The C. L. S. C. on the Pacific Coast.
The following is a report of C. L. S. C. work on the Pacific coast,
sent us by Miss Norton, the Secretary of the Pacific Branch. It
contains so much information and inspiration that we publish it as an
editorial. The growth of which it tells is marvelous; the enthusiasm
it breathes is as sunny, vigorous, and fruitful as the fair land from
which it comes. It is such broad views and high endeavor that are
accomplishing the great results in our work. To know that far away
ranches and lonely camps are finding growth, life, happiness in this
work, ought to inspire every earnest heart to work, as our friends of
the Pacific coast are doing, that “its influence may go out to needy
sections where even school and church have failed.”
At the reunion held recently at the University of the Pacific, the
following report was read by Miss Norton:
As San Jose contains the largest local circle on
this coast, with a membership of about seventy-five,
it seems fitting that our members should be made
acquainted with a few facts respecting the general work
of the society.
The Pacific Branch of the C. L. S. C. was organized
under the name of the California Branch, four years
ago, while Dr. Vincent was on this coast, and during
these years about 1,500 members have been enrolled.
We have representatives of this branch in Oregon,
Washington Territory, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, Mexico
and the Island of Jamaica, and hope soon for a local
circle on the Hawaiian Islands. During the present
year 290 new members have been received thus far, and
it is hoped that the number will exceed 300 before the
close of the year. This is an excess of 100 over those
received last year. The active local circles have also
increased, and now number twenty-six, with two or three
more to be heard from. Of these circles fifteen have
been formed the present year. The progress of the work
in the southern part of the State has been unusual,
the largest circle of the State except that of San
Jose, being at Riverside, with an enrollment of sixty
members. The president of this circle, Dr. Whittier, is
a graduate of the C. L. S. C., and a nephew of John G.
Whittier, the poet. The secretary, Miss Alfaretta Wood,
is an enthusiastic worker, and Riverside proposes to
have the “largest circle in the United States,” so that
San Jose will have to look well to her laurels.
Oakland sustains three active local circles with an
aggregate membership of about sixty, and under the
leadership of Dr. J. H. Wythe is doing excellent work.
Sacramento stands next in numbers, and has a most
energetic and enthusiastic circle; Rev. I. H. Dwinell,
D. D., Mrs. L. J. Nusbaum and Mrs. Brewer being the
officers.
The largest of three circles in San Francisco is the
“More Circle,” numbering twenty members and composed of
young people.
In its beautiful work as well as its name it does honor
to its first leader, Mrs Prof. More.
Ukiah has two local circles doing enthusiastic work.
In our smaller towns the C. L. S. C. often becomes
the center of literary interest, representing a
large proportion of the population, taking deeper
root, and bearing better fruits than in our cities.
But the richest rewards of the Secretary and other
officers for much unrecognized toil, come from mining
camps and lonely ranches, from mountain tops and
deserts, and sick-rooms, where solitary students
are cheered and uplifted by our C. L. S. C. To such
it goes with benedictions, inspiring new hopes and
noble aspirations. If, amid our crowding duties and
interests, we of the San Jose Circle find but little
room for individual work, or for the rich, intellectual
feasts which are often spread for us at our monthly
meetings, may we not gather courage to persevere, from
the thought that this influence has gone forth to needy
sections of our coast, where, in some instances, even
the church and the school have not been organized.
During the first year of its existence, the parent
society received 8,000 members, and of this number
1,700 graduated last summer. During the first year
of the Pacific Branch, under the wise and efficient
leadership of its secretary, Miss L. M. Washburn,
ably seconded by President Stratton and the executive
committee, the first class numbered 700. Of this number
about 100 are active members, or have paid their
annual fees and ought to graduate the coming summer,
if they have not fallen behind in their studies. All
who hope to graduate should promptly report to Miss L.
M. Washburn, Chairman of the Committee on Graduation.
In closing, I would earnestly invite the ex-members
to once more join hands with us, and help forward the
work of the Pacific Branch, as it reaches out its
helping hand to so many earnest students. Especially
let us urge upon the citizens of San Jose, the duty of
sustaining the work of this local circle, a work which
we believe would be an honor to the literary centers
of our Eastern States, or even to the “Hub of the
Universe.” We hope that the coming assembly at Monterey
will be the most interesting and largely attended of
any yet held upon this coast, and that San Jose will be
worthily represented on the occasion of the graduation
of our first C. L. S. C. Class of 1883.
Trial by Jury.
