Heads

In recounting (in its issue for June 30) the death and record of the late Dr. Huber Gray Buehler, headmaster of the famed Maria H. Hotchkiss School, TIME set down, as leading secondary schools of the country, Hotchkiss, Taft, The Hill, Lawrenceville, Groton, Phillips Exeter, Phillips Andover.

Wrote a Mercersburg Academy graduate : "I, . . . along with many fellow alumni, resent the fact that you omitted the name of Mercersburg and the mention of her headmaster, Dr. William Mann Irvine, from an article which ends with this sentence : 'These are the schools which during the last quarter-century have achieved some national repute.' You entirely ignore Mercersburg. She's recognized as one of the five greatest-- Andover, Exeter, Lawrenceville and The Hill being the other four. She is more democratic than any other school of which you made mention -- perhaps that is the reason you so tactlessly passed her by.

"If a school is to be judged only by her athletics, then Mercersburg is greater than even Exeter and her quarterbacks, for who will ever forget Meredith or Woodring or Keck or Caldwell; if she is to be acclaimed only for her scholastic attainments, again she reaches forth and holds those laurels with Andover; if her greatness lies in her wealth alone, you rightfully omitted her name, for Mercersburg does not have the money that Hill does, nor does Mercersburg teach that success and happiness come hand in hand with riches. . . ."

Dr. William Mann Irvine, graduate of Exeter and of Princeton, has guided the destinies of Mercersburg Academy for 31 years. While a youthful Professor of Social Science at Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, Pa., he was offered the headmastership shortly after his 27th birthday. He moved to Mercersburg, Pa., found there a few acres of weeds and one old building, his "school." Today his personality and vision are reflected in a large (550 enrolment), firmly-founded institution with a reputation for vigor, discipline (stiff collars at classes), scholarship, a thoroughgoing democratic spirit.

At St. Paul's School, Concord, N. H., moves another figure very visible upon the educational horizon -- the Rev. Samuel Smith Drury, rector. Thought of by many as a formalist because of his dignified, clerical presence and rather stiff manner in public, Dr. Drury is at heart, and in method, a humanist. He believes in atmosphere. He believes in being "one of the boys"; walks with them; works with them; remembers their first names forever; keeps abreast of their family affairs. His school is noted rather for the stamp of cultured, urbane gentility that it imparts to its graduates, than for preeminence in any special line. The alumni are known to compose one of the most devoted bodies of their kind in the country.

Tall, "lantern-jawed," severe of mien, Dr. Drury little resembles Dr. Frederick Luther Gamage, head of the Pawling School at Pawling, N. Y., who is short, grayish, kindly of appearance.

But the two may be classed together as being "schoolmasters" rather than "educators." Character-building, not marks, is their mutual aim. Dr. Gamage relinquished the headmastership of St. Paul's School, Garden City, N. Y., after 14 years' tenure, took with him three close associates, founded the Pawling School in 1908.

From Lakeville, Conn., the trustees of the Maria H. Hotchkiss School announced the appointment of Walter H. Buell as Acting Headmaster to succeed the late Dr. Buehler. Mr. Buell, now 25 years a Hotchkiss master, had of late shared with Dr. Buehler in the school's administration. He is known to the boys as "a hard marker, strict in class and at table, kind at heart and a knock-out German prof." They call him "The Bull," for no more obvious reason than that which has for years inspired Hill School men to call Alfred G. Rolfe, long the counsellor of Hill headmasters, "The Walrus."