WILLIAM HENRY RAY 
 
 A MEMORIAL 
 

lEetnoir 
 
 WILLIAM HENRY RAY 
 

William Henry Ray 
 
 a jWemorial 
 
 / 
 
 f 
 
 CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 
 
 Srijc ©Intbersitg Press 
 1891 
 
.'\ 
 
 V 
 
 
 
NOTE. 
 
 " I ^HE production of the present volume is due, first 
 -^ of all, to Mr. Henry VV. Thurston, formerly an 
 associate teacher with Mr. Ray in the Hyde Park 
 High School, who prepared the Memoir which is the 
 chief feature of the volume, and made the selections 
 from Mr. Ray's writings ; to Mr. W. A. McAndrew, 
 Mr. Ray's successor as Principal of the Hyde Park 
 High School, and Mr. W. H. Hatch, of Moline, 
 Illinois, who assumed the chief labor of securing sub- 
 scriptions to guarantee the publication of the work ; 
 and to Mr. Francis G. Browne, a former pupil of 
 Mr. Ray in the Hyde Park High School, who assisted 
 in the various details of preparing the matter for the 
 press and overseeing the publication of the book. 
 Acknowledgments are due Mrs. Ray for her coopera- 
 tion in the examination of her husband's papers and 
 in contributing material for the Memoir. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 " There are thoughts we cannot banish, 
 
 There are deeds beyond control ; 
 
 Men build for a day and they vanish, 
 
 But leave us their strength and their soul." 
 
 ' I ^HAT the day of life among men allotted to 
 ^ William Henry Ray, who died July 30, 
 1889, at the age of thirty-one years, was unusually 
 short, the reader of this volume knows too well; 
 but how grandly he used the day that was his, no 
 one can ever know. He was a builder of manly 
 and womanly character, and such structures do not 
 obtrude themselves upon the eye. It is possible to 
 see many foundations laid by him, and to the sympa- 
 thetic observer are disclosed many noble characters, 
 mature and strong, which he has helped to build. 
 But of all the plans and designs for beautiful soul 
 architecture bequeathed by him to others, in such 
 way that they are sure to be wrought out in human 
 lives, to be copied and recopied so long as human 
 characters are formed, even the wisest and clearest 
 sighted can know but little, can see but little. If 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 this volume shall help to make his personality and 
 the purposes of his life any clearer to those who 
 loved him, it will have an excuse for being; if it 
 can help to strengthen those uplifting influences 
 that he himself gave to the young men and the 
 young women he loved, its ideal purpose will be 
 fulfilled. 
 
 H. W. T. 
 
 La Grange, III., 
 
 March, 1891. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 
 
 By Henry W. Thurston i 
 
 APPENDIX {Selections from Mr. Rafs Writings). 
 
 Russia in Asia 72 
 
 The Teacher ^i 
 
 The Public School and Citizenship .... 107 
 
 George Rogers Clark 123 
 
 Miscellaneous Extracts 150 
 
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 
 
 EARLY YEARS. 
 
 WHEN the "minute-men" of 1775 hurried to 
 the field to strike for the independence of 
 the colonies, the great grandfather of William Henry- 
 Ray enlisted from the town of Amherst, New Hamp- 
 shire. His grandfather was one of the early settlers 
 of Danville, Vermont, but lived afterward in Burke, 
 Vermont, where Benjamin Franklin Ray. father of 
 William Henry Ray, was born in 1824, From a 
 journal entitled " Waymarks of my Life," begun by 
 Benjamin Franklin Ray and kept by him until his 
 son was twelve years old and then continued by the 
 latter until near the completion of his college course, 
 have been gathered many of the facts stated in this 
 chapter. The story of the education of Benjamin 
 Franklin Ray shall be told in his own words as 
 they were set down in the Journal ^ : — 
 
 1 This journal is a unique one. The part written by Mr. Ray's father 
 is not strictly a journal, as it was all written at two separate times. 
 When William was ten years old the thought evidently came one day 
 to his father that the boy might be glad at some future time to know 
 something of his ancestry and his own early years. Accordingly he 
 sat down and wrote out a brief record of the Ray family, including a 
 
2 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 
 
 " His advantages were very limited. Until the age of 
 seventeen years, he attended only a very poor district school, 
 and most of the time not more than three months in the 
 year, and had no instruction in the text-books of the school 
 at home. 
 
 " A few old volumes gave him some desire to read. He 
 began early to be interested in lyceums, and was somewhat 
 prominent among the boys of the town for debating powers. 
 In February of his nineteenth year, after having been sixteen 
 weeks in Lyndon Academy, and having taught school three 
 winters, he went to St. Johnsbury with the purpose of attend- 
 ing school at the Fairbanks Academy, which had just been 
 opened under that excellent man J. K. Colby. My father 
 was at this time but poorly clad, having for his sole moneyed 
 reliance just twenty-five cents, for which he had sold a small 
 volume ; besides, he had engaged to pay forty dollars for 
 the remaining portion of his minority. By hard work and 
 careful economy he pursued his studies about three years, 
 teaching winters and working during vacations, on Saturdays, 
 and whenever an hour could be spared from study without 
 falling behind his classes. He paid his forty dollars, and 
 was never in debt beyond a few dollars at any one time. 
 
 " During much of the time he worked morning and even- 
 ing for his board in the family of Dr. Morrill Stevens, brother 
 of the since famous Thaddeus Stevens, leader of the lower 
 House of Congress. In his twenty-third year my father, 
 
 full account of his own life, and a few leading facts about his wife, 
 William's mother, and also a sketch of the first ten years of William's 
 life. Two years later he wrote the record of his son's life for those 
 two years also, and then gave the record to William, who made all 
 future entries. All that the father wrote about himself is in the third 
 person, in the very words William would have used had he written 
 the whole journal. 
 
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 3 
 
 who had been engaged for several months in the study of 
 law, became specially interested in religion. He endeavored 
 to consecrate himself to Christ. So soon as he had united 
 with the Congregational Church at St. Johnsbury, overtures 
 were made to him of pecuniary assistance by Mr. Thaddeus 
 Fairbanks, in case he would abandon the profession of the 
 law and pursue a college and seminary course of education 
 with a view to the ministry. He was pleased with the pros- 
 pect of a liberal education, and felt that it was an indication 
 of Providence which he ought to regard. He gave up the 
 study of the law, and entered school anew. 
 
 " He entered college, having never read a page of a Greek 
 author before the college year began on which he entered. 
 In consequence of a preparation so imperfect, he took a 
 respectable but not a leading stand in the Dartmouth Class 
 of 1 85 1. He, however, received a token of respect from his 
 fellow-students in the gift of the highest office they could 
 confer, namely, First Presidency of the United Fraternity. 
 
 *' After teaching at St. Johnsbury for one year he entered 
 the seminary at Andover, where he remained until near the 
 close of his course, but was persuaded to lose his graduation 
 with his class, to teach another year in Litchfield, Maine. 
 Returning to Vermont in the winter of 1856 he was invited 
 to become pastor of the church in Chelsea and also at 
 Mclndoes Falls. He accepted the latter invitation. His 
 ministry began there in March of that year. 
 
 " About the same time my mother went to Mclndoes to 
 teach music. She was then the widow of Mr. Cargill. My 
 half-brother, Charles G. Cargill, was about ten years of age. 
 My mother in her girlhood had attended school at Thetford 
 and Montpelier, Vermont, acquiring a good education. She 
 was for many years an accomplished teacher of music, both 
 
4 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 
 
 instrumental and vocal. An attachment grew up between 
 her and my father, who were boarding at the same table, and 
 they were married August 13, 1856. June i, 1858, William, 
 the first born, came into the home of the young pastor and 
 his wife.^ 
 
 ''I received baptism at the hands of a godly minister 
 named Gurney, of Worcester County, Massachusetts. My 
 parents consecrated me with the hope that I might be a 
 missionary. In December, 1859, my father was invited to 
 preach in Hartford, Vermont." 
 
 The following letter, written by a friend of both 
 father and son, explains itself and gives an interesting 
 view of the father : — 
 
 Chicago, January 20, 18S8. 
 My dear Mr. Ray, — It seems unaccountable to me that 
 in the time since I knew you it never occurred to me that 
 your father must have been the Rev. Benjamin F. Ray, until 
 this morning before I arose and while my mind was running 
 over the events of last evening; then it flashed over me 
 like a revelation. I cannot permit a day to pass without 
 telling you that he was a teacher of mine in St. Johnsbury 
 Academy, in 1853, when I was a lad of thirteen. How well 
 I remember exactly how he looked in his high chair as I 
 read to him, " Quousque tandem abutere, Catalina, patientia 
 nostra ! " In that particular class there were four of us, and 
 I was the " Bantam." We used to think your father a trifle 
 stern, and he was very dignified, so that he earned from the 
 pupils the sobriquet of '' Judge." As I call to mind those 
 
 1 The journal naively records the fact that the new-comer weighed 
 eight pounds, and did not give much promise of future greatness. 
 
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 5 
 
 days, it is a wonder to me that he was at all patient with the 
 harum-scarum boys that came under his instruction. To 
 my boyish mind he seemed much older than he really was, 
 as he doubtless was then younger than his distinguished son 
 is now. Pardon me that when you alluded to his being a 
 
 classmate of Mr. , and also to the fact that your home 
 
 was in Hartford, I did not at once recognize the relation- 
 ship. It would have been a grateful pleasure to have borne 
 my unqualified testimony to his worth, and to the increasing 
 reverence I have for his memory as the chasm of years 
 grows wider which separates me from the days of my boy- 
 hood. . . . That I did not at once recognize your relation- 
 ship is partly due, no doubt, to the fact that you do not in 
 your physical make-up, nor in your manner, at all bring your 
 father to my mind. . . . More than ever I count it a privi- 
 lege to have known so favorably the son of B. F. Ray, and 
 to know also the excellent work he is doing in the grandest 
 of the professions next to that of his beloved father. 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 E. D. Redington. 
 
 Eleven years of the pastoral life of this man who 
 seemed to the eyes of a schoolboy " stern " and 
 worthy of the name of " Judge," were given to the 
 people of Hartford, when he was obliged to leave 
 them because of ill-health. He then went to New 
 Ipswich, New Hampshire, where he died after two 
 years, in 1872. His work among this people was 
 seemingly in every way helpful and inspiring; his 
 portrait still hangs upon the walls of many a home 
 in Hartford, and even the children of his old parish- 
 ioners still speak his name with reverence. 
 
6 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 
 
 One who was in the church at Hartford for six 
 years, and whose wife was in his church and family 
 at New Ipswich, says of him : " He was a royal man, 
 calm, self-poised, taking his positions carefully and 
 then holding them. He was a general in his church, 
 giving every person his work and leading the whole 
 column grandly on. It was not go, but cojne" Of 
 Mr. Ray's mother the same friend continues : " She 
 was bright, vivacious, and very nervous, brilliant in 
 conversation, nearly always an invalid." 
 
 From these descriptions those who knew Mr. Ray 
 personally cannot fail to see that he united in him- 
 self the strongest characteristics of both parents. In 
 the terse words of the friend quoted above: "Ray 
 took his method and strength from his father, his 
 quickness and nervousness from his mother." 
 
 With reference to the early education of the young 
 William, the Journal continues : — 
 
 " Being of delicate health my parents did not desire me 
 to begin to read young. They took much pains, however, 
 to teach me the right use of language, and many such facts 
 as could be gained by observation. It was not until I was 
 past five years of age that I began to attend regularly to 
 reading. In September of 1863, Miss Fannie Chapman 
 began to teach me. I had before learned my letters from 
 blocks, and read a little for my amusement in the Primer, but 
 soon tired of it and gave it up. I made good progress from 
 the time Miss Chapman began to teach me, and the next 
 spring my father bought a Bible for me, which was given me 
 as a birthday present when six years old. February 28, 1865, 
 
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 7 
 
 I had been to private teachers four terms, — to Miss Chap- 
 man two ; to Miss Brooks and Miss Mary Morris one each." 
 
 When he was seven years old he went to Boston 
 with his father, who took pains to show him places of 
 public and historic interest. He had previously been 
 with his father to Burlington, Vermont, and to sev- 
 eral other places which the father visited in his min- 
 isterial capacity. During all of these little journeys 
 the father seems to have taken the utmost pains to 
 cultivate the powers of observation of his son, and to 
 explain to him the history of all places worthy of 
 mention. 
 
 ** In March, 1866, my father wrote regarding my studies : 
 * This day Willie began to write with a pen, — that is, to learn 
 to write. Since the four terms mentioned above he has 
 been under Miss Morris perhaps sixteen weeks, studying at 
 home some during intervals. He is pretty thoroughly ac- 
 quainted with Primary Geography, has been two-thirds of the 
 way through Colburn's, is taking the Fourth Progressive 
 Reader, having read nearly through Wilson's Fourth. He 
 spells well. His journeys have done him good.'" 
 
 The generous, lovable traits of his character, and 
 the sweetness of his babyhood and early boyhood 
 days, are thus described by his half-brother, Mr. 
 Charles C. Cargill, in a letter to Mrs. Ray just after 
 her husband's death, as the thronging memories of 
 past days came over him : — 
 
 " I loved him dearly. He was my pet brother. When 
 he was a little fellow, — only a baby, and until he was two or 
 
8 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HEYR V RA V. 
 
 three years old, — he was my care. Mother had much to do, 
 and turned Will over to me, and I took nearly all the care 
 of him, — bathing, dressing, and doing all for him. He was 
 a dear little fellow, too, always good and loving. As we 
 grew older we grew dearer to each other. I think of many 
 incidents of our boyhood that were sweet because of his love 
 and goodness. He was always good and noble, always 
 making the most of himself and doing well whatever he had 
 to do, and always endearing himself to others by his lovable 
 character." 
 