The constitution of the United States guarantees that every American
citizen shall have the privilege of having his cause tried and decided
before a jury of twelve of his peers. For centuries this jury system
has prevailed among the English. The framers of our constitution
modeling their laws on the basis of English jurisprudence, incorporated
it into our judicial system. Its purpose is to secure in every case
a just and impartial verdict, and one that is in accordance with the
evidence adduced in the progress of the trial.
It is the duty of every government to see that justice is meted out to
all its citizens, that their rights are duly respected, and that the
poor and weak among them are placed on at least civil equality with the
rich and the powerful. Many centuries of trial has proven it to be the
best means of securing these desirable results. The juror is supposed
to take his place in the jury-box with his mind wholly unbiased with
reference to the case to be tried. In many instances the jurors have
never heard of the case which they are summoned to try. The parties in
the suit are entire strangers to them, or at least are usually persons
in whom they have no especial interest. Under such circumstances a jury
of fair intelligence is pretty sure to bring in a righteous verdict.
But the matter of ignorance in reference to the case to be heard by
the jurors may be, and of late in many instances has been, carried to
an unreasonable extent. In many cases which are of public interest,
and which are of sufficient importance to be discussed by the press,
familiarity with what has been said is deemed sufficient to bar an
individual from sitting as a juror during their trial. As a result of
this it is often difficult to secure a jury in a case which has excited
much comment, and which has been the subject of discussion by the
press. The mere fact that a man has read newspaper accounts of events
that have transpired, or even editorial comments upon them, does not
necessarily disqualify him for being an impartial juror.
All intelligent men are to a greater or less extent readers of
newspapers, and to hold that knowledge thus obtained disqualifies one
for sitting as juror when the case is brought to trial, virtually
excludes men of even ordinary intelligence from the jury-box, and,
too, in those very cases where they are most needed in order to secure
just and righteous verdicts. The legitimate fruits of the exclusion
of the reading classes from sitting as jurors are such verdicts as
that rendered recently by a Fayette County (Pa.) jury, in the Dukes
trial, where, disregarding the charge of the judge,—the evidence
set forth,—the opinion of an entire community,—the jury brought
in a verdict of not guilty. The whole country was horrified and
disheartened, that a man clearly guilty could under this system be
cleared. Such outrages on right and justice are sure to result whenever
ignorance takes the place of intelligence in the jury-box, and will
sooner or later bring the whole matter of trial by jury into disrepute.
It is not _intelligence_, but ignorance, prejudice, and partiality
that should be excluded. The only question in this regard which a jury
when impaneled should be expected to answer is whether, under their
oaths, they can take their place on the jury and render an honest and
impartial verdict.
There is another grave danger in this custom. Not only are the
non-reading and ignorant classes disqualified for rendering a fair and
intelligent verdict, but they are for the most part sadly deficient in
principle and integrity, and hence are more readily corrupted, more
easily bribed, and more likely to be influenced by designing lawyers
than men of average intelligence and general information. The numerous
acquittals of individuals adjudged guilty by the popular verdict,
and in the very face of the evidence adduced, is proof positive that
in such instances the twelve men in the jury-box are in no sense the
custodians of the law or the mouthpiece of justice. If, for any reason,
intelligence is ruled out of the jury-box, the jury system will cease
to be regarded as a reliable instrument for the administration of
justice.
Stevens’s Madame De Staël.
This book, the American edition of which was published in two handsome
volumes by the Harpers, some little time ago, will perpetuate the fame
of a woman of regal intellect and immense influence upon her times. In
Byron’s judgment she was “the greatest woman in literature;” Macaulay
called her “the greatest woman of her times;” and many others, whose
opinions carry weight, could be quoted as giving her a foremost place
among the worlds gifted women. The biography fills a want; for, while
numerous pens have written of this woman, there has been before no
adequate portrayal of her career. The author, Dr. Abel Stevens, whose
reputation as a writer in history and biography is high and secure,
has for some years been living in Switzerland, where he has enjoyed
excellent facilities for the preparation of the work, “Madame De Staël,
a Study of her Life and Times, the first Revolution and the first
Empire.” The work is called, and in its completeness it will probably
remain, the standard biography of this illustrious woman, and will
need no successor. It shows great research and pains-taking, as well
as a skilled literary hand. A complete, much-needed biography, it is
more than this, it is a valuable history of that marvelous epoch in
the annals of France. It is of great value for its sketches of other
eminent persons, contemporaries of its subject, and for its intelligent
narration of events as sensational as any ever witnessed upon the
theater of Europe.
