School days in the fifties; a true story with some untrue names of persons and places

V&i

. f

Southern Branch
of the

University of California

Los Angeles

Form L 1

Education
Library

This book is DUE on the last date stamped below

JUL 8 193!
AUG 31 1942

oeri 1343

AUG -2

19*8

JUN7
JU!

mi 1

IftY

JIAY 1 3 1352
JUS 2 7 1952

Form L-9-15m-8,'24

SCHOOL DAYS IN THE FIFTIES.

School Days in the Fifties

A TRUE STORY WITH SOME UNTRUE NAMES
OF PERSONS AND PLACES

BY

WILLIAM M. GIFFIN, A.M., PD. D.

WITH AN APPENDIX

Containing an Autobiographical Sketch o)
FRANCIS IV AY LAND PARKER

CHICAGO
A. FLANAGAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT 1906

BY
WM. M. GIFFIN.

Education
Library

LB

\

So

MY WIFE

AND

CHILDREN

(CLEON MILFORD AND EMMA LOU)
THIS LITTLE BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED.

CONTENTS

PAGE

CHAPTER 1 7

The Old Stone School House; Voice Culture; The Two
Rooms; Mothers, Mothers; Visit the School.

CHAPTER II ii

Arithmetic; Ethics; Patience; Good Mixers; Brotherly
Love ; Superintendents ; Arithmetic Creed.

CHAPTER III 17

A Teacher vs. Hearer of Lessons; Bill Fools the
Teacher ; The Teacher Fools Bill ; Who Was to Blame ?

CHAPTER IV 21

English Grammar; The Flag; Language Work; Dick
Gets Us to Laugh With Him; Dick Gets Us to Laugh at
Him.

CHAPTER V 27

Miss Composite ; Prepared Lessons ; Natural Voice ;
Please; Heard Both Sides; Not Changeable; Marks;
Never Called Names ; " Cute Baby."

CHAPTER VI 35

Daddy W. ; Prison ; Saved ; Let the Children Help.

CHAPTER VII 39

Examinations in 1861 ; Examinations in 1888.

CHAPTER VIII 43

" Geogafy " ; Point North ; Three Images ; Busybodies ;
Teachers, Don't, Please Don't.

vj CONTENTS.

PAGE

CHAPTER IX 49

Mr. H. and His Whip ; Rules ; Order ; Assigning Les-
sons ; Professional Teachers ; The Per cent No Test.

CHAPTER X 59

Mr. H. and His Hobbies; Spelling Down; The Dull
Boy ; The Daffy Girl ; Sayings of Great Men.

CHAPTER XI 65

Mary M. and Her Influence; Did Not Repeat Answers;
Two Language Lessons.

CHAPTER XII 73

Professional Reading ; Bible ; Page ; Leonard and Ger-
trude ; White ; Payne ; Parker ; Hailman ; Quick ; Commit-
tee of Ten ; Currie ; Sulley ; Murray.

CHAPTER XIII 79

Examinations; What is Geography? Big Live Nanny-
Goat; Bite Wouldn't It?

CHAPTER XIV 85

Light ; No " Plebes " ; The Condition ; Born Short Op-
portunity.

CHAPTER XV 89

The Will; More Than Book Knowledge; Johnny's Pie;
Her Competency.

CHAPTER XVI 93

A Chapter From Real Life; A Hero; Not a Hero;
Fred.

CHAPTER XVII 97

Sylvanus Reported By Prof. Richards.

CHAPTER XVIII 103

The Teachers' Alphabet.

APPENDIX 109

Frances Wayland Parker, Autobiographical Sketch of.

CHAPTER I.

/^'•fff

THE OLD STONE SCHOOL HOUSE.

WHEN a boy I attended school in the old stone
school-house in northern New York, near the banks
of the beautiful St. Lawrence. Those were days
never to be forgotten. How I live them over and
over calling up event after event till I almost feel
that I am a boy again! I can see the old wooden
benches each with the names of many pupils carved
on it; the old painted blackboard hanging on the
wall and behind it the long, crooked beech switch
with which the master often tickled our flesh, thus
developing our organs of speech in a wonderful man-
^ ner. I venture to say that the most celebrated prima
j^ donna with all her modern training never reached
higher notes than we attained by this antique method,
^j How we did learn in those days ! Why, it was no
more trouble for a ten-year-old to rattle off such
numbers as 889,654,328,896 than it is to-day for
a boy of half that age to tell the cost of a peck of
potatoes at fifty cents a bushel; but a boy of ten was
never asked such questions as the latter, for that was
an example in COMPOUND DENOMINATE
NUMBERS ! " Them questions were way over in
the middle of the 'rithmetic and were for the big fel-
lers in the big room."

7

8 SCHOOL DAYS.

Yes, there were two rooms, the big room for the
big fellows and the little room for the " trundle bed
trash " as they were called by the boys in the big
room. It was in the big room where the big fellows
read in the big books, did their sums, and learned
more definitions without knowing the meaning of
one half of the words, than it is possible to do now-
a-days. I recall one now, " English grammar is the
art of speaking, reading, and writing the English
language correctly. It is divided into four parts,
namely, (That namely always sounded so refined to
me) Orthography, Etymology, Syntax, and Pros-
ody." A wag once thinking a lad did hot know what
he was talking about asked when he had recited it
for him, "What kind of an animal is a prosody?"
"I am not quite sure," was the answer, " but I think
it is something like a frog!"

I remember the day when it was announced that
I had outgrown the little room and was to be pro-
moted to the big room. I had gotten into some
trouble with the woman teacher, as had others of my
mates, and we were having a sort of go as you please
time, when, before we knew it, the door between the
rooms opened and the man who taught the big room
had me by the nape of the neck, and without any for-
mal examination landed me in one of the seats of the
big room, where I remained the rest of the term by
right of possession. Needless to say I did not report
my promotion at home. Had I done so with the
cause thereof I, no doubt, would have asked to be
excused from sitting down in the afternoon. Moth-

IN THE FIFTIES. 9

ers were so different in those days. We loved them
just the same and they made good men of the most
of us too.

Mothers, mothers, don't fight every little battle of
your children. Don't go to the school and make an
exhibition of yourself by abusing the teacher. Don't
you know that nine hundred and ninety teachers of
every thousand are the best kind of friends to the
children? Can't you understand that a teacher never
" gets down " on a child who is half trying to do his
duty? Will you never learn that your conduct to-
ward the teacher will do more to get her down on the
child than anything the child can do? I once heard
a teacher say he could get along with the children all
right if the foolish mothers would stay at home. I
have sometimes thought the marriage laws should be
amended by stating that no marriage license should
be granted to a young woman who had not taken
either a kindergarten or normal school course.

On the other hand, while I would not have fathers
and mothers (fathers seldom do) fight the petty
battles for their children, parents should never allow
their children to be tantalized, pestered, and abused
by a set of ignoramuses, old or young, who can see
no difference between the human mind and the instinct
of a dog, and who think it as good a joke to pester
and tease a quick tempered child till they get him in
a frenzy as to tease a dog. I would favor a law giv-
ing a public horsewhipping to any person eighteen
years old or over, guilty of hectoring or pestering a
child just for the fun of seeing him in a temper.

10 SCHOOL DAYS.

A wise mother visits the school often; watches the
progress of her child ; gets acquainted with the princi-
pal and the class teacher and she is always welcome.
A good teacher encourages inquiry into his motives
and methods and a good mother never judges a teacher
before having heard his side of the story. Too often
the cry of fads is made by those who have never been
inside of the school building on a regular school day.
" Many a parent," says Page, " upon the first an-
nouncement of a measure in school, has stoutly opposed
it, who upon a little explanatory conversation with
the teacher, or principal, entertain a very different opin-
ion and ever after are the most ready to countenance
and support it."

CHAPTER II.
ARITHMETIC.

ARITHMETIC, yes, we studied arithmetic in the Fif-
ties. There is stuff enough taught now in its name,
goodness knows; but, teachers, what do you think of
the following being added to your work? It was
found in all the arithmetics of those days and the
teacher was expected to inflict every bit of it during
the year. Viz.: Simple Interest by -Decimals, Barter,
Policies of Insurance, Compound Interest, Discount
by Compound Interest, Annuities, Pensions, &c., Alli-
gation Medial, Alligation Alternate, Position, Per-
mutations and Combinations, Progressions, Arithmet-
ical Progressions, Geometrical Progressions, Annuities
and Equation of Payments. By going back a little
farther, but to keep in the Nineteenth Century we may
add the following taken from the table of contents of
an arithmetic published in New York in 1816, which,
by the way, was a revised edition ! " Practice, Tare
and Tret." ("Tare," says the author, 'is an allow-
ance made to the buyer, for the weight of a box, bag,
or barrel, etc. While Tret is an allowance of 4lb. in
every 104 Ib. for waste, dust, etc. Then comes Cloff,
being an allowance of 2lb. upon every 3cwt.) Table
of Powers and the Biquadratic Root ! " The poor

ii

12 SCHOOL DAYS.

teachers who went through all this are dead and gone,
but I heave a sigh for them nevertheless.

The pedagogy of to-day says that a teacher should
have a motive back of her work. I have often won-
dered what the motive of the author could have been
when he wrote the problems given below. They are
taken from the book mentioned above. Perhaps to
teach a lesson in ethics. Judge for yourself.

" A and B having found a purse of money, dis-
puted who should have it: A said that 1-5, i-io,
and i -20 of it amounted to £35, and if B could tell
him how much was in it he should have the whole,
otherwise he should have nothing: How much did
the purse contain?" This was taken from under the
head, Position. Now comes one from Alligation.

" Suppose I have four sorts of currants, at 3d. I2d.
i8d. and 22d. per Ib. The worst will not sell, and
the best are too dear ; f therefore conclude to mix
I2olb. and so much of each sort as to sell them at
i6d. per Ib. : How much of each must I take?" Is
it any wonder that we have our pure food conven-
tions when our forefathers had such suggestions
given them?

The motive for the following was no doubt to teach
patience, as a pupil must have learned patience to
have found the answer:

" Suppose one farthing had been put out at 6 per
cent per annum, compound interest, at the commence-
ment of the Christian era : what would it have amount-
ed to in 1734 years; and suppose the amount to be
in standard gold, allowing a cubic inch to be worth

IN THE FIFTIES. 13

£53 2s. 8d., how large would the mass have been?"
And here is the answer:

"27,980,859,722,121,260,415,979,512,332,933,594,-
210,766 cubic inches of gold."

About ten years later came a revised book. This
also contains its rules for Permutations of Quanti-
ties, Rule of Three Direct, do. Inverse, Double Rule
of Three and a rule showing how to reduce the cur-
rencies of the different States to Federal Money.

They were still good mixers as the following will
show : " How much water at o per gallon, must be
mixed with wine at 90 cents per gallon, so as to fill
a vessel of 100 gallons, which may be offered at 60
cents per gallon ? "

One more, the motive no doubt being to teach
brotherly love : " Three jealous husbands with their
wives, being ready to pass bv night over a river, do
find at the water side a boat^hich can carry but two
persons at once, and for want of a waterman they are
necessitated to row themselves over the river at sev-
eral times: The question is, how those six persons
shall pass two and two, so that none of the three
wives may be found in the company of one or two
men, unless her husband be present?"

Others might be added to these every one of which
has been taken from text books used within the mem-
ory of the father and brothers of the writer.

The text used in the Fifties was but little better, in
fact the Nineties had not much to its credit. How
is this, taken from an examination for teachers held
not many moons ago ? " How many gallons in a

14 SCHOOL DAYS.

cask 32 inches long with a mean diameter of 13
inches ? " Do you know what a teacher has to recall
in order to solve this problem? Let me give it to
yon. Take the square of the mean diameter in inches
and multiply by the length of the cask in inches and
that product by .0034 to find the capacity in gallons.
When the cask is not full, multiply the square of
one third of the sum of the head and mean and bung
diameter in inches by the depth of the liquid in inches
and this product by .0034 to find the amount of liquid
in gallons.

If a teacher, to prove that she can teach, must be
able to recall such a rule and to work such a problem,
how much time do you expect her to give to the study
of her profession or the little tots put under her
charge ?

Here is another taken from the same test:

£ of 2\ .06 -f 3£
Add to

•5 + f 3i — 2i

My dear Superintendents, you must stop this sort
of examinations if you expect to improve your coun-
try schools. You must get at the fundamental prin-
ciples of arithmetic rather than at its tricks ; you must
treat it pedagogically in your examinations rather
than academically. The question for a teachers' test
should not be " Divide % by ft," but should be,
" How will you teach a child to divide % by ^ ? "
The answer to the first will show a previous knowl-
edge of a rule conned at some time; the answer to
the second will not only necessitate the remembering

IN THE FIFTIES. 15

of the rule, but will also test the teacher's competency
as an instructor.

Marked improvements have been made, however,
in the teaching of this subject as will be seen in the
following " Arithmetic Creed " agreed upon by the
Cook County Teachers' Association during the super-
intendency of O. T. Bright :

ARTICLE I. — All operations which should be taught
to children in Number can be performed with num-
bers of things.

ARTICLE II. — The subjects to be taught in Arith-
metic, the terms to be used, and the processes to be
employed, shall be determined from the standpoint of
the child — not from that of the educated adult.

ARTICLE III. — In determining what shall be taught
in Arithmetic, we should be able to show that any
topic is: (a) practical; that is, that it has to do with
the affairs of life; or, (fr) disciplinary; that is, that
it insures mental growth and mental strength.

ARTICLE IV. — We condemn the giving of work
in Arithmetic under the name of " Examples," for
which conditions stated in problems cannot be made.
For instance, complicated examples in complex or
compound fractions.

ARTICLE V. — Definition and rule should be re-
quired only when the thing to be defined or the proc-
ess under the rule is thoroughly understood. Hence,
definitions and rules should close — not begin — a
subject. They should be made by the student.

ARTICLE VI. — Lessons in Arithmetic should not
be assigned for home study.

l6 SCHOOL DAYS.

ARTICLE VII. — Operations in Arithmetic which
have become obsolete, or have never existed else-
where in the world, should become obsolete in the
schoolroom.

ARTICLE VIII. — Problems in Arithmetic should
employ the best effort of the pupil, but should never
go beyond it. He grows through what he does for
himself. The skillful teacher secures and directs his
best efforts.

ARTICLE IX. — All that need be taught to children
in Arithmetic can be taught under the following sub-
jects: Lines, Area, Volume, Bulk, Time, Weight,
Values, and Single Things.

ARTICLE X. — Fundamental operations — four or
five, according to your faith. Numbers used to be
within the comprehension of pupils. First, correct-
ness, then, rapidity in work. Use of federal money
included in the foregoing.

CHAPTER III.
A TEACHER VS. A HEARER OF LESSONS.

JAMES A. GARFIELD once said, " The student
should first study what he needs most to know; the
order of his needs should be the order of his work."
Surely those teachers. who taught us little folks to
read, write or count numbers from one to one billion,
could never have supposed that the order of our work
was the order of our needs. Had they stopped a mo-
ment to think *hat if a man were to begin to count a
billion and were to count one hundred a minute, eight
hours a day, he would not complete his task in over
sixty years they might have done better by us. The
very children who learned to read and write these
numbers could not possibly have told how many
pounds of bran to give a man for $2.75 at 75 cents a
hundred. Yet I do not know that the teachers were
any more to blame than the authors of the text books,
perhaps not so much. I am quite sure that all the
arithmetics we ever used when I was a boy, had
the teaching of such numbers in the first pages of the
book. The teachers were simply following the sug-
gestions of those whom they considered their supe-
riors. In those days the teachers were not expected
to ask any questions or offer any suggestions. Had

17

1 8 SCHOOL DAYS.

they had more to say the progress would have been
more rapid. The reason that the Creed given in the
last chapter is so full of good sense is because the
teachers of the county were given an opportunity to
help make it.

Some of the teachers, even in the Fifties were in
advance of their age. It must have been hard work
for the most of them, who taught in the old stone
school house. It has been truly said, " There can
hardly be conceived a life of more drudgery than that
of a teacher who goes through a dull, monotonous
routine every day, attempting to instruct, and not
knowing how. But if the teacher will study the
mind he is shaping, his calling must prove to him the
most interesting and fascinating possible."

Too many children never accomplish anything be-
cause they fear both their parents and teachers. Too
many never succeed because they are made to feel
that they never can. Many a child who is full of ani-
mation and life and fun and happiness, is made to
hate his school and school books, because his teacher
does not take the time and trouble to study his dis-
position and thus learn how to govern him.

I am here renvnded of an old schoolmate at the old
stone school house. Bill would do the most cheeky
things, and then put on that innocent look of his so
quickly and perfectly that had a mirror been placed
before him he would have himself been in doubt, for
a moment, whether he was in earnest or not. Often
when the teacher was " hearing " a class " say " a
lesson, Bill would snap his fingers and say very

IN THE FIFTIES. 19

quickly, " Miss Jenks, you lie I think." Miss J.
would place her finger on the line where she had left
off, look up, and ask, " Who is talking? " Then Bill
would put on that innocent look and say, " May / get
a drink?" to which Miss J. would reply, "Yes, yes,
get a drink."

One day we were in the school yard, and Bill, who
had a snowball in his hand, said, " You dassent dare
me to throw this snowball through the window." " I
dassent, eh? " said I, " I'll double dare you to do it."
The words were hardly out of my mouth when,
smash ! dash ! went the ball through the window.
Bill at once ran to the door and said, " Miss J., I had
a snowball in my hand and threw it and it went right
through the glass." The teacher only said, " Well,
Willie, I'm glad you told me yourself; you are a good
boy for telling me."

Bill tried it again the next term on a new teacher,
who said when he went to report, " Well, well, that
is too bad, but since you were so good as to report it
yourself I tell you what I will do — you buy the glass
and I will put it in." Ah! here was a teacher, not a
hearer of lessons. What work we did that term.
How we all respected him every one of us. And by
the way, I think he was the first Normal school grad-
uate that ever taught in the old stone school house.
No fooling him, he made a study of every one and he
knew us too. We were not long in learning that he
knew and we soon got down to work.

He remembered how he felt as a child. He knew
that he who has forgotten how he felt as a child lacks

20 SCHOOL DAYS.

an essential for a good disciplinarian. He knew that
every teacher who succeeds in awakening a desire for
better things in a young scapegrace, deserves more
praise than a thousand " hearers of lessons." He
was full of faith, love, courage, patience, sympathy,
self-control, enthusiasm, and common sense, all of
which are avenues that lead to children's hearts.

