The Two Towers: Main

He [Emory Washburn] was probably the most beloved instructor who ever taught in Harvard Law School.
      --Dictionary of American Biography, 1936

The subject was submitted to us in a very indefinite form, the only direction given being that the money should be devoted to the promotion of education in the County of Worcester.
      --Stephen Salisbury II, 1868

Sweetser. Surely a clergyman would know how to handle a secret. Furthermore, the Reverend Mr. Sweetser, who had been in Worcester at the Calvinist Church now for twenty-seven years, was an overseer of Harvard University, president of the board of trustees of Phillips Andover Academy, a trustee of Andover Theological Seminary, and a member of Worcester's School Committee.

Perhaps more importantly for this story, he was trustee of Leicester Academy, located a few miles west of Worcester. This institution, founded when there were only two other such schools in the State, was already eighty years old and had become a familiar educational pattern. On the board of Leicester Academy were four men, four men who were soon to become affiliated in the direction of still another school. These men, and the order in which they learned about the unidentified John Boynton gift, were Seth Sweetser, Emory Washburn, Stephen Salisbury, and Ichabod Washburn.

Leicester Academy was by no means the only point of common contact for these four men. None of the other three was at the moment a member of Seth Sweetser's congregation, but he knew them well. They were easily the best-known persons in the County, and the four had all served together in public office and as directors and trustees of practically every local organization.

Emory Washburn, a former Governor of Massachusetts now living in Cambridge, was the Bussey Professor of Law at Harvard University. He, too, was an overseer of Harvard in the same era with Seth Sweetser and such men as John Greenleaf Whittier, Edward Everett Hale, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. For that matter, Stephen Salisbury also served in the same capacity for twelve years.

Governor Washburn, as he was still called, was in an eminent position to ask for professional advice, first of all from President Thomas Hill of Harvard University, then from Joseph White, secretary of the Board of Education, of which Mr. Washburn was also a member. Do not, these two educators advised, waste the fund or pervert it. Guard it carefully, and avoid sectarianism. A1though valuable, the advice was not specific because the project still had no definite outline. There was not even a formal offer from Mr. Boynton, nothing more than a reported conversation between two cousins.

Mr. Boynton was hesitant to put his idea into words. You draft the letter, or have someone else write it, he virtually said to David Whitcomb. Finally Seth Sweetser, a craftsman with language, attempted the task. When Emory

Washburn saw the first draft, he made a few penciled suggestions with the remark, "It is perfectly intelligible as it is." Later when Mr. Boynton signed the letter he said, "That meets my view exactly."

There never has been anyone to know just what Mr. Boynton's view was, although many a guess has been hazarded. Like the Bible, his letter of gift has had two kinds of interpreters, the literal and the liberal.