An interesting side-light on the kind of men who attend the classes of
the city evening technical schools was given by a commissioner of the
Board of Education in a recent address to young men:
“I visited the forge-room” (said he), “where a class of
twenty-five young blacksmiths were shaping and welding various
models of iron bars and iron blades. It was an inspiring scene.
No man, however indolent or indifferent to the world’s work,
could have looked on without having his ambitions revived. The
glowing metal yielded to the hammer blows of these youthful
artizans, because interest in their work and a desire to become
producers directed their bare and brawny arms. I walked about
unnoticed. They felt no interest in commissioners of education.
At one of the anvils I noticed a particularly fine, well-built
young fellow. He was wholly absorbed in his work, so when I
picked up the book he had partly hidden under his cap on his
toolbench it did not attract his attention. What book do you
think it was? Oh, no, not a treatise on tool-work in iron; that
would have been fine. It was something even finer than that. The
book was a copy of Vergil’s ‘Eneid’ and the marginal notes on
the pages show that he was as ambitious to acquire a taste for
good literature as for the possession of technical skill.”--New
York _Press_.
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