BRINGERS OF THE LIGHT
In his address to the annual council of the Protestant Episcopal
diocese of Indiana in 1863, Bishop Upfold spoke with much vigor against
the use of flowers in the decoration of churches, and said:--
“There is no sound principle, no true doctrine involved in the
practice. It is all poetry, and the very romance of poetry, the
conception of romantic and imaginative minds, dictated less by
religious sentiment than by a fondness for show and gaudy display.
Instead of the decoration concentrating the attention devoutly on
the great and glorious fact which flowers are erroneously supposed
to symbolize, it is far more likely to divert it, and impair the
true spiritual emotions and impressions, which the commemorative
services of the day (Easter) are destined to awaken and deepen....
The practice will not be allowed in this diocese; and I now declare
and desire it may be distinctly understood and remembered,--and I may
as well say it, because I mean to do it--that I will not visit or
officiate in any parish, to administer confirmation, or perform any
other office on Easter Sunday, or on any other occasion, where this
floral display is attempted.”
Bishop Upfold greatly modified his views before his death, in 1872; but
this declaration is expressive of the general religious attitude of
the earlier Indianians; it was Protestant, intensely Protestant. The
religious phenomena observable in the State are not complex and are
readily explained. The early French were, of course, Roman Catholics,
and their first priests were of the heroic type that had its highest
expression in Marquette and Joliet, and hardly less notably in Father
Sorin of the Order of the Holy Cross, who founded, in Northern Indiana,
Notre Dame University, and lived to see it one of the great Catholic
schools of the continent. But the prevalent religious ideas of the
Hoosiers were not inherited from the early French settlers. North
Carolina contributed members of the Society of Friends to the new
territory, and Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania sent Methodists,
Presbyterians, and Baptists, members of the sect established by
Alexander Campbell, and German Lutherans. Episcopalians were few among
the first Indiana colonists. The diocese of Indiana was created in
1838, and many earnest men have given their labor to its service
first and last; but the slow progress of the Episcopal Church in the
commonwealth has been due to conditions antedating the settlement of
the Ohio Valley, running back, indeed, to the efforts of James I. to
establish Scotch and English colonies in Ireland, the most turbulent
part of his kingdom, and thus forming the base for a migration to
America that was to color the life and thought of a vast area of new
soil. As so large a proportion of the pioneers had rejected apostolic
succession in the Old World, they saw no reason for accepting it in
the Western wilderness. The rugged apostles of Methodism, and the less
rugged but equally diligent and earnest preachers of Presbyterianism,
were leaders in the strenuous religious labors of the early years of
the century. The advance guard of these two religious bodies did not
always dwell together in unity; in educational work, for example,
envy, hatred, and malice were sometimes awakened. The Rev. F. C.
Holliday, writing in 1872,[25] complained of the self-complacency with
which the leading Presbyterians at the West had assumed authority
in educational matters, and “the quiet unscrupulousness with which
they seized upon the trust funds of the States for school purposes,
and made these schools as strictly denominational as though the funds
had been exclusively contributed by members of their own communion.”
It is true that Presbyterians controlled the State University in its
early years, but this was due to their zeal in education and to the
exceptional fitness of many Presbyterian clergymen for teaching.
Princeton extended a friendly hand to the Presbyterians who were
struggling in the new State, and sent, among others, the Rev. George
Bush (1796-1859), who reached Indianapolis in 1824, and two years later
shocked his congregation in the malarious village by denying that there
was any authority of Scripture for the Presbyterian form of church
government.[26] His views became increasingly radical and in 1829 he
left Indiana, accepted the chair of Hebrew and Oriental Literature in
the University of the City of New York, and became a Swedenborgian. He
was a life-long student and a writer of recognized ability.
