22 



THE AMERICAN NATURALIST 



[Vol. LI 



also a teacher in the English high school in Boston, following this occu- 

 pation for over twenty years. ... He is a profound scholar and sue- 



It will be noted that Leonard was teaching at the English 

 high school, 1862- '82, at the time Charles 0. Whitman 

 was there and had preceded him there probably ten years. 

 Leonard was especially interested in mathematics and 

 during the later years of his life devoted much time to 



squaring the circle," i. e., to determining if the relation w 

 can be exactly expressed by a fraction. He is said to have 

 worked out the decimal to over 1,250 places. Relatives 

 say that George Leonard helped secure a college educa- 

 tion for Charles and his influence must have been great 

 in getting his parents to let Charles go instead of, as 

 eldest son, helping his father with his business. Leonard 

 graduated, 1859, and taught, probably 1859- '62, at the 

 academy in Norway and that at Paris only a mile or two 

 away; Charles studied at the Norway Academy, 1861- '64. 

 George Leonard, as we have seen, was already a veteran 

 at the English high when Charles came there to teach, re- 

 taining his connection with it for seven years, and during 

 this entire period his uncle taught there. 



Another instance of scholasticism in this family is that 

 of Charles's first cousin. Rev. Harrison Spofford Whit- 

 man, who was bom 1844, a year or two later than Charles. 

 Harrison is the son of Harrison Whitman, who was a 

 farmer, at one time captain of an infantry company of 

 Woodstock that saw some service at the time when war 

 was threatened over the boundary of Maine ; he was also 

 some time coroner of Oxford County, and died at the age 

 of thirty-one years, leaving a widow and three children. 

 Harrison, Jr., early showed remarkable aptitude in com- 

 position (as did his brother and sister) ; he wrote both 

 prose and poetry; he was fond of study, graduated at 

 Bowdoin in 1869, teaching school meanwhile to earn his 

 tuition and expenses, was for two years principal of the 

 Thomaston Academy, '69- '71; then taught mathematics 

 and later classics at the Dean Academy, Franklin, Massa- 

 chusetts, '71- '74; then he studied theology at Tufts Col- 



