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62 8 The Academyand the Shop Long ago did the old Homer Academy building disappear in fire and smoke, but it was a great credit to the liberal-minded first settlers who planned and built it. I hope that when it was burned, the fire spared the cannon house so near it. There must have been time to take out the cannon, if anybody could find the key of the door. The Homer boys managed to do that, once. It was in an early Summer when the village trustees had inspected the honeycombed relic of the Revolution and had wisely decided that it was not in condition for the firing of Fourth of July salutes. It might burst and do harm to its artillerymen. Vast was the indignation aroused by that prudent decision. Did not the Homer boys know their own cannon, which they or their forefathers had captured from Burgoyne? At all events there came a dark night and a silent procession of young patriots across the green and when, shortly afterwards, the trustees peered in to take a look at the precious gun, it was not there. An excited spirit of inquiry ran all over the village and so did the trustees. Barns and outhouses were searched and so were the woods. All was in vain and something like a mystery brooded silently over the whole affair until the night before the Fourth. Then there was another youthful procession and precisely at midnight the villagers were startled from their slumbers by the loud beginning of the customary cannonade. There was the ancient gun and it was roaring its very best as if to express its indignation at its hard luck in having been imprisoned so long at the bottom of the Lower Pond, for that was where the patriotic boys had hidden it. Of the Academy itself, as an institution of learning, I have few memories, 63 the academy and the shop except such as belong to the ordinary routine of a boy at school. There were elocutionary exercises in public, every Saturday forenoon, but these were the special province of the very largest students until one day when the ambitious youngster who had somehow won the nickname of “Old Put” or “Put Stoddard” managed to obtain the permission of the principal, Professor Woolworth, and marched out upon the high platform to recite “Hohenlinden ” with variations of his own. He was a proud boy, for his elocutionary effort was well received and he was not called upon to repeat it. In one of the reception rooms of the building were preserved the oilpainted portraits of the founders and among them was that of John Osborn. It is my information that the painting of those portraits was one of the earlier commissions of my friend Frank Carpenter,1 the well-known artist of The Signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, for he was a Homer boy and was the first artist I ever heard of. Not long after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, Frank conceived the idea of painting the scene of its presentation by President Lincoln to the Cabinet. In due season he came on to Washington on that errand and I introduced him to the president. Lincoln was pleased with the notion and its first fruits may be found detailed in Carpenter’s book, Six Months at the White House.2 Here he made his studies from the several originals, most of whom he hit off well—all except poor Mr. Caleb B. Smith, secretary of the interior, who to this day looks on the canvas as if he were made of wood, in spite of all I could [do] while his face was in process of putting into oil. [Smith died before Carpenter completed his canvas—ed.] Long time went by and the picture was completed without being finished . Frank never finished anything in his life and no power could induce him to stop building a fence after the top rail was on. In his feverish imagination, there always ought to be some more rails. He came to me in something like despair, one day [years later—ed.]. A bill for the adoption of his picture for permanent lodgings in the Capitol had been prepared and presented but it had gone to sleep somewhere and he wanted me to go on and wake it up. I consented to go, if he would pay my expenses, for I was deeply interested in his undertaking, being aware...

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