The Baptists organized the first Protestant church in Indiana in
1798. The Methodists formed a society in 1803, and in 1805 Peter
Cartwright, one of the great pioneer Methodist evangelists, was at
work in the State. The oldest Presbyterian society was formed in
1806, near Vincennes, then the capital, and William Henry Harrison,
the governor, who had married a Presbyterian wife, was numbered among
its parishioners.[27] The very nature of the pioneer life compelled
the simplest of religious as well as of social observances. The
meeting-houses were of logs, and the ministers were often tillers of
the soil. One of the early Presbyterian clergymen aided the support
of his family by farming, writing the deeds, wills, and other formal
papers of his neighbors, by teaching singing, and by making shoes, and
from all these sources of labor, including his pay as minister, he
averaged only $80 a year for a period of sixteen years. Father (the
Rev. James) Havens, one of the famous apostles of Methodism, who,
in 1824, rode what was known as the Connersville circuit, embracing
several county seats, received $56.06-1/2 for his year’s services.
This does not indicate indifference among the scattered flock, but a
lack of actual money. Instances are reported of men splitting rails or
working in the harvest field at fifty cents a day in order to aid their
ministers. Meetings were held in wayside cabins, in which the near
neighbors gathered, and after the service the housewife prepared a meal
for the clerical guest, and for those of the little congregation who
remained. The ministers of the day were not always profound scholars,
but they were light-bearers, who went ahead of the schoolmasters,
communicating to scores of the youth of the new land an interest in
the world of men and books. It has been said that three-fourths of the
early students of Asbury (DePauw) University came from homes that were
visited by the itinerant Methodist preachers.[28]
Ministers were required to be extemporaneous speakers, and they
often indulged in joint debates that aroused the greatest interest.
These contests were markedly frequent during the period in which the
“Campbellite” movement gathered force and began to attract members of
the older religious societies. Lay discussion was common, and the free
interpretation of the Bible urged by the Campbellites encouraged it.
“Revivals” and camp-meetings were conducted frequently, and were often
attended with great excitement. During the first quarter of the century
religious enthusiasm manifested itself with an excess and abandon that
were unknown in politics. “Father” was often prefixed to the names
of the venerable pioneer ministers as a mark of affection, and in
recognition of long service. This was not unusual among the Methodists,
and even the Presbyterians occasionally bestowed the term on some of
their old and worn missionaries of the early days. Many of these men
lived until late in the century, and saw the theology of their young
manhood altered or superseded, and amid new men and new manners became
almost strangers in the land they had first known as a wilderness.
Great care had been taken to assure to the Northwest religious
liberty and free schools. The ordinance of 1787 touched directly on
the questions of religion and education in the Northwest Territory.
“No person,” it declared, “demeaning himself in a peaceable, orderly
manner shall ever be molested on account of his mode of worship or
religious sentiments in the said territory;” and “religion, morality
and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness
of mankind, schools and the means of education shall be forever
encouraged.” The ordinance has clearly been one of the great guiding
influences of the nation. It prepared the way in the Ohio Valley
for the attitude of the people toward slavery; and its assurance of
religious freedom and friendliness to learning brought to the new
territory the benefit of the experience of those who had striven for
such liberties and advantages in the seaboard colonies. The history
of civilization in Indiana may be said to date from its passage.
When, in 1804, Congress provided for the disposal of public lands in
the districts of Detroit, Kaskaskia, and Vincennes, the act carried
with it a reservation of the sixteenth section in each township for
the support of schools, and also an entire township in each land
district for the use of a seminary of learning; and later, the act of
1816 that raised Indiana Territory to statehood, provided “that one
entire township, which shall be designated by the President of the
United States, in addition to the one heretofore reserved for that
purpose, shall be reserved for the use of a seminary of learning,
to be appropriated solely to the use of such seminary.” Under the
first law Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury, selected a
township in Gibson County; and, following further the direction
of Congress, Governor Harrison approved, in 1806, an act of the
territorial legislature, incorporating Vincennes University, which
was not, however, fully open until 1810. The territorial legislators
believed that it would serve a good purpose to admit Indian youth
to the privileges of the school, and the law enjoined the trustees
“to use their utmost endeavors to induce the said aborigines to send
their children to the University for education, who, when sent,
shall be maintained, clothed, and educated at the expense of said
institution.”[29] Only one Indian ever availed himself of this offer.
