The reception of the camp idea by educators and schoolmen
was so negative at the beginning that it puzzled me and
made me doubtful. Professor Wentworth, the great "Bull"
Wentworth of Exeter, was an exception. He did not visit
the camp but he did ponder the ideas I put before him
and understood them. Moreover he thought them sound. All
the other teachers I talked to were perfectly calm and
not the least appreciative.
Then came Armstrong, welcome as good water in a dry land.
He had made a distinguished place by original work at
Hampton and elsewhere. He was not, I gathered, regarded
as a regular by Schoolmen. He did not stop at phrases.
He lived at Camp Chocorua for weeks and studied both the
theory and practice. He proclaimed his opinion and wrote
it in generous words. Articles in magazines and books
followed. Camps grew, the legend began, culminating in the interpretation
of American Private Schools.
Balch in the foregoing reflected on the cool attitude of
schoolmasters toward the small camp. With their slow response,
conservative as always, they saw nothing of value in so
radical an innovation. It remained for General Armstrong
and Mr. Frissell of the Hampton School and a few other open-minded
men to espouse the cause and preach the doctrine of the
summer camp.
Through correspondence with Balch, the Reverend Nichols,
inspired with the same idea, opened a camp for boys in 1882
at Stow, which he called Camp Harvard. This camp was later
taken over by Dr. Winthrop T. Talbot, a son of Dr. J.T.
Talbot, then dean of the Boston University Medical School,
who, in 1884, moved it to Squam Lake, where it was known
as Camp Asquam.
Louis D. Bement, editor of the Camping Handbook, Summer
Camps, 1931, wrote the following of Camp Asquam:
The camp was situated on sloping ground well up from
the shores of Squam Lake near Holderness, N.H., and commanded
a beautiful view of that picturesque lake with its islands
and the surrounding mountains.
There were four buildings; a combination dining hall
and cook shack, the director's cabin and two dormitories.
These latter held some twenty bunks lined up against the
two side walls, while at one end there was a large fieldstone
fireplace.
Down on the shore of the lake was a boathouse which held
some five or six rowboats of the Adirondack type, as canoes
were considered too dangerous for boys in those days.
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