New England Conservatory of Music takes rank, and its remarkable
development and wonderful growth tends to prove that the youth of the
land desire the highest advantages that can be offered them. More than
thirty years ago the germ of the idea that is now embodied in this great
institution, found lodgment in the brain of the man who has devoted his
life to its development. Believing that music had a positive influence
upon the elevation of the world hardly dreamed of as yet even by its
most devoted students, Eben Tourjee returned to America from years of
musical study in the great Conservatories of Europe. Knowing from
personal observation the difficulties that lie in the way of American
students, especially of young and inexperienced girls who seek to obtain
a musical education abroad, battling as they must, not only with foreign
customs and a foreign language, but exposed to dangers, temptations and
disappointments, he determined to found in America a music school that
should be unsurpassed in the world. Accepting the judgment of the great
masters, Mendelsshon, David, and Joachim, that the conservatory system
was the best possible system of musical instruction, doing for music
what a college of liberal arts does for education in general, Dr.
Tourjee in 1853, with what seems to have been large and earnest faith,
and most entire devotion, took the first public steps towards the
accomplishment of his purpose. During the long years his plan developed
step by step. In 1870 the institution was chartered under its present
name in Boston. In 1881 its founder deeded to it his entire personal
property, and by a deed of trust gave the institution into the hands of
a Board of Trustees to be perpetuated forever as a Christian Music
School.

[Illustration: The Dining Hall]

In the carrying out of his plan to establish and equip an institution