SEEN THROUGH THE LONG VISTA OF DEPARTED YEARS
In Bates Hall in the old public library in Boston, lying open on one of
the ledges to any visitor, was an Ignorance Book, in which any one could
ask a question on which he desired information, and after an interval,
return to find it was answered. The Redwood library at Newport, R. I.,
has had, upon a commodious desk, a book by means of which readers can
take their intellectual needs to those who have the ability to meet
them. The Lyceum was once a great solvent. Nothing has taken its place.
It was an evil day when this profoundly useful educational institution
closed its doors. People are sitting on its front steps awaiting a
reopening. They have, before them, a new map, a new world, and a new set
of questions.
_What is Your Problem_
Can a person change his disposition? The features of children are as
diverse as their faces, all have the family likeness, but each has his
own peculiar temperament.
Is it the brain, and not the soul, that does the thinking? Is man a
machine and not a living spirit, inhabiting a physical body? Do people
speak advisedly who use the expression "Keeping soul and body together?"
Why did not the slaves in the South do more for their own emancipation?
Why does a minister use a text? This custom prevails among pulpit
orators who do not believe in miracles or in the inspiration of the
Scripture or in the authority of the Bible. There's a reason. What is
it?
Our teachers, in faithfulness and friendship, used to stand next to our
parents and are entitled to and will ever receive our most grateful
recollections. They are happy men whose natures sort with their
vocations. On revisiting the earth there was one instructor who beside
exercising a benign and stimulating personal influence had high
qualities and remarkable fitness for his noble profession, whom I would
cheerfully make a sabbath day's journey to honor. Let me preserve his
name, S. H. Folsom. Schoolmaster was about the right word for him for he
was master as well as teacher. His severity is to be attributed to the
times rather than to him. It is said that a drowning man can in two
minutes live over again every incident in a long and checkered career,
and a boy does not doubt the possibility of such phenomena, if he has
been publicly requested, by the master, to remain after school to be
whipped. We all remember him with kindly feelings and there are hundreds
of his pupils living who have not lost their sense of indebtedness to
him.
_On the Road to Learning_
A boy lays up nothing against a noble, faithful, patient teacher who
whips him. Pain is nothing to boys. They give it, and suffer it, in
their sports, many of which have penalties. They uplift tearful eyes,
but it is in entreaty, and not in rage. It was from him I acquired a
life-long practice of the little economies of time. We are now so
interlocked with others, we are so far from living or laboring alone
that our time is much disposed of by other people. "Do you ever reflect
how you pass your life? If you live to seventy-two, which I hope you
may, your life is passed in the following manner: an hour a day is three
years. This makes twenty-seven years sleeping, nine years dressing, nine
years at table, six years playing with children, nine years walking,
drawing, and visiting, six years shopping, and three years quarrelling."
I now save the time I used to spend in going to the postoffice. I used
to reckon how many trips would make twenty miles. Still the flight of
time grieves me. I must draw tighter and tighter every string. The
school that I attended was a mere vest-pocket edition of the one which,
year by year, like a starling, keeps adding to the nest, on which Mr.
Folsom now looks down in benediction. This building has a telephone
switchboard. I recognized only the switch which in my day was a weeping
willow. When a gone feeling was experienced, a boy could dig up a small
coin, go to a grocery and buy a pickle, but now schools have a buffet
car attachment supplied by the woman's club.
_The By-product of Development_
It was an unrealized deprivation, but I do not seem to remember, when I
was under the ferule, the teacher's maid, such as waits upon the
children at the new training school here, nor do I seem to recall the
school physician, such as the city now elects, nor the piano, nor the
victrola, nor do I remember any free transportation to and from school
except by "punging" when we had to take what came in terms of the sleigh
driver's whip.
The principle of the Declaration of Independence was taken literally
that all are created equal, which makes in education a Procrustes' bed
and every boy or girl in a class, supposed to be equally capable, as
they were not, was to be stretched to learn lessons of equal length.
They trained up a child in the "way." The way was first fixed. It was a
grown up theory. They thought more of the way than of the child. The
child's primitive nature had no play. The process often lost the scholar
his childhood. He was robbed of his birthright. The old maxims even,
also taught that anything saved from sleep was so much saved.
With his pen, Mr. Folsom could, with unerring grace, draw an eagle, put
an inscription into his mouth and thus stir in his pupils astonishment
and patriotic feeling. In writing he made a specialty of capital
letters, which had the last touch of nicety. Any line of his writing was
as neatly molded as Spencerian copy. We had thus two epochs in our
school, the Ciceronian and the Spencerian periods. One was distinguished
by the graces of speech, the other by waves of ink. We have always been
given to understand, that if the cradles in a neighborhood were
assembled the occupant of one of them would call those present to order.
It is thought to be a wonder that an American is born knowing how to
conduct a public meeting. He early learns how to make motions. It is
instinctive to know that a motion cannot have more than two amendments
offered, at the same time, and to know the order in which they must be
put, the second amendment before the first. When we wonder at some of
the traits of colts we are told that they are born with their
peculiarities; so with boys. The crown of everything was public
declamation.
_Best When Most Catching_
All paths led to the exhibition as we have seen. Other studies were
subordinated to the all absorbing preparation for it. Other branches
suffered from eclipse. The taste for it became very great. It fixed the
boy's bent. The men having a lyceum, the boys took the infection and
even had a relapse. In our community they formed a lyceum, and among the
questions discussed was this: Which is preferable, city or country life?