 Mr. Ray's Journal continues: — 
 
 In June, 1866, I attempted for the first time to attend 
 public school, but was unwell and remained only two weeks. 
 Received a little instruction until the winter term, attended 
 through the term the district school, and went in the summer 
 to Miss Downing. In the autumn of 1867, I began to study 
 regularly, reciting to my father. I had for a companion 
 Charles Cone. We studied together " Science of Common 
 Things," which we enjoyed very much, completing and re- 
 viewing the book in less than two terms. We also reviewed 
 Colburn's Arithmetic, studied Greenleafs Intellectual, and 
 about mid-winter began Written Arithmetic. After a few 
 weeks in the latter, my parents intended a removal to 
 Lyme, so that a long vacation succeeded although the re- 
 moval did not occur. In the summer the study was re- 
 newed. Arithmetic and grammar with spelling were our 
 studies. We went through and reviewed the little book 
 called Tower's " Elements of English Grammar " in about 
 twelve weeks. I have had considerable fondness for reading 
 for two or three years, but my father thinks at ten years of 
 age I ought to have a more instructive class of books. 
 
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 9 
 
 Most that I have read have been moral stories, such as we 
 find in the Sabbath School library. I have, however, read 
 some short biographies, — such as the life of Washington, 
 Franklin, and Lafayette. I was considerably interested in 
 Scott's " Lady of the Lake," read in the family. When 
 nearly ten years of age I undertook Irving's " Columbus," but 
 having considerable studying to do I did not finish the sec- 
 ond volume until later. About this time I read the " Hero- 
 ism of Boyhood," opening the early Hfe of several dis- 
 tinguished characters, and enjoyed it much. The " Little 
 Corporal " was my favorite. ... I sometimes thought my 
 father urged me to study when I ought to play; but he 
 thought I should live to bless his memory for the hard work 
 he was willing to do to aid me to a course of education. 
 
 This is where I stand at ten years old. God alone knows 
 the future. May His good hand be over me, and His Spirit 
 guide me to do well the work of life ! 
 
 William Henry Ray 
 
 (By his father). 
 Hartford, Vt., June I, 1868. 
 
 Two years later the father again took up the story 
 of his son's life, and having completed it for these 
 two years also, gave the book to the boy, no doubt 
 with much fatherly advice and instruction. Mention 
 is made of many short trips with his father and of 
 visits to his relatives. He also describes a visit to 
 Hanover, New Hampshire, during the celebration of 
 the Centennial of Dartmouth College, in 1869. The 
 boy remarked that he was " much interested in the 
 speaking of the students, and thought the Class of 
 
lO MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 
 
 1869 would always be proud to belong to the cen- 
 tennial year." 
 
 When he was ten years old he began the study of 
 Latin with his father. 
 
 " He set me to the study of Latin, using Harkness' * First 
 Lessons.' We also had algebra. I enjoyed the Latin quite 
 well. Father thought we got on quite well. Charles Cone 
 and Emma Pease were my classmates- We went entirely 
 through with the ' Lessons ' in one term. We did not like 
 algebra and of course did not succeed in it." 
 
 To those who knew Mr. Ray in his manhood it is 
 needless to say that this early love for Latin con- 
 tinued unabated, and that his dislike for algebra did 
 not hinder him from gaining a thorough mastery of 
 the subject later on. 
 
 Toward spring [when William was eleven years old] my 
 father's health failed. He was obliged to give up preaching. 
 His physicians thought his life could not be very long. It 
 was dark looking toward the future. How should we live? 
 How would Herbert [a young brother] and I find means for 
 our education ? Such questions were forced on our minds, 
 but no answer could be given. To diminish the expenses 
 of living, Herbert was sent to Lancaster [his uncle and aunt 
 Stephenson had kindly offered to keep him for a few months], 
 and I went to Mr. Charles Hazen's to work for my board. 
 
 During the summer my father's health improved to some 
 extent. He thought he must try to preach again to earn 
 subsistence for his family. He had a great desire to obtain 
 a situation for a year where there was a good school which 
 I might attend. Such an opportunity offered. He was 
 
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. II 
 
 invited to New Ipswich, New Hampshire, where is the Apple- 
 ton Academy, as good situation in respect to school as he 
 could hope. Because of the school, and because of his invalid 
 condition, he accepted the offer of the society to employ 
 him for one year, on the small salary of eight hundred dollars 
 and rent of parsonage. About the 20th of July, 1870, we 
 moved to that place. 
 
 At the beginning of the term, a month after we came to 
 New Ipswich, a new life began with me. Instead of a little 
 class in my father's study, I must take my chance with a 
 large number, mostly older and braver than I. [Remember 
 that these are the words of the father. It is hard for those 
 who knew the man to believe any of the boys could have 
 been at heart braver than the little boy William.] In vaca- 
 tion I had read a few pages of Caesar. ... In school I 
 began Sallust, which was quite difficult for me, especially as 
 I was engaged in the recitation-room four hours. Besides 
 Latin, philosophy, reading, spelling, and arithmetic were 
 my studies. Then there were declamations, essays, and 
 compositions to employ the spare moments. Base-ball was 
 a chief recreation. 
 
 Almost two and a half years have passed since the first 
 date in this Journal. It has sped quickly away. A few 
 more such periods, and if I live, my opportunities for educa- 
 tion will be passed. Am I filling up these months as I shall 
 wish I had done when plunged into the active duties of 
 manhood ? 
 
 WiLMAM H. Ray 
 
 (By his father). 
 October 29, 1870. 
 
 How the father's heart would have filled with joy- 
 could he have seen how well his son met the active 
 
12 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 
 
 duties of life as they thronged upon him ! And if 
 those who have died to their friends still have the 
 power to see those whom they have left, surely must 
 there have been joy in the heart of one father as the 
 years of his son's young manhood passed in rich 
 fruition of that father's hopes and prayers. 
 
 The imagination easily pictures these first twelve 
 years of the ardent young life of Mr. Ray. A father 
 who had known much struggle, and who foresaw that 
 a hard future was before his boy, would make use of 
 every means possible to develop his mind and fortify 
 his nature against the inevitable hardships of the 
 future. Thus, because of the father's far-seeing and 
 sometimes stern love for his boy, it often happened 
 that William was kept at his books when his whole 
 boyish, exuberant nature would have preferred to be 
 at play. Perhaps the father was wiser than even he 
 himself knew ; for he was dealing with a nature whose 
 enthusiasm was not easily checked, and might have 
 run into channels that would have scattered it, or have 
 applied it to unworthy ends. From his mother must 
 have come the influences that made him so gentle 
 and thoughtful of others. From his earliest years she 
 was not strong, and the sensitive boy learned to con- 
 trol his noise lest it hurt the mother's aching head. 
 When his mother had to be left in quiet, the books 
 in his father's study gave a chance for his activity to 
 expend itself. His journeys with his father had made 
 him keenly observant of men and things; his studies 
 with private teachers had made him a careful, self- 
 
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENR Y RA V. 
 
 13 
 
 reliant student; and his home-life had made him 
 earnest, thoughtful, and tender beyond his years. 
 Thus at twelve years of age, having previously been 
 but a little more than two terms in a public school, 
 William Henry Ray entered Appleton Academy to 
 begin in earnest to prepare himself for college. 
 
SCHOOL AND COLLEGE LIFE. 
 
 'T~^HE story of Mr. Ray's life in the academy and 
 -^ at college was given in a paper before the Illi- 
 nois State Teachers' Association held in Springfield, 
 IlUnois, in December, 1889. The author of this 
 sketch, from which extracts will be taken, is Profes- 
 sor Herbert J. Barton, of Illinois State University, 
 who was in college with Mr. Ray and knew him 
 intimately ever after. Professor Barton says : — 
 
 " Of these years at the academy, one writes : ' Ray was 
 quite a favorite at school, not only because he was small and 
 the rest took a fatherly interest in him, but because he was 
 free from hateful ways, was bright, jolly, and friendly.' How 
 well these words describe his later life among us. 
 
 " On the death of his father, the mother moved to Nor- 
 wich, Vermont, for the advantages of the academy situated 
 there, and also for its proximity to Dartmouth College. He 
 graduated from Norwich Academy in the spring of 1873, and 
 entered college in the fall of the same year. At college I 
 first met Mr. Ray. He was young in looks and young in 
 years for a college boy, but he was the Ray of a year ago, 
 making allowance for the years that have flown between. 
 Bright, cheerful, and vivacious, so we thought then, and is 
 not this the report that all of us who knew him in his 
 adopted State can give? 
 
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY, 1 5 
 
 " Ray dropped back a year in college and graduated in 
 1878. He did this from financial needs. He taught 
 considerably during his college course, and nearly paid 
 his way by this means. Of Ray's first school I know 
 nothing. His second was in one of the back districts 
 of Hanover, New Hampshire, where two teachers had 
 been turned out by the scholars, — a Hoosier Schoolmaster 
 kind of district, — but they did not turn Ray out. This 
 is what the committee said of the school : ' The term was 
 finished by W. H. Ray, a wide-awake and live teacher 
 who, improving with years and experience, will make a 
 teacher such as we are in so much need of at the present 
 time.' 
 
 " During Ray's junior year in college he rented Norwich 
 Academy from the trustees, engaged an assistant, and taking 
 in the very boys with whom he had played, made a grand 
 success of the work. That same assistant writes me from 
 Plymouth Rock, and his words describe well the Ray of those 
 days. He says, 'Those days of work together in that old 
 school building, how they linger in memory ! How we two 
 frisky boys put all our friskiness into school work and yet 
 withal did some sohd instruction, or at least Ray did. The 
 most striking personal trait of Ray in those days, he con- 
 tinues, 'was his unHmited enthusiasm. His love of sport 
 and fun and hilarity of every kind was inextinguishable. 
 Small in size and boyish in appearance, he would romp with 
 the boys on the foot-ball ground, then throw himself with 
 sweaty brow and dishevelled hair into his instructor's chair, 
 and hold, by his innate skill as a teacher, those same boys 
 who a few moments before had been rolling him around on 
 the ground in their mutual pursuit of the bounding rubber 
 sphere.' When he took the school, nearly every one said 
 
I 6 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 
 
 he would make a ridiculous failure of it, but they all rejoiced 
 to find that they were mistaken. 
 
 " Ray's rank in college was good, yet I think his aim was 
 rather to stand fairly well than to try to lead his classes. He 
 was a man who read largely, but it was in no particular line. 
 General culture was his aim then, as indeed it always was. 
 He was seeking the rounded man." 
 
 Some extracts from the Journal, kept henceforth 
 by the boy himself, will serve to show his develop- 
 ment and throw light upon his life from the inside. 
 The first of these extracts are taken from the entries 
 made soon after it was given to him, when he felt as 
 if he must write something every day. Let no one 
 expect maturity in a boy of twelve. 
 
 October 31, 1870. 
 
 It has been quite wet to-day, for last night there was 
 quite a snow-fall, and this morning it rained and so made a 
 slosh. There has nothing happened to-day that I can think 
 of, so I don't know anything to write about. 
 
 November 6, 1870. 
 
 We have not got along so far in Sallust as we ought to, 
 and if we get through without any review we shall have to 
 work very hard. Yesterday did not seem a bit like Saturday 
 for I had to work most all day. 
 
 An estimate of Josh Billings is brief and to the 
 
 point. Perhaps the spelling of the humorist was 
 
 contagious. 
 
 November 16, 1870. 
 
 Last night I heard the famous Henry B. Shaw, better 
 
 known as Josh BilHngs, of New York. The lecture was quite 
 
 funny though not very litter ary. 
 
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. I 7 
 
 The following extract gives an account of his first 
 examination in a public school and another specimen 
 of literary criticism : — . , . „ 
 
 November 26, 1870. 
 Tuesday school closed and there was a public exhibition. 
 I got of first rate in the examination, for I did not miss a 
 single thing that was put to me. ... I am now reading 
 Ivanhoe, one of the best novels of Sir Walter Scott. I like 
 it very much indeed, and it is my first reading of Scott's. It 
 is got up in an interesting style, though I can't say anything 
 about it. It is in a story telling style, though there is con- 
 siderable knowledge in it. 
 
 Few American boys of twelve have ground for an 
 opinion of their own about Virgil: — 
 
 December 7, 1870. 
 I do not know what to write about or I should have writ- 
 ten before. School commenced to-day, and I have begun to 
 study Virgil. I think I shall like it, though it is awful hard. 
 
 During the winter he made but few entries in the 
 Journal. Nor did he attend the academy for any 
 study except Virgil. The rest of his time was evi- 
 dently spent in the study of some subjects in which 
 he was deficient, under the care of a private teacher, 
 one of the young ladies of the academy. 
 
 Of his Christian life and boyish quarrels with his 
 younger brother he writes thus : — 
 
 April 28, 1871. 
 Oh, dear, somehow, I don't know how it is, I cannot keep 
 out of trouble with Herbert ! I pray every day to God to 
 help me, and for an hour or two it is all right, and then it is 
 as bad as ever. I try to be a Christian boy, but somehow I 
 am almost afraid I am not. 
 
1 8 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 
 
 After school closed he went to spend the summer 
 with relatives in Peacham, Vermont, and in Lancaster, 
 New Hampshire, and during the most of the time he 
 seemed to be having too good a time to record the 
 fact in his Journal. 
 
 December lo, 187 1. 
 
 It is a long while since I have written in my Journal, and 
 I feel almost ashamed to say it. After I came home from 
 Lancaster I soon commenced school again, and had to study 
 pretty hard to keep up with my class. I took Livy, com- 
 menced Greek and English Grammar. During the winter I 
 joined the Fraternity, a society of the boys for the purpose 
 of debating and literary improvement. I find this very in- 
 teresting and in some degree improving. I take part some- 
 times. 
 
 The winter vacation he spent in Boston, and writes 
 an enthusiastic account of his visit to Harvard Col- 
 lege and the historic buildings of the city. But how- 
 ever light-hearted, thoughtless, and gay he may have 
 seemed to his companions during these days, he was 
 at heart serious and earnest. The endless quarrel 
 between what he would do and what he did was giv- 
 ing him many anxious hours, and the poor health of 
 both his parents was always on his mind. 
 
