Address of welcome to the State Teachers’ Association, delivered in
Representative Hall, Topeka, December 28th, 1886.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Readers of Kansas newspapers and students of Kansas
affairs cannot have failed to notice the fact that, during the hot and
dusty months of July and August, many vocations in this State are
practically abandoned. Courts adjourn, and judges and lawyers flit away
to the mountains, the woods, or the lakes; churches are closed, and
ministers seek the peace and quiet of rural sights and scenes;
physicians discover that their patients can get along without them for a
while, and take a vacation; and men engaged in every department of
commerce or industry abandon, if it is possible for them to do so, the
cares, perplexities and toils of their employments, for a brief summer
sojourn amid fresh fields and pastures new.
But during this season of sweltering heat and stifling dust, as the same
readers or observers must also have noticed, there is one class of men
and women who, having then a legal holiday, do not utilize it to “loaf
and possess their souls.” In every county of Kansas these men and women
assemble, not to rest, but to work; not for pleasure, but to study; not
to get away from the worries, the troubles and the tasks of their
profession, but to fit themselves more thoroughly for its duties and
responsibilities.
I hear it said, now and then, Mr. President, that the profession of the
educator is not progressing as are many other vocations, or that the
schoolmasters and mistresses of twenty-five or fifty years ago were more
proficient or competent than are those of to-day. Against such
thoughtless or reckless assertions, I put the convincing fact of these
midsummer schools, in which the teachers of Kansas assemble to study, to
compare notes, and to be instructed in the best methods of instructing
others. Men and women capable of such devotion to their work as these
meetings illustrate, need no excuse or defense.
And these are the men and women I am now to welcome to the capital. I
discharge the duty assigned me, Mr. President, with sincere pleasure.
Very few, if any, of the meetings held in this room are composed of
people who occupy so important a place in the every-day work and growth
of the State as do those now assembled here, and none, I am sure,
represent a more useful or honorable calling. Teachers of Kansas, I
believe you understand these facts. I believe you appreciate, in full
measure, the dignity and importance of your vocation, and that you are
striving, earnestly and laboriously, to fit yourselves for its great
duties and vast responsibilities. I trust your sessions will be alike
pleasant and profitable, and that you may one and all return to your
work refreshed and benefitted by this fraternal intercourse with one
another. In this faith and in this hope, I greet you, and most cordially
welcome you to the capital of the State.