In 1822 a law was enacted calling for the sale of the Gibson County
lands and the use of the proceeds for the State seminary already
planned at Bloomington. Thus the State boldly confiscated the fief of
one institution and turned it over to another--an act that led to long
litigation; and though Vincennes University was partially successful in
the courts, its revenue was curtailed and permanent injury resulted. It
continues, however, in spite of reverses a lively member of the company
of Indiana schools of the preparatory type.
Under the act of 1816 President Monroe designated Perry Township,
in the county which was named for him when, in 1818, Orange County
was divided.[30] The selection of the “seminary township” became of
great importance, for it determined not merely the location of the
contemplated seminary, but of the State University, into which it
grew. Efforts have been made repeatedly to remove the institution
from Bloomington, the town that rose about it; but they have been
unavailing. The site chosen by President Monroe, as it was impossible
for him to foresee, was not to remain the most fortunate in point
of convenience and accessibility; but Monroe County has clung
tenaciously to the honor conferred upon her, and seems destined to
carry her dignity through the twentieth century. The first principal
of the seminary was Baynard Rush Hall (1798-1865), the son of a
Philadelphia physician. He was a graduate of Union College and of
Princeton Theological Seminary. He was not only an early and valuable
teacher, but a pioneer author. One of his books “The New Purchase;
or Seven and a Half Years in the Far West” contains a vast amount of
information touching pioneer customs; and while it is not always wholly
good-natured, it is written in the main with spirit and humor.[31]
He declared his belief that he was “the very first man since the
creation of the world that read Greek in the New Purchase”; which
is extravagant, as many of the earlier Protestant ministers were
doubtless learned in the languages, even if the distinction of which
he boasted did not belong to some Roman Catholic missionary. Ten boys
and young men were all that were admitted to the new seminary when it
opened, May 1, 1824. The standards of admission seemed wholly novel
and unnecessary. “Daddy says he doesn’t see no sort a use in the high
larn’d things, and he wants me to larn Inglish only, and book-keepin’,
and surveyin’, so as to ’tend store and run a line,” was the tone of
protest heard from many applicants, as reported by Hall in the “New
Purchase.” Local politicians, viewing the new school as something
exclusive and aristocratic, declared that “it was a right smart chance
better to have no college nohow, if all folks hadn’t equal right to
larn what they most liked best.” Hall was the sole teacher employed
for the first three years, and during this period the only branches
taught were Greek and Latin.[32] While he thus filled all the offices
of the seminary in the woods, he organized his handful of students
into a literary society, which he called the _Henodelphisterian_,
and for which he made the rule that members should drop their proper
appellations while in the academic shades and assume Greek or Latin
names. “Thus,” says Judge Banta, in his reminiscences, “every member
of the society was an Ajax, a Pericles, a Timoleon.” Hall’s salary
at this time was two hundred and fifty dollars a year, and there is
ground for the suspicion that he compensated himself for deficiencies
of income by the free indulgence of his sense of humor. As the young
gentlemen of the _Henodelphisterian_ were occupied out of school
hours in wood-chopping and swine-herding, the joke was rather broad.
Additional instruction was demanded in the third year, and a teacher
of mathematics was employed. The seminary became the State University
in 1838, and among the first trustees were David Wallace, Governor
William Hendricks, Jesse L. Holman, Robert Dale Owen, and Richard W.