Having the stern rule that the less favored one must also stand up I was
invited at the age of ten to share in the deliberations. I became so
absorbed in some of the follies, presented by my opponents, and so lost
sight of the occasion, that, when called upon by name, I was startled.
The boys took sides in the universal conflicts of opinion. Nobody could
find rest on a fence. It was a picket fence. The ground was the only
safe place to stand on. As a regiment takes on the character of its
colonel, so a school in a particular degree, reflects the teacher. I
cannot tell how we all came out of the craze. When penmanship was the
rage and writing became epidemic the scholars developed the villainous
habit of scribbling always and everywhere. As stationery was not
plentiful they used the leaves and margins, not only of their own
books, but those of the others. They decorated the walls and desks. As
the nights were extremely cold, the ink would be turned by the frost
from a liquid to a solid state. Hence the bottles were placed on the
stove for thawing purposes and would sometimes decorate the ceiling or
empty their contents on the stove and floor, accompanied by a detonation
like that of a pistol.
_The Love of Conquest_
Now this man Folsom understood human nature in its initial stages. His
insight showed him that boys and girls crave some reward and
recognition, so when he could approve a youngster's conduct and
application, he would award him a diminutive ticket on which, in his
beautiful writing, was the word Perfect. By touching up emulation he
ruled the school. When ten small tickets were carefully acquired they
would be proudly cashed up into a somewhat larger chromo with the same
device. Before we call anyone lucky, who takes a prize, let us call him
unlucky, who is without the desire to make the effort to win it. It is
fine for him to contend to the uttermost for even the meanest prize that
is within his reach, because by such strenuous contention, his nature
grows and by lack of it, nature decays. A poor boy cannot rival the
wealthy, in items of luxury, but in a school he finds himself in a
little republic, where the prizes do not fall to the rich, because they
are such. A boy out of an humble home may have lacked recognition and to
receive it makes him a new creature. To find himself appreciated and
well-liked touches a spring at the center of his being. A boy is often
made over by the quickening thought that to him might fall one of the
little early prizes of life.
_The Impulse From Incentive and Reward_
The fire and the force to do great things were slumbering in Senator
Wilson's soul.... "His future course of life," his biographer says, was
affected by Mrs. Eastman, who handed him, when he was eight years old, a
little book. "Now carry it home with you and read it entirely through
and you shall have it." A book he had never owned. To him it was a
golden treasure. He hurried home to read it. He coveted the prize. In
seven days he called to say that he had read it from end to end. This
little book, a Testament, he kept all his living days, saying, that the
presentation of it was the starting point in his intellectual life. The
reason, as Sir Walter Scott believed, why the passion for books so lifts
up a poor boy, is that he makes himself a master of what he possesses,
before he can acquire more. Queen Judith, a princess of rare
accomplishment, promised a finely illuminated book of Saxon poems, to
which, her son, Alfred the Great, when young had been listening with
enthusiasm, to such of her sons as should the soonest be able to read
them. The innate energy of those dormant talents of "the Darling of the
English" was roused and he made his name the brightest that adorns
Anglo-saxon history. He became the most illustrious monarch that ever
filled the English throne. He founded the University of Oxford,
established trial by jury, and sought to emulate the deeds, to the
recital of which he so early loved to listen. It is said that when this
promise of the book was made, "Alfred returning to Queen Judith, eagerly
inquired if she actually intended to give the book to the person who
would soonest learn to read it?" His mother repeated the promise, with a
smile of joy at the question; the young prince took the book, found out
an instructor, and learned to read, and soon recited all its contents to
her.
_The Fascination of Matching Abilities and Efforts_
Oh for some angel visitant to stir the waters of the Bethesda of
self-improvement as it was once done by the use of this principle of
emulation in our class in spelling. Alphabetically the scholars were
called out into a line, toeing a crack in the floor. Beginning at the
head of the class the master puts out the word and those who have
studied their lesson pass above those who have not. It is an unequalled
revelation for a boy's later life. How came I at the foot? When one boy
has competitors and they attend to their business and he does not, he
will gravitate downward. I had been trained in the catechism to believe
that it was first Adam and then Eve, but this theory was upset, when we
stood up to spell. I can still see one of those girls stick to the head
of the class. Blessed be the bad roads, "kind the storm" that housed the
girl, for a day, as on her return she went to the foot. At length she
modestly said to the master, "Put out any word in the book and I will
spell it." With such proficiency we challenged the nearest district
school to a spelling match.
_The Tug of War_
Before the interest began to flag, it was understood that as a final
test, every body in the house should rise and spell down. With blushing
honors, under the spell of emulation, this unobtrusive girl would rally
her powers, and hold her timid self up to meet all comers by sheer force
of a moral courage, unsurpassed by men who go over the top and look into
the cannon's mouth. The audience grows breathless. She clings to her
position like that which Oliver Wendell Holmes called The Last Leaf. Our
best girl won. Our boys seeing any members of the defeated school would
use their two palms for a trumpet and shout the pivotal word, on which
our victory turned, "Phthisic." It was a great incitement to strive to
equal or excel when a rival was seen to take a reward for doing what we
might have done, but didn't. The name of the winner became a household
word and was garlanded. I have felt depressed by my consciousness of the
unworthiness of the response, that my life has made, to such an
excellent instructor in penmanship and spelling. His name is embalmed in
all our hearts. The terms of school soon ended. Beyond this we have no
record of our eminent teacher's life and as Bunyan says of one of his
characters "We saw him no more."