 On the last night of the year 1871, he wrote: — 
 
 Now the old year has drawn to its close, and to-morrow 
 is the commencement of the new year. . . . Oh, may I do 
 better in future, may I be more watchful and prayerful and 
 zealous in the cause of Christ ! During the past year I have 
 done well in my studies, studied hard, tried to take a good 
 
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 1 9 
 
 Stand and to please my dear father, and have, I hope, im- 
 proved myself by composition and discussion and by, in the 
 main, dropping story reading [story reading seemed to be 
 associated in his mind witli frivolity and wickedness, a view 
 reached no doubt by his father's objection to most of the 
 Sunday-school books which were offered to the young peo- 
 ple of his churches], and as I look forward to the future, 
 what is before me? Father is worse, although I hope he 
 will pick up again. Mother is dejected and nervous as ner- 
 vousness Itself, although I mean to do what I can to cheer 
 her up. Father says he cannot afford to send me to school 
 much longer, but next spring I mean to take care of the 
 academy, and father has found a place for me to work next 
 summer, and then I mean to earn enough to pay my tuition 
 and clothes, and by another year I shall be large enough to 
 take care of myself and relieve father of my expense." 
 
 Before another entry in the Journal is made his 
 father died, and the slight boy of thirteen years 
 bravely faces the future. As the eldest son, the care 
 of his mother was to devolve upon him, and he prays 
 for strength to help her. There was more before 
 him than he knew on the last night of the old year. 
 
 January 28, 1872. 
 Since I last wrote my dear father has passed from this 
 earth, and I am left without a father in the world. In some 
 measure the responsibilities of the family now come upon 
 me. I am old enough to do something toward the support 
 of the family, or at least toward my own support. I m.ust, in 
 great measure, be the only one for my dear mother to lean 
 upon, and it is my daily prayer that I may be kind and obe- 
 
20 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 
 
 dient to my mother and be a good example to my brother. 
 Father died on Sunday, the 7th of January, at ten minutes of 
 eleven, just as the bell ceased tolling for church. 
 Now I have no father, no father ! 
 
 Soon after his father's death he went into school 
 again, and an entry is made with no date that 
 says : — 
 
 " As to study, I am having all I can do and rather more 
 perhaps than is good for me ; but then I guess I can tough it 
 through. Yesterday I wrote all day and wrote till midnight." 
 
 The work of life was upon him like a deluge, and 
 from the midst of it all rings out his sturdy cry, " I 
 guess I can tough it through." Henceforth there 
 was no pause in the struggle, hardly even for breath, 
 but upon one thing after another he was always at 
 work with a brave heart and a bright face, " toughing 
 it through." 
 
 No further record is made until August 7, 1876, 
 when the whole period between this date and the 
 time of the last entry in New Ipswich is sketched in. 
 After spending the summer in Lancaster, he and his 
 mother moved to Norwich in August, 1872, where 
 he soon entered the academy under Charles E. 
 Putney, afterwards principal of St. Johnsbury Acad- 
 emy, and with a class of eight others finished the 
 course. In his own words : — 
 
 " Not expecting to enter college in the fall, I left school 
 three weeks before the close of school and took a district 
 school for the summer, at the wages of ^2.30 a week and 
 
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 21 
 
 board. I was present, however, at our graduation, and de- 
 livered an oration on the Latin sentence, ' O auri sacra fames, 
 quid non mortalia pectora cogis ! ' I got through my first 
 attempt at teaching with a good degree of success, a^id was 
 offered a good position for the fall ; but by some strange 
 workings of circumstances I decided, about the middle of Sep- 
 tember, to enter college, which I did at old Dartmouth." 
 
 This school in Norwich, then, was his first school 
 about which Professor Barton said he knew nothing. 
 Here was the humble beginning that, in the few years 
 before his death, led to such a commanding position 
 as a teacher. 
 
 " My second year in college I partially wasted, contracted 
 some bad habits, and stood low in my class. By the grace 
 of God and by the gentle influence of one of whom I will 
 speak soon, I have broken my bad habits, and for a year 
 have taken a good stand as a reliable man and a Christian." 
 
 Surely from this time on, the "grace of God and 
 the gentle influence " of one human life never left 
 him, and he always felt that he owed much of what 
 was best in him to their help. 
 
 During the summer between his freshman and 
 sophomore years he worked on a farm, and during 
 the winter of the sophomore year he taught the 
 term of school in the unruly district mentioned by 
 Mr. Barton. The next summer was spent in the 
 store of L. B. Downing in Hanover, who knew his 
 father and mother well, and says of him : " He was 
 in our family much while in college, in my store part 
 
2 2 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 
 
 of the vacation, and seemed very near to us. We 
 used to scold him about his overwork, and he would 
 promise to do better, but never did." The Journal 
 says : — 
 
 " Junior winter, although my mother was sick, I accepted 
 a school of forty or forty-five scholars in Rindge, New Hamp- 
 shire, receiving as compensation $182 for thirteen weeks. It 
 was a hard school, and quite noted as an unruly and turbulent 
 one. I got through without using much physical force, and 
 my manner of instruction and discipline were highly com- 
 mended at the end of the term. I think, however, that I 
 did not deserve nearly all the credit I got." 
 
 The next year was spent in the academy at Nor- 
 wich, as has been told before. Of his work here, 
 Mr. Ray himself says : — 
 
 " My school here was in some respects a success, in 
 others, not. The first term I had thirty-two scholars and 
 went along pleasantly enough. I taught six hours and 
 kept very busy over the studying I had to do to teach 
 well. At the close of school we gave an exhibition which 
 was in every way a grand success. We were complimented 
 and praised to the greatest extent possible. Professors 
 Quimby and Young, of Dartmouth, Dr. Leeds, and others, ex- 
 pressed themselves very much more than satisfied. . . . The 
 Trustees urged me to stay another term, and I did so. . . . 
 The school went on fairly well with twenty-seven scholars ; 
 but I was over-worked and was probably cross, and there 
 was more or less friction. I was glad to get through. Fi- 
 nancially it was not much of a success ; but I would not take 
 back the year now if I could. I have grown from a boy to 
 
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 23 
 
 a man. I have gained the good will and respect of the best 
 class of people, and feel now that I am qualified to take any 
 kind of a school and do well with it." 
 
 And this feeling on the part of the young man of 
 nineteen was not based on a vain opinion of himself, 
 but rather on the hardest kind of experience and the 
 truest self-respect. Since he was graduated from the 
 same school only four years before, he had done 
 three full years of work in Dartmouth College, taught 
 three terms of district school, the second and third of 
 which were in districts requiring unusual skill, and 
 conducted Norwich Academy, which prepared stu- 
 dents for Dartmouth College and was continually 
 under the eye of its Faculty, to their satisfaction. 
 Well might he say in view of such record that he had 
 now become a man. Well might he feel confident of 
 his power to teach and control a school. " Tribula- 
 tion worketh patience ; and patience experience ; and 
 experience hope ; and hope maketh not ashamed." 
 A hope based upon such a sequence was the hope of 
 William Henry Ray at this time. 
 
 In the fall of 1877 he again went to Dartmouth for 
 his senior year's work, which he took up with all the 
 earnestness of his ardent nature, directed by his past 
 experience as a teacher, and inspired with love for 
 the strong yet quiet woman. Miss Martha Hutchinson, 
 to whom he had been engaged since July 22, 1876. 
 
 While attending college in Hanover, he still lived 
 with his mother in Norwich, and walked to and from 
 college, a distance of one mile daily. During much 
 
24 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 
 
 of the time also his mother's health was completely 
 broken, and his care of her was touching. One who 
 was near to them both writes thus of his thoughtful- 
 ness for her: "His care of his invahd mother after 
 his father's death was most tender, sleeping on a 
 couch by her bed during several years, and soothing 
 her overwrought nerves as a mother would soothe 
 her child." What a contrast to the hilarious, romp- 
 ing boy of the campus ! How completely did all 
 those, through his whole life, fail to know him, who 
 knew only the surface of his nature, the forceful, 
 enthusiastic, combative manner of the man ! Almost 
 from the cradle, as has been shown, was he at heart 
 unselfish and thoughtful of others. 
 
 Of his college life, as seen from the standpoint of 
 the Faculty, a beloved professor writes : — 
 
 " Mr. Ray entered college young, too young, and there 
 was nothing, I should say, very marked in the first two years 
 of his college course. He then stayed out of college for a 
 year, successfully engaged in teaching. On his return to 
 college, he at once showed himself the man he was to be, 
 and the remainder of his college course was marked by the 
 faithfulness and diligence of the devoted student." 
 
 It is not strange that the professor above quoted 
 should confound some one of the individual terms of 
 school which Mr. Ray taught with his year in the 
 academy, which really occurred, as we have seen, 
 after he had been in college three years. That a 
 change took place in him in his third year has been 
 
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 25 
 
 told US by his Journal, and that this change was 
 genuine and lasting the testimony of his professor 
 proves, for he concludes thus : — 
 
 " We all here who knew Mr. Ray, have the same feelings 
 with you at the West who knew him there. His removal is 
 one of the mysteries, and seems an irreparable loss. Only 
 this, I think, we may be sure of, his character, his character- 
 istics, and example will be brought out, spoken of, and 
 pondered upon much more, and much more influentially, by 
 their consummation in this early death. * He being dead 
 yet speaketh,' and the echo is more interesting and effective 
 than that which caused it ! " 
 
 A hint of vi^hat was going on in Mr. Ray's own 
 mind during his last months in college and a revela- 
 tion of the earnest, spiritual nature of the man are 
 given in his Journal for the months of May and June, 
 1878, since which time he seems not to have kept a 
 journal. In the entry of May 4, 1878, occurs this 
 statement with reference to his work in college during 
 the year : — 
 
 "Yesterday, owing to carelessness, I made almost the 
 only poor recitation this year. Had not looked at my 
 lesson and ought to have expected restitution for it." 
 
 Again for Saturday of the same week : — 
 
 " Staid at Hanover till two o'clock and did nothing. I 
 am getting lazy and must try to do more work." 
 
 How vainly does the imagination of those who 
 knew him strive to picture the young man as truly 
 
26 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 
 
 lazy ! It can safely be allowed each reader to fill 
 the hour or two of time between the close of Mr. 
 Ray's college work on that day and the hour of two 
 when he went home. Activity, productive or effec- 
 tive, there surely was. 
 
 The entry of Monday, May 6, is in spirit the prayer 
 of his life : — 
 
 " Yesterday was the Lord's Supper celebrated in our 
 church. It seems to me that there must be a radical defect 
 in my make-up that I do not have more eagerness and 
 earnestness in the Master's work, more love for Him, and a 
 readiness to do His bidding. O Lord, help me to think 
 less of myself, less of my own way, to be more prayerful, 
 more loving to those dear ones who love me and do so much 
 for me ! Forgive I pray, the evil thoughts, the vain imagina- 
 tions, and the wrong acts ! Make me to see myself as I am, 
 and to lean on the Lord's arm ! " 
 
 About this time also, a correspondence sprung up 
 between him and the Trustees of McCuUom Institute 
 in Mt. Vernon, New Hampshire, with reference to 
 the principalship. 
 
 Almost the last entry in the Journal is with refer- 
 ence to this school, and henceforth there was no 
 need that he leave a record upon paper, for his life 
 work was written in human lives which he helped to 
 make intelligent and noble. 
 
 " This morning after I finished the letter to Martha, and 
 went to Hanover, I found a letter from Deacon Conant, say- 
 ing that I had better go to Mt. Vernon and see them and 
 
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 27 
 
 let them see me ; so I am going in the morning and hope I 
 can please them. I think I can run the school successfully 
 and well. I would at least try to do the best I could. I 
 take for my motto, ' Als ikh kahn,' the same that old Johann 
 Van Eyck used to put on all his paintings." 
 
 At this time he was not quite twenty years of age 
 and extremely youthful in appearance. It was not 
 strange, therefore, that when he appeared before the 
 Trustees at Mt. Vernon, one of them should ask him 
 how old he was. His answer was characteristic, 
 " Old enough to teach this school, sir." And he got 
 the school. 
 
MR. RAY'S WORK AS A TEACHER, 
 
 WITH ESTIMATES OF HIS WORTH AND CHARACTER. 
 
 w 
 
 ITH reference to Mr. Ray's work in Mt. 
 Vernon, Mr. Barton says : — 
 
 " He made a great success of it. Up to this time he had 
 thought of the law as a life work. At Mt. Vernon he chose 
 the teacher's profession. Here he was also town superin- 
 tendent, and did his first work in school supervision. His 
 equipment was as extensive as possible. Nearly all the 
 money saved in those early days was spent in books. As a 
 student he was most diligent. Many a morning the sun 
 came streaming in at the windows before he sought rest, and 
 he never left his work before midnight. 
 
 He also was a leader in Christian work in those days as 
 afterwards with us. During most of his stay at Mt. Vernon, 
 he conducted religious services at the school-house out of 
 the village. One writes, * He never was too busy to talk 
 with pupils on any subject, trivial or serious, and many a 
 boy and girl left his desk with a lighter heart and a nobler 
 purpose because of the earnest, sympathetic words given.' 
 This school was very near to Ray's heart. He once told 
 me he never expected to see another like it, and I judge its 
 charm was in the sympathetic union between teacher and 
 pupil. After two years and a half at Mt. Vernon, Mr. Ray 
 
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 29 
 
 went to Yonkers, New York, and there finished the year. He 
 received very high testimonials for his work at this city." 
 
 As an example of Mr. Ray's " toughing it 
 through" during these first years can be stated the 
 fact that he obtained permission to go to Yonkers in 
 the middle of the year, only upon condition that he 
 should continue his work as superintendent of the 
 Mt. Vernon schools during the rest of the year. 
 Accordingly he used to leave Yonkers on Friday, 
 ride all night to Mt. Vernon, straighten out matters 
 there on Saturday, and return to Yonkers before 
 Monday morning. 
 
 An old pupil bears this testimony to the inspiring 
 character of Mr. Ray's teaching at Mt. Vernon : — 
 
 " As I look back upon that time I feel that he opened a 
 new world for me. His was the grand power to draw forth 
 the best qualities within his pupils. I have had some suc- 
 cess as a teacher, and I feel that the best I have been able to 
 do I owe to the teaching of Mr. Ray. He was always kind 
 and helpful. . . . The second year I taught in the Institute 
 as assistant pupil, continuing to recite in one study and 
 teach three hours a day. While I taught thus I received 
 much help and good counsel from him. After I left the 
 Institute I did not hear anything from him until 1886, when 
 I wrote to him, and received between that time and 1888 
 three kind, cordial, and helpful letters." 
 
