Lyman Gorham Smith to A. W. Terrell, April 5, 1895

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A letter to Terrell from a recent Harvard graduate interested in employment as an instructor in an American school or college in Turkey.

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137 Tremont St. Ansonia, Conn. April 5, 1895

Hon. Alexander W. Terrell Dear Sir,

Learning that you are soon to be seeking for men to engage in educational work in Turkey, I write to offer my name for your con- sideration.

I was graduated at Harvard in 1892, and since then I have been engaged in teaching. First I went to Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, serving one year; then I came to the High School in this city where I am just about to complete my second year. I have passed the Boston supervisors' examination, and I hold their first grade certificate. Last summer I took

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this subject nine and a half hours per week for a year, and we go through a course in qualitative analysis.

While in college I studied mainly under the late Professor Josiah Parsons Cooke, also late president of the American Academy of Science, pursuing very advanced courses in chemistry and mineralogy, a fact that he men- tions in the testimonial enclosed. It is to him that I owe not only so much of my knowledge of chemistry, but to him I am indebted also for a knowledge of the rational and progressive system of instruction in chemistry, which he originated as the founder of laboratory teaching in America.

I have always taken an interest in general school

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the course given in psychology, at Harvard by Professor Hugo Münsterberg of Leipsic.

I have a practical acquaintance with the French language, for besides studying it for a period extending over four years and a half while in school and college, I taught French at Andover, and have had reason to use it consider- ably in conversation.

I am a teacher of science, and chemistry is my specialty. That study, with physics, makes the most important part of my work here. A great deal of time is devoted to laboratory work, more indeed than that in any other high school I know of, and I believe that the quantity and quality of the work done in chemistry is unus- ual for an institution of this grade. It nearly covers the work of two years of college chemistry, for we give to

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work, and I am familiar not only with the usual public school system, but also with the work of manual training schools, like the Rindge Manual Training School, Cambridge, Massachusetts. I understand the construction and furnishing of laboratories particularly for chemistry in all its departments. I have also some knowledge of draughting.

I was born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1869, and was educated in the public school of that city, entering Harvard College in 1888 from the Salem Classical School. While in college, I lived with a relative in Boston.

I trust I may fit one of the positions you are seeking to fill, and I should be pleased to have you make farther investigation concerning me.

Yours respectfully, Lyman Gorham Smith

{written upside-down with respect to the rest of the text, at the bottom of the page} 95 Education book

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