We boys of the old stone school house were like
the average boys, full of fun and vim, always looking
on the bright side of life, and seeing a joke the mo-
ment it presented itself. We were by no means
vicious, nor did we intend to do any real wrong. We
took no interest in our arithmetic, because, as taught,
it was beyond our comprehension. We had no liking
for our grammar, because we never saw any practical
use of it. We did not get our spelling lesson, be-
cause it was utterly impossible for us to do so intel-
ligently. All this, as a matter of course, led us into
mischief and we did just what our teachers let us do.
Let me repeat that, just what our teachers let us do
— nothing more, nothing less.

Who was to blame? The teachers who let us?
Or the trustees who hired such teachers? Or th-e
people who elected such trustees?

CHAPTER IV.
ENGLISH GRAMMAR.

LET ME again quote James A. Garfield who was
talking not of the schools of to-day but of those of
which I am writing : " One half of the time which
is now almost wholly wasted in district schools on
English grammar attempted at too early an age,
would be sufficient to teach our children to love the
Republic and to become its loyal and life long sup-
porters." I seldom, if ever, read this quotation without
recalling the correcting of false syntax, the conjugation
of the verb " to love," the declension of the pronouns
and nouns, and the diagramming of the extracts
from Thanatopsis with which I was burdened when a
boy. Oh! the time that has been wasted discussing
whether President should be in the nominative or
objective case in the following sentence : " He was
elected President." Is it any wonder that Garfield
said (remember he was talking of the schools of long
ago), "To me it is a perpetual wonder that any
child's love of knowledge survives the outrages of the
school room " ?

We were all good at the declension of pronouns.
Of course we had no idea that nominative I meant that
we were to use I as a subject of a sentence; that had

21

22 SCHOOL DAYS.

nothing to do with it. All we wanted was nomina-
tive I, possessive my or mine and objective me,
though in less than five minutes we would be saying,
"Can John and me get a pail of water?" This
would go by uncorrected. As was said at the begin-
ning of the chapter we diagrammed extracts from
Thanatopsis, but I was a young man before I knew
that Thanatopsis had any reference to death.

Reader, which do you think is better, for a child to
try to understand why " I would go if I could," should
be parsed in the past tense when it is in answer to
the question, "Are you going to the city to-morrow ? "
or for him to be able to tell how the President of the
United States is elected?

There is no excuse for sending into the world at
this — the beginning of the twentieth century — any
boy or girl without a knowledge of the fundamental
principles of this government, while a course of study
is required which is to teach him how to diagram
sentences, correct false syntax, or parse nouns which
could not possibly be misused though they were to be
repeated a thousand times.

It is all right to hurrah for the flag, and to pass a
law saying that it must be raised above our school
houses every Monday morning. But we must not
forget that it is not sufficient to hurrah for the flag.
The seeing of the flag waving over the school houses
is of very little use if the child does not understand
the fundamental principles for which it stands.

Toward the last of the old stone school house days
there came a teacher who, the first day asked all who

IN THE FIFTIES. 23

were to take grammar to come forward to the reci-
tation seats. Three or four of the larger pupils re-
mained in their seats. The teacher asked if they
were not going to take the study. All said they were
not and at recess talked it over, giving as their reason
that they thought it would be so much lost time.
During the first recitation they sat listening to the
lesson and, though they could not have expressed it
as here given, they realized that this teacher was get-
ting at the subject from the standpoint of the child
and not from the standpoint of the educated adult.
No error went by without being corrected. This
teacher seemed to know, too, when a child had arrived
at an age when he must either know the why or the
correction would mean nothing to him.

" Children," she would say, " I notice that many of
you say, ' he don't ' when talking among yourselves.
It is not good English for you to use don't in that
way. Let me tell you how to remember. Don't is
not to be used with any of the three pronouns that I
now write on the blackboard." Then stepping to the
board she wrote in large writing, " HE, SHE, IT."
;* You may use don't with any other pronoun, but
don't forget these three." At the class she would dis-
cuss the reason why, and you may be sure the large
pupils who had not taken the subject were all ears and
did but little studying during the recitation, and more
than once regretted that they had not joined the class.

I recall another lesson. " Children," she said, " I
am going to talk to you to-day about some great little
words. I call them this because they are so small in

24 SCHOOL DAYS.

size and so great in importance. I say, the book is
the table. I do not tell what is true; that is, I do
not show the proper relation between the book and
the table. I must add a little word, to show the true
relation; that is I must say the book is ON the table.
What a difference in the meaning of our sentence is
given by simply adding the small word ' ON.' These
words that show the relation between their object and
some other word are called prepositions. (Here the
new word was written on the board and the class were
asked to copy it, thus were all new words presented
by this teacher.) There are quite a number of them
but the most important for us to take now are the fol-
lowing: on, at, by, for, in, with, under, over, between
and from. We must remember an important truth
here, viz. : object pronouns are to follow prepositions
and not subject pronouns/) So many people forget this
I desire to impress it orfyour minds so that you will
not join the army of for getters. If I were to say
what I now write on the board, viz. : ' I heard him
say so between you and — .' We should fill in the
dash with an object pronoun, as, I heard him say so
between you and ME. Where people make the mis-
take most often is when there is a noun between the
preposition and the pronoun as, He called for Jennie
and me. People too often say in such sentences, He
called for Jennie and I. If they would stop to think
a moment they would know that they would never
say, ' He called for I ! ' The fact that the noun is
there makes no difference as to the relation between
the preposition and the pronoun."

IN THE FIFTIES. 25

How it opened our eyes to grammar and how we,
who had not joined the class wished we had, but child
like, were ashamed to admit it to the teacher.

Miss Composite, for that is what we shall call her.
knew how to discipline as well as to teach graittfnar,
as will be shown. Dick, one of the boys, the term
before, when Miss K. was teaching, brought an ugly
picture of a woman's head which he had cut out of a
comic paper, and fitted it around the neck of Miss
K.'s cape. When she went to get the cape she saw
what had been done and turning to the school began
to show her temper in a frightful manner, saying,
" I've been insulted. I'll not stand for any such
thing. If I find out who did this I'll turn him out of
school; do you hear, turn him out of school" How
red she got. How the little fellows trembled! How
the older ones smothered their delight till we got out
of doors and what fun we had talking it over. It
worked so well that Dick tried it on with Miss Com-
posite the very first week (he would not have thought
of such a thing after that time, as she had too many
friends by the end of the first week). When Miss C.
got her cape she at once glanced around the room,
knowing that most of the eyes would center on the
guilty one. Then turning towards Dick she looked
him right in the eye and with a smile said, " Richard,
don't you know that you should not bring your pho-
tographs to school ? "

Poor Dick. You should have seen him. He
seemed to turn red, blue and yellow. And the chil-
dren; how they did laugh at him. Miss C. made a

26 SCHOOL DAYS.

friend of every one in the room then and there.
Even Dick became one of her best. I recall other
things that impressed us that term, but I shall devote
the whole of the next chapter to them.

" He who has the God-given light of hope in his breast, can
help on many others in this world's darkness, not to his own
loss, but to his precious gain."

Henry Ward Beecher.

CHAPTER V.
MISS COMPOSITE.

Miss C. would not allow a word to be mispro-
nounced, or an error in grammar to be made, without
correcting it at once. Always in such an indirect
way as not to offend. She felt that this was a part
of her work. Never for a moment thinking that she
had no time to do it.

She did not call on the bright pupils more fre-
quently than on the dull ones. She knew that the
diamond will always be in the rough, unless it is pol-
ished. She knew the dull pupils would not learn if
the bright ones did all the talking. She also knew
that bright pupils, as a rule, are attentive while dull
pupils are inclined to be inattentive.

She never became tired of correcting faults of
pupils, or of telling them what to do and how to do
it. She felt that children have rights, and so long as
they do not understand a subject they have a right to
ask and receive explanations.

She never did for a pupil what the pupil could with
reasonable effort do for himself. She knew that the
mind can become vigorous only by vigorous exercise;
that a class that is helped too much will soon learn to
wait for the teacher to do its work and answer its

27

28 SCHOOL DAYS.

questions. That children should be trained to ob-
serve, to do, and to tell.

She never began a recitation until she had prepared
it herself, and decided how much of the work the
class could do for itself. Feeling that a teacher who
does not prepare herself will unconsciously do for her
class what they might do for themselves.

She never allowed a pupil to ask a question, give
an opinion, or leave his seat, without first obtaining
permission. She knew that laxity in this respect
would lead to frequent interruptions, and that in a
short time it would be hard to tell who was teacher
and who pupil.

She never spoke in a loud or unnatural tone of
voice when teaching. She was always herself, and
did not overtax her organs of speech. Knowing
that if she did, the whole class would soon adopt the
same tone, and tumult and disorder would result.

She never called the answer to a question wrong,
merely because it was not in the exact words of the
text book. This was a new departure in the old stone
school house. But she knew there is more than one
way to express the same thought. If the answer were
faulty she corrected it; but commended the pupil for
his effort, if it were in the right direction, and, hence
did not dampen his ardor.

She never used a commanding tone of voice when
asking a favor, or when giving a direction. She
knew that no one enjoys being commanded ; that one
would rather be asked to do a thing, than commanded

IN THE FIFTIES. 29

to do it. She knew that "please" is an easy word
to say, and that its use never harmed a teacher.

She never asked a pupil if he had been out of order
when she knew that he had been. She felt that if she
did the pupil would be tempted to say " No," thus
adding a falsehood to his other offense. When she
knew that a pupil had been out of order she dealt
with him accordingly, as a rule just as she dealt with
Dick.

She never hesitated to ask the pardon of a pupil or
class when she found that she had accused them
wrongfully. She felt that morally speaking, it was
her duty to apologize in such a case. The pupils
honored and respected her for doing it, and when
their turn came, they did not hesitate to follow her
good example.

She never refused to hear a pupil's side of a story.
She gave him a hearing after, if not in school hours.
She felt that every person is entitled to a fair trial, no
matter what his offense may be. She thought there
should be no absolute monarchy in a republican form
of government.

She did not look always at the faults, and refuse to
see the good in her pupils. Her motto was, " What-
soever ye would that men should do to you, do ye
even so to them."

She never allowed a pupil to sit in the class with
untidy head, or dirty hands and face. She felt that
inattention to such things could not fail to have a
demoralizing effect on the class.

She never found fault with a child for doing what

30 SCHOOL DAYS.

she herself was guilty of doing. If the act was one
that her age permitted she would reason with the
child trying to show why it was worse for him than
for her.

She was never satisfied with the careless or noisy
performance of a duty, and never neglected to repeat
her request until it was properly obeyed. She felt
that habits formed when one is young are not easily
broken when one is old; that there was no better way
to show the class that she was not satisfied, than to
repeat the direction until they did properly what was
required of them. She was careful never to show
any temper; she would simply repeat the request in a
calm, though positive manner, until her direction was
followed.

She never neglected an opportunity to show her ap-
preciation of pupils' efforts to do right, or to instill
into the minds of pupils a sense of the nobleness of do-
ing right because it was right. She knew many of the
children in the school never went to church or Sab-
bath school. Their only model of manhood or wom-
anhood was their teacher. She felt how important it
was that the model be a perfect one.

She never took the time of the class to do her own
work. She felt that she had no more right to take
their time than she had to take their money. She
knew that she could not write letters, make out re-
ports, etc., and teach at the same time. She felt that
her duty during school hours was to teach.

She was not changeable in her discipline. She was
every day alike. Steady, uniform, even, regular dis-

IN THE FIFTIES. 3 1

cipline was maintained. " Never a tyrant — always
a governor," was her rule.

She never tried to startle a class into being orderly
or attentive. She knew that the class would learn to
wait for the " thunder clap " before giving attention.
She felt that a low, but steady, firm tone of voice
would do the work much better. She thought the
desk was not made to pound upon, nor the floor to
stamp upon; and that neither pounding nor stamping
was of the least use in obtaining order. The desk in
the old stone school house gave evidence that this had
not always been the rule.

She never ordered a thing done, when a suggestion
would do as well. She would say, " Boys, I would
not do that." We never heard her say, " Boys, turn
this way and mind your own business, or I will give
every one of you a mark." We had " markers " in
the old stone school house, now and then. " Chil-
dren, what are you studying for?" asked a visitor
one day and the whole school with one voice yelled,
" Marks ! " Which was " as true as preaching " that
term.

Miss C.'s dress was always neat and clean, not
costly but neat. How the girls did copy her. What
respect they had for her. A class that respects a
teacher is not hard to discipline.

She never called a pupil a sneak, or liar or dunce,
or fool, nor did she ever make use of any other epi-
thet of the kind, she was too much of a lady to do so.
She knew that such language was unbecoming and
would cause the pupils to think ill of her. She knew

32 SCHOOL DAYS.

that it hurts a boy's feelings, arouses his resentment,
and makes him surly and unmanageable to be so
treated.

She greeted us every morning with, " Good morn-
ing, children," or " Good morning, boys and girls."
She taught us how to be polite to her and to one an-
other.

She never allowed the pupils to wear their wrap-
pings, overcoats, or overshoes in school and never
neglected the proper ventilation of her room, feeling
that inattention to these matters might endanger the
health of the children. They were not old enough to
have good judgment, and if they were to err, she felt
that it would be her fault, as she was older and ought
to know better.

Do you wonder that we loved her? Is it at all
surprising that we learned that term? Take our
country over and there are hundreds upon hundreds
of just such teachers, hard-working, untiring, con-
scientious, enthusiastic, who never have received, and
who must never hope to receive their full reward in
this world. Such teachers are worth their weight in
gold. And yet there are trustees that will stand and
quibble over five dollars a month as between such a

teacher and a " Daddy " W . as we boys called

him.

Miss C. was one day teaching a class of little chil-
dren the different kinds of angles, as, right, obtuse,
and acute. Drawing a right angle on the board she
called their attention to it and then named it. Next
she drew an acute angle and called their attention

IN THE FIFTIES. 33

to the difference between them. Just at this point
one little fellow began shaking his hand in the air,
as children will when very much in earnest. " What
is it, my boy ? " said Miss C. When the little fellow,
who by his earnestness had caused all to look in
his direction, exclaimed with a beaming face, " We
have a ' cute ' baby home, too." We were all on
the point of shouting with laughter when Miss C.
quickly raised her hands to her lips and then ex-
cusing the little class, telling them to go out doors and
play, turned as she closed the door after them, and
burst into a hearty laugh in which we all joined. She
would not for the world have hurt that little boy's
feelings or have done anything to encourage him to
become the school clown.

" Many arguments might be adduced to show that the princi-
ple, that the main business of the teacher is to get the pupil to
teach himself, lies at the basis of the entire art of Instruction.
The teacher who, by whatever means, secures this object, is an
efficient artist; he who fails in this point fails altogether; and the
various grades of efficiency are defined by the degrees of approx-
imation to this standard."

Joseph Payne.
i

CHAPTER VI.
" DADDY W."

IN THE last chapter I mentioned a " Daddy " W — .
One of the boys who was in his school is now a man
pronounced by all who know him a gentleman. He
is a quiet, unassuming, dignified man. He has a
rich, thoughtful mind. He is one with whom I de-
light to converse because I always learn. Sympa-
thetic as a child, kind hearted and true. He now has
a very responsible position, is in fact, the principal of
one of the largest schools in one of the largest cities
of the Union. When a boy he went to school and
he remembers just how he felt as a child, a grand
good thing, by the way, inasmuch as he has chosen
the profession of teaching for a life's work. For he
who cannot remember how he felt and thought as a
child, is hardly calculated to be the disciplinarian of
children.

He was not always good in school. I was out
walking with him one day when we met an old school-
mate, they shook hands and for ten or fifteen min-
utes talked of old times. When we started on our
walk, my friend said, " I wonder how that man re-
members me, he was one of the goody-goody boys in
school, and I, well, well, I fear he recalls things about

35

36 SCHOOL DAYS.

me that I have forgotten myself." Then after a mo-
ment, I looked at him and saw an expression on his
face I had never seen there before. Stopping he
turned to me and said, " We had one teacher who
was not fit to teach a cat. I was in his class for three
years, and I honestly believe that had I been in his
class three years longer I would have ended my days
in State Prison. Let us not talk about it."

Think you my readers, this teacher ever did any-
thing for the good of the profession he had dared to
assume? Oh! the influence of such a man, where
will it end? What think you that teacher was work-
ing for? For the good he could do? Had he any
spirit in his work? Did he give his pupils a thought
outside of his school? Which, think you, he cared
for the most, their average per cent to show company,
or their everlasting good? He certainly made grave
mistakes. His excuse might be that he did it through
ignorance of child nature. But I charge him that is
no excuse, for he, when he took his position, assumed
all of its responsibilities. Rather than to have had an
influence over this one boy for bad, let him seek a
livelihood anywhere else, or as David Page expresses
it, " Failing to gain it by other means, let starvation
seize his body, and send the soul back to its Maker as
it is, rather than he should incur the fearful guilt of
poisoning youthful minds and drag them down to his
pitiable level."

" Oh ! let not then unskillful hands attempt
To play the harp, whose tones, whose living tones,
Are left forever on the strings. Better far

IN THE FIFTIES. 37

That heaven's lightnings blast this very soul,
And sink it back to Chaos' lowest depths,
Than knowingly, by word or deed, he send
A blight upon the trusting mind of youth. n

" But, how did you get where you are ? " I could
not help asking. " Ah," he answered, " that is an-
other story. When I left ' Daddy's ' school I went
to the school under Mr. H — , who changed my whole
life. God bless his memory." " How did he reach
you ? " I asked. " Well, first, he trusted me, and sec-
ond he let me help him." He let him help him! Ah,
teachers, here was the secret. How often have par-
ents spoiled their children by not letting the little
children help them. Mother is sweeping and Tot
comes and says, " Mama, let me help you sweep with
my little broom ? " What is the reply ? " No, no,
go away,, you will make more work. Now, stop,
or I will have to send you in the other room. You
had better go there right away, as I am in a hurry."
Papa is just as bad, and in a few years when the child
is a little older the parents say, " Willie is never will-
ing to do anything. I would rather do it myself than
ask him to do it for me." Little dreaming that they
have driven him away so often in the past that they
have robbed the child of all the ardor he once had for
helping mama and papa.

When the trusting child comes to you

Asking that he do his part,
Do not give a hasty answer.

Do not wound his little heart.

38 SCHOOL DAYS.

If refusals come too often,

There will surely be a day
When you long to have him help you,

He will turn the other way.

Oftentimes the thoughtful teacher
Gives the thoughtless boy a start,

When she simply lets him help her,
She has won his little heart.

Ah! I hope that I may never
Put a blight on trusting youth,

That I never dampen ardor,
That I always stand for truth ;

For I love these little children,
With their hearts so frank and free,

And it is a mighty tribute
When they — so fresh from God — love me.