 At another time the same pupil wrote of him and 
 his school at Mt. Vernon : — 
 
 " The school was small, about fifty pupils during the winter 
 terms. The work done by the teachers was excellent, and 
 
30 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 
 
 in most cases the pupils responded readily, for we were 
 made to realize the importance of good work. He aimed to 
 help us both in school and out. Every pupil was made to 
 feel that he had a friend who sympathized with him at all 
 times and would do everything possible to aid him. It 
 was Mr. Ray's aim and wish that the school should have 
 a high moral and Christian standing in the community, and 
 such it did have." 
 
 At the meeting of the Alumni of McCullom In- 
 stitute, Aug. 21, 1890, a more detailed account of 
 Mr. Ray at Mt. Vernon, and a sincere tribute to his 
 memory, were presented in a paper prepared and 
 read by Lucia E, Trevitt. That paper has a place 
 here. 
 
 "There are, no doubt, some among us to-day who re- 
 member distinctly our impressions on entering the old 
 academy eleven years ago this fall. There was something 
 in the way the new principal conducted the brief devotional 
 exercises, and set about the business of finding out what we 
 knew and did not know, that inspired our respect in spite of 
 his boyish presence, and made us feel his power as a teacher. 
 
 " The school was small that year, and both Mr. Ray and 
 Miss Dillingham must have found much that was discourag- 
 ing, for they were used to larger work and better appliances ; 
 but their enthusiasm did not flag. 
 
 " Looking back from this distance over the work of that 
 year, I can see better than ever how much it was worth to 
 us. The two teachers supplemented each other admirably. 
 Both were enthusiastic students with an earnest love for all 
 that was good in the world of men and books, and what is 
 more, with the power of making their pupils love it too. 
 
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 3 I 
 
 Mr. Ray was, as he called himself sometimes, a plain, blunt 
 man with a practical mind and a matter-of-fact way of look- 
 ing at things ; while Miss DiUingham was intense, poetic, and 
 sensitive. We shall never forget how she opened up to us 
 the study of literature ; nor how we found that Virgil with 
 Mr. Ray meant something more than the ability to construe 
 a passage with the help of notes. I cannot measure the in- 
 fluence of that year of study and contact with such minds. 
 To so many of us it brought such an awakening out of in- 
 tellectual sleep and the revelation of what life could mean, 
 that we look back upon it almost with awe. . . . 
 
 " Even had I time to-day I could not give a detailed 
 biography of Mr. Ray, as I have only a meagre outline of it 
 before me. He came to us from Dartmouth College, where 
 he had taken honors, full of youthful zeal and with an ex- 
 alted ideal of his profession. We were sorry when his 
 ambition took him away from us, near the end of the third 
 year in Mt. Vernon ; but recognizing his ability, we cannot 
 wonder that he wished for a larger sphere of work and use- 
 fulness. This he found in the West, and his labors both in 
 Waukegan and Hyde Park, Illinois, were crowned with great 
 success. Under his management the high school in Hyde 
 Park became one of the best in the State. He wrote for the 
 educational papers, and worked during the summer in county 
 institutes, thus extending his influence. Many teachers 
 have spoken of the help and inspiration he gave them. 
 Here, as everywhere, he was among the leaders in the 
 church and Sunday-school, and joined heartily in every work 
 for the public good, taking upon himself new duties and 
 responsibilities every year. Such constant labor without 
 relaxation, year after year, was too much for even the 
 strongest, and it is no wonder that his strength gave way 
 
32 
 
 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 
 
 and that the call to rest came to him swift and sudden, in 
 the prime of life. Such a teacher, citizen, and Christian 
 worker is sorely missed. 
 
 " Mr. Ray was married during the summer of iSSo, and 
 brought his bride to Mt. Vernon the fall before he left. 
 Two children were born to them in Hyde Park, the eldest 
 of whom blessed their home only two short years. Little 
 Margaret, now more than two years old, remains to comfort 
 her mother. 
 
 " It was at Hyde Park that most of his larger work in 
 religious and educational lines was done ; but we of McCul- 
 lom Institute feel a more tender interest in the promise and 
 beginning of that work as we saw it here. 
 
 " Mr. Ray was a born teacher [when he was but twelve 
 years old his father saw his gift in this direction, and said, 
 when he had explained some point in a lesson to his brother 
 with remarkable clearness, "Willie will make a teacher "]. 
 He possessed, to a large degree, that quality of personal 
 magnetism at once so dangerous and so necessary to the 
 true leader of youth, and it was this that made the school 
 discipline an unseen force, and gave him his strong influence 
 — intellectual, moral, and spiritual — over his pupils. 
 
 " I have spoken of his enthusiasm. It was a flame which 
 lighted everything that he did, and kindled an answering fire 
 in the hearts of most of his students. It entered into his 
 recreation as well as his work, and we saw him thoroughly 
 alive on every side. 
 
 " His religious influence was so large a part of his teach- 
 ing that one can hardly speak of it separately. His early 
 training by his stern Presbyterian father had been a good 
 basis for the more liberal influence of his student life, and he 
 came to us full of the spirit of the best modern religious 
 
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 33 
 
 leaders. The simple chapel service each morning came to 
 mean something more than a form to us ; and we heeded the 
 Scripture that was selected for some special reason, and the 
 prayer which voiced our every-day needs. In these morning 
 talks, and in the more intimate personal contact with us, he 
 made us feel that to be religious meant the largest, richest, 
 and most beautiful living. 
 
 " I still cherish a quotation which he gave me years ago, 
 and which well expresses the spirit of his teaching : ' To un- 
 derstand the world is better than to condemn it. To study 
 the world is better than to shun it. To use the world is 
 better than to abuse it. To make the world better, lovelier, 
 and happier is the noblest work of any man or woman.' 
 
 " We are to-day to pay some tribute to his memory and 
 express something of our gratitude for what we owe him. 
 His wife says of him : ' He crowded the work of fifty years 
 into his life.' The work of such a man lives after him, and 
 one cannot measure its span by months and years. 
 
 *' 'We live in deeds, not years, in thoughts, not breaths. 
 In feelings, not in figures on a dial. 
 We should count time by heart throbs. He most lives 
 Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.' " 
 
 After Mr. Ray's half-year of work in Yonkers, New 
 York, he became superintendent of schools and prin- 
 cipal of the high school in Waukegan, Illinois, and two 
 years later was chosen principal of the Hyde Park 
 High School, which school he made known in many 
 States, and with which his name is, for most who knew 
 him in the West, forever associated. Again, in mak- 
 ing the change from Waukegan to Hyde Park, he was 
 obliged to act as superintendent of the schools in 
 
 3 
 
34 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 
 
 the place he had left for nearly or quite a year. But 
 he " toughed it through," and nothing suffered for 
 lack of his painstaking attention. He himself was 
 the one who was to suffer from such excessive 
 labor. 
 
 Regarded from the standpoint of mere worldly 
 achievement, one is compelled to admire a man who, 
 unaided, has raised himself from the position of a 
 teacher in an obscure Vermont country school, to 
 the position of principal of a high school which he 
 himself had developed and given a commanding in- 
 fluence in a great commonwealth like Illinois, and 
 whose name he had caused to be spoken with respect 
 and admiration both East and West. It was no acci- 
 dent of fortune that wrought all this. Whatever Mr. 
 Ray attained was attained by force of character and 
 hard work. No sudden success came to him ; but day 
 by day he reached higher ground, and day by day his 
 hori;^on widened. His steady upward course must 
 finally have led him to the summit of educational 
 greatness in this country, had his life been spared. 
 Already had he been seen by those above him, al- 
 ready were they beckoning to him. Several of the 
 best colleges of the West were watching him with a 
 view to offering him a professorship. There was no 
 limit to his aspiration for the highest success as a 
 teacher. Repeatedly had he refused offers to engage 
 in business that would soon have increased his income 
 many fold. With an eye single to his own high pur- 
 pose he kept the upward way. 
 
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 
 
 35 
 
 Had he set an easy thing before himself he might 
 have done it, and Hved, perhaps ; but with an infinite 
 task before him, he died, because he was finite. And 
 yet, had he known his ownrend, he would doubtless 
 have kept straight on. He did not expect a long 
 life, as he sometimes remarked to those nearest him. 
 Often were the words of Browning's poem the subject 
 of his thought and conversation : — 
 
 " That low man seeks a little thing to do, 
 
 Sees it and does it ; 
 This high man, with a great thing to pursue, 
 
 Dies ere he knows it. 
 That low man goes on adding one to one, 
 
 His hundred 's soon hit ; 
 This high man, aiming at a million. 
 
 Misses an unit. 
 This has the world here, should he need the next, 
 
 Let the world mind him ! 
 This throws himself on God, and unperplexed 
 
 Seeking shall find Him." 
 
 Secure In the belief that Mr. Ray, too, seeking has 
 found Him, there is no need that any one try to out- 
 line what would have been his course here had he 
 lived longer. Better is it to look more closely at 
 what has been and what now is. 
 
 While Mr. Ray was pre-eminently a teacher, in 
 church also as in school his position was a responsi- 
 ble one. At the time of his death he was a trustee 
 and one of the members of a building committee in 
 the Presbyterian Church of Hyde Park. He was also 
 assistant superintendent of the Sunday-school and 
 
36 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 
 
 teacher of a normal class of about thirty young men 
 and women. He had been the virtual founder of a 
 mission Sunday-school at Parkside, Illinois, and had 
 long since had the pleasure of seeing a beautiful new 
 chapel, of his own design, erected there for the weekly 
 use of two hundred or more grateful people. 
 
 His services to the church in Hyde Park were 
 keenly appreciated by its members, and the following 
 Resolutions faintly express the personal obligations 
 felt by many individuals : — 
 
 The following report of a committee of the Board of 
 Trustees of the First Presbyterian Church of Hyde Park, 
 appointed August 17, 1889, was adopted by the Board, 
 September 6, 1889. 
 
 In view of the death of Mr. William Henry Ray, the Board 
 of Trustees of the First Presbyterian Church of Hyde Park 
 directs the following minute to be placed upon its records, 
 and a copy to be sent to Mrs. Ray. 
 
 The death of Mr. Ray has deprived this Board of a most 
 active, efficient, and valuable member whose intelligent zeal 
 and fidelity in advancing the interests of the church are 
 worthy the admiration and the imitation of all. 
 
 Mr. Ray was conspicuous for his constant and earnest 
 attention to the business of the Board, and for the cheerful 
 promptness with which he always responded to its demands 
 upon him. 
 
 Mr. Ray's death, especially at the present time, this Board 
 regards as a calamity to the church and Sabbath-school, to the 
 high school of which he was the energetic principal, and to the 
 community to whose higher interests his rare qualities of mind 
 and spirit were devoted. This Board tenders to his beloved 
 
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 2>7 
 
 wife and child the tenderest sympathy of every member, and 
 commends them both to the loving care of our Heavenly 
 Father, whose wise purposes are beyond our comprehension. 
 
 H. H. Belfifxd, \ 
 J. C. Welling, \ Committee. 
 William C. Ott, j 
 
 Of his work among the needy ones of the commu- 
 nity, and of the steps taken by him to found the 
 Mission at Parkside, the following letter written by 
 himself to the Rev. E. C. Ray, then pastor of the 
 Presbyterian Church at Hyde Park, will give a hint. 
 Few men have been better exponents of practical 
 Christianity than he. He went about doing good, 
 and usually left the impression upon those whom he 
 had helped that they had helped him, and that the 
 obligation was all on his side. 
 
 Easter Eve, 1884. 
 
 My dear Mr. Ray, — In response to your request I 
 will try to state some of the needs of the Parkside 
 Mission. 
 
 We need first a suitable building in which to hold our 
 Sunday-school and other religious exercises. The building 
 we now use is totally unfit for the purpose. Arranged for a 
 dwelling-house, and occupied in part as such and in part for 
 public school purposes, the rooms are small, poorly ventilated, 
 and in every way inconvenient. 
 
 We are placed at a disadvantage in two ways, — in that we 
 cannot accommodate our increasing numbers, and are un- 
 able to assemble all the school in one room for any general 
 exercises ; and secondly, because it is impossible to invite 
 
38 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 
 
 the parents in and properly seat them on such a festival as 
 that to be celebrated to-morrow. 
 
 1. The spiritual needs of the community are great. Your 
 mission school workers are unable to provide as they would 
 for these needs. The Macedonian cry is heard from these 
 people, " Come over and help us." With a cheap but not 
 unattractive building I believe that it would be possible to 
 gather the people, at least once in every week, and preach 
 to them the Word of Life. The saloons are not closed even 
 on Sunday, and entice many to enter their open doors. Does 
 not the Lord call upon the people of this church, whom he 
 has made his stewards, to throw open in Parkside the doors 
 of some house of worship? 
 
 2. We need also some means of alleviating the temporal 
 poverty in the district. Let me cite a single instance. A 
 few afternoons since, one of the teachers of the mission 
 school and myself visited a family from which two 
 children come regularly to the Sunday-school. We found 
 them living in a house of three or four rooms, but two of 
 which appeared to be occupied. The house faces a marsh 
 which was, on the day of our visit, filled with water. With- 
 out was dirt and every invitation to disease, within was 
 poverty, wretchedness, and sickness. 
 
 Two or three children, half-clad and hungry, met us at 
 the door and ushered us into a room in which was a cradle 
 where a wan baby lay crying, a table, and a tumble-down 
 and next-to-useless cooking stove. There was no chair nor 
 was one seen in the house. The mother was half-clad in 
 a petticoat, an old shawl thrown over her shoulders and 
 wrapped about her body, and was barefoot. She was ill, 
 suffering from what appeared chills and fever, and was bend- 
 ing over a wash-tub set on the floor. She had been ill most 
 
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 39 
 
 of the time since the three-months-old baby was born ; while 
 the husband and father had been unable during a large part 
 of the winter to earn anything for his family. There were 
 two beds to be seen, — these to afford sleeping accommoda- 
 tions for father, mother, and at least four children. 
 