Thompson, all of whom were otherwise factors in the early history of
the State, and in several cases members of families distinguished in
subsequent generations. The University’s influence in the State has
been inestimable. It has usually been fortunate in its administrators,
and it has more and more grown to be the centre of agencies related
to the better life and advancement of the commonwealth. After leaving
Indiana, in 1831, Hall taught academies at Bordentown and Trenton, New
Jersey, at Poughkeepsie and Newburgh, New York, and in 1852 he became
principal of Park Institute, Brooklyn. He received the degree of A.M.
from Princeton and of D.D. from Rutgers College.
So early as 1793 W. Rivet, a French missionary, “a polite,
well-educated, and liberal-minded enthusiast, banished to this country
by the French Revolution,” had conducted a school successfully at
Vincennes. A system of county seminaries was introduced early in the
nineteenth century, and such schools were organized in about half of
the counties; and between 1825 and 1850 seventy-three private and
incorporated schools were opened, traces of which remain. These were
known sometimes by the name of the founder, or were identified with
the name of the town in which they were situated. The democratic idea
that secondary and higher education could not properly be provided
by the State found early and wide acceptance. It was believed that
the obligation of higher education should be undertaken by private
enterprise and by religious organizations; and out of this spirit
came a group of seminaries, similar to those of the counties, and
representing the several churches that had established outposts on the
frontier. Many of these grew into colleges. Hanover and Wabash colleges
thus began under Presbyterian auspices, DePauw (Asbury) University
under the Methodists, and Franklin College under the Baptists; and
while their beginnings were not strictly in the seminary, Notre Dame,
a Catholic university, and Earlham College, an institution of high
character allied to the Society of Friends, were of like origin.
Late in the period during which the seminaries flourished there rose
a number of schools for women, of the academic grade, and all of them
private or denominational.
Institutions for higher education often precede schools for primary and
intermediate training; and in Indiana care had been taken to provide
seminaries and colleges before the important matter of establishing
a common school system had received intelligent attention. David
Starr Jordan, long identified with education in Indiana, has remarked
that “the growth in educational systems is from above downwards.
In historical sequence Oxford must precede Rugby, and the German
University must come before the gymnasium.” Nearly half a century
after the organization of the first territorial government, no system
of common schools had been perfected in Indiana. Efforts had been
made and the subject had not been wholly overlooked by the lawmakers,
but a prejudice existed in the minds of many against free schools as
undemocratic. The principle that enlightenment must be a condition
precedent to the intelligent exercise of citizenship was not grasped
by the populace; and as a result of inattention the Hoosier, as
Eggleston’s schoolmaster found him, was appearing on the scene.
And yet, in 1837, while this type was increasing, a member of the
legislature declared, during the discussion of a proposed school tax,
that “When I die I want my epitaph written, ‘Here lies an enemy to free
schools.’”[33]
But while many enemies of common school education were blocking the
way, an unheralded champion was to appear, whose identity was not
generally known for several years after he took the field, and whose
services entitle him to first place among all who have striven for the
advancement of learning in Indiana. This was Caleb Mills, a native
of New Hampshire (1806) and a graduate of Dartmouth (1828) and of
Andover Theological Seminary (1833). In 1831 he had made a tour of
the Southwest in the interest of Sunday-schools, and the social and
intellectual conditions that he found had deeply impressed him. It
was a kind providence that led him back to Indiana in 1833, and that
gave to his adopted State the benefit of his sympathy, intelligence,
and spirit to the end of his life. Among his classmates at Dartmouth
were Milo Parker Jewett, who helped to mould the common school system
of Ohio, and later became the first president of Vassar College, and
Edmund O. Hovey, associated with Mills as a founder of Wabash College,
and long a member of its faculty. Others of his Indiana contemporaries
may have appreciated the gravity of the situation as fully as he, but
it was left for Mills to sound the alarm and lead the charge. In the
first year after he entered the State it was averred by a reputable