CHAPTER VII.
EXAMINATION — 1861-1888.

PERHAPS nothing will better show the advance
made by the public schools since the Fifties than to
quote from an article written by Charles F. King, who
at one time was Manager of the National School of
Methods. He says, " We have a very distinct recol-
lection of the first examination in 1861, for the pur-
pose of testing our fitness to teach a district school.
The questions propounded were as follows :

1. What is a conjunction?

2. How many vowels in the alphabet?

3. What is a neuter verb? Give one.

4. Define he; conjugate hear.

5. Give the opposite gender of duck, earl, nun,
wizard, duke.

6. Why do you in dividing one fraction by an-
other invert the divisor?

7. Give the table for apothecaries' weight.

8. What is true discount?

9. How do you explain the rule of three?

10. Where is Cape Fear?

11. Bound Michigan.

12. What is the capital of Beloochistan ?

13. Name the principal islands of Malaysia.

39

40 SCHOOL DAYS.

14. Read this extract from Webster. (Peroration
at Bunker Hill.)

15. Spell the following words: Chameleon, eligible,
querulous, dyspepsia; pinnacle, elixir, cylinder, mea-
sles, caterpillar, venerate.

Next comes the list for 1888.

1. Which would yob develop first in a child, the
power of reasoning or that of observation? Why?
How?

2. What place has the kindergarten in education?

3. Do you favor manual training? If so, why?

4. What studies should be taught topically?

5. Who was Pestalozzi? Comenius?

6. Name five other eminent educators in the past;
five of the present day.

7. How many of the following books do you own ?
viz. : Page's Theory and Practice, Quincy Methods.
Johonnot's Principles and Practice of Teaching.
Fitch's Lectures on Teaching, Parker's Talks on
Teaching, Payne's Lectures on the Science and Art of
Teaching, Bain's Education as a Science, Sully's Psy-
chology, Compayre's History of Pedagogy. Quick's
Educational Reformers. How many have you read?

8. Write a review of some educational book.

9. How would you improve the conversational
form of your pupils?

10. What is the best way of getting pupils to read
books?

11. What is the best method of teaching reading to
beginners ? Why ?

12. Describe some well chosen busy-work.

IN THE FIFTIES. 41

13. How can the attention of pupils be best secured ?

14. How much time would you devote to commer-
cial geography?

15. Name four good educational papers or maga-
zines.

1 6. State the means and proper appliances necessary
for the proper performance of the work of the teacher
and students in history.

" The geography of the infant school should be pictorial and
descriptive. Commencing with the elements of natural scenery
that fall under the child's observation, and carefully noting their
distance and relative direction from the school and from each
other — the hill, the mountain, the brook, the river, the plain, the
forest, the moor, the rich mould, the island, the sea, the cliff, the
cape, the village, the city, that may be seen in prospect from the
school ; the productions of his own land — its animals, trees and
flowers — the men of his own land, their occupations, customs,
habits, food, clothing ; it should seek to make the child realize the
corresponding features of other lands by comparison with what
it has observed in its own."

From Early Education by James Currie, Scotland.

CHAPTER VIII.
" GEOGAFY."

WE STUDIED "geogafy" in the old stone school
house, too; both in the big room and the little room.
The only difference between the book used in the little
room and that used in the big room was in thickness.
Each had the same text and had the same maps. Ask,
" What is an island ? " and all would yell, " An island
is a body of land surrounded by water." Then had
we been asked what is the meaning of surrounded,
there would have been no yelling, as it is doubtful
if any of us knew. I shall never forget the day a
visitor, a teacher, by the way, up in pedagogy as I now
know, sat listening to us recite definition after defini-
tion with a smile on his face. At last the teacher
asked him if he would like to ask some questions. At
first he declined but afterward changed his mind. His
first question was, " Name the Middle Atlantic States."
We named them. His next, " Who ever saw any of
or any part of the Middle Atlantic States? Hands
up." No hands. " Well, who never saw any of the
Middle Atlantic States? Hands up." Up went all
of the hands ! Then, " Does the St. Lawrence river
flow up hill or down hill?" "Up hill," with one
voice. We knew by the way the teacher looked that
something was wrong, but did not know what. We

43

44 SCHOOL DAYS.

were sure we were right because we had seen it on
the map. Now came, " Which is higher, Lake Erie
or Lake Ontario? " " Lake Ontario," again from the
whole class. Now came the last but not least, " You
may all point to the north," and every index finger of
our right hand pointed to the ceiling of the room.
The teacher was heard to say, " Thank you very much.
I have learned a lesson." Somehow, after that day
the geography lessons became more interesting.

How wise we had been as to the Danube, Euphrates,
Amazon, and all of the other rivers and cities of Eu-
rope, Asia, Africa and South America. As to local
geography, we could not have bounded our native
county, nor so much as told the points of the compass
in our own town, had the master's switch been ten
times as long, wonderful as were its powers of per-
suasion. I have often wondered, yet have never un-
derstood, why that switch could so often bring out the
right answer to a question from us boys, w^ho fpr the
life of us, could not tell how we ever knew it.

I cannot resist here telling a good joke on Bill,
whom I have mentioned before. Bill had neglected
to get his lesson and bargained with Dick to tell him
the answers when he might be called upon to recite.
His first question was, " In what direction is Texas
from New York ? " Bill knew nothing about it, and
Dick much less, but whispered, " Easty-westy," which
Bill bawled out loud enough to be heard in all parts of
the room to the delight of the whole school. The next
minute Bill was having an introduction to Dr.
" Beech " as we used to say. When the class went to

IN THE FIFTIES. 45

their seats Bill gave Dick to understand, by signs well
known to boy life, that he might expect a settlement
after school.

" Lull'd in the countless chambers of the brain,
Our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain;
Awake but one, and lo, what myriads rise !
Each stamps its image as the other flies."

How true the above ; as I sit here writing of the old
days, there come to me the images of three of my old
teachers. That of Mr. B. because of a great wrong
he did, that of Mary M., because of her great kind-
ness and that of Mr. H., because of his six feet of
avoirdupois, and his carriage whip, warranted whale-
bone!

Before these teachers there had been Mr. X., who
showed no more evidence of knowing how to govern
children than a snail does of rapid transit. What a
term that was! I mention this because of what is to
follow. Soon after X. left it was reported that Mr. B.
was coming to teach. I chanced to meet a chum on
the village green, when he asked me if I had heard
there was to be a new teacher. I had and told him
so. Then we began to talk things over ; all about X's
school ; how bad we had been and how much better we
ought to do. Think of it, teachers, two boys twelve
and thirteen years old talking all by themselves in this
way. Did you ever think boys got together and had
such talks? My chum said he had made up his mind
to be a good boy in school and try to please Mr. B. I
promised that I would try, too. We shook hands on

46 SCHOOL DAYS.

it and parted. When the day for opening school
came, we started for school rilled with good resolu-
tions. Everything passed off nicely the first day until
our class was called to the recitation. The teacher
had called upon me to recite, it seems, though I had
not heard him. Stepping up to me he said, " Well,
sir, why don't you answer me? See here, young man,
I want you to understand that I have heard all about
you. (The busy-bodies had been to work. How
many there are in the world.) You may just make
up your mind that if you come to school, you have got
to mind me, and with no fooling about it either. I've
been told how you cut up, and — " I may as well stop
here as to give the whole harangue. How I hated
that man, and I fear that I was the means of his sin-
ning more than once during that term. All good
resolutions went for naught. I am indignant, even
now, when I think of his abuse that day. More so,
however, toward those who felt it their duty to give
him his information. Teachers, don't, please don't,
say to the teacher who is to have your class next term,
" Wait till you get so and so. He will make it warm
for you." How do you know but that the bad boy
of today is to be the best boy in school tomorrow?
How do you know but that he may have met his chum
and talked it over? Let the one who gets the class
find out who are the bad boys and then, when she
comes to you talk it over with her. In this way you
will have given them a chance, the least you can do.

I know of a boy who went to a new school with
his card marked in deportment, " Very Poor." The

IN THE FIFTIES. 47

principal said to him, " Well, well, that is a bad record
to bring, but perhaps you are going to try to do better.
Anyhow, I am not going to judge you by what you
have done for others. I shall see what you do for me.
I tell you what I will do ; I'll throw this card away and
take you to the teacher myself." This he did, saying
nothing to the teacher as to his past. In about two
months he asked the teacher how the boy was doing
and she said, " O, he is one of the good boys, —
never does anything bad, and always has his lessons."

THE CHILD.

"He who checks a child with terror,
Stops its play or stills its song,
Not alone commits an error;
But a great and grievous wrong.

"Give it play and never fear it,
Active life is no defect,
Never, never, break its spirit,
Curb it only to direct.

"Would you stop the flowing river,
Thinking it would cease to flow?
Onward it must flow forever,
Better teach it where to go."

CHAPTER IX.
MR. H. AND HIS WHIP.

MR. H. and his whip warranted whalebone. Here
was order for you ! How still his school was ! How
quickly we obeyed when he gave the signal ! Yes,
and how quickly we moved if we did not obey at once!
What do you suppose we care for the memory of Mr.
H. today ? I do not recall anything he ever taught us,
and only think of him to laugh at him. To this day
when any of the old boys meet, we talk of him as " old
H." Mister never seems to fit. When we talk of
him it is to recall some one he pounded. No doubt
the Board of Education thought Mr. H. was a great
success because he had such good (?) order. Let me
give some explanations that may be useful to any
young teachers who may read this chapter :

H. let us see that we could vex him, — the worst
thing he could do. Two little fellows, in the first
grade, were one day heard talking at recess time about
a substitute teacher they were having that day. One
said to the other, " Say, didn't we make her mad ?
Wasn't it fun?" The other answered, "Yes, let's
do it again when we go in, will ye?" Remember
they were only seven years old, but they had " caught
on."

He whipped only when he was angry, — the next

49

50 SCHOOL DAYS.

worse thing he could do. He was changeable in his
discipline, excusing a rank offence today and punish-
ing a slight offence tomorrow, — a serious fault in a
teacher. He would threaten us, — we accepted the
threats as a challenge. He began the first day to read
off the rules of the school. The rules, many of them,
suggested to us what to do. Read a rule to a school as
follows : " The rule of this school is that no one must
write on the side of the building." The chances are
ten to one that there will be a dozen marks within
twenty-four hours. No one had thought of marking
the building till the rule was read. H. had hobbies.
One was " Order." Another, Spelling. A third,
showing off for Company.

Yes, we had spelling that term. I can see the line
we used to toe as we stood in a row reaching nearly the
whole length of the school room. It was as important
to toe the line squarely as to spell correctly. I think,
perhaps, more so, as my image of the line is much
sharper, while I write, than is that of the words we
spelled.

When assigning a lesson the teacher would hold
up the spelling book in one hand, and draw three
fingers of the other hand over the three lines extend-
ing from the top to the bottom of the page, and say
without a smile, " Class will take the next three lines
for tomorrow's lesson; and any one who misses two
words will have to stay after school and spell the
whole lesson. Sometimes we did and then again we
did not, so we were inclined to run the risk that the

IN THE FIFTIES. 51

teacher had a date, knowing if he had, we would not
have to stay, miss or no miss.

The lesson would not only contain from forty to
sixty words, but one-half of them were such as we
had never seen anywhere but in the spelling book and
many of them we have never seen since. Why did
no one see how absurd it was to cram the children's
heads with eight thousand words when the teaching
of four thousand of these words was as senseless as the
words were useless?

The reason is plain to me now. They did not real-
ize that teaching is a profession and that to succeed
they must keep up a continuous study of the best
writers in the profession. As well might a lawyer
endeavor to practice law with no knowledge of the
statute laws of his state, or a doctor to practice medi-
cine with no knowledge of physiology, as for a -teacher
to teach with no knowledge of the mind he is trying
to develop.

" O, woe to those who trample on the mind,
That deathless thing! They know not what they do,
Nor what they deal with. Man, perchance may bind
The flower his step hath bruised ; or light anew
The torch he quenches ; or to music wind
Again the lyre-string from his touch that flew ;
But for the soul, O, tremble and beware
To lay rude hands upon God's mysteries there ! "

A non-professional teacher — that is one who has
no scientific knowledge of the human being's mind, —
has no right to be the disciplinarian of children. Such

5^ SCHOOL DAYS.

teachers are too impatient, too thoughtless, too unsym-
pathetic to deal with children.

If they have to do with none but bright goody-
goody boys and girls they will do very well. If a
child comes under their care who has any physical de-
formity, they are kind enough and will not admit of any
ridicule; perhaps they will even be patient with a lame
boy because of his limping; and if his arm be broken
will not scold because he cannot do his writing les-
son. Yet, on the other hand, a poor little fellow
who has a deformity of mind receives no help or sym-
pathy from them ; they only know that he is dull, hard
to teach, difficult to interest in his work.

It may be the child inherits a bad temper, or per-
haps a nervousness that causes him to be at all times
in motion. He may have inherited a suspicious na-
ture, selfishness, in fact, many of the things that are
bad and may be inherited. Now, how does the non-
professional teacher look at such children? He looks
upon them as being in his way for several reasons;
first perhaps — they will keep the class average down
on examination day or mar the order when company
is present. Such teachers never stop to think that if
it were not for just such boys and girls there would
be no need of them as teachers; that it is just this
class of pupils that gives us our positions. Any old
quack of a doctor can prescribe for a case of tempo-
rary indigestion, but where a genuine case of dys-
pepsia takes hold of the patient, the quack hacks away
at him till he (the patient) is ready to end his life to
get rid of his sufferings. When, on the other hand,

IN THE FIFTIES. 53

the professional doctor takes hold of him, studies his
symptoms, reads up on the disease and soon has his
patient well. So with the quack teacher when dealing
with mental dyspepsia. He hacks away at the child,
calls him a dunce, tells him he is bad, finds fault with
him, pesters him, in short makes his school life too
warm for him until finally " school " and " prison "
become synonymous terms to him. The professional
teacher, on the other hand, studies such children, reads
up on them, realizes he has a chronic case on his hands
which will not yield at once to his skill, works away
day after day knowing that the educating of this child
does not mean the learning of rules in grammar, or
of descriptions of rivers, or in the working of prob-
lems. These are all right in their places but the pa-
tient must first be made ready for them ; and, though
at the end of the term, the child may not know " A "
from " X " he has been far more benefited and more
highly educated than others who have mastered the
whole alphabet, and when the dull or bad boy once
begins convalescing he will out-strip the others so
rapidly and leave them so far behind as to cause them
to forget they were ever in the same class with him ;
and best of all is, he owes his growth to his patient
teacher.

And now, dear reader, to which class of teachers do
you wish to belong? To which class, do you think,
Prof. James B. Richards belonged? * Think you, my
friends, that Prof. Richards had a knowledge of So-

*See chapter XVI.

54 SCHOOL DAYS.

crates, Plato, Aristotle, Lock, Seneca and Pestalozzi?
Did he go at his work blindly ? Had he not a definite
purpose in his teachings? Could he by trusting to
chance have accomplished his grand, noble work?
And is it not fair to conclude that any who fail or do
but fairly good work may trace their failure back to
the want of a knowledge of the principles as laid down
by the old Greek and Roman philosophers ? Are they
not all, if not independent students inclined to do
the same thing, viz. : Confine themselves mainly to
the imitating of their teachers?

Why did your teacher and your teacher's teacher
call out some twenty or thirty pupils at a time and
have them toe the mark while they pronounced some
fifty or sixty words for the pupils to spell orally?
Was it not because they had not the opportunity, or
had failed to embrace it, of becoming acquainted with
principles and methods of teaching? Is it any wonder
that their teaching was mechanical, soulless, devoid of
high aims? Is it at all surprising that they exercised
very little if any influence upon the development of
intelligence and character in pupils? There was no
individuality in their work and hence they could not
develop any individuality in their pupils. And inas-
much as they were unable to contribute to the growth
of correct principles in the profession, they were rather
an impediment to the progress of the profession. Per-
haps they had not the time for the study of the pro-
fession. Now stop a moment and think how very
weak, how absurd such a reason is. They had the

IN THE FIFTIES. 55

assurance to ask for a position to do a work which
they had not the time to learn.

Think, ladies, of your paying a dressmaker two
dollars a day to experiment on your new dress till
she learn to make one. I say paying a dressmaker
whose only preparation to make herself a dressmaker
is to present herself and ask for a position as such;
or who may have been through a dressmaking train-
ing class, and trod the sewing machine while some one
stood by to help her guide the work and who claimed
in this way to have become an expert in the art and
to need no more study but practice only; how many
will hire her?

" Well," you say, " what about such men as Wash-
ington, Jefferson, Webster, Clay and hundreds of oth-
ers, who became so great and were pupils in the
old-time school ? " The teachers of such pupils de-
serve but little credit. Such boys will learn if shut
up in a room by themselves; though you should bind
them hand and foot yet will they gain knowledge.
The teacher who deserves credit is he who awakens
the sleepy mind ; he who reaches that which all others
have failed to reach. He it is that, like the sculptor
who had finished his masterpiece, may clasp his hands
and with joy exclaim, " This is my handiwork ! "

"Well," says another, " I know of teachers who do
not study their profession and do a grand, good work."
How do you know ? let me ask. " Why ! look at their
results." What are they ? "A class average of over
go% ! ! " Ah ! yes, but I saw an answer to that in the
" New York School Journal." " Examinations, as or-

56 SCHOOL DAYS.

dinarily conducted, do not give the result of good
teaching, because they are based upon the supposition
that knowledge is everything. A cross, selfish, and
even brutal teacher may make a good text-book
scholar. They may know a wonderful number of
facts in history and geography; they may be quick in
mathematical calculations, and excellent in the lan-
guages, and yet with all this they may send their pupils
out into the world fit only to become Wall Street
sharpers, boodlers, vicious and tricky politicians.
They will probably get money, live in palaces, drive
fast horses, and be among the " successful " men of
the world. But are these things the measures of their
success? By no means. Just such men pulled Rome
down, and just such men will cause the ruin of our
country if it falls. The imparting of knowledge is of
minor importance. We are running wild over strength
of body and mind, and neglecting the culture of the
soul.

There are some who will say this is " nonsense,"
'" preaching," and all that. It is not nonsense, and if
it is preaching, the more of it the better. We want
some earthquake that will shake a few of these funda-
mental truths into the inner consciousness of thou-
sands of teachers who are wild over facts. They are
everlastingly asking "Who?" "What?' "When?"
" How ? " This is the beginning, middle, and end of
all their teaching. If they find a pupil who can tell
the name of Queen Victoria's great grandmother, or
conjugate the Greek irregular verbs, and give Cicero's
idiomatic expressions, they at once pronounce him

IN THE FIFTIES. 57

" excellent." Special results stand at the end of all
their ideas of school work."