Madame De Staël lived from 1766 to 1817. Her full maiden name was Anne
Louise Germaine Necker. Her father was the great Necker, for a time
Minister from Geneva at the French court, and afterward the powerful
French Minister of Finance. Her mother was the daughter of a Swiss
pastor, and a woman of beautiful person and fine accomplishments, with
whom, while Mademoiselle Curchod, the historian Gibbon fell in love,
and for whom he always cherished a tender regard. The love of Madame De
Staël for her father approached idolatry, but for her mother was much
less ardent. She was an only child, and received a careful training and
the highest advantages. She was born and died in Paris, and this was
the place always where she loved best to live, though for many years,
through the persecutions of Napoleon, she was an exile from France. As
a child she was very precocious; a girl in her mother’s _salon_, she
astonished the people by the brilliancy of her conversation; she very
early tried her hand at writing, and showed marked literary gifts;
when fifteen years old, she had the maturity which might be looked for
in a young woman of twenty-five. At the age of twenty she became the
wife of Baron De Staël. The baron was thirty-seven. It was a marriage
of _convenance_, such as in France were customary, and on her part,
at least, there was no love. For a number of years they lived apart,
but she went to the baron in his last illness and remained with him
until his death. When she was forty-five years old, she made a second
marriage, with a young French officer, Rocca by name, twenty-two years
her junior. Strange as it may seem, this was a true love-match, and
the two, notwithstanding the disparity of age, lived together in great
devotion and happiness until her death. The marriage was secret, and
was known to but few persons in the life-time of Madame De Staël. Of
three children, offspring of the first marriage, one was killed in a
duel while the mother lived, and the others survived her and did her
honor. A son was also born from the second marriage.
What eventful years were those for France in which this woman lived. If
one with such a theme as our author can not make an interesting story,
the fault surely is not with his subject-matter. Madame De Staël saw
her father, whom she idolized, the idol of the French people; she saw
him—and it was a proud time in her life—after the jealousy of rival
ministers had brought about his retirement from the office of finance
minister, recalled by the king, and welcomed back to his old position
by such demonstrations of popular homage and devotion as have been
accorded to but few; and later she saw him again seeking the retirement
of his Swiss home execrated by the same fickle populace of France. She
saw the downfall of Louis XVI. and deplored this ill-starred monarch’s
fate, whose head was one of the trophies of the guillotine. She saw
the First Revolution with its horrors, and ardent champion as she was
for human freedom and popular rights, her heart was sickened at the
spectacle. She saw the hero of Corsica arise from nothingness to be the
terror of all Europe; the strides of his ambition she witnessed until
he stood the first monarch of the world, with crowns in his hands as
baubles to give away. She saw his “vaulting ambition o’erleap itself”
at last, and the tide of his fortunes reversed; the exile of Elba and
that of St. Helena passed before her view, and while she rejoiced to
see Napoleon crushed, she sorrowed as a true French woman over the
humiliation of France. She saw another Louis upon the French throne,
and was his trusted adviser and friend. Napoleon she hated with all her
soul. Acknowledging his consummate military genius, she loathed him
as a monster of selfishness—a tyrant whose god was self. The emperor
feared her pen in the cause of popular freedom, and after trying in
vain to gain her support he showed in various ways his malice toward
her. He banished her from France at length, and the story of her
years of exile—bravely borne with all its hardships, though she could
have escaped it by writing in praise of Napoleon—is very affecting.
Dr. Stevens uses as the appropriate motto of his book the saying of
Lamartine: “This woman was the last of the Romans under this Cæsar, who
dared not destroy her, and could not abase her.”
And mighty was the influence of Madame De Staël upon her age. To say
that it was equaled by that of no other woman is not to say enough.
Kings and queens were her personal friends. With chief men and women
in different lands—statesmen and warriors, persons distinguished in
science and letters—her relations were intimate. They admired her, and
bowed to her genius. In political affairs her influence was great, and
in the world of letters she made an impression deep and abiding. As a
writer, perhaps no woman of any time will be accorded equal rank with
her, unless some would concede it to George Eliot and Mrs. Browning.
Her best known works are “Delphine,” “Allemagne,” and “Corinne,” though
others have had a wide reading and been much admired. The “Allemagne”
produced a profound impression. Great as this woman was as a writer,
some have freely said she was greater as a conversationalist. With
wonderful brilliancy she shone in the _salon_. Her own _salon_ in
Paris would be thronged by distinguished men and women, and the great
attraction was herself. She would dazzle with her eloquence, as she
discussed various questions, some of them deep questions of philosophy
and religion. Her love of society was a passion. Her power of affection
was mighty, and her attachment to her friends most strong. When the
light of her life was quenched at the comparatively early age of
fifty-one, the number was large who mourned, not simply for a rare
woman of genius lost to the world, but for a friend, true, sympathetic,
loving, whose place could not be filled. More than one have said of her
that she was a man in intellect—though we do not make the remark our
own—but it is certain she was a woman in heart. Let our readers turn to
the new and best record of her life, which Dr. Stevens has given us,
and find delight from its perusal.