witness that “only about one child in eight between five and fifteen
years is able to read.” Dr. Joseph F. Tuttle, the honored president of
Wabash College for nearly a third of a century, described the condition
of affairs in these words:--
“In 1840 there were 273,784 children in the State of school age, of
whom only 48,180 attended the common schools. One-seventh of the
adult population could not read, and a large proportion of those
who could read did so imperfectly. In spite of the constitutional
provision of the State and the famous ‘sixteenth section,’ the common
schools of Indiana were in bad condition. As late as 1846 the State
rated lowest among the free States as to its popular intelligence and
means of popular education. Even the capital of the State did not
have a free school until 1853, and then one was kept open only two
months.”[34]
The census of 1840 showed the illiteracy of Indiana to be 14.32 per
cent. The return made by Illinois at this time was but little better,
while Ohio, on the eastern boundary, showed only 5.54 per cent of
illiterates. Omitting Illinois and Indiana, the illiteracy of the
Northern States was only one in forty; in Illinois and Indiana it was
one in seven. In twenty-two counties of Indiana the average illiteracy
was more than 26.5 per cent. Montgomery County, the home of Wabash
College, returned at this time one-fifth of her adult population as
illiterate, and Putnam County, the seat of Asbury College, returned
one-sixth of her adult population as belonging to the same class.[35]
With a knowledge of these facts Mills made and published, in the
winter of 1846, “An Address to the Legislature of Indiana,” and
signed it “One of the People.” The motto of this, as of his five
succeeding addresses, was, “Read, discuss, and circulate.” These were
all written in a tone well calculated to interest and arouse. He
handled his statistics skilfully, and made clear the alarming progress
of illiteracy in the State. He was as ready with suggestions as with
criticisms, and his several papers show him to have been thoroughly
informed as to the educational conditions existing in every part of
the country. He possessed great patience, and the series of pamphlets
was marked throughout by good temper. He wrote in a deliberate manner,
rarely showing haste or anxiety, as if confident of the impression that
would be created by fair and judicial statement, and with faith in the
ultimate triumph of his cause.
In the year following the publication of his first address, a call was
issued for a general meeting of educators to be held at Indianapolis.
Among those interested in the movement were Ovid Butler, afterward the
generous benefactor of Butler College, Henry Ward Beecher, pastor
of the Second Presbyterian Church of Indianapolis, and John Coburn.
A series of common school conventions followed, and was of great
value in unifying sentiment. In the roll of those who were prominent
in the first meeting appeared the names of Isaac Blackford, Oliver
H. Smith, Calvin Fletcher, Jeremiah Sullivan, Richard W. Thompson,
Solomon Meredith, and James Blake, who were of the saving remnant of
their time. As a result of the agitation by Mills, the conventions of
educators, and the ceaseless activity of many friends of education,
the legislature of 1847-1848 authorized the people to express their
sentiments for or against a tax for the support of free schools, at
the election to be held in the fall of 1848. This was a presidential
year, and the Mexican War issues were discussed bitterly in Indiana
and in the border States, where slavery lifted its head ominously; but
the advocates of free schools forced their issue and evoked from the
enemy a variety of objections which strike the sense curiously in these
later years. Should the industrious be taxed to support the indolent?
Should the people be made benevolent by law? There was priestcraft
in the scheme; free schools were merely a bait; the real object was
the union of Church and State. Free schools would make education too
common, said some; but the fiercest antagonism came from the class
for whom the friends of free schools were laboring--the wretchedly
poor and ignorant.[36] The vote on the school question was 13,000 less
than the vote for president cast the same day, but free schools won,
the affirmative vote being 78,523; the negative 61,887--a majority of
16,636 for free schools. The principal opposition to free schools was
manifested in the counties lying south of a line drawn across the map
along the southern boundary of Marion County, in which Indianapolis
is situated. The northern counties gave a majority of 18,270 for free
schools; while the southern division, deriving its population chiefly
from the South, gave a majority of 1634 against the proposition.