 Before the Gospel is preached to such as these something 
 must be done to lessen their temporal distress. For these 
 and many others similarly situated, we ask a generous con- 
 tribution. For these our Lord died. That they might live 
 He rose on the first Easter morning, and He says, " Inas- 
 much as ye have done it unto one of the least of these ye 
 have done it unto Me." 
 
 Yours in the work, W. H. Ray. 
 
 Besides his work in church, Sunday-school, and 
 Parkside, he was one of the founders and most ardent 
 supporters of the Young People's Society of Chris- 
 tian Endeavor in his own church. He recognized 
 the fact that most of the young people had few op- 
 portunities of hearing first-class lectures and en- 
 tertainments, and accordingly, in the winter of 
 1 887-1 888, arranged a course of lectures by the best 
 city speakers, and, almost unaided, secured the finan- 
 cial and popular success of the course. 
 
 Nor were his energies confined to his own church 
 and society. Not the least helpful to the community 
 was his work as a member of the Board of Directors 
 of the Hyde Park Lyceum, — an organization formed 
 for the purpose of furnishing good books and a 
 pleasant reading-room for the young people of Hyde 
 Park. His many-sided nature touched humanity on 
 
40 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 
 
 every side, and always to its good. The following 
 letter belongs in this place. 
 
 Chicago, August lo, 1889. 
 
 Dear Madam, — In the general loss sustained by the 
 community in the death of William H. Ray, the Hyde Park 
 Lyceum shares too deeply to remain silent. Mr. Ray has 
 served on its various committees most helpfully during the 
 past four years. As a member of the committee on books, 
 his association with the young people of the town, — to whom 
 he was so wise and sympathetic a friend, so inspiring a 
 leader, — enabled him to suggest the most useful and attrac- 
 tive books to buy, and always to counsel a liberal expenditure 
 in this direction. 
 
 None of us will forget the graceful and fitting words in 
 which as member of the entertainment committee he intro- 
 duced our various speakers to their audiences. In all de- 
 partments of our work we will go on more sadly and heavily 
 fur want of his cheerful assistance. As a Board and as 
 individuals we desire to extend our deep sympathy to his 
 wife, and to assure her that we share with her a sense of 
 
 irreparable loss. 
 
 Sincerely, 
 
 Annie Hitchcock, 
 In behalf of the Board of Directors 
 of the Hyde Park Lyceum. 
 
 Every summer after he came West, he had been 
 engaged in institute work in various counties, and 
 thus came in contact with a great number of the best 
 teachers in the State. His influence upon them was 
 always inspiring. One who knew him intimately 
 and who often taught with him in institute work, 
 
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 4 1 
 
 writes to Mrs, Ray: " Could you hear the expressions 
 of deep sorrow felt on the part of scores of friends of 
 Mr. Ray here, and the feeling of kindly sympathy for 
 you and the dear little girl, I am sure it would be 
 gratifying to you. The influence of his work and 
 life will never cease, wherever he came in contact 
 with teachers." 
 
 Mr. Ray's literary work had been of a high order. 
 Besides many lectures and papers before reading 
 clubs, high schools, and teachers' associations, and 
 frequent contributions to educational journals, he 
 \vrote often for " The Dial," of Chicago, and his 
 criticisms of historical and economic works in this 
 journal were authoritative. In some cases, the au- 
 thors of the books reviewed wrote to thank him for 
 his criticism or for his genuine appreciation of their 
 efforts. Let the following letter serve as an example : 
 
 65 Pleasant St., Dorchester, Mass., May 12, 1888. 
 Mr. W. H. Ray : 
 
 My dear Sir, — I want to thank you heartily for your 
 admirable review of " Napoleon and the Russian Campaign," 
 in " The Dial " for May. The book has received a good deal 
 of attention, but I do not remember any notice that has 
 given so just and adequate an idea of what the author has 
 undertaken to show, as your article. 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 Huntingdon Smfth. 
 
 In response to a request "from the Editor of the 
 " Illinois School Journal," he wrote a series of arti- 
 
42 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 
 
 cles which appeared in that journal for 1 887-1 1 
 He also wrote for the " New England Journal of 
 Education " and other educational papers. As a 
 member of the Chicago Literary Club, he prepared 
 and read before the club a paper on " Russia in 
 Asia," that was afterwards printed in the " Atlantic 
 Monthly " (April, 1887). Of this article " The Dial " 
 for the same month said : — 
 
 " Mr. W. H. Ray's paper on ' Russia in Asia,' in the 
 * Atlantic ' for April, is an admirably concise and well 
 digested statement of Russia's movement and policy toward 
 the Indian frontier. One cannot wonder at the outburst of 
 England's poet laureate : ' Russia bursts our Indian barrier. 
 Shall we fight her? Shall we yield? ' " 
 
 So far as it can be completed, a list of Mr. Ray's 
 articles for periodicals and the miscellaneous papers 
 left by him will be found on another page of this vol- 
 ume. They cover a wide field and show great prom- 
 ise of what their author might have done, in almost 
 any line he chose, had his life been spared. 
 
 During the last year of his life, when his brain was 
 not able to rest because of the disease that was irri- 
 tating it, his activity was marvellous and the quality 
 of the work he did superior to all he had done be- 
 fore. Besides his work in school and church and 
 town (during a part of the year he was a member 
 of fourteen different committees throug-hout the 
 State), a notable effort of this year, and perhaps the 
 crowning hterary effort of his life, was an address on 
 
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 
 
 43 
 
 George Rogers Clark, given in a lecture course in 
 Bloomington, Illinois, and also in the Manual Train- 
 ing School Course of Lectures on American History, 
 in Central Music Hall, Chicago. Much of the mate- 
 rial for this lecture was obtained from original manu- 
 scripts, and thus was made public in Illinois several 
 months before it was accessible to the ordinary- 
 reader. Theodore Roosevelt in his " Winning of 
 the West," published since Mr. Ray's lecture, covers 
 the same ground, but not more eloquently. 
 
 During this last year Mr. Ray presided over the 
 deliberations of the Illinois State Teachers' Associa- 
 tion, with such courtesy and spirit as to compel the 
 admiration of all, even of men grown old in the ser- 
 vice. His opening address on this occasion, with the 
 subject " The High School and American Citizen- 
 ship," was masterly. 
 
 Here is an estimate of his ability as a presiding 
 officer from one who had taught in the Springfield 
 schools for twenty years and thus had been familiar 
 with all the recent meetings of the Association. 
 
 " The best part of this week has been given to our Annual 
 State Teachers' Association. I met your high school prin- 
 cipal, Mr. Ray. Do you not consider him a man of unusual 
 ability? He gave us that impression. He was chosen to 
 fill the president's chair in Mr, N's absence, and we have not 
 had so good a presiding officer for years." 
 
 From the records of the Illinois State Teachers' 
 Association for 1888, the following is taken: — • 
 
44 
 
 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 
 
 On motion of Dr. Edwin C. Hewett, a vote of thanks 
 was extended to the President, Wm. H. Ray, for the able 
 discharge of his duties. 
 
 [Signed] F. T. Oldt, Secretary. 
 
 With a mere mention of numerous unwritten ad- 
 dresses made before the Cook County Teachers' 
 Association, Christian Endeavor Conventions, Chau- 
 tauqua Clubs, and other meetings, both religious and 
 educational, there remains one address, also of this 
 last year, that demands a further word. He had 
 consented to speak before the graduating class of the 
 Rock Island High School, but the train that was to 
 carry him there was found to be behind time. At the 
 first opportunity, therefore, Mr. Ray climbed into the 
 engine cab and so prevailed upon the engineer that 
 the engine was put upon her mettle and made up 
 so much time that he was able to walk calmly upon 
 the platform at the appointed hour. He was greeted 
 with great enthusiasm, and those who heard him then 
 say that he spoke as he had never spoken before, and 
 that his words came with melting tenderness and 
 wonderful power to the strong young hearts before 
 him. The principal of the school at that time further 
 says that Mr. Ray's influence upon the Rock Island 
 School, from this address and from occasional visits 
 before, was remarkable. Indeed, so fully and person- 
 ally had he become a part of the lives of many of the 
 pupils that when, to a party of them on their way 
 home in great glee from a vacation trip with one 
 of their teachers, the news came of Mr. Ray's death. 
 
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 45 
 
 their joy was turned to profound sorrow, nor could 
 they keep back their tears. 
 
 And so the minds and hearts of all who knew him 
 turn naturally and irresistibly from what he did to 
 what he was. Men were proud of him for what he 
 did ; they loved him for what he was to them. 
 
 Said one of his teachers in a letter written upon 
 the news of his death : — 
 
 " ' How he will be missed in the state, in the educational 
 circles of Chicago, in his church, in every field,' so people 
 say ; but my heart only cries out, ' How I shall miss him, his 
 friendship, his help, the stimulus of his mind, his just and 
 generous criticism which had that rarest of all qualities that 
 it left you stronger to try again than you were before, his 
 quick thoughtfulness, gentle heart, and warm sympathies.' " 
 
 The last words of Mr. Barton's paper, from which 
 so many quotations have already been made, read 
 thus : — 
 
 " I cannot refrain from adding my tribute to the manly 
 worth, the sterling virtue, the much prized friendship of this 
 school-master, dead in his early manhood. A school-master, 
 yes, that is the term. We talk of principal and superinten- 
 dent and instructor and teacher, but a master is to me 
 better than all. William H. Ray was a master ; not over- 
 bearing, not tyrannical, always kind and sympathetic, careful 
 of mental growth and moral excellence. A master. Can 
 we give him a better tide ? Can his monument have a more 
 fitting inscription? 
 
 " Speaking of him in all his relations in life, one who knew 
 him most intimately says, *He was a just man. First, to 
 
46 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 
 
 himself. In his scheme of self-culture, he did not narrow 
 his sympathies to any one line as if culture were a foot-path, 
 but looked abroad on the universe with kindling eye. He 
 was only unjust to himself in trying to accomplish more than 
 one man could do. 
 
 " * He was just to men. He judged but with singular im- 
 partiality. He was a true friend, and as steadfast an oppo- 
 nent when duty called him. The power and success of his 
 brief career are a remarkable testimony to the Socratic virtue 
 of justice.' One further word, because it seems to be 
 needed. One of his most intimate friends says ; ' Ray's 
 exuberance of spirits often misled the estimates of those who 
 did not know him as a few of us did.' There was never a 
 time when his life was not within deeply serious and earnest, 
 and I can gladly bear testimony to the strength of his reli- 
 gious life, to its genuineness and growing power. 
 
 " Here we must pause, and it is always easy to do so with 
 words of extravagant and indiscriminating eulogy, yet this 
 would not be just. Let me rather quote these lines, to my 
 mind well expressing his merit : — 
 
 "' Life's work well done; 
 Life's race well run; 
 Life's crown well won ! ' " 
 
 A second paper, read at the same time and place 
 as the above, has a place here. It was written by 
 Mr. W. H. Hatch, of Moline, Illinois, than whom no 
 one in the State knew Mr. Ray more intimately nor 
 had a keener appreciation of his worth. 
 
 *• Eight years ago last fall there came to us a young man 
 almost fresh from college. At our last annual meeting he 
 stood before this Association as its acting president, in a 
 
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 47 
 
 manner that caused all to concede to him a rank among the 
 first of our state. 
 
 " To those who knew Mr. Ray intimately during these 
 few years there was revealed a character marked not merely 
 by an absence of any whit of meanness but strong in its 
 positiveness for all that is good and noble. Uprightness and 
 straightforwardness were marked traits in his character. No 
 thought of self nor consequences, but ' what is right ? ' was 
 ever the question before him. This trait was so plainly re- 
 vealed in all his intercourse with others that, though differing 
 with him, one was forced to admit the honesty of his 
 convictions. 
 
 " This was particularly noticeable in his intercourse with 
 irate parents. The burly Irishman who called to serve the 
 teacher as the teacher had served the boy, soon left with the 
 remark, ' You may thrash my boy all you please,' fully con- 
 vinced that his boy was in the hands of one who knew better 
 how to deal with him than the father himself. 
 
 *' The same element of character enabled him to speak 
 plain and even severe words to his pupils with the result 
 of good only and with no bitter feeling. He would deal 
 with the would-be-smart young man (or old either) in an 
 institute, with the most cutting severity and at the same time 
 win his respect and affection. As another has well said : 
 
 " ' There was about him little of the conventional school- 
 master. In his own school, personality counted for more 
 than formal method, and his personahty was of the ideal 
 type. He was so sure of himself and of his pupils that he 
 had no need of the time-honored barriers which teachers of 
 weaker power are forced to raise between themselves and 
 their scholars. There was with him no parade of discipline, 
 but there was every sign of perfect control.' 
 
48 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY, 
 
 " This power was swayed by a gentle, loving heart. Upon 
 my first visit to his school, I found at the entrance a kitten 
 sleeping in the sun in undisturbed contentment. This well 
 illustrated the gentleness that through him pervaded the 
 school. 
 
 " He may be well written, as desired by Abou Ben Adhem 
 of old, ' as one who loved his fellow-men.' This intense love 
 for the young drew all to him and bound them with cords 
 that death only tends to strengthen. This is well illustrated 
 by an incident that occurred last fall. Some one inquired of 
 the Superintendent of Oakwood Cemetery for direction to Mr. 
 Ray's grave. After locating it as best he could, he added, 
 * You will distinguish the grave by the flowers. Scarcely a 
 day passes that children do not come here with wild flow- 
 ers to place upon his grave.' What lover of children could 
 wish to leave a sweeter memorial than is shown by this? 
 
 " His earnestness communicated itself to all with whom he 
 came in contact and led them to feel the importance of the 
 work in which he was engaged. This was remarkable upon 
 his Board of Education, from whom he was able to secure 
 almost anything he wished. To his credit be it said that he 
 refused to continue in his position unless the power of the 
 appointment of his assistants and the direction of all affairs 
 of his school were placed in his hands. His motives were 
 pure and unselfish. In fact, he had so thoroughly surrounded 
 himself by an atmosphere that was an outgrowth of his own 
 unselfishness, that the barbs of petty personal thrusts never 
 reached him. With him the contest was ever one of ideas, 
 not of persons. 
 