Of course there always have been and always will
be hundreds and hundreds of hardworking, untiring,
conscientious, progressive, enthusiastic teachers at
work. But, oh ! how our honorable profession has
been made to suffer by the thoughtless, incompetent,
money-loving, one-sided, narrow-minded, covetous old
sinners who have passed themselves off as representa-
tive members of it. One of the worst things that can
happen to a school, is to have teachers who can do
what passes for good work but who are either too
lazy to read or too stingy to pay for professional books.

" Why," say they, " I do not find anything new in
them."

No, of course you do not, and why? Because that
noble, God-loving, high-minded teacher, who taught
you, years ago, was a reader; and put into practice,
what you learned of her, without knowing it. But
you will not impress your pupils as she impressed you,
for her success came from the heart, while yours
comes only from the head.

The great trouble with teachers who do not study
their profession and the laws of the mind is, that they
make tugboats of themselves, and pull and puff and
tug away at their pupils, pulling them through the
waves against the tide ; whereas had they known more
of the laws of the mind, were they in love with the
work, they would have seen how unnecessary all this
was ; and instead of taking the place of the tug, would
have taken the place of the rudder, and simply guided

58 SCHOOL DAYS.

their pupils in the right direction, to help themselves
through.

We sometimes complain that we are too poorly com-
pensated for our work. If there are hundreds and
hundreds of teachers who are underpaid there are
hundreds and hundreds who are overpaid. Many a
teacher is receiving good pay this very moment who
is not worth his salt as a teacher. Whose fault is it?
Yours, my reader, and mine and every teacher's in
the country, if we do nothing to raise the standard of
the profession.

CHAPTER X.
MR. H. AND HIS HOBBIES.

As SAID in the last chapter one of the hobbies of
Mr. H. was spelling. When a boy we were filled with
admiration for Sir Isaac Newton, we admired Benja-
min Franklin, we appreciated the plays of Shake-
speare, the force of Webster, the statesmanship of
Hamilton, and the generalship of Washington; but
these did not awaken our indescribable wonder, our
unbounded amazement, as did the performances of
some of the boys and girls, in the old stone school
house. It was beyond our comprehension how they
could stand and spell the school down by rolling out
letter after letter which, combined in regular or irregu-
lar, wise or otherwise order, make up the words of
our English language. Let company come and we
were sure to have a spelling match. H. would rather
go without his dinner than to have any one miss a
word the first three or four times around.

After a hasty recitation in grammar, arithmetic, and
geography, H. would say, " We will now choose sides
for a spelling match." There came one day, shall I
ever forget it, when we had company and as usual
the sides were chosen. Poor Tim always dreaded the
matches as well as some of the rest of us, but had to

59

60 SCHOOL DAYS.

be chosen, as all were to take part. The spelling be-
gan with such words as, Thames, Corsica, Sierra
Madre, phthisic, until H. came to Tim, whom he gave
bullet. Tim saw the point, and in a not very gracious
manner mumbled, b-u-1-bul, 1-e-t, let, bullet. The next
time around, Tim got baker. And as before, b-a-ba,
k-e-r, ker, baker. The next for Tim was compel. The
pupils were trying hard to hold in and even some of
the company were inclined to smile. Tim sang out in
a loud voice, c-o-m, com, p-e-11, pel, compel, go to

h 1, give me small words, will you ? And away he

ran out of the door never to return.

It was naughty in Tim and hard on H., but we
have always felt it served him right, as he was hu-
miliating the boy to build up his own reputation.

H. had this one method for teaching spelling and
each child whether deaf, dumb or blind must learn to
spell by this method. Heaven help the children who
have a " Method " teacher over them.

" But," said the king, " are pupils all the same,
Do various minds not various methods claim?
Pearls are not always found upon the shore,
And gold is oft extracted from the ore ;
And he who gems from terra would procure,
Must not expect to find them bright and pure.
What different methods, too, the gold assay,
And diamonds' luster to your gaze display !
Thus should the teacher on each different boy
A different method patiently employ;
Minds he should know, from various method choose
That which is proper, and with patience use.
Then might he see, and hail without surprise,
The stupid boy becoming learned and wise.

IN THE FIFTIES. 6l

'Tis they whose 'art with all is just the same'
More often than their pupils are to ' blame.' ,

Revolve this thought in your pedantic skull :
' The pupil, through the teacher, oft is dull.' "

R. W.

Very few teachers stop to think that the " dull boy "
may be dull or slow because he is deaf, near-sighted
or bashful. I recall a mother who one day brought
her large overgrown boy to school and said to the
principal, " I have brought my son to you because he
has not made much progress where he has been. He
is fifteen years old and only in the sixth grade."
" What seems to be the trouble? " asked that dear old
children's friend, Col. Parker, for it was he. " Is he
hard of hearing ? " " Oh, no, he can hear well enough
only he is hard to learn I guess." At this the principal
took out his watch and stepping behind the boy, held
it about 12 inches from the boy's ear asking, " Can
you hear my watch tick ? " The boy shook his head.
The watch was then placed near the other ear. " Do
you hear it now ? " Once more the boy shook his
head. The look on that mother's face! Could it be
possible? The boy was placed in a room with a
teacher. Miss G., who knew how to deal with such
cases, and who in about a week reported to the princi-
pal that she had discovered that the boy was also near
sighted ! Was it any wonder he had not been getting
along very fast? Was it not more of a wonder that
he had reached even the sixth grade? The boy re-
mained in school until he reached the high school. A
year or so after he had left the school he called to

62 SCHOOL DAYS.

see the writer, whom he told how cross his teachers
had been until he met Miss G. Other things he said
that were pathetic. How he had made up his mind
before this that he was too dull ever to learn anything.
How he had been kept after school for not having
followed a direction he had never heard. How he had
almost always sat in a back seat where he had not
seen much of the work that had been written on the
blackboard, etc. "How was it possible?" you ask.
Ten years ago it was not only possible, but very com-
mon. Not today, however, thanks to the Child Study
movement that has swept the whole country.

One day a bright, young teacher went to visit a
certain school and during the morning the teacher in
charge pointed out a little girl, " who did the funniest
things." " What seems to be the trouble with her? "
asked the visitor. " Oh, I don't know," tapping her
forehead, " I guess." The visitor passed down to the
back of the room (these children always take back
seats if choosing for themselves) and found the little
thing writing everything inverted. She began talk-
ing with her and found that she was very bright and
unusually quick to take a suggestion. Returning to
the teacher she said, " That child is bright enough,
but there is some trouble with her eyes." " Oh,
pshaw," was the reply, " you don't know her." " Yes
I do, and if she was my pupil I would see her mother
at once." So much was said that the teacher did see
the mother, who took the child to see an oculist, who
in turn, fitted her eyes with the proper eye glasses,

IN THE FIFTIES. 63

and lo ! no one did his work better after that than the
little " daffy girl ! "

Oh, teachers, what a calling is yours. Read the
opinions of some of the greatest school men that have
ever engaged in your honorable calling :

From Col. Francis W. Parker, " Selfishness may
be turned to benevolence, cruelty to love, deceit to
honesty, sullenness to cheerfulness, conceit to humility,
and obstinacy to compliance, by the careful leading of
the child heart to the right emotion. But, in this
work, the most responsible of all human undertakings,
we cannot afford to experiment; there is one indis-
pensable requirement, — the teacher must know the
child, and its nature."

" Of all children born," says Rousseau, " only about
half reach youth; and it is probable that your pupil
may never attain to manhood. What, then, must be
thought of that barbarous education which sacrifices
the present to an uncertain future, loads the child with
every description of fetters, and begins, by making him
wretched, to prepare for him some far-away indefinite
happiness he may never enjoy ! "

South says, " He that governs well, leads the blind,
but he that teaches gives him eyes; and it is glorious
to be a sub-worker to grace in freeing it from some
of the inconveniences of original sin."

" What considerate man," says Edward Everett,
" can enter a school and not reflect with awe, that it
is a seminary where immortal minds are training for
eternity.'

' The teacher has the consciousness of being en-

64 SCHOOL DAYS.

gaged in a useful and honorable calling. My pen is
too feeble to attempt to portray the usefulness of the
faithful teacher " — is the language of David Page.

" The true teacher of today is not only moulding
the lives of children who are to become the men and
women of the immediate future but in doing this he is
also influencing the intelligence, character and progress
of generations yet unborn," are the closing words of
Orcutt.

Said the late Mr. Fletcher, " The intellectual facul-
ties can never be exercised thoroughly, but by men of
sound logical training, — perfect in the art of teach-
ing."

Says Charles Northend, " To take the child of today
in all his ignorance, weakness, exposed to evil influ-
ences and temptations on every hand, and lead him
on through the devious and dangerous paths of child-
hood and youth, and finally place him upon the battle-
field of life, a true-hearted and intelligent being, richly
furnished with those traits and qualities which will
nerve and strengthen him to ' Act well his part in
life ' — to do all this — is the high privilege and duty
of the teacher; and is it not a noble and godlike
work?"

The following are the words of the lamented Dr.
Channing — " There is no office higher than that of a
teacher of youth, for there is nothing on earth so
precious as the mind, soul, and character of the child."

CHAPTER XI.
MARY M. AND HER INFLUENCE.

Now what of the third teacher we recalled in Chap-
ter VIII, Mary M.? Can we ever forget her? What
an influence she had over us! What nice ways she
had. The school was almost like home. When night
came we longed for morning. What good times we
had! No sitting up straight then like little sticks, to
show off for company. Why, we even talked once in
a while! No doubt we gave her a great deal of trou-
ble at times. No boys could be as full of fun as we
were and not give the teacher trouble. Notwithstand-
ing all this we loved her dearly. We learned things,
too, that we have never forgotten, — things that we
feel have always been useful.

Yet, strange to say, ask us to name some of the
things and we would hesitate, and ask just what they
were, we answer, " Oh, we feel it. Do you under-
stand, we feel the good she did. She made us look
higher, to long to do something. Not by talking to
us about it. If we were doing anything wrong, her
eyes would tell us to stop. All she had to do was to
look at us and we would feel ashamed that we had not
been doing our duty." How wonderful the power of
an influence. Let me quote a verse from a poem writ-

65

66 SCHOOL DAYS.

ten by the man whom " Daddy " W. came so near
sending to States Prison.

" For good or bad our lives and influence make ;
Perchance to live and spread when we are dead.
E'en as the pebbles thrown into the lake
Will move the waves in widening circle spread,
Each circle wid'ning, wid'ning till it break
Upon the margin of its little sea,
So every influence doth its journey take
Perchance to break upon Eternity ! "

There is one point I recall that we all liked but could
not then perhaps have told just what it was, viz. :
She knew more of the subject than she had occasion to
teach. She felt that if she knew no more than she had
to teach her questions would be narrow in range and
her explanations meager. Moreover, she knew that by
being master of the subject she could get at it in a
variety of ways, reproduce it in more than one shape
and see it in more than one aspect.

She took care that all impressions made on the
minds of the pupils were morally wholesome. She felt
that impressions received in the school room go far to
determine character, and are quite as truly a part of
education as the direct teaching given there. If a
child was tardy he was tardy whether he arrived ten
minutes or one-fourth of one minute late. Nor did
she ever let a pupil sneak in as if she did not see him.
Much as she disliked to record a tardy mark every
one was recorded. We soon learned to know this and,
hence, ran no risks.

She lost no time in repeating the answers of the

IN THE FIFTIES. 67

pupils. We never heard her say, " What is a verb? "
" A word that expresses action." " Yes, a word ex-
pressing action." She knew that the repetitions took
time and imparted no new information to the pupil.

She regularly read some standard educational paper
or magazine; feeling that teaching was a science, one
of the few in the Fifties, and therefore, like any other
science demanded study.

When she saw that the class was becoming tired she
changed the exercise or recitation. Let us here go a
little more into detail:

There were once two bright young teachers, each
having a class of equally bright young boys and girls.
It so happened one day, that both of these teachers
selected " The Famine," from Longfellow's " Hia-
watha," for a language lesson. The story being a
pretty one, each thought it would interest the children,
hold their attention, and after being read, each pupil
could be asked to reproduce the story in his own words.
The story was read by both teachers. Both classes
were attentive from beginning to end. Both teachers
were satisfied. The stories were written by the pupils.
Those of one class were fairly well told, while those
of the other class were excellently well told. Why
this difference? As said before, the classes were
equally bright. There were excellent reasons, as will
be shown, for the difference so plainly seen. One
teacher had applied her pedagogy in a general way,
while the other had applied hers scientifically. The
first had chosen the story because she knew it would
win the attention of her pupils. It certainly did and

68 SCHOOL DAYS.

had the other class not been heard from, hers would
have been called a good exercise. She failed, how-
ever, as (i) She gave her class the exercise imme-
diately after a long recitation in arithmetic. (2) The
thermometer registered 78° when she began to read,
and not one of the windows was open as it was a very
cold day. (3) She told the pupils before reading they
were to reproduce the story after she had finished the
reading.

The second teacher had also been giving a long and
difficult lesson in arithmetic just prior to her language
lesson, but before taking up the language, she had ( i )
Opened the windows, and had given the pupils a few
light calisthenics. (2) They sang a few songs. By
these exercises both the mental and bodily fatigue
were removed. The teacher well knowing it would
be idle to try to enlist the close attention of the pupils
while either their minds or bodies were fatigued. (3)
She did not begin by telling them that the story was
to be reproduced, and hence did not divide the atten-
tion of the children, i. e., while listening they were not
thinking of their reproduction. (4) Here she made
her strongest point. This teacher not only told the
class she had a pretty story to read, but gave them an
outline of it as follows : " There was once a wonder-
ful Indian chief. He married a pretty Indian girl.
We shall see what her name was. It was you will find,
an appropriate one. She one day had two strange
visitors, two we none of us would care to have. Her
husband one day, went on a long journey. Before he
returned his beautiful wife died. The Indian's dear-

IN THE FIFTIES. 69

est friend was with her when she died. We will see
how and why this beautiful girl died."

By this happy application of her professional study,
she not only secured the children's attention, but she
had aroused their expectant attention.

Their minds were able to look onward and antici-
pate a coming impression. The consequence was, a
shortening of the process of reception and recogni-
tion. The pupils' minds had a continual satisfaction
of nascent expectation. Laughing Water was recog-
nized at once by the pupils; so was Minnehaha; so
were Famine, (Bukadawin.) and Fever, (Ahkosewin) ;
and poor Minnehaha's death by starvation made all the
stronger impression because of their having been an-
ticipating the kind of death. The teacher also dis-
played great tact in taking this indirect method of im-
pressing upon their minds the fact that one's mother
is his best friend. The class were eagerly waiting to
ascertain who could have been with the young wife at
her death. When it proved to be old Nokomis, the
grandmother of Hiawatha, they were at once willing
to acknowledge her his best friend, though nothing
was said. It is not surprising that the reproduction
of this class was by far the better of the two.

Miss M. always had the attention of her pupils.
" How did she get it ? " She knew that attention is
a voluntary act of the mind. Therefore, she did not
shout for it; she did not scold to get it; she did not
demand it. She did what all teachers must do, who
succeed in securing it. She won it. And better yet,
when she had won it, she did not try to hold it too

70 SCHOOL DAYS.

long. So must it always be when teaching young chil-
dren.

She was enthusiastic over her work. She distin-
guished between a demonstrative, and an animated or
enthusiastic manner. She knew that to be noisy,
flighty, or fussy was not being animated. Too many
do not see the distinction.

She embraced all opportunities for showing sym-
pathy with her pupils. A teacher may place a barrier
life-lasting between her and a pupil by saying, " What,
sick again, dear me, why didn't you stay home then ? "

She was always early in attendance at school, know-
ing that, otherwise, she could not enforce her precept
by example.

She manifested implicit confidence in her pupils'
veracity, knowing that to suspect an innocent child of
falsehood is to wound him almost beyond cure. " Sus-
picion is the poison to true friendship."

She instantly checked any laughter when a diffident
pupil was reciting. Nothing gives a diffident child
more confidence than to know his rights are to be
respected.

Miss M. was not one who would be inclined to say
to her principal, every time he entered her room, " Mr.

what would you do with a boy who does so and

so? " or " Mr. what do you think of a boy that

will do so and so? " or perhaps, " Mr. I am glad

you came in. John, stand up. Would you think a
boy like that would do so and so ? "

Miss M. would know that it is hard for a principal
to do anything at such a time but look foolish. That

IN THE FIFTIES. 71

he will feel more like asking why the boy had been
permitted to stay in the room at all if he had been
guilty of doing such things as required a public charge.
A private talk in the office after, or even during school
hours will do a boy a thousand times more good. A
boy soon learns to grow proud of his bad record if
chastised too often publicly, and when nothing much is
done to him as must be the case under the above con-
ditions, (for it was only by chance the principal en-
tered the room at that time, and had he not entered
nothing would have been reported to him) the others
inclined toward misconduct, are encouraged to become
troublesome.

" There is a given order in which, and a given rate at which,
the faculties unfold. If the course of education conforms itself
to that order and rate, well. If not — if the higher faculties are
early taxed by presenting an order of knowledge more complex
and abstract than can be readily assimilated ; or if, by excess of
culture, the intellect in general is developed to a degree beyond
that which is natural to the age ; the abnormal result so produced
will inevitably be accompanied by some equivalent, or more than
equivalent, evil."

Herbert Spencer.

CHAPTER XII.
PROFESSIONAL READING.

WHEN reading the autobiography of Col. Parker
(see appendix) you will find the following: " When
I went into Boston and could not find a single work on
pedagogics I was surprised, etc." This was long after
the old stone school house days, hence you will know
there was no food for the teachers of those days.
One of the first that the writer ever saw was written
by David Page. It was not long after Col. Parker's
work at Quincy, Mass., however, before the books be-
gan to be published. Teachers' Reading Classes were
formed all over the country. The writer has the honor
of being one of the first to graduate from the New
Jersey State Teachers' Reading Circle. He is proud
of it and makes no excuses for mentioning it here. He
was once asked about that time, " What is a good
book for a teacher to read," and answered the question
as follows : " That reminds me of the man who asked
a doctor what was a good medicine for a patient. The
doctor told him it all depended on what was the
matter with the patient. So I answer your question.
It all depends on what the teacher needs."

If he is a cool, matter of fact, worldly man, and is
teaching for the money he can get out of it, with no

73

74 SCHOOL DAYS.

regard for the influence he may have on his pupils,
thinking his only duty is to put in five hours a day
hearing lessons, I advise, by all means, that he make
the Bible his principal book until he becomes aware of
his awful mistake.

