BOYHOOD 



a cabinet before he was ten years old. I recall many 

 tramps, when we came back laden with what looked very 

 like ' trash ' to most folks. But dear Sister Harriet was 

 an angel of patience." 



We have also a picture of the school where this boy 

 was taught after he reached the age of fourteen, the 

 Utica High School. Charles Bartlett was its master, and 

 Fay Edgerton the teacher of science. Its methods were 

 influenced in no slight degree by those of the Round Hill 

 School in Northampton, where Joseph G. Cogswell and 

 George Bancroft were teachers, and still more by those 

 of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute of Troy, then 

 under the direction of Amos Eaton, an influential pro- 

 moter of scientific teaching throughout eastern and cen- 

 tral New York. Many are they who owe their love of 

 science directly or indirectly to this inspiring teacher. 



A letter from Dr. M. M. Bagg, of Utica, gives these 

 particulars : 



" About 1826, Charles Bartlett, a graduate of Union 

 College, ambitious and enterprising, though not remarka- 

 ble as a scholar, and having liberal ideas of what should 

 be the requirements of such a school as he proposed to 

 establish, gave up a day-school that he was then con- 

 ducting, and devoted some time to preparations for his 

 future work. After visiting several schools of the day, 

 he is believed to have adopted as his model the Round 

 Hill School of Northampton, then in wide repute. The 

 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute of Troy, a pioneer 

 school of science, then flourishing under the direction of 

 Amos Eaton, furnished other and important features that 

 were adopted. As his teacher of the natural sciences 

 he selected Fay Edgerton of Bennington, Vermont, a 

 recent graduate of the Institute, and with him and other 

 teachers the Utica High School (as Mr. Bartlett called 

 it) was begun in the year 1827. Mr. Edgerton gave lec- 

 tures in a moderately furnished laboratory, successively 

 in chemistry, botany, mineralogy, and geology, to classes 

 of the older students, who in turn were required, after a 



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