 " It was in the school-room, however, that his genius was 
 most apparent. As an instructor I never saw his superior. 
 A prominent school-man wrote me, after an extended trip 
 
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 49 
 
 through the West, ' I have, as you know, come in contact 
 with the majority of the prominent high school men west of 
 the Hudson, and it is no disparagement to the rest to say 
 that Mr. Ray impressed me as the best of all.' 
 
 " His method was the Socratic, pure and simple. His 
 questions were well chosen, carefully formulated, and logically 
 connected. He was thoroughly conversant with his subject 
 in all its phases, and consequently left free to study carefully 
 the mental state of the pupil and formulate his question 
 accordingly. Inattention in his classes was unknown. 
 
 "The boy in him never reached maturity. All who knew 
 him best will never forget his ringing boyish laugh and 
 hearty, cordial hand-grasp, as he looked you straight in the 
 eye with a glad smile that showed his greeting to be genuine. 
 Full to overflowing of spirits that never flagged, he was 
 never too tired for a good time. Respect him as we shall 
 as a man, admire him as a teacher, revere him as a genius, 
 we shall ever love him as the genial companion and loving 
 friend. In his life is well exemplified the fact that a noble 
 purpose, backed by a determination that no obstacle can 
 turn aside, achieves ends that genius may fail to attain. His 
 nobility of character, loftiness of purpose, purity of motive, 
 are elements that will live in the minds of all after his rare 
 gifts of intellectual power are forgotten. 
 
 " The life of man is measured not so much by its length in 
 days as by the intensity of its efforts, the breadth of its in- 
 fluence, and the fulness of achievement. By this standard 
 the life of William H. Ray will rank among those who have 
 been called in the fulness of years. He has — 
 
 " ' Breathed a song into the air, 
 
 And the song from beginning to end 
 Will be found again in the heart of a friend,' " 
 4 
 
50 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 
 
 or friends in whose hearts and lives he still remains the 
 reality of a living presence. Who will dare to say that less 
 than aeons of eternity will bound the influence of such life? 
 
 " The burden of his whole work was to bring youth into 
 harmony with God and fellow-man, and his greatest work is 
 written in the lives of his pupils who, lifted into a higher and 
 purer atmosphere, will ever catch broader glimpses of the 
 great world of man about them." 
 
 The Illinois State Teachers' Association at the 
 same meeting passed the following resolution : — 
 
 Resolved : That in the death of Principal William H. 
 Ray, of Hyde Park, the Association has lost one of its most 
 active and valued members ; the cause of secondary educa- 
 tion, a noble advocate and representative ; the state, a true 
 man and ideal teacher. 
 
 Flora Pennell, 
 
 Secretary for 1889. 
 
 With the Northern Illinois Teachers' Association 
 he was still more intimately and helpfully connected 
 than with the State Association, and by this body, at 
 a special meeting held in his memory in Englewood, 
 in September, 1889, this resolution was read and 
 adopted : — 
 
 Englewood, Illinois, September, 1889. 
 
 Whereas, another loved companion and earnest fellow- 
 worker has fallen by the way, and realizing that the educa- 
 tional work of this State has suffered, in the death of Mr. 
 William Henry Ray, an irreparable loss : 
 
 Be it rksolved : That we, the teachers of the Northern 
 Illinois Teachers' Association, testify to his sterling worth as 
 
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENR Y RAY. 5 I 
 
 a man and a teacher. We feel that in his death every good 
 cause has lost a helper, and every honest man a friend. We 
 as teachers have lost the inspiiing influence of his presence 
 and voice. The ideal teacher, he lives in the lives of his 
 pupils and our grateful hearts, where his memory will ever 
 lift us to higher purposes and nobler motives. 
 
 Resolved : That we extend to his bereaved wife our 
 tenderest sympathies, with the earnest hope that this life, so 
 short in years but full in its fruit and so far-reaching in its 
 influence, may be ever with her as a precious memory, com- 
 forting her with the purity and unselfishness of its motives 
 and fulness of its achievements. 
 
 Leslie Lewis, 
 W. H. Hatch, 
 
 '' \ Committee. 
 :h. ) 
 
 Said Mr. Hatch, in the letter which conveyed the 
 above resolutions to Mrs. Ray, — 
 
 " The thought of Mr. Ray and his life among us pervaded 
 all the deliberations of the Association, and we felt his in- 
 fluence as of one present. His name was upon every lip. 
 I never realized before how wide-reaching his influence 
 was." 
 
 A letter to the State Superintendent of Public 
 Instruction, asking permission to print in this volume 
 a letter requesting Mr. Ray to serve a second time as 
 one of the State Board of Examiners for the issuing 
 of State Certificates, elicited this reply : — 
 
 There is no objection at all to your using the letter I wrote 
 to Mr. Ray, at the time mentioned, asking him to be one of 
 the State Board of Examiners. The letter was written be- 
 cause I thought he was a worthy man, and a man who 
 
52 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 
 
 would give character to the gradings upon which the certifi- 
 cates were to be awarded. I wished to fortify myself before 
 the people by the help of men whose fitness as examiners 
 would be recognized. 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 Richard Edwards, 
 Superuitendejit of Public Instruction. 
 
 From the correspondence of Mr. Ray with Mr. 
 M. B. Drew, whom he had never seen and to whom 
 he had written merely on business, the following is 
 selected for the purpose of showing how Mr. Ray's 
 influence was felt even by those whom he never 
 saw. 
 
 Marshall, Lyon Co., Minnesota, June 15, 1888. 
 W. H. Ray, Esq., 
 
 Hyde Park, Illinois. 
 My dear Sir, — I have just received yours of the 12th, 
 containing kind expression of confidence and friendship, 
 as well as an invitation to visit you. Nothing would give 
 me more pleasure than to see you at your home, unless 
 it would be to see you at my home here. I am glad to 
 find a man occasionally who can take time to give vent to 
 kind thoughts, without which this world would be worthless 
 
 and cold. 
 
 Yours, 
 
 M. B. Drew. 
 
 The same writer, in a letter to Mrs. Ray after the 
 death of Mr. Ray, says: "I received from him the 
 kindest letter I ever received in my life from any 
 man whom I had never seen." 
 
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 53 
 
 The following letters, written during the compila- 
 tion of this volume, also illustrate marked traits in 
 Mr. Ray's character: — 
 
 Princeton, Illinois, November i, 1890. 
 My dear Sir, — I have among many reminiscences of 
 Mr. Ray, which are pleasant matters of remembrance to my- 
 self, perhaps one or two which may reproduce him in a 
 grateful light to those of his friends who were much better 
 acquainted with him than was I. From the time when I first 
 met him, I felt that he was a bright man, full of the ability and 
 intention to make others happy ; and later, as I came, now 
 and then, to have casual business relations with him, I was 
 deeply impressed by his alert, strong spirit of helpfulness. 
 
 Not only was he faithful in duties professionally laid upon 
 him, — this were not noteworthy ; it belong? to teachers as a 
 class, — but he sought opportunities to be helpful. He 
 would go a long way out of his common path to show this 
 ever-present spirit of faidifulness and friendliness. If this 
 makes a rare man, Mr. Ray was a rare man, or I have the 
 grateful mal-adroitness to misread him. An incident will 
 illustrate. 
 
 In the Spring of 1889, as the Centennial Anniversary of 
 Washington's inauguration approached, I wished to procure, 
 for distribution to my pupils as a souvenir of their participa- 
 tion in our exercises, some medals which had been provided 
 by a committee of the Board of Education in Chicago for 
 such use, and of which they had a surplus. 
 
 Having lost the advertisement, I thought it possible Mr. 
 Ray might be able, with small trouble to himself, to put me 
 on the track again. 
 
 I wrote him asking whether he could name the proper 
 
54 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 
 
 party. Not hearing from him quite so soon as I anticipated, 
 the matter had been dismissed as being probably outside his 
 knowledge, and I felt really chagrined that he had been 
 troubled by it. How httle I knew the man ! A day later 
 he wrote me that he did not know the address, but was in 
 the way of finding it. Two days later he wrote again, inci- 
 dentally showing that he had been up to the city for the 
 purpose of hunting up the proper office, and not encounter- 
 ing the person in charge, had made an arrangement with a 
 third party which resulted later in a letter containing the 
 desired information. All this was at serious cost to a very 
 busy man. Now, the ordinary man, being busy, would have 
 courteously said that he had not the information sought, and 
 the matter would have rested there. 
 
 This was not Mr. Ray's way. He would take any amount 
 of unusual trouble to help a man whose claims upon him 
 were of the slightest. This was one of the secrets of his 
 hold upon men. He had a host of friends because he 
 showed himself friendly. 
 
 Another of his characteristics came to my notice when, in 
 October, 1887, he became for a few hours a guest with my 
 family. We found him full of sparkling spirits, both in con- 
 versation and at the family board. After a while, the repast 
 having been finished, he quietly disappeared from our circle, 
 but soon revealed his whereabouts by the irrepressible racket 
 into which he had fallen in company with the little six-year- 
 old girl of the family. 
 
 We adjourned to investigate, and found the two, Mr. Ray 
 and the little girl, rivalling each other in jumping from the 
 end of a high porch to the turf. 
 
 They were both equally simple-minded about it, equally in 
 earnest, and equally happy. 
 
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 55 
 
 The child remembers him to this day as the improvised 
 companion of her jolly frolic. Here was revealed another 
 secret of his influence with humanity. He met each speci- 
 men on its appropriate level, and did it not as a matter of 
 acting but as a matter of nature, — that one touch of nature 
 makes the whole world kin. 
 
 He grew old with the experience of life, and met the 
 serious situations of business with all considerateness, but he 
 kept his heart green. He had strong thoughts for his equals, 
 but he had also warm blood in him for the young, and merry 
 ways for the little children. Such men get years and wisdom, 
 but they cannot grow old, — 
 
 " For let the cynic grumble as he will, 
 Except in cares, a good heart grows not old ; 
 The rill of inward laughter bubbles yet, 
 'Twixt cressed banks fresh with the scents of spring." 
 
 Nay, further, such serviceably good men as our friend 
 
 Wm. H. Ray die not. How could this be? They are 
 
 translated. We shall find them again. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 H. C. Forbes. 
 
 Beloit College, November 22, 1890. 
 
 My dear Sir, — My heart goes along very warmly with 
 the plan you have, with others, of giving the friends of our 
 brother teacher, Wm. H. Ray, a memorial of that good, 
 brave man. I do believe that such a story of such a man 
 who did his work not in the most conspicuous places of 
 privilege, where dwell the usual subjects of biography, but in 
 the humbler walks which most of us are frequenting, will do 
 most to help us frame the ideals we especially need. 
 
 The best memento which good people can leave behind 
 them is written in the character and lives their influence 
 
56 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 
 
 helps divine Providence to form ; but it makes me happy 
 to think that some such expression as you will furnish of 
 what you and others have had given you by our friend v»'ill 
 again and again be in the hands of young teachers to show 
 them what there is for them to do and to be ; particularly 
 that Mrs. Ray and her child will always have the privilege, 
 so often as they open the book, of being reminded by the 
 testimony of others, as well as by their own hearts, of the 
 blessed legacy bequeathed to them. 
 
 Mr. Ray came to see us three winters ago, and lectured 
 in the interests of normal training before the college and the 
 academy. I need not say that the lecture was all we wished, 
 and how grateful we were. Especially the man charmed us 
 all. So alive, so full of the responsibility and ardor of his 
 work, so broad and rich in his conception of the Life and the 
 Light of the world. 
 
 How meagre the learning which does not hold all its 
 possessions of scientific truth upon Him as their organizing 
 and explanatory principle ! How feeble the moral power of 
 whatever endowed teacher who does not hide himself be- 
 hind the spiritual love of Him in whom there is no darkness 
 at all ! I need not say that I shall read the volume you 
 will send me with deepest interest, neither because it is a 
 memorial of my friend, nor because it is the memorial of a 
 bright and intellectual spirit, nor because of tender associa- 
 tions of our having dear old Dartmouth as our common 
 Alma Mater, but because I shall surely find in it the sugges- 
 tion of one who was a teacher after the style of Arnold, 
 because he had learned his art from the same divine 
 
 source. 
 
 Very sincerely your friend, 
 
 J. J. Blaisdell. 
 
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 57 
 
 At the Annual Meeting of the Dartmouth Alumni 
 Association of Chicago, held January 15, 1891, a 
 paper was read in memory of Mr. Ray, from which 
 some extracts may fitly be given here : — 
 
 " The memory of a strong and earnest man passes not away, 
 but lingers long in the hearts of those who have called him 
 friend. That any one who knew William Henry Ray could 
 forget him, might be counted impossible. His hearty pre^; 
 ence, the cordial grasp of his hand, his merry laugh, his keen 
 eye, quick footstep, the strong, clear tones of his voice, — all 
 these scill are with us, but they are not the man, and when 
 they have grown dim and faint there shall still remain, clear 
 and shining in our hearts, the character and soul, that elusive 
 spiritual essence which no pen can fully describe, but which 
 never loses its power and individuality. 
 
 " While he lived hearts loved him, weak spirits trusted him, 
 strong souls recognized him, the world about him felt his 
 power. Now that he is gone, it remains only to put in 
 words this love and recognition, and, to leave the record for 
 those who knew him not. Born June i, 1858, he died at 
 an age when most men have but fairly begun their work, and 
 learned their place in life. Though his life must thus seem 
 to our mortal eyes unfinished, it was long enough not only 
 to show plainly to the world what he could do, and what he 
 intended to do, but to leave much actually accomplished 
 behind it. 
 
 " The boy William grew up in narrow surroundings and in 
 the midst of hard work, but having always about him the 
 pure atmosphere of a genuine home where love for good 
 and high things prevailed, where tender hearts and their 
 
58 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 
 
 aspirations were cherished and encouraged, where strict 
 integrity and uprightness were the rule, and where Christian 
 courtesy and gentleness softened and brightened all the 
 home life. 
 
