The Cambridge of eighteen hundred and ninety-six: a picture of the city and its industries fifty years after its incorporation
Arthur Gilman, Ed.

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Believing that boys intended for a liberal course of study should be early initiated into that course, whenever he can the principal is glad to have them begin with the elements of Latin or French, with algebra and inventional geometry at the age of nine or ten years.

This school has had its measure of success in training boys in knowledge and righteousness; good results have been reached; patrons have generally, after trial, approved of it. Three professorships in as many of the leading universities in the country are now filled by its graduates, while others hold high positions of different kinds. This shows that some of them get a right start at least on the road to higher learning in this school.

Mr. Lyman R. Williston opened a school for girls, on Irving Street in 1862. It was removed the following year to its present situation. It is called ‘The Berkeley Street School’ from its ___location. Mr. Williston conducted the school with success until 1870, and then transferred it to his brother-in-law, Mr. Justin E. Gale, who, in turn, passed it over in 1881 to Miss Margaret R. Ingols, who still carries it on.

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The Browne and Nichols School.

In the fall of 1883, at the suggestion of Professor Child, Professor Norton, and others interested in the establishment in Cambridge of a school for boys which should effectively meet the demands of the new education, the Browne and Nichols School was founded at No. 11 Appian Way. The principals had graduated from Harvard only five years before, and they therefore brought to bear upon the problem fresh experience, both from the student's and the teacher's point of view. A radical change in the traditional course of study was immediately adopted: four departments, language, mathematics, science, and history, were organized; and while a high standard was maintained in the classics and mathematics, much more time than usual was devoted to modern languages, science, and history.

By keeping the classes small, and thereby adapting the work to the individual needs and capacities of pupils, the teachers were enabled from the first to give not only excellent preparation for the university and the scientific school, but also thorough training in branches not required for the entrance examinations.