor. There are five Churches—Congregational, Universalist, and three Methodist, besides two societies worshiping in halls (the St. John's Episcopal Mission and the Union at North Saugus). After the schism in the old Third Parish about 1809, the religious feud between the Trinitarians and the Unitarians became so intense that a lawsuit was had to obtain the fund, the Universalists retaining possession. The Trinitarians then built the old stone Church, under the direction of Squire Joseph Eames, which, as a piece of architecture, did not reflect much credit on builder or architect. It is now used as a grocery and post office; their present place of worship was built in 1852. The Church edifice of the old Third was erected in 1738, and was occupied without change until 1859, when it was sold and moved off the spot, and the site is now marked by a flag staff and band stand, known as Central Square. The old Church was moved a short distance and converted into tenements, with a store underneath. The Universalist society built their present Church in 1860. The town farm consists of some 280 acres, and has a fine wood lot of 240 acres, the remainder being valuable tillage, costing in 1823 $4,625.

The town is rich in local history and has either produced or been the residence of a number of notable men and women.

Judge William Tudor, the father of the ice business, now so colossal in its proportions, started the trade here, living on what is now the poor farm. The Saugus Female Seminary once held quite a place in literary circles, Cornelius C. Felton, afterward president of Harvard College, being its "chore boy" (the remains of his parents lie in the cemetery near by). Fanny Fern, the sister of N.P. Willis, the wife of James Parton, the celebrated biographer, as well as two sisters of Dr. Alexander Vinton, pursued their studies here, together with Miss Flint, who married Honorable Daniel P. King, member of Congress for the Essex District, and Miss Dustin, who became the wife of Eben Sutton, and who has been so devoted and interested in the library of the Peabody Institute. Mr. Emerson, the preceptor, was for a time the pastor of the Third Parish of Lynn (now Saugus Universalist society), where Parson Roby preached for a period of fifty-three years—more than half a century, with a devotion and fidelity that greatly endeared him to his people. In passing we give the items of his salary as voted him in 1747, taken from the records of the Parish, being kindly furnished by the Clerk, Mr. W.F. Hitchings: "A suitable house and barn, standing in a suitable place; pasturing and sufficient warter meet for two Cows and one horse—the winter meet put in his barn; the improvement of two acres of land suitable to plant and to be kept well fenced; sixty pounds in lawful silver money, at six shillings and eight pence per ounce; twenty cords of wood at his Dore, and the Loose Contributions; and also the following artikles, or so much money as will purchase them, viz: Sixty Bushels Indian Corn, forty-one Bushels of Rye, Six hundred pounds wait of Pork and Eight Hundred and Eighty Eight pounds wait of Beefe."

This would be considered a pretty liberal salary even now for a suburban people to pay. From the records of his parish it would seem he always enjoyed the love and confidence of his people, and was sincerely mourned by them at his death, which occurred January 31, 1803, at the advanced age of eighty years, and as stated above in the fifty-third year of his ministry. Among other good works and mementoes which he left behind him was the "Roby Elm," set out with his own hand, and which is now more than one hundred and twenty-five years old. It is in an excellent state of preservation, and with its perfectly conical shape at the top, attracts marked attention from all lovers and observers of trees. Among the names of worthy citizens who have impressed themselves upon the memory of their survivors, either as business men of rare executive ability, or as merchants of strict integrity, or scholars and men of literary genius, lawyers, artists, writers, poets, and men of inventive genius, we will first mention as eldest on the list "Landlord" Jacob Newhall, who used to keep a tavern in the east part of the town and gave "entertainment to man and beast" passing between Boston and Salem, notably so to General Washington on his journey from Boston to Salem in 1797, and later to the Marquis De Lafayette in 1824, when making a similar journey. We also mention Zaccheus Stocker, Jonathan Makepeace, Charles Sweetser, Dr. Abijah Cheever, Benjamin F. Newhall and Benjamin Hitchings. These last all held town office with great credit to themselves and their constituents.

Benjamin F. Newhall was a man of versatile parts. Beside writing rhymes he preached the Gospel, and was at one time County Commissioner for Essex County.

To these may be added Salmon Snow, who held the office of Selectman for several years, and also kept the poor of Saugus for many years with great acceptance. He was a man of good judgment, strong in his likes and dislikes, and bitter in his resentments. George Henry Sweetser was also a Selectman for years, and was elected to the Legislature for both branches, being Senator for two terms. Frederick Stocker, noted as a manufacturer of brick, was also a man of sterling qualities, and shared in the confidence and esteem of his fellow citizens. Joseph Stocker Newhall, a manufacturer of roundings in sole leather, was a just man, of positive views, and although interesting himself in the political issues of the day would not take office. Eminently social he was at times somewhat abrupt and laconic in denouncing what he conceived to be shams. As a manufacturer his motto was, "the laborer is worthy of his hire." He died in 1875, aged 67 years. George Pearson was Treasurer of the town and one of the Selectmen, and also Treasurer and Deacon of the Orthodox parish for twenty-five years, living to the advanced age of eighty-seven years. He died in 1883.

Later, about 1837, Edward Pranker, an Englishman, and Francis Scott, a Scotchman, became noted for their woollen factories, which they built in Saugus, and also became residents here for the rest of their lives. Enoch Train, too, a Boston ship merchant and founder of the famous line of packets between Boston and Liverpool for the transportation of emigrants, passed the last ten years of his life here, marrying Mrs. Almira Cheever. He was the father of Mrs. A.D.T. Whitney, the author of many works of fiction, which have been widely read; among them "Faith Gartney's Girlhood," "Odd or Even," "Sights and Insights," etc. In this connection we point to a living novelist of Saugus, Miss Ella Thayer, whose "Wired Lore" has been through several editions. George William Phillips, brother of Wendell, a lawyer of some note, also lived many years at Saugus and died in 1878. Joseph Ames, the artist, celebrated for his portraits, who was commissioned by the Catholics to visit Rome and paint Pope Pius IX., and who executed in a masterly manner other commissions, such as Rufus Choate, Daniel Webster, Abraham Lincoln, Madames Rachael and Ristori, learned the art in Saugus, though born in Roxbury, N.H. He died at New York while temporarily painting there, but was buried in Saugus in 1874. His brother Nathan was a patent solicitor, and considered an expert in such matters, and invented several useful machines. He was also a writer of both prose and poetry, writing among other books "Pirate's Glen," "Dungeon Rock" and "Childe Harold." He died in 1860.