If he has to contend with trials and tribulations and
to meet difficulties which he thinks have never fallen
to the lot of any other man and hence that there is no
encouragement for him, I advise him to read David
Page, in whom he will find a kind, faithful, sympa-
thetic friend, who will instil in him new hope and a de-
termination to overcome all obstacles ; who will inspire
him with a love for his profession and cause him to
lose sight of the almighty dollar, to wait with patience
till he passes to his final reward which will go with
him through Eternity.

If he is one who thinks that children are to be
treated like automatons to be wound up with the key
of nonsensical definitions and run down at his will ; or
if he has the idea that children can learn only when
stuck up in their several seats like so many wooden
posts, I advise that he read Pestalozzi's " Leonard and
Gertrude," where he will find that children can learn
just as much and be a thousand times happier if al-
lowed to be what God intended them to be, simply
little children who can be made to love their teacher,
their school and their several tasks.

Is he inclined to be a skeptic and to scoff at the idea
of teaching's being either an art or science, I advise
him to read White's " Elements of Pedagogy," in
which he will find well known and fixed principles in

IN THE FIFTIES. 75

teaching which, if he violate, will make his task a
monotonous routine, that in turn will bring him to a
premature grave and which will also do an injury to
his pupils that can never be undone.

Is he one who stands before his class the personifi-
cation of an Encyclopedia, airing himself from morn-
ing till night, day after day, explaining every detail,
I advise him to read Payne's " Lectures on Eudcation,"
where he will find, I think, to his satisfaction, that he
is robbing the children of all development of mind.

Is he one who has been feeding his pupils on dry
husks for the past ten years, I advise him to read
Parker's " Talks on Teaching," where he will find
ear after ear filled with the bright, sparkling, well-de-
veloped and thoroughly digestible " Col.," which,
after a few meals, will so change him, that his pupils
will not recognize him as the old dry cob of a few
weeks before.

Is he one who thinks there is no system to the Kin-
dergarten and that it is only fooling away time, I ad-
vise him to read Hailman's " Primary Methods and
Kindergarten Instruction," where he will discover that
there is a methodical, systematic, economical and
efficient use of the occupations described therein which
will successfully guard him against the evils of
random, unsystematic and too common " busy work."

Is he one who has not read the history of his pro-
fession, fearing it would prove dull and uninteresting,
I advise him to read Quick, Fitch or Compayre's
"History of Pedagogy," where he will find (if not
too thoroughly steeped in cheap novels as to be lost

76 SCHOOL DAYS.

to all decent reading), chapter after chapter that will
hold him spellbound from beginning to end. If un-
able to read but one of these let it by all means be
Quick's " Educational Reformers," written by one
whose whole soul was in the work and who has done
much to raise the standard of our profession.

If he be fond of deserts and desire now and then
a real relish, then I advise that he keep always be-
fore him " The Report of the Committee of Ten,"
which he will find full to overflowing of good, sound
common sense that will make him so happy he will
go through his daily work as light-hearted as a child.

Is he one who wishes to know how to manage
children in their early life, i. e., school life, and desires
good sound psychological common sense for the
reason given, let him read Currie's " Early Educa-
tion," a book that is full of thought and wise sugges-
tions for young teachers; a book that every teacher,
and especially every primary teacher, should have,
even though she borrow the money with which to
buy it.

Is he one who has no faith in science teaching in
the common schools and who thinks that it has no
place in the educating of the young and does he desire
to have proven to him how utterly wrong are his
arguments, how absolutely necessary to the child's
health, his good citizenship, in short to his complete
being, is this science study, I advise that he read
Herbert Spencer on Education, where he will find the
question discussed in a logical, comprehensive, con-
clusive manner, so much so that I doubt his being able

IN THE FIFTIES. 77

to lay down the book till every page has been read.
Surely he cannot begin the chapter on Moral Educa-
tion and stop till he has read every word. A chapter
that should be read by every teacher as often as once
a term.

Has he but a limited knowledge of the mind he is
trying to develop and does he desire to realize how
much easier, more attractive and scientific he can
make his work with such knowledge, I advise him to
read Sulley's " Outlines of Psychology," or " Murray's
Hand-Book of Psychology," in either of which he will
learn that there are well known and fixed principles
which should govern all teaching and teachers in their
work. The reading of these two books will not only
make him a better teacher but a better man in every
respect.

How the list has grown. Every year adds its new
ones. No doubt my list will look like a " back
number " to the young teachers who may read it, but
I am quite sure that none on the list will harm them
and the oldest on the list will do them good !

EXAMINATIONS.

The other night I went to bed,
But not to sleep, for my poor head
Was filled with a most awful dread.

Examinations !

I thought of this, and then of that;
Of set and sit; which goes with sat?
I fear my brain has run to fat.

Examinations !

Next came the base and rate, per cent,
Of money to an agent sent,
And with that word all wisdom went.
Examinations !

Then my lessons I try to spell ;

Which words have two, and which, one L?

Oh, my poor brain ! I cannot tell.

Examinations !

Where is Cape Cod, and where Pekin?
Where do the rivers all begin?
A high per cent. I cannot win.

Examinations !

Who was John Smith? What did he do?
And all the other fellows, too?
You must tell me, I can't tell you.

Examinations !

Oh, Welcome sleep! at last it came;
But not to rest, all the same;
For in my dreams this was my bane —
Examinations !

CHAPTER XIII.
EXAMINATIONS.

WE HAD examinations in the Old Stone School
House! I do not mean by that exclamation point
that there is any harm -in the written examination
when " supplementing it with the current work of the
school, and used in the same spirit, and with equal
common sense as the oral test," for when thus used,
" the written test is a most valuable means of school
training." But at the old school we had them to see
if we were to " pass " at the end of the term, and oh,
the lying, copying, cuff-defacing they caused! If we
had been given our choice in knowing much and rank-
ing low in our class, or knowing little and ranking
high, we would have unhesitatingly chosen the latter.

These old annual, to decide all, farcical examina-
tions caused the teachers to become machines for
cramming, pouring into, and stuffing the minds of
their pupils with words, words, words, causing them
to give as much time to the G. C. D. and the L. C. M.,
and that old father of frauds, allegation, because they
might happen to be in the tests, as they gave to the
common sense practical principles of arithmetic.

I once knew a child to con by rote nearly all the
chronological tables in his history so as to be up in all

79

80 SCHOOL DAYS.

the dates, and it caused him to take a life-lasting dis-
like for one of the grandest studies in the curricula of
our public schools.

Such a system simply impressed upon the minds of
the pupils that it is not our daily life that is of im-
portance, but that all is to be summed up at the
eleventh hour, when it will be determined, regardless
of our every day life, whether we are to be rewarded
or punished. Hence many a one of them would spend
the whole year in acts of pure cussedness, idling away
his time day after day, using up more of the teacher's
nerve force than any other half-dozen pupils, and
finally receive a promotion to a higher grade because
he sat up nights during the last month learning the
words of his text book by heart, and on examination
day gave three-fourths of his answers correctly.

These examinations were supposed to test the
teacher's competency also. No matter how faithful
she may have been, if the class ranked low she was
held responsible. It might be that any other ten ques-
tions would not have caught her. That made no dif-
ference; this ten had caught her.

There was a young teacher when these term ex-
aminations were at their height who had been trans-
ferred from one school to another. In the past every-
thing had depended on her class average. A few
weeks before the term examinations began she became
pale, nervous, and irritable ; her new principal noticing
this, asked her the cause, when she expressed surprise
at his having noticed anything unusual in her conduct.

She then frankly acknowledged that the forth-

IN THE FIFTIES.

8l

coming examination was worrying her greatly. She
said that this being her first examination in this
school, she was particularly anxious to have a high
class average. The principal smiled and replied,
" Should your class happen to have a low average, I
presume you will have been a failure." " Yes," she
answered, " I presume I shall have been." Her
trembling voice and downcast eye spoke louder than
her words.

The principal then said, " My dear child, go on with
your work, and if you do as well in the future as you
have been doing in the past, I shall be perfectly satis-
fied with your results, and shall not care whether your
class average is forty or twice forty per cent. By
the way, do you know you might have a class average
of ninety per cent, and be a failure, while on the other
hand the average might be forty per cent, and you be
a perfect success?" " Why, no! " she replied, " how
can that be possible?" "I'll show you," said the
principal, turning to the class of little second year
pupils, " Children," said he, " I'm going to teach you
a new lesson to-day. You may repeat after me,
' Geography is a description of the earth's surface.'
' Say it again.' ' Again.' ' Once more.' ' Now,
who can tell me?' 'What is geography?' 'Willie
may tell me.' ' May, tell me.' ' Class, tell me.'
' Johnny may tell.'

" There," said he, turning to the teacher, " they
know that, don't they?" "Yes, there's no doubt
they do." " Then, if I were to give them an exami
nation, and the first question was, ' What is geog-

82 SCHOOL DAYS.

raphy ? ' you would admit that it was a fair ques-
tion?" "Yes, certainly." " Very well. 'Children,
an island is a body of land surrounded by water.' '
This was repeated and recited as before. " Now,"
said the principal, " the second question will be fair if
asked as follows." ' What is an island ? ' " Yes, per-
fectly fair." " And if the children answered as they
have answered me now, you would give them perfect
marks? " "I certainly should." " Very well, I shall
now prove to you that they know absolutely nothing
about the subject." He then began questioning them
as to how many had ever seen a geography. Up
went their hands. When asked about how it looked,
they answered, " a description of the earth's surface."
The question was then put, " What is a geography
itself?" The definition was again repeated. When
asked how large they thought a geography was, one
thought it was as large as his fist, another as large as
the desk, still another thought it was as large as the
blackboard, when at that moment a little fellow in the
back part of the room with the most intense earnest-
ness pictured on his face, raised his hand and ex-
claimed, " Oh ! I know, sir ; I know ! I know ! "
" Well, my boy, what is it? " " It's a great, big, live
nanny-goat."

Reader, that is as true as that you are reading this
book. The writer was in the room and heard it
himself.

There was not a smile upon the boy's face, nor did
any members of the class laugh, evidently thinking his
answer was right. The little fellow, no doubt, had at

IN THE FIFTIES 83

some time heard that goats were a destruction to the
earth, hence his error. The exercise closed as fol-
lows : The principal said, " Now, children, you may
tell me what is an island?" and they all recited, "An
island is a body of land surrounded by water." " It
would bite you, wouldn't it? " he asked, when they all
exclaimed, " Yes, sir ! "

That teacher afterwards became one of the best in
that school.

Think of a child being promoted after such a test,
with perhaps an average of 75.1 per cent, while the
conscientious child who works faithfully during the
year is left behind as he receives but 74.9 per cent.

" Such men — men deserving the glorious title of Teachers of
Mankind — I have found, laboring conscientiously, though, per-
haps, obscurely, in their blessed vocation, wherever I have gone.
Among the indomitable, active French ; resolute, industrious
Swiss ; the warm-hearted Germans ; the high-minded, but en-
slaved Italians ; and in our own country, God be thanked, their
number everywhere abound, and are every day increasing."

Henry Brougham (1779).

84

CHAPTER XIV.
LIGHT.

THE TIME came when we parted from the old stone
school house. I one day told my father I desired to
go west. "Why?" he asked. "Because I never
saw a young man live on his father till he was twenty-
one who ever became good for anything." I was
given a ticket and with twenty-five dollars in my
pocket started to make my fortune. In a little over
eighteen months I returned to my native village, a
wiser if not a richer boy, though I have always boasted
that I returned with more money than I had when I
left. Money could not buy my experience. A thou-
sand dollars would be no temptation, and yet I would
not have my son go through the experience for many
thousands.

That experience has helped me much as a teacher,
in giving good, practical advice to boys who became
uneasy, and who, tired of school, wished to get to
work. My talks with them were not based on
theories, but were given them from facts from " real
life."

" Poverty," says Garfield, " is uncomfortable, as I
can testify, but nine times out of ten the best thing
that can happen to a young man is to be tossed over-

8s

86 SCHOOL DAYS.

board and compelled to sink or swim for himself."

Shortly after returning from the west, I entered the
Albany State Normal School (Class '73). It was
here I came under an influence that changed my whole
life. How much I owe to the teachers of this school.
How little I knew at the time what an influence they
were having over me ! What an ambition I had to be
somebody in the world! How I longed to be doing!
How differently I looked upon life! There were
those here for whom I had, when under them, un-
bounded respect. Not until later years, however, did
I realize how great was, or rather is, that respect.

How did these men and women reach us ? I do not
remember that they ever gave us a lecture on morals.
There was no sickly precept and moral suasion about
them.

When we entered the school we were sent to our
boarding houses and that ended it so far as we ever
knew. There was no hazing there. The freshmen
were not greeted as " plebes," but were taken by the
hand and given a glad welcome.

I shall never forget the day we took our entrance
examination. Had the " markers " of a few years
later (not in this school, but throughout the country),
given the examination I would have received about
ten points. I was admitted, however, on two months'
probation and at the end of that time in " due form."

What a perfect image I have of the room to which
we went for our geography examination. We were
told to go to the blackboard and draw any map we
liked. I drew Massachusetts, and when Miss S.

IN THE HF'IiEj. °7

passed around the room to look them over she stopped
at mine and asked, " Who drew this ? " I, thinking
it must be very good to have such notice taken of it,
raised my hand high in the air. " Yes," 'said she, " it
looks like an enraged elephant." This in such a way
as not to anger, but to bring a laugh, in which I joined
with the others.

We hear of " born short " pupils now days. If
there had been a class of born short in arithmetic in
those days I'm sure I would have been at the head of
it! I was conditioned in algebra in 1872, and in 1895
I sent a little algebra to my old teacher with a note,

saying, " To Prof. , in memory of the condition

of 1872, with the compliments of the author." In
about six weeks I received a letter saying, " I have
looked the little book over carefully and have come
to the conclusion that the condition was a mistake ! "

But as to these born short are there so many of
them after all? Is it not possible that now and then,
not always, but now and then that the teacher is the
one who is short? Whenever I feel that I have a
born short I ask myself, " Have you looked into this
pupil's past? Do you know his past teachers? Have
you seen them teach the subject he is short in ? Tfien
to give me new courage I do what I am going to ask
you to do and that is to read the report of Prof. James
R. Richard, Chapter XVII, read by him at the
Twelfth Annual Session of the Conference of Char-
ities and Correction, held in Washington, D. C, June
9, 1885, as to how he treated the boy, Sylvanus.
Then ask yourself, " Dare I, who have all the senses

88 SCHOOL DAYS.

with which to work, admit there is a child under my
charge whose mind I cannot reach ? "

OPPORTUNITY.

" Mkster of human destinies am I.
Fame, love, and fortune on my footsteps wait,
Cities and fields I walk; I penetrate
Deserts and seas remote, and, passing by
Hovel, and mart, and palace, soon or late
I knock unbidden once at every gate!
If sleeping, wake — if feasting, rise before
I turn away. It is the hour of fate,
And they who follow me reach every state
Mortals desire, and conquer every foe
Save death; but those who doubt or hesitate,
Condemned to failure, penury, and woe,
Seek me in vain and uselessly implore,
I answer not, and I return no more."

John J. Ingalls.

CHAPTER XV
THE WILL.

THE will is the mind willing. It is the self-active,
self-determining power of the soul. An act of will
involves a choice between alternate acts. How im-
portant for a teacher to know these truths when he
stops to think with White, that " It is possible, by the
non-exercise of certain feelings, and the constant exer-
cise of others, to create in man, in a certain sense, a
new nature — to substitute for passions and lusts, that
degrade the soul, those affections and desires that
exalt and make beautiful the life." Teachers should
not forget, however, that the soul may be filled to
overflowing with emotions of pity and compassion;
the heart may be ready to burst in sympathy for the
sufferings of another, and yet if the feelings do not
pass into a purpose, or out into an act of kindness,
they will develop character but very little, if at all.

The above truth was thoroughly understood by that
noble-minded teacher who, when she heard of an old
lady who had recently lost her husband and whose
only son had a few days later been brought home in
a dying condition for his mother to care for, took
occasion to tell her pupils of the sad case. The chil-
dren listened attentively while their teacher described

89

90 SCHOOL DAYS.

the old lady's home in which were found none of the
luxuries of this world, and but few of the necessities.
Long before the teacher had finished the story many
of the children were in tears. Now was the all im-
portant moment. So far the exercise had been a
success; the teacher had displayed her power of
description; the elocution had been faultless; she had
moved the whole class. This, however, was not her
purpose; she well knew the real test was yet to come.
" How many would like to help this dear old lady? "
was asked. Every one would, even little Johnny,
whose fiery temper and cross, selfish nature had been
a source of great anxiety to his teacher, was ready
with the others. O, how the teacher's heart throbbed
as she noticed this! She well knew that her work
with Johnny was all " the powers that be " would ask
for. Johnny was the brightest boy in the class, as far
as his book-knowledge was concerned, yet this teacher
felt that the public schools were not intended to teach
the Young Americans a few facts from books. She
felt that the millions of dollars annually expended
were worse than wasted, if the children left the school
with no character back of their book knowledge. She
felt that it was not only her duty to teach a child how
to read but what to read. Not only was she to teach
him how to write but what to write ; yes, and what not
to write, too. She knew that there were schools
which have turned out into the world pupils for whom
and for whose country it would have been better had
they received no education; for that which they had
received had only helped them to practice their dis-

IN THE FIFTIES. 91

honest tendencies all the more successfully; tendencies
which by proper training might have been checked.

Here was Johnny, the selfish, then, raising his hand
with the others. " How shall we help the old lady,
Johnny?" is asked. Johnny says he will ask his
father to give him some money to bring to the teacher
for the old lady. The children were all ready to do
this. " But," said the teacher, " I do not like this
plan very well; I want you to do something your-
selves. Ah, I have a plan. When you go home to
dinner, notice what there is on the table that you
desire the most, and then do not eat it. It will re-
quire more or less will power for you to resist. When
you come back to school, you may each tell me what
you denied yourself, and I will put a price on it, and
to-morrow morning you may bring me the amount I
name."