Professor Boone has pointed out that “notwithstanding the denser
population having the older settlements, the established industries,
and all of the colleges but one, the most insistent opposition to free
schools came from the southern half of the State. The influence of
local seminaries and colleges seems to have gone for nothing in the
movement for free elementary schools.”
Mills returned imperturbably to the attack in a third message
carefully scrutinizing this vote, and showing that of the thirty-one
counties voting negatively, twenty were below the general average of
intelligence. The same measure and tolerance that characterized all his
addresses show finely in this paper, in which he said: “Let the record
of the affirmative vote stand as a proof of the existence in our State
of the spirit of ’76. I rejoice that we have such indubitable evidence
of it. I rejoice that we have been furnished with such proof that we
are not the degenerate sons of noble fathers, but that we possess the
spirit to rebuke selfishness wherever found, and however disguised--a
kindred spirit to that which pledged life and fortune and sacred honor
to the cause of national independence.”
A new school law was framed by the legislature in 1848-1849, which
legalized public taxation for schools and changed the existing system
of school administration; but the respective counties were to be free
to adopt or reject the law as they might see fit, and it was only
a _via media_, beyond which lay still much ground for the friends
of education to conquer. At an election held in August, 1849, the
counties exercised their privilege to pass on the new law. Friends
and foes of free schools again conducted a heated campaign, both
sides amplifying the arguments advanced in the former contest. The
result was a majority in favor of the law of 15,767, a decrease from
the majority given in the preceding election, though the two results
may not fairly be compared, owing to local issues and animosities.
Fifty-nine counties voted for the law and thirty-one against it,
and of those that rejected it twenty were in the southern half of
the State. But the battle was more nearly won than the friends of
education imagined. The constitutional convention that met in 1850
prescribed in the organic law of Indiana a foundation which subsequent
legislatures have built upon until a comprehensive system of schools,
intelligently administered and adequately supported, is now the pride
of the State.[37] The friends of education were to meet with further
trials and discouragements; but the pioneer work in Indiana education
closed when the new constitution had been ratified by the people. It
is clear that any examination of the forces that raised Indiana into
an enlightened community must comprehend a knowledge of these early
struggles, and that the showier attainments of later citizens cannot
obscure for the sincere student the services of those who dared to
stand for the cause of free schools in the day of their peril.
Mills is an especially admirable and winning figure. He was hardly
equalled for sagacity and suavity among his contemporaries, and he
brought to bear upon his great task a steadfastness and quiet energy
that no defeat could overcome. The State recognized his abilities
and rewarded his services by confiding to him the office of State
superintendent of public instruction, of which he was the second
incumbent. He was deeply though sanely patriotic, and during the
Civil War his zeal for the Union cause was so marked that one of his
associates pronounced him the best recruiting officer in Indiana. He
belonged to Wabash College, and continued in its faculty until the
end of his long life (October 17, 1879), giving his last years, with
characteristic unselfishness and devotion, to the organization of the
college library.
The early Hoosier school-teachers were often poorly trained, and
sometimes were adventurers from England, Scotland, or Ireland.
Occasionally they were intemperate, and frequently they were eccentric
characters, whose vagaries made them ridiculous before their pupils;
but there were competent instructors among them. One of the most
charming figures in the history of cultivation in Indiana is Mrs.
Julia L. Dumont (1794-1857), who was born in Ohio, but for forty-three
years resided at Vevay, in Switzerland County. Among all the
light-bringers of the first half of the century in the Hoosier country
Mrs. Dumont was one of the most distinguished; and she was easily the
woman of most varied accomplishment in the Indiana of her day. She
possessed an instinct for teaching, and Dr. Eggleston remembers that
after she was sixty a schoolroom was built for her beside her husband’s
house, and that she taught the Vevay High School in her old age, when
no properly qualified teacher appeared to take charge of it. Dr.
