The Two Towers: Main

He [Boynton] wished to make the avails of his industry a permanent means of aiding the young in obtaining advantages and privileges in preparing for active life which had been beyond his reach.
      --David Whitcomb

There has been scarce anything which could be called education for practical life.
      --Edward Everett, 1869

help many a such lad, and he had an obsession--not that every boy should go to school, but that every boy should be given a chance to go. Recently Mr. Boynton had given ten thousand dollars to the town of Mason in New Hampshire, his birthplace, for the support of the common schools. He did not know that a coterie of grateful students would one day climb the winding hills to that little town, there to erect for him a memorial stone with the inscription: "He opened the door of opportunity to youth."

There was now a rumor that Mr. Boynton intended to establish a special kind of school, different from the public schools, for boys who planned to be manufacturers and mechanics, or even farmers, instead of lawyers, clergymen, or physicians. No wonder the townsfolk of Templeton declared it "all nonsense." What was wrong with the old apprentice system that had served so long so well?

No, they really didn't want the school.

But they might have to take it, because no one was in a position to refuse Mr. Boynton. There was scarcely anyone in town to whom he had not loaned money at one time or another. Even the town had borrowed from him, and the State, and other towns, and other States. For two years he had been president of a bank. He was listed as owning more than one-eighth of the town property. And the books in the County Courthouse revealed him as being the grantor and grantee of nearly one hundred and fifty pieces of land.

Even now, when he no longer lived in Templeton and his business had been transferred to other persons for almost twenty years, the big white-pillared house on the Common with its second-story door opening nowhere, reminded the townsfolk of John Boynton. "You ought to build a veranda up there," advised a bystander, when the house was being built. Although this had been his original intention, John Boynton was incensed at the interference and vowed no upstairs veranda would ever be added. No one was going to tell him what to do.

Now John Boynton was all alone in the world, and childless. He was getting old, reaching his seventy-third birthday on May 31 of this year, 1864. People thought him sometimes dour and strange. As so often happened, he had lost touch with his eight brothers and sisters. His money, as well as his time, lay heavy on his hands, and he had become almost a recluse in his personal habits.

Mr. Boynton lived now in Leominster with relatives of his first wife, but he often came back to visit the town which had, for him, "opened the door of opportunity." Sometimes he traced the trail back to the day in 1825, when he had first arrived in Templeton. As miles go, the little town had not been far from his New Hampshire home in Mason or from New Ipswich, where he first learned about making tinware. But it had been far enough away to give him, at thirty-four, a new start in life and to initiate many another future far off into other centuries.

When John Boynton started his shop in Templeton, there was no more promising a business in America--for two reasons. It in-