In the afternoon the first few minutes were taken
to determine how much money had been raised. One
child had eaten no butter; another no meat, and an-
other no potatoes. Last of all came Johnny. The
teacher had hardly dared ask him. When asked, he
brought a note to the teacher's desk. It was from his
mother, and stated that for a week Johnny had been
teasing her to make a custard pie for dinner. She
had made one that day, and not a mouthful would
Johnny take. He had tried to explain, but she could
not understand. What did it mean? The class were
told the contents of the note, and it was unanimously
agreed that Johnnie's pie should be marked the
highest of all. The next day the teacher was de-

92 SCHOOL DAYS.

lighted to see Johnny sharing an apple with one of his
less fortunate class-mates. And on the next day after
she learned he had given half of his marbles to a little
fellow who had none. Who knows but that this
teacher had made a Peter Cooper, or a George Peabody
of Johnny ? And yet all the examinations ever given,
by all the boards of examiners that ever existed, would
not have discovered the competency of this noble
woman.

CHAPTER XVI.
A CHAPTER FROM REAL LIFE.

THE year's work is done. The annual examina-
tions are finished. We sent a large class to take the
test. We have been congratulated on our success.
Many, yes, nearly all of our class have passed. A
good showing, says the public at large.

Are we happy? Alas! no. Johnny has been left
behind. Johnny was under our charge for four years.
O, how he tried us ! Time after time we were tempted
to suspend him from school. Still, we held on to him
year after year. Some of our friends thought us too
patient. Others said we " lacked back-bone," while
others who knew us and understood us said, " There is
a limit to all things and you have done your duty."
* Still, we held on to Johnny. Even some of his class-
mates thought we were letting Johnny go too far.
Yet, we did not give him up.

A few weeks before the annual examinations, how-
ever, the last straw breaks the camel's back. We sent
for the father and asked him to take Johnny from
school. " We have no influence over him," we say,
" Nothing we have ever done or said has moved him,
rind now we feel that for the good of the school he
must go."

93

94 SCHOOL DAYS.

The father, with tears in his eyes, agrees with us,
thanks us for all our care and patience, and we feel
while he is talking that we have been quite a hero.
Johnny goes, and when he has gone, we do not feel
so much like a hero as we did. We feel that we are a
poor, weak, impatient good-for-nothing man, and long
to get out of teaching and go into something for
which we are fitted.

The year has gone. Its work is done. Johnny
has not graduated with the rest and we feel, notwith-
standing the congratulations of the public, the year's
work has been a failure.

Weeks, yes, months, have passed since Johnny has
left us. To-day there was a ring at the door-bell.
" Some one wishes to see you," says the little monitor.
We go to the reception room, where we find an old
friend. We shake hands and are glad to see each
other. Our friend asks after our health, how our
class is doing, what kind of a class it is. Then he
tells us of himself, where he has been, what he is and
has been doing, thanks us for something we once did1
for him, tells us that though he did not show any ap-
preciation at the time, his heart was softer than we
thought; says he has just joined the church and is
taking up some of his old studies at home.

We grasp his hand and say, " Ah, Johnny, (yes, 'tis
he) we always said you would come out all right; we
are so glad you came to see us; come again often."
He says he will ; he does not go yet, and seeing he
has something still to say we encourage him to say it.
At last he says, " There is one thing I do not yet

IN THE FIFTIES. 95

understand." " What is that, Johnny ? " we ask.
" Why did you sometimes tell me before the class that
you thought I would come out all right? I can see
why you did so sometimes in private, but do not see
why you did in public." " My dear boy," we say,
" we did it because we try to do our work for all time
and not for the time being only. In your old class of
forty boys and girls some, perhaps many, may become
teachers. They may have a Johnny in their class;
they will then remember you and us, and will remem-
ber our words, and when they see you, or hear of your
becoming a good man, they will have more patience
with their Johnny and will be thankful to you and to
us for our lesson of patience to them."

How happy we feel to-night! How thankful we
are to our kind Heavenly Father because He has given
us a little view of our harvest! O, teachers, what a
grand noble work is ours! We are too apt to look
for immediate results, and think, if we see or hear of
no improvement in our pupils while they are with us
that none has been made. Those teachers who did
the most for me never knew how much they were
doing. If I can do as much for any of my pupils as
some of my teachers did for me I shall feel that God
has let me do some good in the world and that it is
a little better for my having been in it.

Pardon one more reminiscence. Fred, Fred, what
a boy was Fred! How often we came nearly giving
him up. Once his teacher, a grand good woman, said
to us, " Either he goes or I do, which shall it be?"

96 SCHOOL DAYS.

" Fred," said I one day, " how is it you cannot get
along better?" "Oh," said he, "I get ugly, then
Miss — — corrects me and then I get mad, so of
course she gets mad, and the next thing is the office."
I could not but feel that a fellow who talked like that
must have some good in him and so I would talk with
him and (let me say here, with no thought of ad-
vancing an argument for or against corporal punish-
ment, I cannot but feel that the fact that / had the
power to whip him but would not had a much better
influence over him than would the fact that I would
but could not) he talked back with such good hard sense
that I would beg the teacher to give him another trial.
He was a queer boy to deal with, but we held on to
him and at last sent him to the high school and I came
west. In something like four years I returned on a
visit. One day, when walking down one of the prin-
cipal streets, I felt some one tapping me on the back
and turning I saw a six-footer looking down at me.
He had on a broad grin and said, " You don't know
me, do you ? " " No," said I, " I must say I do —
w-h-a-t? Is that you, Fred?" "Yes, it is I."
" How are you, old boy, and what are you doing ? "
" Oh, I am well and you can't guess what I am doing."
" No, I give it up at once, so tell me." " Well, sir, I
am down at R college preparing for the ministry !

CHAPTER XVII.
SYLVANUS.

By Professor James R. Richards.

How are we to reach these unfortunate innocents?
Can they be taught by the ordinary methods? What
is the difficulty?

These questions can, perhaps, best be answered by
drawing a comparison between the normal and the
abnormal child, laying down some general principles,
and illustrating the methods of teaching by giving one
or two cases which have come under my own ob-
servation.

The normal child has all his senses acute, keen, on
the alert. He recognizes the mother's voice, sees any
bright object near him, grasps firmly the finger placed
in his hand. The senses of the abnormal child are all
dormant, sluggish, perhaps morbid. A film seems to
be over his eyes; to the mothers voice, he never re-
sponds; his limbs are useless; he is also deficient in
will power. I was once asked by the late Dr. Bellows,
of New York. What constitutes an imbecile? The
imbecile child is one who has the fewest wants. Per-
haps his only want is to be made comfortable, that is
all; but, from that one simple want, we shall climb,

97

98 SYLVANUS.

step by step, the ladder of wants, and so ascend in
part the scale of all human development.

One of the most trying cases that I ever had to deal
with was in my early experience. It was a boy about
eight and a half years old. He had never known his
mother, so she told me. She had never seen a smile
upon his face. His father had tried to send a light
from some shining object into his eyes, but he never
blinked but once. He had not the power of locomo-
tion; his lower limbs were paralyzed. Not even the
sense of pain or the sense of touch did he have. This
boy I found dressed in a red flannel gown, lying upon
the floor. He could not even roll over; he could do
nothing. There are a great many others as bad as
he, but let us see what we did with him.

I took the boy with me with the greatest care to the
institution, and dealt with him as with a babe. He
was held in arms, fed, rubbed, manipulated, worked
upon to see if we could arouse the energy of his body.
He was properly bathed and exercised, and everything
possible done to develop him. After a month's care-
ful study of his case, I made up my mind that I must
get down to him. Where did I get my lesson? 1
observed one day how a mother, a bright, intelligent
woman, managed a child. She was upon the second
floor and her boy, who was on the lower floor, dis-
obeyed her. She did not scream to him from the top
of the second flight of stairs, saying, " Jack, you must
not do that." She came down stairs, both flights,
and getting right down to him, on the same level with
with him, eye to eye, she said, " My dear boy, don't

SYLVANUS. 99

you know that that is wrong? " The boy melted and
threw his arms around his mother's neck. That is
where I got my lesson. Get upon the floor, — get
down where the child is, right down there. If he
knows anything, it is down there. You must take
hold of the slightest thing in your favor. Day after
day, for an hour at a time, for three months, I took a
book and read aloud to that boy, — intelligently, as if
he understood every word I said, adapting the intona-
tions as if I were reading to an intelligent person.
When mothers talk to their little babes, telling them
little "goo-goo" stories, what is the effect? The
bright child wakes up by and by to this pleasant voice
in the ear. And so it might be with this unfortunate
boy here. And so it was. He finally heard this
voice that was ringing around him in a musical tone,
month after month, and one day,, when I came and
simply sat in a chair and read to myself, I looked one
side to see if he missed me, and the child actually
appeared uneasy. Imagining that he missed me, I
lay down on the floor beside him as usual, saying,
" Oh, you want me, Sylvanus ? Well, I am here."
He breathed a soft " Ah ! " I had planted the first want.
He wanted me. and he wanted me there. He had felt my
influence there; I was too far off in the chair. So I
read to him two or three months more. Then, in-
stead of reading aloud, I read to myself one day.
After a long time, I saw he was trying to do some-
thing. I watched him. Gradually he lifted his finger
and laid it on my lips. " Oh, you want me to read to
you, do you ? " And so I read. Another want had

100 SYLVANUS.

been implanted. I read to him every day, letting him
always have the privilege of opening my lips. At
last he smiled, — the first smile of recognition that
ever came upon that unfortunate child's features. It
was enough to pay me ten thousand times over for all
I had done. " If we can redeem one," I said to Dr.
Howe, " we will redeem them all over the country.
We will open the door so wide that every State shall
pass an act to found an institution for these unfortu-
nates, and every intelligent being shall feel that it is a
privilege to enter into this great work."

This boy, step by step, went on. Finally I could
take him up and have him where I pleased. He was
near me — we were one. He felt it and knew it.
He was glad to be taken up. This training went on
and until one day I found he could move his limbs.
I put him on his hands and knees to teach him to
creep. This was nearly a year and a half after he
came into the institution. As I placed him there, I
said, " I wonder if I can help him to talk." He had
not talked any. I said to him, " Now, move this
hand; that is right. -Now the other; that is a good
boy," guiding them as I spoke. I did this every
day for months, till finally I found he was trying to
do it himself between the drills. After a while I
thought I saw his lips moving as he did it. Putting
down my ear very close I found he was talking. He
was whispering to himself : " Move this hand, that is
right. Now the other; that is a good boy. Now,
move this leg; that is right. Now the other; that is

SYLVANUS. 101

a good boy." He had heard me talk in such a way,
and it aroused him to talk.

We went on. Object lessons came in. He must
go down to the shoemaker's every day to see the
shoemaker make him a pair of shoes. " What are
those, Sylvanus ? " we would ask ; and he would say,
"Shoes." "Who made them?" "Shoemaker."'
"What is this?" "Bread." "Who made it?"
" Betsy " (the girl). And so the object lessons had a
connection in his mind. One day I showed him an
apple. " What is that? " " Apple." He had picked
them up on the ground. " Who made it." " Don't
know." "Didn't the shoemaker?" "No." "Didn't
Betsy?" "No." It was time to give him another
lesson.

I took him up stairs one morning to an east window,
to see the sun rise. " What is that, Sylvanus ? Say
sun." "Sun," he repeated. " Who made it, Sylvanus?
Say God." " God," he repeated. I left him there
and went down stairs. When breakfast was ready I
sent the nurse for him. When I came to the school-
room there was this little boy. He had crept up to the
window, and was talking to another boy. " What is
that, Charlie ? Say sun, Charlie. Who made it ? Say
God, Charlie," calling up one child after another, and
going through his brief lesson. " What is that ? Say
sun. Who made it? Say God." He was the best
teacher I ever had.

That is the way. You must take the clew before
you, and not always thrust yourself in. Some days
after in my object lessons, I took up the apple.

102 SYLVANUS.

" Who made it? " I asked of the children. All were
silent but Sylvanus. He looked as if he had a
thought. " What do you think, Sylvanus ? " I asked.
" God," was the reply. He had made the connection.
Remember, this was the little child when eight and a
half years old, lay upon the floor and could not recog-
nize a thing about him.

One day Sylvanus saw a mother come in and take
up another child and try a jacket on him. Sylvanus
looked up in my face and asked, " Have I a mother ? "
He wanted a mother. Yes, we all want mothers ; and
this little boy wanted one, too. I told him that he
had a mother. He said that he wanted to see her.
So she came one day, and when she came into the
room, she looked all around, and said, " Where is
Sylvanus?" When he heard his name he answered,
" Here I am; is that my mother? O, mother, I am so
glad to see you ! " Joy upon the return of one among
the angels? Here was one redeemed.

Yes, and let me add, my dear Mr. Richards, Through
patience, perseverance and love.

CHAPTER XVIII.
THE TEACHERS' ALPHABET.

A teacher who has forgotten how he felt as a child
lacks an essential for a good disciplinarian.

Because a child is slow we must not count him dull.
Slow boys and girls have made quick men and women.

Children soon learn to wait for the " thunder clap."
Never, then, begin by trying to startle a class into at-
tention. Attention thus gained is not healthy.

Do not make tug-boats of yourselves, to pull your
pupils through the waves. Act as the rudder, to guide
them. If patient the storm will soon pass.

Every teacher who succeeds in awakening a desire
for better things in a young scapegrace, deserves more
praise than a thousand " hearers of lessons."

Faith, love, courage, patience, sympathy, self-con-
trol, enthusiasm and common sense, are the avenues
that lead to the children's hearts.

Good, hard-working, conscientious, progressive, en-
thusiastic teachers must never hope to receive their full
reward in this world.

Hundreds of teachers (?) go to their class-rooms
every day, who are as unfit for their work as a snail
for rapid transit.

It is much easier to teach by rote than to train and
103

104 TEACHERS' ALPHABET.

develop the mind. For this reason many cry down
the new methods and cling to the old.

Just as well to practice medicine with no knowledge
of physiology, as to teach with no knowledge of the
child one is teaching.

Know as much of the home life of your pupils as
possible. It will often help you to get hold of the
bad boy to know his bad father.

Let every child have access to the school library.
Lending the books to only those who obtain high rank
is bad. Often the ones who need the books most
never get them.

Many children who are full of animation, life, fun,
and happiness, are made to hate school and books be-
cause their teachers do not take the time or trouble to
study their dispositions.

Never get out of patience with a slow pupil if you
desire to keep him patient. Never laugh at him unless
you desire to wound his feelings.

Opportunities are often given teachers which they
fail to see. Heaven lead us all to feel thy power, Op-
portunity, and teach us how to rightly use it.

Professional teaching can only be done by profes-
sional teachers. Professional teachers are those who
take time to prepare themselves for the work.

Question, then name the pupil who is to recite; all
will then give attention, not knowing who may be
called to answer the question.

Read of Laura Bridgman, Helen Keller, or the boy
Sylvanus, and tell me if we, who have the five senses
with which to work, dare assert there is a child in

TEACHERS' ALPHABET. 105

our charge whose understanding we cannot reach.

Some of your brightest pupils may become useless
members of society unless you teach them how to ap-
ply what they learn. (I once saw a pig pass a good
examination in reading.)

There should be almost as many methods as there
are pupils. " 'Tis they who with all are just the same,
more often than their pupils are to blame."

Unless a child is taught to govern himself in the
school-house and school-yard, pray, where is he to be
taught? His employer cannot be expected to hire
some one to watch that he does his duty.

Very few teachers stop to think that the " dull boy "
is only slow because he is deaf or near-sighted. Test
any cases you may have to see if this is not true.

What credit is due a teacher who graduates a
bright, intelligent boy with a high standing ? Scarcely
any. Such a child will learn if shut up in a room by
himself.

Xenophon, when a young man, had charge of an
army of ten thousand men. He owed his success to
his faithful, patient teacher, Socrates.

Young teachers are apt to look for immediate re-
sults and think if they see or hear of no improvement
in their pupils that none has been made. Your in-
fluence is life-long; let it be for good.

Zeal, rightly applied by a teacher in her class-room
work, is a better disciplinarian than a thousand rattans
in the hands of as many " living " automatons. The
teacher who deserves credit is he who awakens the
sleepy mind ; he who reaches that which others have
failed to reach.

APPENDIX

Containing an Autobiographical Sketch

OF
FRANCIS WAYLAND PARKER

107

APPENDIX.

INTRODUCTION.

Not long after receiving his appointment as Vice-
Principal of the Cook County Normal School (1889),
the writer one day asked Colonel Parker what data, if
any, there were on file that could be used by one desir-
ing to write a sketch of his life. He knew of none.
He was then asked if he would be willing to give
sittings if a stenographer was engaged to take down
what he might dictate. After thinking it over he said
he would give such sittings. A stenographer was en-
gaged by the writer, and he can see the Colonel now
as he sat in his reclining chair, with his head thrown
back, his eyes closed, his right hand twisting the end
of his mustache, and as he talked his face now and
then reflecting a smile, when he recalled some past
event. Those were busy days at the old school, and
it is to be regretted that but one sitting was ever had.
What was taken at that time is here given. Now and
then the Colonel was unable at the moment to recall
a proper name of some person or place. Such places
the reader will understand have been filled in with
stars. They might have been looked up and supplied
by the writer, but it was thought best to leave the
record just as it fell from the Colonel's lips. Meager

109

I IQ APPENDIX.

as is the sketch, it will be read with pleasure by all
who knew him and with interest by all others.

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
OF

FRANCIS WAYLAND PARKER

My ancestor on my father's side was Rev. Thomas
Parker, who came over from England to Newbury-
port, Mass. He was a Presbyterian minister, and the
record says he was a little liberal, and they turned him
out at Newburyport. My grandfather, William Par-
ker, was the founder of the village called Piscatauquog,
in the old Scotch-Irish town of Bedford, N. H. He
made boots to pay for his first acre of land. My
mother's name was Rand. My great-grandfather on
that side was a classmate of John Hancock, and once
the librarian of Harvard University. Another of my
ancestors was Col. John Goffe, a noted Indian fighter
of those days. He was supposed to be of the same
family as Goffe the regicide. One prominent feature
of my ancestry is the number of ministers, as many
as five strains of ministers, the Stiles, . . . Rand,
Goffe and Parker. I had three ancestors who fought
at the battle of Bunker Hill, and three of my ancestors
lie buried at Copps Hill burying ground in Boston.

My grandfather Rand was the first school teacher
recorded in the old town of Derryfield, now Man-
chester, N. H. My mother was a teacher, and it was
said of her that she never taught as anyone else did,

APPENDIX. Ill

that she had ways of her own. My father, Robert
Parker, was partially deaf, he was a cabinet maker,
and noted all the country round for the good work
he did at his trade. I was born in the village of Pis-
catauquog, Town of Bedford, N. H., Oc ;ber 9, 1837.
My father was poor, from the fact that he was sickly,
he was never a well man, he died at the age of forty-
seven years.