Eggleston draws her portrait from memory:--
“I can see the wonderful old lady now, as she was then, with her
cape pinned awry, rocking her splint-bottom chair nervously while
she talked, full of all manner of knowledge; gifted with something
very like eloquence in speech, abounding in affection for her pupils
and enthusiasm in teaching, she moved us strangely. Being infatuated
with her we became fanatic in our pursuit of knowledge, so that the
school hours were not enough, and we had a ‘lyceum’ in the evening
for reading ‘compositions’ and a club for the study of history.
If a recitation became very interesting, the entire school would
sometimes be drawn into the discussion of the subject; all other
lessons went to the wall; books of reference were brought out of her
library; hours were consumed, and many a time the school session
was prolonged until darkness forced us reluctantly to adjourn. Mrs.
Dumont was the ideal of a teacher because she succeeded in forming
character. She gave her pupils unstinted praise, not hypocritically,
but because she lovingly saw the best in every one. We worked in the
sunshine. A dull but industrious pupil was praised for diligence,
a bright pupil for ability, a good one for general excellence. The
dullards got more than their share, for, knowing how easily such an
one is disheartened, Mrs. Dumont went out of her way to praise the
first show of success in a slow scholar. She treated no two alike.
She was full of all sorts of knack and tact, a person of infinite
resource for calling out the human spirit.”[38]
Her natural grace and refinement gave to her discipline many a novel
turn. She endeavored, and most happily succeeded in the attempt, to
link the life of the time and place to “high thought and honorable
deeds.” Once, during her administration of the Vevay High School,
a game of ball proved so absorbing that the boys were an hour late
in reporting after the noon recess. They found the teacher calmly
enthroned in her rocking-chair. She did not ask for an explanation, but
spoke to them firmly of their indifference; they had humiliated her,
she said, before the whole town. No recesses would be allowed for a
week, and an apology must be forthcoming the following day. The apology
was duly submitted in writing. The remainder of the incident is best
described in Dr. Eggleston’s own words:--
“The morning wore on without recess. The lessons were heard as usual.
As the noon hour drew near, Mrs. Dumont rose from her chair and went
into the library. We all felt that something was going to happen. She
came out with a copy of Shakespeare, which she opened at about the
fifth scene of the fourth act of the second part of King Henry IV.
Giving the book to my next neighbor and myself, she bade us read the
scene, alternating with the change of the speaker. You remember the
famous dialogue in the scene between the dying king and the prince
who has prematurely taken the crown from the bedside of the sleeping
king. It was all wonderfully fresh to us and to our schoolmates,
whose interest was divided between the scene and a curiosity as to
the use the teacher meant to make of it. At length the reader who
took the king’s part read:--
“‘O, my son!
Heaven put it in thy mind to take it hence,
That thou mightst win the more thy father’s love,
Pleading so wisely in excuse of it.’
Then she took the book and closed it. The application was evident to
all, but she made us a touching little speech, full of affection, and
afterward restored the recess.”[39]
Mrs. Dumont was the first Hoosier to become known beyond the State
through imaginative writing. In the little school of story-tellers
and poets that flourished in the Ohio Valley in its early history,
she was one of the chief figures. It had not then become the fashion
to transcribe with fidelity our American local life, and her prose
sketches usually reflected nothing of the pioneer times. Her “Life
Sketches from Common Paths: A Series of American Tales,” published
at New York in 1856, is in the best manner of the day. Western is
italicized in the preface of “Ashton Gray,” the novelette which closes
the volume, and the author evidently believed that she was making
a record of the life that lay about her; but after all, the scene
is laid in Ohio and not in Indiana, and a Western atmosphere is not
discernible. The hero is the traditional hero of old romance, “whose
innate delicacy was refinement, and whose generous impulses, chivalry,”
and whose “extreme beauty” was a subject of comment from fair lips.