The Educational Problem.
One of the gravest matters claiming the attention of the American
people to-day is indicated by the above heading. It is a truism
that popular education is a prerequisite to the success of popular
government. We may be said, as a nation, to have done grand things
already in the way of the education of the people. Nearly fifty years
ago there was a wonderful awakening to the importance of this matter.
The people must be educated, was the thought which took possession of
the soul of Horace Mann, and his beneficent work has lived and grown.
Our common school system was set in operation. It has become our pride
and boast. In a way very gratifying we have seen the cause of education
advancing in our land. Compulsory education in late years has been
introduced to some extent.
At the present time, however, we are confronted with facts of a nature
to excite alarm. The late census shows a condition of things in popular
education in America over which it is impossible for citizens to feel
self-complacent. These facts have been set forth in a most impressive
manner by General Eaton, National Commissioner of Education, and by
Senator Blair, of New Hampshire, whose speech in the United States
Senate last summer on “Aid to Common Schools” has attracted much
attention. Some of the things we have to consider are as follows: In
a population of fifty millions in the United States, five millions of
people over ten years of age can neither read nor write; six and a
quarter millions can not write. There are two million of illiterate
voters here, in a total of ten millions. The number of illiterate
voters in the last presidential election was large enough to reverse
the result in all of the States but five. In illiteracy the North of
course does not approach the States of the South. In the latter there
are, in round numbers, five and a half millions of persons over ten
years of age unable to write, the number of white illiterates being
to the colored in the proportion of two to three. Nearly one-third of
all the voters in the South are illiterate, and more than two-thirds
of the colored voters. But with regard to the States of the North, the
showing is far from being what we could desire. From a recent report to
the Massachusetts Legislature, by Hon. Carroll D. Wright, it appears
that in this State even—the State of Horace Mann, and the vanguard
always in the cause of education—there are nearly seventy-five thousand
persons more than ten years of age, in an entire population of less
than two millions, who can not read. These are startling facts, and the
alarming truth is, that illiteracy in our land, instead of diminishing,
is on the increase. Ex-President Hayes, in his address at Cleveland
in October last, made this statement: “In more than one-third of the
Union the ignorant voters are almost one-third of the total number of
voters.” And the number of the illiterate voters is growing larger. It
was swelled in the South, in the decade from 1870 to 1880, by nearly
two hundred thousand. In the country at large the number of children
not attending school is increasing at a rate which, it is affirmed,
if it continues, will in ten years make the aggregate of children of
school age outside of school larger than of those within.
Surely, in view of these things, one of the greatest problems before
this nation is the educational problem. As a national safeguard the
people must be educated. If this mass of ignorance continues an element
of our population, and if it goes on increasing, how can we hope for
the perpetuity and prosperity of this “government of the people, for
the people, and by the people?” There must be compulsory education.
The different States must adopt the principle, and enforce it. It
is not strange that our statesmen are turning their thoughts to the
great question of national aid to education. Hitherto the national
government has done but little in providing ways and means for the
education of the people. It has been left for the several States to
look to the educating of their citizens. But it can hardly be doubted
that the time has fully come when the nation on a grand scale should
provide for this cause of such vital moment—popular education. We are
very ready to agree with General Eaton, when we consider the astounding
statistics he adduces, in the judgment that none of the measures
proposed by statesmen thus far are sufficiently large and liberal
in their devising. Enormous is the work to be done, and vast is the
expenditure of money needed. But whatever the nation expends to elevate
her people and fit them for citizenship is an investment for her own
safety, and is well expended. Joseph Cook, in the prelude to one of
his lectures, dwells upon such facts as we have cited. He affirms that
America is doing less for the education of her people, in proportion to
her wealth, than certain European nations. We fear that what he says is
true: “Instead of being, as a whole, at the front of the educational
advance of civilization, our proud nation is gradually dropping into
a laggard place.” Let us trust the time will come in the near future
when this can not be truthfully said; and while we may regret the delay
of needful national action, let us honor individuals who are giving so
nobly to make ignorance less in our land. If the generous scheme of Mr.
Slater for the good of the benighted millions of the South were to be
duplicated by other millionaires, how grand the results might be.