The first thing I can remember in my early child-
hood is when at three years of age I climbed up to the
window to look out of the little log house and see £
procession go by. It was an original Harrison pro-
cession, in 1840. I cannot remember when I learned
my letters, nor when I learned to read, but I knew my
letters before I went to school. I can remember very
well the first time I went to school. I carried a
Leonard spelling book in my hand, and was led by my
two sisters, each one holding a hand. I dropped my
book at every few steps, and my sisters would pick it
up and hand it to me. I went to the village jschool,
one of the old fashioned variety of schools, in Pisca-
tauquog. I went there until I was seven_years old.
Then they had an academy established there, as the
village school was too full, and all the boys over ten
years of age were drafted out of this school and put
in the Academy, and as I thought I knew a great deal
more than some of those boys, and as my uncle was
on the School Committee, I cried my way into the
Academy. I put my head down on the desk and
bawled until they allowed me to go. So I went to
the Academy at seven years of age. My father

112 APPENDIX.

died when I was six years old — in 1843. I had
$200, and that was all the money I had for my
life. My uncle, James Walker, proposed to put me
out on a fanji, to bind me out until I was twenty-one
years of age, and so I was bound out to a man by the
name of Moore. It was in the middle of winter when
I was sent out to the little rocky farm in Goffstown,
N. H., where I was to stay until I was twenty-one. I
was a little fat, squabble of a fellow. When I went
there I read in the Rhetorical Reader, had been
through . . . Arithmetic, and had just gone into
the Written Arithmetic. I studied the large geog-
raphy, Roswell & Smith's Geography. I stayed
on the farm for five years, in the meantime going
to school something like eight weeks in the winter.
I was not allowed to go in the summer be-
cause my services were needed on the farm, riding
the horses to plough. The schools were very poor in-
deed, and I do not know as I learned anything in them,
but I can well remember now as I look back upon it,
how the old farm attracted my attention and was a
great means of educating me. I did not understand it
then, but now I see how I loved everything in nature,
and how I- observed everything around me. I remem-
ber one great thing that attracted my attention was
the change in the season. I went there in the winter,
and I observed the changing of the trees from their
winter bareness to the spring glory, and of one especial
orchard that I could see out of my little garret win-
dow. I slept up in a little bit of a garret, so low that
I could touch the rafters with my hands, and could

APPENDIX. 113

hear the rain pattering on the roof as I lay in bed. I
always loved to hear the rain, because I knew on that
day I would not have to work, and could go a-fishing
in the Piscatauquog River. I watched these trees in
the orchard with their shining bark, and by and by the
buds bursting out, and the change, until it was one
great snowbank of beautiful apple-blossoms, and I
thought I must tell all about what I had seen. I had
not learned to write very much, but I got an old
stump of a pencil, and an old piece of brown paper,
and sat down at my desk, for I had my father's desk
with me, and wrote an account of this wonderful
change, this marvelous change in the orchard. I
wrote down all I could think of about the dead tree
and the shining bark and then the bud and blossom,
and then I prognosticated about the fruit. I put my
whole heart into the composition, and then I felt that
I must show it to somebody, and I carried it down to
the lady where I lived who had taught school for
about six months. She looked atjt^ read it, and then
handed it back to me with a very scornful look on her
face, and with the remark that if she could not write
better than that she would not try to write.

I never afterward in my life, except when I was in
the Academy, could be compelled to write a composi-
tion, and I lay it to that influence. I used to study in
a spontaneous way everything in nature. I knew
every tree on the farm, and the grasses and flowers
and berries. That was my Botany. And now when I
go anywhere, in any part of the world that I have
ever visited, I always, when I see a new plant, say to

114 APPENDIX.

myself, " That was not on the old farm," and when
I see another I say, " That was on the old farm." I
also knew all the animals. I studied them in a spon-
taneous way, all the butterflies and insects and animals,
and I also studied what little Mineralogy there was.
I learned about the rocks by loading them on the cart
and building them into a stone wall. I studied Physics
in the work I did in logging in the woods, and in
ploughing, but when I went to school no one ever-told
me that that work I did on the farm was of any
worth in my education, and I never dreamed it until I
had taught school twenty years. Now I know it was
the beginning of what littlejjducation 1 have, and the

best in__thg world J If any teacher Tiad tolcT me in*

/"school that that was real true education that I was
getting on the farm, and that the work I did was the
best I could have, how it would have lit up the whole
farm in a blaze of glory for me,_becaiise- 1 had a-

strong desire to get an education -J I believe most boys
then in New England did have. I believed that an
education was the one thing I must get or die in the
attempt, and I never lost a day in school, or an hour,
when I could get it. The teachers I had, one in par-
ticular, were the old hedgehog variety, who worked
on the farm in the summer and taught school in the
winter. This one chewed tobacco' and spit all around
on the floor, and I hated him with a just and righteous
hatred. He did not teach school in the way that I had
been used to, or the way that I thought he ought, and
according to my idea he was not doing just right, and

I said to him one day in school, " Mr. Major, you are

'

APPENDIX. 115

not doing right; you don't teach as they do down in
Squog."

The first summer I was on the farm I begged to go
to school, and although they thought I ought to stay at
home and ride the horse to plough, they sent me off for
a day or two, for I cried and said I wanted to
go, and as I was a little fellow they let me go; so/
I started off to school with my books under my arms
consisting of Smith's Arithmetic, the Rhetorical!
Reader, the large Geography, Roswell & Smith's I
Geography, and carried them to school. I was a small
boy and the teacher came to me and asked me in whatf
class I belonged, to which I replied very quietly and ^
firmly that I was in the first class. As it happened
there was a little different arrangement in this school
from the one in Piscatauquog, the first class was the
lowest instead of the highest. So the teacher waited
until she called out the A. B. C. class, consisting of
some large boys, one a colored boy, and then little
Miss Mullet walked up to me and said, " Little boy,
come out and say your letters." I have been very
much chagrined at different times in my life, but prob-
ably that was the deepest chagrin I ever knew. I put
my head down on the desk and wept sore. A boy
sitting beside me said, " He does not belong in
that class, he has an Arithmetic and a Geography,"
and he pulled out my books and put them on the
table. But I could not get over it, and would not go
back to school. I took the advice of the man for
whom I worked and stayed at home. I can say that
the boys at school were very rough. But I was used

Il6 APPENDIX.

to it. In the village where I went to school they were
very rough. The boys in the country school proposed
to whip me, and I had no peace afterward until I
whipped every one of them except a large boy fifteen
years old, who was a sort of friend of mine.

I think I can say that I loved to work. I never
shirked my work. One favorite occupation of mine
was sawing wood. We used to draw up eight-foot
long sticks under an old butternut tree, " oilnut tree"
we called it, and then cut it into four-foot sticks, and
then I sawed it up in the spring into wood for the
year's fire. I liked the sawing very much, — because
I could work and think. I had a great many dreams
under that old oilnut tree, and I read, by the way,
everything that I could get my hands on. In a little
cupboard in the house there were almanacs dating
back to 1794, and I read all these, every one of them,
jokes and all, right through. I read the Bible through
several times, generally getting a reward for it. I
read everything I could find. " Bunyan's Pilgrim's
Progress " I used to read through about once a month.
I got hold of Wayland's " Life of Judson." By the
way, I was named for Francis Wayland, the great
educator, and as I said I read " Wayland's Life of
Judson," and read it with great pleasure. It had quite
an effect on me. One favorite dream I had while
sawing wood was to dream out what I would be in
life. I would follow out a certain line of life. I
would be a statesman, and I would follow a statesman
through what I knew of statesmanship, until I got to
be President of the United States and head of all

APPENDIX. 117

affairs, and then I would stop and say, " Well, and
what then ? " Then I would go back and begin again
on another line. I would be a warrior, and I would
go on until I commanded all the warriors and was at
the top, and then I would say to myself, " And what
then? " And so I went through all the various lines
of greatness, and success, and fame, but every time I
would come out at "and what then?" and I think I
then made up my mind to be a school teacher. I did
not see any fame in it, or.honoj* but I think I made
up my mind then, in fact I cannot' remember the time
when I had not made up my mintf to be a school
teacher.

I have been often asked what I considered the best
thing in my education, and I have named two things /
- the five years on the farm, and the four years in the V
army. The five years on the farm gave me my love
for study, and the work gave me my physical strength,
and the army gave me some measure of self-control,
not very much, by the way, but' enough to steady me.
At thirteen years of age I was very much dissatis-
fied. Though I loved to work, still I felt that I must
have an education. As I said before, I only had eight
weeks schooling in the year, and I was extremely anx-
ious to become educated. I had very few with whom
I could consult. My mother lived in the old house at
Piscatauqoug, but she thought that perhaps I had
better do as my guardian said and stay on the farm.
But the man for whom I worked, Mr. Moore, thought
I was so .very much dissatisfied that I had better go
and see my guardian, Mr. Walker, and talk with him

Il8 APPENDIX.

about the matter. So one day I walked five and one-
half miles to see him. I met him at the gate of his
domicile and told him my desires, and then he very
earnestly and savagely told me that I was a lazy brat
and did not want to work, and that that was the rea-
son I wanted to go to school, and that the one thing
for me to do was to walk back to the farm and go to
work. I remember that I made up my mind then and
there that I would have an^education, or die for it.
And so I went off without his consent to Mt. Vernon,
where they had a very good school. My sister went
to school there, and a cousin of mine. I went to
school for five years, working my way sawing wood,
painting or varnishing boxes, and doing odd jobs, and
in the summer I worked for my uncle on the farm,
picking up a little money in that way. In the fall or
winter I went to school, until I was sixteen years
of age, three years. Then I had forty dollars left
me, and I went to my uncle and asked him if I could
not have it to go to school, and I made the statement
to him that if I could go to school one term more I
could teach. He said there were too many school
teachers already, and that I had better get a job and
go to work on the road at eleven dollars a month if I
could get it, and advised me to take it, or commanded
me to. I obeyed him by starting off to school. The
school was in charge of Dyer H. Sanborn, a man who
taught grammar by a new method. That winter I got
a school on Corser Hill, N. H. This was my first
school. I had nearly seventy pupils, a large number
older than myself. Six of them taught school the next

APPENDIX. IIQ

summer. One of my pupils set the copies for me.
How I got through that school I don't know. I
simply know that I lived through it. I did not
know anything about teaching, and it was only by
the love and sympathy of my pupils that I man-
aged to teach out the winter. That summer I went
to work again on the farm, and in the fall I
wanted a school. I was told that there was a school
over in Auburn at a place called " Over-the-Brook,"
and one afternoon I started and walked over there,
nine and one-half miles, and found the school com-
mittee husking corn. I sat down and husked with
them, and as the result of our talk I was offered the
school at $17 a month, and $18 if I did well, and
board around. The winter before I had had $15 a
month. This was a very hard school, and one old
gentleman gravely informed me that I was too young,
and had better go home. But I came down with my
old trunk to the school house, and there I taught for
thirteen weeks, and they gave me the $18 a month.
In all my country school teaching, so far as I can see, I
simply did what my teachers had done before me, noth-
ing more, but I had a way of getting along with the
pupils. I had spelling schools and evening schools, and
declamations, and other things of that sort. One
thing I neglected to say in regard to my early educa-
tion, and that is, that I began to declaim before I was
three years old, and I was considered quite a famous
declaimer in all the country round. I learned to re-
cite nearly all the pieces then in vogue. This part of
my education I believe to have been very damaging

120 APPENDIX.

upon my success in after life. The declaiming culti-
vated an extreme self-consciousness.

I had a way of governing by getting the good will
of my pupils. I seldom punished. As I boarded
around I got acquainted with all the people in the dis-
trict, and better acquainted with the scholars, and I
was quite successful in my management.

I taught a select school in the vestry of the meet-
ing house. I had about fifty pupils. Afterwards I
taught in the village school. When I was twenty
years old I was called to take a very hard school in
the Village of Hinsdale, N. H. The boys had turned
out the former master and pelted him with snow-
balls, and they sent to Manchester where I lived, and
I went over to take the school. A village schoolmas-
ter who wanted the place had told the boys that I
would punish them unmercifully, and they had made
up their minds that they would whip me and turn
me out as they had my predecessor. As I sat in my
chair the first morning I noticed that the boys had a
very firm and determined look, in fact there was a
tightness of the teeth and a glare in the eyes that told
me there was trouble ahead, and it pleased me so
much, the more I thought of it, that I burst out into a
loud laugh, and then they all smiled, and that was the
end of the trouble. I never punished anybody there.

Then I was called back to my native village of Pis-
catauquog to take charge of the Grammar School,
which I taught a little over one year.

In 1859 one of my classmates who had been a teach-
er in Carrollton, Greene County, Illinois, was in-

APPENDIX. 121

structed to procure a Principal for the school of which
he was First Assistant. He chose me, and I went
West in 1859. Carrollton is about thirty miles north of
Alton, and fifty miles from St. Louis. The people
were mostly Southerners, Kentuckians and Virginians,
intensely Southern in feeling. I had in the school,
about one hundred and twenty-five, with one assistant.
The pupils in my room were from twelve to twenty-five
years of age. It was probably the roughest school I
ever taught. I was then a thin, spare young man,
with long hair, very pale and almost emaciated. I re-
member very well when I sat down in the room for
the first time surrounded by my pupils. The past rec-
ord of the school had been exceedingly bad, one of my
predecessors had been pelted with mud, the soft
unctious mud of Southern Illinois. I remember the
first speech I made to the pupils seated in a big chair.
I told them that my idea of a good school was to have
a first class time, and that in order to have a good
time they must all take hold and work together, and
then they would be sure of a good time. My first as-
sistant, Miss Gilchrist, told me confidentially some
time afterwards, that she knew when she heard me
talking that way to the pupils that I would fail, and she
felt sorry for me, and sorry that I had come out there
so far from home. The schoolhouse was old, and the
yard was not blessed with a single shade tree, the
yard was full of gypsum weed, and was a rooting
place for hogs; the fence around the yard was in a
very bad condition. I got my pupils to pull up the
weeds, and I sowed grass seed in their place. I used

122 APPENDIX.

to go out and play games with my pupils at recess
time, and though I taught in the same old way, teach-
ing the rules of Grammar and Spelling in a perfectly
perfunctory manner, I gained the good will of my
pupils in my two years there. My salary was $650 a
year, paid in depreciated wild cat scrip of that time.
While there Lincoln was elected President, and then
came the rumors of war. Though I was a Republican
at heart my Directors were all Southerners. I cast
my first ballot for Lincoln, and when the question of
war came to the front J. did not keep still. I pro-
nounced myself a Union man and ready to go to war.
They got up a Cavalry Company in Carrollton, — I
owned a pony at that time, and I rede him in with
the recruits and said I would go with them. Then
my Directors turned on me. They did not dare to
turn me out, but proposed to cut down my salary
because I took the stand I did. The Company could
not get the saddles and equipments necessary to enter
the service, and the school closed its term and I went
East to my home in old Bedford, but the war spirit
had not gone, though my sisters begged and pleaded
with me not to go to war, saying that I was the only
son, and the only hope 'of the house. My mother
never said a word against it, and I judged rather from
the way she acted than from what she said that she
thought I had better go. However, my sisters' plead-
ings led me to put off the day of my enlistment, and I
received the offer of the High School. In the mean-
time the Directors in Carrollton had cut down my sal-
ary one hundred dollars in order to punish me. The

APPENDIX. 123

Directors of the High School in Alton hearing of it
offered me by telegraph the position of Principal of
the High School, and I accepted it. But just as I
got ready to start I received a message from a Cap-
tain of a Company saying that if I would come over
and help him recruit his Company he would make me
Lieutenant I did not wish to be an officer at all,
I did not know anything about war, but my sisters
had said that if I could only be an officer of some sort
they would give up their opposition to my going.
So there was my chance, and I hurried over to
the place. This was Company E, Fourth New
Hampshire Volunteers, and the time was August,
1 86 1. The Company was recruited and on the first
of September we went to Washington and to Annapo-
lis, where we prepared to go South to take Port Royal.
In my Brigade there were several distinguished men;
General Terry was the Lieutenant Colonel of the
Seventh Connecticut, Gen. Joseph .Hawley, now United
States Senator, was Lieutenant Colonel of the Sixth
Connecticut. We were in a great storm off Cape Hat-
teras and came near being foundered on Frying Pan
Shoal. The first battle I witnessed was a naval battle,
the taking of Fort Walker at Port Royal. My Captain
afterward went home and I was promoted to take his
place. We spent the winter of 1862 at Port Royal.
We went down in the expedition to Florida in 1862, tak-
ing Augustine and Jacksonville. In 1863 we were in
the siege of Charleston and at the battle of Pocotilligo.
and in 1864 we were under General Butler in the great
Virginia campaign. Had a thousand men in the

124 APPENDIX.

spring when we recruited, and in September my regi-
ment could muster only forty men. We were in the
battles of Drury's Bluff, Coal Harbor, the attack on
Petersburg and the siege of Petersburg, and the bat-
tle of the Mine, where I took command of the men
and commanded until the i6th of August, where I
was in the midst of a fight under General Hancock.
General Grant was present. At Deep Run I was
called to take charge of the Brigade, as the Captain
and two Brigade commanders had been shot before
me, and in repelling the charge of the enemy I was
shot in the neck, and ordered taken to the hospital at
Hampton Roads. I came home and was detailed as
Adjutant General of the rendezvous at New Haven,
Connecticut, and took an active part in the second
Lincoln campaign. I stopped in New Hampshire for
three or four weeks, and was married to Phenie
E. Hall of Bennington, N. H., went back to
New Haven, was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel,
and by request went back to my regiment at Port
Royal. They had been in two battles under General
Butler and one under General Terry, and had done
noble service. My old flag was against the Rebel
flag on the redoubt for twenty minutes during the
thickest of the fight at ... I took command and
marched across the country under General Schofield.
Then we marched to Goldsboro, N. C, where we met
General Sherman. Then my regiment was sent back
to take charge of a strip of railroad nine miles long,
between . . . and ... to send supplies to
General Sherman. Then the regiment was afterward

