After experimenting for some years with the new exercises he had devised Dr. Lewis determined to concentrate his efforts on the attempt to introduce them to the public, and in June of 1860 established his home in the vicinity of Boston for this purpose. “I thought,” he says, “that Boston would prove more hospitable to an educational innovation than any other city in the country;” and he was not disappointed. Evening classes in gymnastics were soon organized in West Newton, Newtonville, Newton, Newton Upper Falls, and Watertown. The English and classical school of Mr. N. T. Allen, in West Newton, was the first to introduce the new system, according to Dr. Lewis, and it was soon followed by the Normal School at Framingham, and in Boston by the institutions of Mr. Gannett in Pemberton Square and Madame de Maltchyce in Pinckney Street, the Concord Hall school, and many others in and near the city. A public gymnasium, also, for men, women, and children was opened at 20 Essex Street, in Boston. Among others, a class of clergymen and their wives met there regularly for an hour on Mondays—‘blue Monday’—to exercise with the proprietor and, as one of them expressed it, to “inhale hygiene in his presence, and in the atmosphere of his room.” In August of 1860 the ‘new system’ was all at once brought to the notice of leading educators gathered from the length and breadth of the United States. Dr. Lewis himself related the circumstances to a Boston audience, several years afterward,[226] as follows: “I may remark that the hour of my coming was most fortunate for my cause. Just then the American Institute of Instruction held its great Convention—the largest ever held in this country—in this city. I was so fortunate as to be invited to appear before that most august of all educational bodies, to explain and illustrate the new system of gymnastics. They told me ‘You may have half an hour on the second morning; we have the business so arranged that we cannot give you more.’ But when the half-hour had expired they said, ‘Go on;’ and I went on until two hours had passed, and then they voted that the next morning they would meet at half past eight (having announced important business for nine o’clock), to hear more about the new gymnastics. The next morning was foggy and dark, but the hall (Tremont Temple) was full, and they passed over their important business and gave me nearly two hours more, and at noon another hour. With such an opening as this, it is not remarkable that the interest spread over the entire country.”[227]