It is not surprising that Annabel, “the dreamy, the impressible,
the desolate Annabel,” should have found Ashton “her beau-ideal of
the distinctive characteristics of the fearless and self-sustained
backwoodsman.... The untamed horse that tosses his mane in the green
savannas could scarcely have moved with more freedom; and the perfect
development of limb and muscle evidently arose from the conscious vigor
and habitual action of one accustomed to tread, not the gay saloon
and prescribed walks of fashion, but the rough paths of danger, and
the limitless range of voiceless solitudes.” Ashton rescues three
children from a burning cabin, using a ladder, in keeping with the
best traditions, thus winning the heart of Annabel, who marries him
clandestinely, just before he is arrested for murder. He is acquitted
by the testimony of his supposed father, and an old Indian appears
opportunely to confess that Ashton was really the son of Colonel
Ainsworth, Annabel’s guardian.
There was a particular vocabulary that belonged to this school of
romance, and Mrs. Dumont employed it in all its copiousness. When
rightly used it minimized the importance of invention; and it was
better adapted to the portrayal of delicate and shrinking heroines
and noble and handsome heroes, than to the rougher work of depicting
action. A nice instinct was essential to its proper use, and no one of
her generation wielded it with more grace and ease than Mrs. Dumont.
Scott and Irving were the inspiration of the school in which she took
so high a place; and the verse which it produced so abundantly showed
frequently the influence of Mrs. Hemans. Mrs. Dumont’s technical skill
was superior to that of her Western contemporaries; but it is idle
and ungracious to criticise the writings of one whose talents were so
varied, and whose life was consecrated to good works.
Her name inevitably suggests that of another teacher, her kinswoman,
Miss Catharine Merrill (1824-1900), who, with a wider field and larger
opportunity, filled a similar place at Indianapolis for fifty years.
She was born at Corydon, the old capital. Samuel Merrill, her father,
was a cultivated man, a native of Vermont, and an early settler of
Indianapolis. He subscribed to the English reviews and owned a large
library, whose contents circulated freely among the pioneers. He
had been educated at Dartmouth, and occasionally taught the higher
branches, but he was a man of affairs, served the public in important
offices, and was one of the ablest of the State’s early financiers.
The daughter taught English literature in Butler College for eighteen
years, and during this time, and subsequently as a teacher of private
classes, inculcated in the minds of three generations a discriminating
taste for literature. Miss Merrill wrote (1869) “The Soldier of
Indiana,” a valuable record of the State’s participation in the war
of the rebellion, which contains much biographical matter that is
nowhere else collected. Mrs. Dumont and Miss Merrill afford delightful
illustrations of the compelling force of personality. In a sense one
succeeded the other, and, though they labored in different fields,
throughout a century they impressed upon the youth of the commonwealth
the nobility of character and the love of learning which they so
happily combined in themselves.
Samuel K. Hoshour is another sterling figure in Indiana pedagogy. He
was a native of Pennsylvania, and a minister, first in the Lutheran and
afterward in the Disciples Church; but he was a school-teacher first,
last, and always, and taught many hundreds of the youth of Indiana. He
was, in his later years, a resident of Indianapolis, and died there in
1883. Oliver P. Morton, Lew Wallace, and others of the distinguished
men of the State sat under his teaching. In the eyes of two generations
he was the embodiment of learning and scholarship; and he retained to
the last something of the austerity and exaggerated dignity of the
old-fashioned school-teacher. He was, indeed, always the schoolmaster,
and a pedant, though naïvely seeking to avoid the appearance of it.
He was a linguist of wide reputation, and delighted in comparative
philology. He had a fancy for unusual words, and took pleasure in
illuminating their meanings from obscure origins. He wrote a book,
prized by many of his old pupils, called “Altisonant Letters” (1840),
which, as the title indicates, was written in high-sounding words.
It is in the form of correspondence, and was devised as a kind of
philological primer, to be “a stepping-stone from the current everyday
English to the Latin and Greek.” The plan was not a bad one, and was
in some respects a forerunner of the inductive methods of teaching
languages that have since been popular.