APPENDIX. 125

stationed higher up, and in making a detour my Adju-
tant and myself were away from the railroad and were
captured by a squad of Wilber's Cavalry and taken
across the country to General Johnson's army, with
whom I marched through to Raleigh, N. C, bare-
footed, for one of the Rebels had taken away my
boots. We brought up at Greensboro, N. C., where I
was paroled, but could not leave for eight days. I
was in my Colonel's uniform and was the only Yankee
there and they plied me with questions. They had re-
ceived the information that Lee had surrendered.
Three weeks later I was back in Raleigh in charge of
a Brigade and continued in command until we were
ordered home. After I got home, by the way, I
preached reconstruction and reconciliation as well as I
knew. I said the war is over, the Southern people
have done the best they can, now let us shake hands
and make up. I was looked upon by my friends as a
young man who had succeeded very well, and I had
a commission in the regular army offered me, and a
clerkship at WaghingtQnj in Jact— nothing-juras _too
good^for me.^ywhen I said that I was going to be a\
school teacher my friends were very much disgusted
with me. One of my friends, a man who had taught

school and was a teacher^ said Iwas a fool for/

_any such a thing^l told him all 1 wanted was
a chance to teach the school at Manchester at $1,100 a
year. In fact, all through the army I thought a great
deal of what I would do in school, and planned how I
would change things. It seemed to be the only thing
that held me as a dream, and I thought if I ever did

126 APPENDIX.

get back, and I never expected to, that I would teach
school. So in 1865 I was in the North Grammar
School as Principal, and there was where I began my
discipline. I had everything in good shape, I had bat-
talion drill and marching, and everything went like
clock work. I also believed in ranking, and I had the
idea of emulation as an incentive for school work. I
ranked my scholars, changing their places from week
to week, and had everything to my mind. This was
the first time in my life that I had departed from the
regular routine of school teaching. Up to this time I
kept the law and the gospel of the old fashioned teach-
ing with a great deal of strictness. I taught school
here for three years in the North Grammar School
in Manchester, having considerable success as a
teacher, and studying hard for my profession. I
did not wish to go into politics, and I tried to
keep out of it, but some way or other I was drawn
into it at this time, and I asked a friend of mine if
he knew of a place out West for me. They were
then founding the Soldiers' Home in Dayton, Ohio,
and I was called to take charge of the first district
school there, at a salary of $1,600 a year. This
was the first time I had ever had charge of little
children since I taught a country school. And I had
long wished it. I had been down in the school at
Manchester and had seen the little children studying
their A B C's, and doing their work, and they did
not seem happy in it as I thought children should, and
my question was, Did God intend that this mournful
process, that this mournful plan, should be the way of

APPENDIX. 127

developing the embryotic man? It seemed to me
wrong. I could not be reconciled to the fact that
these little children were in such, tn rn<*, flpp1nrah]^_
_slate^~JSo when I went to Dayton I made up my mind
that I would study the question of the treatment of,
little children./^! got horn ot some work or other that
^gave me a list of juvenile books that were published,
but I could find none of them in this country except
" Sheldon's Object Lessons." That was in 1868 when
I went to Dayton, Ohio. I immediately went to work
and studied the Primary School question^ I had a
class of eight preparing for the High School, and I
prepared them for the High School, but spent all the
time I could in the Primary Departments where the
teachers wanted me to help them. I told the Primary
teacher I did not know anything about Primary teach-
ing, but thought it could be better, and she said,
" Come and help me." In 1868 in Ohio everything
was run upon the examinat^n_j)lan_jmda. percentage
in marking, and Cleveland, Toledo ancT Cincinnati
went wild over it. They actually telegraphed from
one city to another the percentage in examinations,
—"What per cent, did you get?" "We got 75."
" Well, we got 90 in our place," and so on. The
whole plan of the schools was to learn words and re-
cite them, and then write them down in the examina-
tion stiff and strong. Now, I had very little idea, and
was perfectly innocent, of how other teachers did their
work. My whole idea was to learn how to teach
school.>Tthought_it_was a great profession and that
I ought to know myjvvork, and wherTl waked up to

I2g APPENDIX.

the fact that other teachers did not study their pro-
fession I was very much surprised. I was aston-
ished. I went into this school to learn how to teach.
My first efforts were very crude. The papers poured
out the vials of their wrath against me, and a great
book house by its agents 'did its best to kill me. But
at the end of the year they said I had a very good
school.* The next year they put up a building and
proposed to have a Normal School in the City of Day-
ton, and I was elected

__

teachers, and in i86oj I began the Normal school
jfNcmdthe plan ~oi training teachers by practice work.
I I had one teacher in each room, and then took
(| the pupils from the High School and trained them
to teach. I went on in my work under a great load
of opposition from the teachers in all the country
round. I tried to teach reading on something like
the phonetic plan, and then I introduced the Word
Method. I changed a little in Arithmetic and~*Ge
( )ofap?ry" and dropped Technical Grammar. I kept ijp
the idea of ranking and emulation right through. I
stayed two years as Principal of the Normal School,
having under my charge about seven hundred. The
fourth year they called a Superintendent to the school
and I was appointed Assistant Superintendent, at a
salary of $2,000 a year, with general charge of the
Primary work and of the Normal School. It was
here that my wife died and left me with a little girl.

I had a great fear that I might be wrong in my
teaching. In fact almost everybody, all the teachers
at least, said I was wrong, and the criticism was very

APPENDIX.

129

strong. They also said that I had not a good educa-
tion, that I had not been to college. I was fitted to
enter college, and proposed to go after I returned from
the West, but the war broke out and that prevented my
entering college, and when I came back I was married
and of course could not well go. They accused me of
being an illiterate man, and a]l_t±La±_r/TrrfartT ther>
^as very little they did not accuse me of, and I waked
up to the fact slowly that other teachers did not study
and plan for their work as I was doing, so I resignepi
my position in 1872. /\ had a little money at this time,
coming from~an aunt who left me $5,000, and I took
this and went to Germany, to_Berlin, and studied in
the University of King William in Berlin. ( I visited
schools in Berlin, and all over the country. During
vacations I traveled in Holland, Switzerland, Italy
and France. I studied in Germany for about two and
one-half years. I also took private coaching in certain
branches. I went into the Kindergarten Schools, and
became acquainted w:ith the Kindergarten work in
Berlin. ) In 1874, or early in 1875, I returned to my
home. I wanted to stay in New England and teach
school, because I thought the influence would be bet-
ter than if I went West. I wanted to teach in Bos-
ton, because there I thought I would have the best ad-
vantages for study, having access to the libraries, etc.
There were several failures in my family about this
time, and I offered to teach in my native school \vhere
I had taught before, — but they did not want me. I
became greatly despondent and discouraged, and in
Boston I offered myself for a sub-master, and though

130

APPENDIX.

I had the highest recommendations and credentials,
the highest a man could probably have, they did not
care to engage me. A little later I accidentally made
the acquaintance of a gentleman by the name of
Adams, a relative of John Quincy Adams and of
Charles Francis Adams, and through his influence I
was appointed Superintendent of the school in Quincy,
the first Superintendent they had had. I went there
^Mn 1875. Quincy never had had a Superintendent be-
fore, as I said, it was an old fashioned town, but the
schools were fully as good as the average in the State
of Massachusetts, perhaps a little better.

I never had any idea of any particular fame that
would come from that work, that was entirely foreign
to my feeling. I never thought for an instant that I
was going to do anything superior to anything else
that had been done in the schools; I simply wanted to
carry out my plans. My observations, and what I
had learned in Europe, had convinced me that the
philosophers and thinkers of the ages were right ; that
there was something a great deal better for mankind
than what I had been doing, at least, in school; that
there was a means of arousing the mental and moral
power that I never had tried, at least, and I was seek-
ing to try to present the conditions for higher growth.
I knew from what I had read and from what I had
seen that reading and writing and numbers could be
taught in a better way than the old fashioned way.
And from all the works that I could get on the sub-
ject, both in English and German, I found that there
was a great deal better way of doing it than anything

APPENDIX. 131

I had done, and of course I had a great deal of en-
thusiasm and a great desire to work out the plan and
see what I could do. I did not have the faintest sus-
picion that I was going to do anything better than
had been done, that was entirely foreign to my mind,
and when our schools in Quincy became famous and
thousands of visitors poured in, and it was written up
in all the papers and discussed, I was probably the
most astonished man in the whole community.) I
thought from my point of reasoning that the work I
was doing was a grand work and the right work and
what most teachers would do.) I must say I felt very
sorrowful and sad over what I found as to the schools
in Boston and Massachusetts, in Boston in particular.

lougnt every teacher with such a profession7~al
such a glorious opportunity for good work would do all \
these .things that I was trying to do. When I went into
Boston and could not find a single work on pedagogics
I was surprised, and when I met the teachers in Nor-
folk and talked with them on the Phonetic Method,
when I found that they did not know what I was talk-
ing about I was astonished, and my feeling was simply
a strong feeling of sadness and of sorrow over the fact
that they were not doing the work that I supposed
they were doing. — that they should do, and that thi

About 1876 there had been a change in the govern-
ment of the Boston schools. Dr. Samuel Eliot was
chosen Superintendent, and a Board of Six Supervis-
rs was established to supervise the schools, and in
1880 I was called to become one of the Supervisors. I

APPENDIX.

was placed in charge of the primary schools of the
North End of South Boston. My work here met with
fierce and prolonged opposition of the teachers, espe-
cially of the principals of the schools; but notwith-
standing this opposition I was re-elected for a second
term. The position was not, to say the least, what I
wanted. I wanted to come in closer contact with the
schools, that I might verify the suspicion of better
things which I thought were in store for the children.

I was offered the position of principal of the Cook,X^
County Normal_School at a salary of five thousand /
dollars a year. The school had had a struggling ex-
istence for fifteen years ; it was born in the travail of
a bitter fight, and had lived only by the persistent en-
ergy and indomitable love of its principal, Dr. D. S.
Wentworth. Professor Went worth had founded the
school in 1868, and under great opposition had held
it until he was taken sick. When I came here in
1883 Professor Wentworth, who had been sick two
years, died the September previous to my coming.
The school therefore not having a head and always
having had a bitter fight, was in a sad condition.

I don't know why I took the school, I had no par-
ticular reasons for taking it. I had a good place and
everything was going well. But it came to me, I do
not know how, or why, that that was the place for me
to work. I suppose some people would call it Divine
Providence, I don't know. It came to me that that
was the place for me to work, that I could work out
right face to face with little children the plan I had in
my mind, and so I resigned my position in Boston,

APPENDIX. 133

was married again, and came to Cook County in
1883.* I was given the full charge of the school for
three years, to make my own course, and to appoint
my own teachers, within certain limitations of salary.

I can say that all my life I have had a perfect pas-
sion for teaching school, and I never wavered in it in
my life, and never desired to change. I never had
anything outside offered me that had any attractions
for me, and never desired to go outside of the work,
and it was sort of a wonder to me that I did have such"
a love for it./ I remember when I was teaching in .the
Grammar School in Piscatauquog I had a little gar-
den. Then we lived near the old home where I was
born, and I had a little rocky, gravelly garden, that
I used to tend and hoe at morning and night, beans
and corn, and so on. Of course when I was hoeing I
was dreaming and thinking of school. I remember
one day I was hoeing beans, and, by the way, I always
liked to hoe beans the best, and I remember just where
I stood, and I said to myself, " Why do I love to teacl
school ? " and then I looked around on the little gro\v
ing plants, and I said, " It is because I love to se
things grow," and if I should tell any secret of my
life, it is the intense desire I have to see growth and
impnngmejQt in'lrun'uii beings. — I lliinfcTJTat is the
whole secret of my enthusiasm and study, if there be
any secret to it, — my intense desire to see the mind
and soul grow.

* His second wife was Mrs. M. Frank Stuart, who at that time
was first assistant in the Boston School of Oratory.

APPENDIX.

The change from the strict discipline to the democratic
form of government.

I am by nature a Martinet. I was in the army
noted for my discipline, and in my school in Manches-
ter, and very much so in Dayton, and to some extent
in Quincy, though I had not direct charge of the
schools. I was noted for my discipline, but I want

tO Show Why I Chajlggj my frn-m._.r>f grp^rnrnm^TT

made up my mind, slowly, that if the human being is
to attain freedom, if its soul is to grow, he must choose
for himself, andjmis^ see the right_and_chpose it and
jmder it/And when I took the NormaLSdiool-hete^

T pnrpnspd fr> rarry nut tin* plnn thifffhp great Secret

of human growth was to arouse the spiritual and
higher in the human being, to drop all external incen-
tives to selfishness, leave out ambition and emulation*
and all unnatural competition, and feed the child with
mental and-.mnral -nourishment. Make it love the
work and love to help others for the sake of the work.
That was the great change I made, and slowly of
course, I was going from the Quincy work to the
Cook County Normal School plan of teaching. Then
in the Normal work I took up the mental training for
the first time to any extent. I took up the Science
wOTkLjmji^Jii«--eott:elatk^ as one

whole_and th ^concentration— oL^ajl. I saw for the
first time fully that reading, for instance, should be a
means of growth, and that- there was no need in the
study of reading to have any reading- outside of that

APPENDIX. 135

which bears directly upon the study taught. It seemed
to me one of the most satsifactory discoveries to my-
self in my life when/ I felt that there was only one

that is the study nf lifc,

Jaafc — ihe study of the laws of
Jfhere is aperfect correlation and a perfectjmjty,
all lies, it all centers, in Tjod._ l'he~great en-
ergy should center in the human being as a focus, just
what the human being can take into his soul of this
All Life, and give it back again, is the function of
the human being ; to take the truth that comes in from
all the universe and give it back being created and
ever creative. The child rules with God so far as this
All Life, the lines of life come in, — he conforms to
that life and the functions of his own life in giving it
out to others, and just so far he rules with God, — and
the supreme joy of being is to take in this life and give
it out to others. The steps of progress that I can see
are the concentration of it in an ideal school, in an
ideal education, — and mankind is lost upon any-
thing else, because all forms of expression and all
the so-called branches when seen under the light of
the one central thought of unity are all one, and one
cannot be known alone, and if all is known each study
is only known as it is known in its relation to the great
center, to the unit.

An Instance in My School Life

This was an instance in my school life in Pisca-
tauquog. One of the customs of the school there was

136 APPENDIX.

the habit of going and telling the teacher if any one
teased another, or hurt another, and out at recess one
day somebody abused me and I trotted up to the school
room door, and opened it, and said, " Teacher, John-
nie has been pounding me," and the teacher, a very
nice lady, Miss Sarah Walker, said, " Come right
in, and bring the little boy with you." And then I
immediately began to be very much ashamed to think
what a mean thing I had done to go and tattle. So
I did not return to the school house, but started off in
another direction, and the teacher thought it was her
duty to catch me, and she started after me. Up right
opposite to my house was a steep declivity which led
right down into a swamp. The teacher was still fol-
lowing after me, and down I went into the swamp and
paddled my way through the mud, and lost one of my
shoes. At last she gained on me and I laid down in
the mud, and as she was not strong enough to take
me up in her arms and carry me she called to a man
who was working in a field near by to come and help,
and I was taken up kicking and struggling and taken
back in all ceremony into the school house and laid out
on a long seat, where I was straightened out and left
to dry. And then as I began to dry I began to re-
flect how foolish I had been, and that the teacher had
done nothing to me, and then I began to melt and I
lifted up my voice and wept loud and long. And be-
fore the close of the school when the teacher called
me up to the desk and took out the ferrule and told
me to hold out my hand, I felt it was only a just and

APPENDIX. 137

righteous punishment, and every whack she gave me
on my hand I felt was an expiation for a sin.

The author one day said to Col. Parker, Colonel, I
have heard that when you went to Germany and se-
lected the line of work that you desired to take the
President of the University said. " But that does not
lead to any degree." And that your answrer was,
" No, but it leads to the children of America." Is it
true? He did not deny it.

Helps in Geography

Chalk Illustrations

By Eliza H. Morton. A book of nearly 200 simple, freehand
sketches of many scenes and object of interest to classes in
geography, and a large amount of valuable information in connection
with each sketch. Many suggestions and full directions for the
drawings are also given. Each continent is taken up separately.
200 pages. Cloth. Price, 60 cents.

Geographical Spice

By Eliza H. Morton. A compilation of brief descriptions, of
natural curiosities, interesting notes of art and illustrative items not
found in the regular texts, but of much value in creating fresh interest
and teaching the wonders of geography. Gathered from all portions
of the globe and arranged by continents, with a copious and conven-
ient index. 210 pages. Paper, 25 cents. Cloth, 50 cents.

Industrial and Commercial Geography

By J. U. Barnard, Kansas City, Mo. A series of working out-
lines, with suggestions to teachers. Facts are given, references are
mentioned and a comprehensive outline is furnished by grades, from
the third to the sixth. It teaches the true value of geographical con-
ditions as factors in the development -of man, introducing the child
into the real activities of the business world. First it takes up the
different industries, one by one; then the different sections, showing
the products of each state, their industries, means of transportation,
etc. Invaluable to every teacher of geography. 164 pages.
Price, 30 cents.

Outlines of Geography

By J. M. Callahan. The best and most complete outlines of
geography published. Besides the topical outlines, the most impor-
tant facts are given, supplementary notes are added and general
questions are inserted for reviews. 51 pages. Price, 15 cents.

A. FLANAGAN COMPANY, :: CHICAGO

GAMES, SEAT WORK AND SENSE TRAINING EXERCISES

By M. Adelaide Holton, Supervisor of Primary Schools and Eugene
Kimball of the Minneapolis School, Minneapolis Minn. The games,
seat work and sense training exercises contained in this little book are
the result of years of experience with thousands of children and hundreds
of teachers. Great care has been taken to give a variety of educative
exercises that cultivate attention, concentration, interest, judgment and
reasoning, and that train along the lines of regular school work. 124
pages. Cloth. Price 40 cents.

DEVICES FOR BUSY WORK

By Abbie G. Hall. One hundred of them. This book contains a
choice selection of plain, sensible, easily followed devices, to keep the
little ones busy. Enough for a whole year. Invaluable to all primary
teachers. Price, 10 cents

HOW TO MANAGE BUSY WORK

By Amos M: Kellogg. Being suggestions for desk-work in language,
number, earth, people, things, morals, writing, drawing, etc. All primary
and intermediate teachers need its help. It is a book not only of
devices but of methods. It describes in full the apparatus needed and
tells how to use it, Profusely illustrated. Price, 25 cents.

SUGGESTIONS FOR SEAT WORK

By Minnie M. George, author of the Plan Books — the most helpful
book for teachers ever published. This little book is worth its weight
in gold. Here are 62 pages of busy work devices that will supply
pupils with employment that will occupy head and hands; that will lead
pupils to observe closely; lead pupils to be inventive; and, best of all,
to relieve you of much care by furnishing your pupils something profita-
ble to do. There are suggestions and devices enough to last from
September to June, inclusive. This pamphlet will give you more help
in your work than the average dollar book. If not, return it and receive
your money back. Price, 15 cents.

A. FLANAGAN CO. /. CHICAGO

University of California

SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY

405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388

Return this material to the library

from which it was borrowed.

MB."

UCLA-ED/PSYCH Library

LB 1037 G36

UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY

A 000 974 702 3