EDITORIAL 



(Perhaps Pardonably Personal.) 



For Forty Years a Teacher. 



On June 6th Dr. Edward F. Bigelow 

 went to Montville, Connecticut, to cele- 

 brate, with the Center School of that 

 town, an interesting- occasion. It has 

 been forty years since he first went to 

 Montville to teach school. At that 

 time he was seventeen years of age, 

 and had been called from Bacon Acad- 

 emy, Colchester, to take charge as prin- 

 cipal of the Montville Center School, 

 although he had completed only two 

 years of his course at the academy. 

 The situation at Montville was pecu- 

 liar. The authorities of Bacon Acade- 

 my had been requested to send to the 

 Center School a teacher big enough 

 and robust enough to protect the school 

 and to prevent himself from being 

 forcibly ejected by the "big" boys. In 

 those days the pupils in many schools 

 considered it highly creditable to them- 

 selves if they threw the school-teacher 

 out of doors. This was usually done 

 on the first day. Having tossed him 

 into the bushes, they told him to head 

 homeward, and he usually obeyed. The 

 request to Bacon Academy was for a 

 teacher who could stay in the school- 

 room. It was not necessary for him to 

 know anything else than how to stay. 

 Staying qualities were more important 

 than much learning. As Dr. Bigelow 

 was about six feet tall, weighed nearlv 

 two hundred pounds, and had come out 

 of the wild wood^ as a hunter and 

 trapper, where he had been trained by 

 a prize fighter, it was thought that he 

 might fill the bill, because "Bill," the 

 famous hunter and prize fighter, had 

 drilled him and taught him certain val- 

 uable movements that might astonish 

 those "big" boys. The new teacher 

 stayed in that schoolroom. He did the 

 teaching. He was not taught by being 

 thrown out of the window. If any one 

 took his departure by means of the win- 

 dow, it was not the new teacher. Sev- 

 eral of the pupils were older than he 



but he stayed with them. And, after 

 an interval, they stayed with him. Re- 

 cently he told the story of his prelimi- 

 nary training, and of some assistance 

 that he had rendered to a woman who 

 had been to Norwich to buy a sewing 

 machine. The story, entitled "Prize 

 Fighting and Sewing Machines," was 

 published in "The Sewing Machine 

 Times," New York City. Copies of 

 the article were circulated in the Mont- 

 ville school together with a recent es- 

 say from "The Christian Endeavor 

 World" by a naturalist friend of Chat- 

 tanooga, Tennessee. These two articles 

 resulted in an invitation for the former 

 teacher to visit the school after forty 

 years and give his former pupils an op- 

 portunity to do what at that time they 

 were compelled to leave undone- 

 throw him out of the schoolhouse. The 

 naturalist jocosely said that it might 

 be a dark and deep-laid plot but he is 

 still six feet high, he still weighs an 

 eighth of a ton, so he went. 



The present Superintendent of 

 Schools suggested that the old teacher 

 deliver a lecture, the proceeds to be de- 

 voted to the taking of the senior class 

 of to, 1 7 to the capital at Hartford. The 

 exercises included a roll call with re- 

 sponses, a history of the school, kind 

 and regretful words for the pupils that 

 have died, and a general rally of the 

 old-time boys and girls, every one of 

 whom is considerably more than a half 

 century old* although that is never 

 mentioned. There were also addresses 

 to the present pupils and exercises by 

 them. 



Among the pupils of the reunion 

 were some of the most prominent men 

 and women of Montville and of vari' us 

 other places, including a present Rep- 

 resentative of the Legislature, a Judge 

 of Probate and so on. The oldest puoil 

 of the school, now nearly fifty-nine 

 vears of age, presided. Though he 

 holds a prominent position in a large 