 " Intellectually, Ray was a bright, keen, original thinker, 
 with a mind of unusual activity and force. He possessed to 
 a marked degree the genius for hard work, and in addition 
 to his school work, was daily occupied with book reviews, 
 articles for educational journals and associations, and literary 
 papers. What he had to say upon educational topics was 
 listened to by the world of schools and teachers as coming 
 from one who spoke with authority. From his daily ex- 
 perience in the class-room, he deduced principles and sug- 
 gested methods capable and worthy of wide application. 
 
 " His own power as an instructor was great and unusual. 
 To sit for an hour in his class-room was an education and 
 an inspiration to an ordinary teacher. Always brimful of his 
 subject and thoroughly posted in all its details, concentrating 
 all his attention upon one point after another, and holding 
 the minds of his class rigidly to the same point, it seemed as 
 if one could see the mind of a child expand under his 
 earnest thought-awakening questioning, and quiet yet eager 
 manner. His great warm heart took in every boy and girl 
 in school, and made each feel, sooner or later, that he had an 
 especial interest in him. And such an interest he had in- 
 deed, for he was never too busy or hurried to give a word of 
 truth to the seeking mind, of encouragement to the dis- 
 heartened, of advice to the perplexed, of sympathy to the 
 lonely. No amount of trouble was too great for him to take 
 in the endeavor to be of service to some one who needed it. 
 He never held himself away from his pupils. His presence 
 
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 59 
 
 was sunshine and brisk fresh air in the school-room. His boys 
 considered him the best of companions in school and out. 
 
 " His personal influence was great throughout his school, 
 but its greatest element lay in the moral power and Christian 
 character of the man. He loved his pupils earnestly, and 
 his highest aim in training them was to develop in them 
 manly, strong, and beautiful character. They saw and felt 
 his Christianity in all his daily life, and they recognized it in 
 his supreme desire to serve them. In the heart of many a 
 young man and woman to-day his helpful influence is yet 
 alive as a restraint and an inspiration, and his Christian 
 manhood is quietly made a standard of living in many young 
 lives. Who can estimate such work? 
 
 " His clear insight, wise judgment, and thorough knowledge 
 of men entitled him to the position of influence which he 
 held in the community. While his warm impulsive heart, 
 alive to every emotion, his quick sympathy, his eager readi- 
 ness to be of service, won him friends everywhere, his mag- 
 netic, loyal nature and frank, boyish manner kept them his. 
 He was a member of the Chicago Literary Club, and was 
 there known as a man of culture, an enthusiastic reader, an 
 earnest student, a keen critic, a live questioner, a prodigious 
 worker. His was a progressive spirit, quick to recognize 
 the good in what was new, but not hasty in leaving behind 
 all that was old. 
 
 " He was proud, but not too proud to recall the hasty judg- 
 ment, or acknowledge the mistake. That he was sincere 
 impressed all who met him, and even his enemies acknowl- 
 edged it. He was human, impulsive, quick-tempered, full 
 of humor. His strength and enthusiasm were contagious. 
 He rejoiced to live as a strong man to run a race. 
 
6o MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 
 
 " The impression that he made upon one, even at first, was 
 as if the poet's words had been upon his lips : — 
 
 " ' How beautiful it is to be alive, 
 
 To wake each morn as if the Maker's grace 
 Did me afresh from nothingness derive, 
 That I might sing : How happy is my case ! 
 How beautiful it is to be alive ! ' 
 
 " So active was he, so eager in learning, so energetic in 
 doing, that when after a few days' illness, in July of 1889, he 
 vanished from our sight, amazement almost equalled grief. 
 That such life could have been quenched, it is impossible to 
 believe. Rather do we know that fully armed and equipped 
 he has been transferred to a heavenly service, — 
 
 " ' And having died, feels none the less 
 How beautiful it is to be alive.' " 
 
 Surely, however much his friends may admire what 
 Mr. Ray did in a more public way, it was through his 
 personal influence as a man and as a teacher that his 
 Hfe work was greatest. He had a wonderful power 
 to help others, and this was the grand purpose of his 
 hfe. A part of this power was due to his unusual 
 gifts of mind and heart, but more of it depended 
 upon his clear, unswerving Christian purpose. 
 
 No labor was too great, infinite pains were as 
 nothing, if he could do a person good ; and for the 
 encouragement of the reader, may it not be said 
 that, whatever his abilities, Mr. Ray's purposes and 
 methods can with success be imitated. 
 
 Of his technical work as a teacher there is little 
 need to speak more, for it is so well known. In his 
 
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENKY RAY. 6 I 
 
 power to question, to make pupils think, to help them 
 during the recitation to unfold and use their powers 
 of mind and soul, he had few equals anywhere, even 
 in our best colleges. 
 
 But if as a mere instructor he excelled, his life was 
 still more potent in its personal relations with both 
 pupils and teachers. Here the unselfish purpose of 
 his life was everywhere manifest. He once gave in 
 answer to the earnest question, " What is the use in 
 living, anyhow?" the simple word, service^ and this 
 word more than any other seems to have been the 
 key-note of all his living. 
 
 The teachers' cloak-room in the Hyde Park High 
 School building is connected with the office, and 
 twice a day, each day in the year, each teacher thus 
 had the opportunity of coming into magnetic personal 
 contact with Mr. Ray as he sat at his desk. There was 
 always a hearty " good-night" and " good-morning" 
 and often much more, — always something helpful. 
 A door also leads from the office into the main study- 
 room, and this door was always open to the pupils. 
 Those who had stayed behind for special work by 
 themselves or with individual teachers, or, what was 
 very common, for an inspiring confidential talk with 
 Mr. Ray himself, always paused, one by one, in the 
 door of the office, when they were ready to go, to say 
 "good-night" to him and to receive the warm re- 
 sponse that went with them like a benediction. One by 
 one also the teachers took leave of him, and usually 
 before six o'clock Mr. Ray was left alone to complete 
 
62 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 
 
 the details of the next day's work. But no matter 
 how late he stayed, the next morning found him 
 again at his desk first of all, and from the midst of 
 his work there was always a welcome for everybody. 
 
 In a talk before his pupils, in 1888, he used these 
 words : " It is necessary that all men should be self- 
 masterful. The purpose of school life is to teach you 
 to think, to be independent and self-centred." Such 
 was ever the tendency of Mr. Ray's personal influ- 
 ence. Not only was he their accomplished instructor, 
 in the ordinary sense, and their enthusiastic companion 
 in athletic sports, but he was their truest friend and 
 teacher in all good things, and as such they mourn 
 his loss to-day. 
 
 Said one member of his senior class two years ago : 
 " After I came to know Mr. Ray, I never cared to 
 read any more trash." One of the teachers in the 
 Hyde Park Public Schools, formerly a pupil, re- 
 marked: "Only once have I ever met Mr. Ray, if 
 but to pass him on the street, when he did not leave 
 me stronger and better." 
 
 But did every one like this man, and was he 
 satisfied with his own life and work? 
 
 He should not be represented other than he was. 
 His success made him some enemies, and his hatred 
 of sham, formality, and toadyism, together with his 
 outspoken manner, made him others. His purposes 
 were true and high, and he clung to them always; 
 but he often deplored his inability to accomplish all 
 that he wished, and sometimes he lacked faith in 
 
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 63 
 
 results. He was an unselfish and strong man with 
 the highest ideals ; but he was often tired, and he was 
 human. The constant drain upon his vital energies 
 and sympathies when away from home sometimes 
 caused him to be depressed at home. 
 
 Says Mrs. Ray in a recent letter: " How unsatis- 
 fied he always was with what he accomplished, and 
 at times depressed because he saw so little resulting 
 from his work. But to me the power of his life 
 grows stronger and stronger as the months go by 
 and I am compelled to live without him." 
 
 " This high man, with a great thing to pursue, 
 Dies ere he knows it." 
 
 All persons and every work that have ever been 
 helped by Mr. Ray, owe more than most of them 
 know to the quiet and little-known woman who made 
 his home what it was. From the very fact of his 
 wonderful activity, he had imperative need of a quiet, 
 restful home. He used often to say that he thought 
 he was more dependent upon home, and enjoyed 
 home more than most men, even though he some- 
 times had but little time to spend in it. 
 
 There is no further need to multiply testimony to 
 the personal help all those about him had from Mr. 
 Ray ; but the following extract from a letter written to 
 Mrs. Ray by one of the teachers after she had col- 
 lected the papers from Mr. Ray's school-desk should 
 not be omitted. Testimony will then have been 
 given by college professor and school-house janitor, 
 and their opinions do not conflict. 
 
64 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 
 
 '•' Mr. Grady [the janitor to whom Mr. Ray never omitted 
 to say " good-night " ] stood in sad and respectful silence by 
 the desk for a little while, as I worked. I was touched by his 
 saying that he had thought of having one of Mr. Ray's pic- 
 tures enlarged for himself, and by his earnest remark that 
 Mr. Ray was always kind to every one. It was character- 
 istic of his many-sided activity that side by side stood his 
 Sunday-school normal-class book and that of his daily recita- 
 tions ; that bills for apparatus and copies of the Constitution 
 of the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor were in 
 close proximity." 
 
 He was always a servant of all men and women 
 who knew him, and he has left to them the priceless 
 service of his life to do them good, and through them 
 to do others good. This is a royal legacy, and as 
 such must ht received and used. As such the young 
 people of his normal class in Sunday-school have 
 already received and used it, for they have placed in 
 the new Sunday-school room of the Presbyterian 
 Church, in Hyde Park, a memorial window bearing 
 only the name of William Henry Ray, and the simple 
 word, service. Thus to all, young and old, who shall 
 henceforth gather in that room, as already to the 
 lives of those who have gathered around him while 
 living, will continually come sunlight and cheer 
 through the " service " of William Henry Ray. 
 
 In another way, also, have those who loved him 
 shown their appreciation of his service. His old 
 pupils and his friends, feeling in themselves the uplift 
 of that liberal education that he spent his life to give 
 
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 65 
 
 them, have placed to the credit of his httle Margaret 
 a fund of $750 to be used, principal and interest, for 
 her education. Thus will they be able to give the 
 child that which the father would have most desired 
 for her. 
 
 In no more beautiful and true words can this 
 memorial be closed than in those inscribed by the 
 wife of Chrrles Kingsley to the memory of her 
 husband : — 
 
 DEDICATED TO THE BELOVED MEMORY OF A 
 RIGHTEOUS MAN. 
 
 Who loved God and truth above all things. 
 A man of untarnished honor, — 
 Loyal and chivalrous, gentle and strong, 
 Modest and humble, tender and true, 
 Pitiful to the weak, yearning after the erring. 
 Stern to all forms of wrong and oppression, 
 Yet most stern toward himself; 
 Who being angry, )'et sinned not. 
 
 Who lived in the presence of God here. 
 
 And passing through the grave and gate of death, 
 
 Now liveth unto God forever more. 
 
APPENDIX: 
 SELECTIONS FROM MR. RAY'S WRITINGS. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 A PARTIAL LIST OF THE WRITINGS OF 
 WILLIAM HENRY RAY. 
 
 1. Tennyson: A paper read at Read's Ferry, New Hamp- 
 
 shire, January 14, 1881. 
 
 2. Elementary Science in Public Schools. 
 
 3. Translation of Poet Archias : For his Cicero classes. 
 
 4. South Chicago Rolling Mills : A paper prepared for the 
 
 Agassiz Association of the Hyde Park, Illinois, High 
 School. 
 
 5. Future Punishment : A paper read in the Presbyterian 
 
 Church, Hyde Park, Illinois, May 15, 18S6. 
 
 6. The Philosophy of History : A paper read before the 
 
 Hyde Park Philosophical Society. 
 
 7. Russia in Asia: An article read before the Chicago 
 
 Literary Club, and published in the "Atlantic Monthly " 
 for April, 1887. 
 
 8. Robert Burns : A paper prepared for his school. 
 
 9. How can our Academies and Seminaries be Strength- 
 
 ened? — A paper read in New Hampshire before a 
 Teachers' Association. 
 
^o 
 
 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 10. The Study of Literature in the High School : A paper 
 
 read before the High School section of the Illinois 
 State Teachers' Association, Springfield, Illinois, 
 December, 1888. 
 
 11. George Rogers Clark : A lecture delivered in Blooming- 
 
 ton, Illinois, and in Central Music Hall, Chicago, 
 in 1889. 
 
 12. The Public School and Citizenship : A paper prepared 
 
 for the Hyde Park Philosophical Society in the winter 
 of 1887-88. Repeated in La Grange, Illinois, and 
 before the State Teachers' Association, Springfield, 
 Illinois, during the winter of 1888-89. 
 
 13. The Teacher : A paper read several times at teachers' 
 
 meetings, and before the students of Beloit College, 
 Beloit, Wisconsin, during the winter of 1887-88. 
 
 14. How to Study: An outline of a talk before the Hyde 
 
 Park High School, 1888-89. 
 
 15. The Religion of Virgil : Prepared for his Virgil classes. 
 
 16. English in the High School : An exhaustive report of 
 
 the English work of high schools in Illinois and in 
 many of the best schools in the country, read before 
 the Northern Illinois High School Teachers' Associa- 
 tion, Kewanee, Illinois, 1889. Published in "The 
 Academy " for May, 1889. 
 
 17. Reviews for "The Dial," Chicago : 
 
 Napoleon's Russian Campaign, May, 1888. 
 Benjamin Franklin as a Man of Letters, January, 1888. 
 The Life and Times of John Jay, January, 1888. 
 Mannasseh Cutler, July, 1888. 
 Profit Sharing, May, 1889. 
 
 18. Reading of Young People : A paper read before the 
 
 Hyde Park Lyceum, 1887-88. 
 
LIST OF WRITINGS. 7 I 
 
 19. Contributions to the "New England Journal of Educa- 
 
 tion " for May 26, 1887, and June 23, 1887, 
 
 20. Contributions to the Illinois School Journal for the years 
 
 1887-88. 
 
 21. Natural Gas: A paper read before the Agassiz Associa- 
 
 tion of the Hyde Park High School. 
 
 r 
 
RUSSIA IN ASIA. 
 
 [By permission of the " Atlantic Monthly."] 
 
 FOR three hundred years Russia has slowly and stealth- 
 ily enlarged her grasp and tightened her hold on 
 Northern and Western Asia. At the end of the seventeenth 
 century almost the whole of modern Siberia and bleak 
 Kamchatka were under the sway of the Russian autocrat. 
 Since the day when the great Peter built the city on the Baltic, 
 — named in honor of his patron saint, — that he might, as 
 he said, have an eye through which to look out upon Europe, 
 and seized Azov from the Turks in order to gain a foothold, 
 or shiphold, upon the Black Sea, the Russians have con- 
 templated the extermination of their ancient enemies, the 
 Tartar hordes of Central Asia, and the final occupation of 
 their territory. From the time of Catherine the Great, there 
 has been added to the purpose just stated another, — namely, 
 to get possession of Central Asia, not alone as the material 
 proof of Russian superiority over the barbarians, but perhaps 
 also as a means of aggrandizement and base of operations 
 in a struggle for the vast territory and untold wealth of the 
 Indies. 
 
 Since 1725, the time of Peter's death, till the accession of 
 Nicholas in 1826, Russia was occupied in overpowering Fins 
 and Swedes, in partitioning Poland, in conquering Turks in 
 the Crimea, in gaining control of the Euxine, in further 
 
RUSSIA IN ASIA. 73 
 
 robbery of Persia of its rights and possessions along the 
 Caspian, and in subjugating the rude nomadic tribes of the 
 great barren steppe between Siberia and Turkestan. The 
 process by which this last was accomplished is most interest- 
 ing. A line of frontier posts was established, and from these 
 agents were despatched into the wild country beyond, who 
 persuaded the nomadic tribes to settle permanently by 
 families on the land. In due course of time the villages 
 thus formed, attacked by the fiercer races on the south, 
 appealed to Russia for aid to repel the enemy. Russian 
 protection, readily given, soon becomes Russian dominion, 
 to which resistance is impossible. The frontier line of 
 military posts was moved forward, and similar acts were 
 repeated, with the same result, — the establishment of Rus- 
 sian supremacy. All this was quietly done ; it did not 
 attract the notice of Europe, which was engrossed during 
 this period in the career of Frederick the Great, in the 
 American and French Revolutions, and the Napoleonic wars. 
 It was the work of more than a hundred years to force a way 
 south on the east and west borders of the Khirgiz country, 
 to bring under a semi-control three million savages, reaching 
 from the Altai Range to Lake Issyk Kul, and from Orenburg 
 to the Aral Sea and the river Jaxartes, or Syr Daria. Thus, 
 across two thousand miles of barren steppe, difficult moun- 
 tain ranges, unfordable rivers ; across a dreary country whose 
 only inhabitants were the fierce savages known as the 
 " Great " and " Little " Hordes, — Russia stretched the strong 
 arm of her military, and had, at the close of the Crimean 
 War, in 1858, brought the confines of her territory near to 
 the door of fertile Khiva on the west, and Khokand on the 
 east. It was a tremendous undertaking, accomplished with 
 characteristic pertinacity and cunning. Immediately to the 
 
74 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 south lay a line of fortresses constructed by the Khokandis, 
 which would be most useful to the Russians if once in their 
 possession. Between i860 and 1864 these forts surrendered, 
 one after the other, to the Russian army, giving the Czar 
 control over the richest district of Khokand. This was a 
 serious matter. No longer could Europe laugh at the 
 absurdity of wasting men and money in an attempt 
 which was sure to prove futile, — to conquer the barren 
 country and barbarous wanderers of the steppe. The 
 steppe was conquered ; the subjugation of fertile country 
 and settled inhabitants was begun; Russia was one thou- 
 sand miles nearer the Persian Gulf and India. Europe 
 was alarmed. 
 
 At this stage of the game Russia thought it prudent, or 
 expedient, rather, to vouchsafe some explanation of her 
 acts. This she did in a circular written by that prince and 
 diplomat, and prince of diplomats, Gortschakoff. It was 
 necessary — so reasoned our diplomatist — that the two 
 frontiers, one starting from China, and extending as far as 
 Lake Issyk Kul, the other from the Aral Sea along the Syr 
 Daria, should be united by fortified posts, so connected that 
 nomadic tribes might not harass and plunder the peoples 
 under their protection. It was necessary that the line of 
 advanced posts should be in a country sufficiently fertile to 
 furnish provisions and facilitate colonization, thus giving 
 stability and prosperity, and a means of winning the neigh- 
 boring populations to a civilized life. " Lastly," and here I 
 quote, " it is urgent to fix the line in a definite manner, in 
 order to escape from the dangerous and almost inevitable 
 inducements to go on from repression to reprisals, which 
 might result in endless extension." "The line now estab- 
 hshed," says Gortschakoff, in substance, "is determined by 
 
RUSSIA IN ASIA. 75 
 
 reason, and by geographical and political conditions which 
 are of a fixed and permanent nature." 
 
 Before the ink had become dry on this circular a new 
 military province was organized, under the name Turkes- 
 tan, ostensibly governed from Orenburg, but in reality by 
 the general commanding in the chief town of the province, 
 the city of Turkestan. The next step in advance was an 
 attack upon the great fortress of Tashkend, which was de- 
 fended for raany weeks by the combined forces of Khokandis 
 and Bokhariots. The city was finally captured by storm, 
 and with it fell the last hope of Khokandi independence. A 
 large part of the territory of the Khanate became Russian. 
 The civil government of the province is in the hands of a 
 native prince, who conducts affairs in accordance with the 
 kind suggestions of Russian ministers resident, who is pro- 
 tected by Russian troops and carefully guarded by Russian 
 police ; in Tashkend itself are a Russian governor and coun- 
 cil, and Russian courts and police control the city of two 
 hundred thousand inhabitants, while the commercial and 
 civil ascendency of Russia enables her to dictate all meas- 
 ures of foreign or domestic policy. 
 
 Khokand, conquered, brought new adversaries by a demand 
 for the evacuation of Tashkend ; this exaction was preferred 
 by the Ameer of Bokhara, who felt that his State would be 
 the next object of northern rapacity. Finding his remon- 
 strance unheeded, he marched against the Russians in Tash- 
 kend, with an army of forty thousand men. Discipline and 
 fine equipment won the day, and opened the way to the 
 occupation of Khojend, important as a commercial centre, 
 and Samarcand, remarkable for its beauty, and renowned 
 for its connection with the conqueror, Timour Tamerlane, 
 who died within its walls, and whose dust is entombed within 
 
76 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 its precincts. Thus the great Jaxartes Valley was added to 
 the widening Russian possessions, and the historic ground — 
 perhaps the cradle of the human race — passed underneath 
 the sway of a hereditary foe. 
 
 Two years later Khojend was actually seized, and Kho- 
 kandi power crushed ; next year a fortified town, command- 
 ing a view of Samarcand, was occupied, and the Ameer 
 threatened with destruction. To avert this he sent out forty 
 thousand men, whose rusty guns, slow to fire, burst with 
 damage only to those who fired them. The Ameer's army 
 was routed, and Samarcand passed under Russian control. 
 The fate of these forty thousand foreshadows the destiny of 
 all the Uzbeg States, — gradual extinction, or absorption into 
 the empire. 
 
 Writing in July, 1868, shortly after the events just nar- 
 rated. Sir Henry Rawlinson says of Russia : " Her present 
 position is another illustration of the old doctrine that where 
 civilization and barbarism come in contact, the latter must 
 inevitably give way ; and thus, whether the final consumma- 
 tion occur this year or next year or five years hence or 
 even ten years hence, come it soon or come it late, we may 
 take it for granted that nothing can prevent the extinction of 
 the three independent governments of Khokand, Bokhara, 
 and Khiva, and the consequent extension of the Russian 
 frontier to the Oxus," — a prophecy to be accomplished 
 and surpassed much sooner than the vaticinations of most 
 political seers. 
 
 We turn to the West, and find the Czar standing on the 
 borders of Khiva, where his ancestors had wished to place 
 the banner of Russian sovereignty generations before. Peter 
 the Great sent a general, Bekovitch by name, to take Khiva ; 
 he failed, and was captured and flayed by the Uzbegs. 
 
JiUSSIA IN ASIA. 77 
 
 About one hundred years later Nicholas sent Perovsky on 
 the same errand. We may imagine, with perhaps some 
 reason, that Perovsky was met by troops keeping step to the 
 beats of a drum whose head was formed of the well-tanned 
 skin of his unfortunate predecessor. He too failed most 
 dismally, and during more than thirty years Khiva was un- 
 molested by the Bear of the North. 
 
 In 1872, notwithstanding the direct orders of the home 
 government to the contrary, General Kaufmann planned, and 
 in the following spring executed, an attack upon Khiva. 
 The expedition was conducted in four columns, two starting 
 from the Caspian, and two from opposite shores of the Aral 
 Sea. The four columns, numbering only four thousand 
 soldiers, headed by the intrepid Kaufmann, arriving within a 
 few days of one another, laid siege to a city of more than 
 five hundred thousand inhabitants. The contest was sharp, 
 short, and conclusive. Russia, after taking to herself all the 
 right bank of the Oxus, generously established the Khan as 
 sovereign over the remaining portion of his kingdom lying 
 on the left of the river, subject only to the suggestions of 
 Russian ministers and the burden of an enormous war 
 indemnity. 
 
 This conquest gave Russia new power in Asia. Already 
 her vessels floated on the Caspian, and her naval stations 
 were established on the Persian shore of that sea ; but now 
 her fleets could sail the inland Aral, and her vessels steam 
 up the Jaxartes to within less than one hundred miles from 
 Samarcand, and up the Oxus to within a much shorter dis- 
 tance from Bokhara, and meet with no more opposition than 
 that offered by the natural current of the streams. 
 
 In the opinion of the Russo-phobes, every conquest made 
 by Russia, each step toward the south, has been only another 
 
yS APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 advance toward the accomplishment of her ulterior and con- 
 summate purpose, to despoil the British crown of its fairest 
 jewel, — India. If this is really her end, she is much more 
 likely to attain it by a southeasterly route from the Caspian 
 than by the long and dreary way across the steppe from 
 Orenburg. Pursuing the latter course, her progress is hin- 
 dered by bleak wastes, great rivers, yet unconquered tribes, 
 and the lofty mountain ranges of the Hindoo Koosh ; should 
 she wish to invade India by the former, the path is easy and 
 almost open, — entirely so from Krasnovodsk on the Caspian 
 to Herat. Says Marvin, " Setting out from Krasnovodsk, a 
 Russian could drive a four-in-hand all the way to the Indian 
 frontier near Quetta." 
 
 Let us look for a few minutes at this southern route, over 
 which the Russian might so easily drive his chariot and four. 
 As in the northern advance, the beginning was made in the 
 reign of Peter, and continued by Nicholas ; but the first 
 definite step was taken when, in 1869, a fleet left one of the 
 North Caspian ports, two hundred miles south of the Volga 
 Delta, and landed a few men and guns on the opposite side 
 of the sea, at Krasnovodsk. During ten years the Russians 
 " dawdled about," to use Skobeloff s expression, before mak- 
 ing a decisive attempt to secure control of the interior of 
 Turkoman country. 1879 saw the attack and slaughter and 
 conquest of Geok Tepe. The cost of ammunition and lives 
 was fearful. Twenty thousand, or more than half the be- 
 sieged, fell, while the rest were scattered and plundered. 
 The effect of this victory was almost incalculable. Skobeloff 
 had conquered and nearly crushed a people who had suc- 
 cessfully withstood Genghis Khan, Timour Tamerlane, and 
 Nadir. The power of the North had won the admiration and 
 respect of the barbarians, and the everlasting gratitude of the 
 
HUSSIA IN ASIA. 79 
 
 Persians for ridding them of the marauding Turkomans. In 
 this fertile country Russia can give scope to her genius for 
 colonization. Already a beginning has been made. A rail- 
 road was several years since completed from the Balkan Bay 
 to Askhabad, a distance of over two hundred and fifty miles ; 
 the Turkomans, scattered by the victory at Geok Tepe, have 
 been called from the deserts to which they had fled, have 
 been invited, and urged, and assisted to take up their abode 
 in their old homes, and to till the soil as heretofore. Vam- 
 b^ry, who can see nothing good in Russia and its conquests, 
 declares that the Turkomans are in large part sent to hades, 
 and the remaining part naked and wretched, and sums up 
 the effect of European civilization a la Rtisse by saying that 
 in the course of two years six whiskey distilleries were 
 opened in Askhabad, and that " even playing-cards, formerly 
 known as 'the Koran of the Muscovites,' had found their 
 way to the tent of the simple Turkoman." Judging from 
 less partial authority, it would seem that, though Russian 
 efforts to bring content and prosperity have not been so 
 successful as those to subjugate, enough has been done to 
 establish tranquillity and peaceful pursuits, and to insure, at 
 no distant day, large domestic production and extensive 
 commerce. 
 
 Among the inferior officers who assisted at the Geok Tepe 
 assault was a bright and reckless fellow, by name Alikanoff. 
 He it was who conceived and executed a trip to Merv. 
 Setting forth from Askhabad, now the headquarters of the 
 Russian troops, a small party, in guise of traders, easily 
 made their way to Merv, and gained admission to the city. 
 Marvin tells a most entertaining story of the surprise and 
 indignation of the city authorities when they found the 
 hated Russians in their midst. An assembly, called to drive 
 
80 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 the intruders from their town, was so impressed with the 
 advantages of commercial relations as set forth by the wily 
 Alikanoff that it ended in granting them permission to re- 
 main and sell their wares. The two weeks of grace were 
 employed not so much m buying and selling fabrics as in 
 the purchase of friendship and promises of secret and open 
 support. Merv was in the last century a dependency of 
 Persia, and occupied until 1884 a semi-independent position; 
 though it would seem that, had the English exerted their 
 influence, an alliance between Merv and the Shah would not 
 have been difficult of accomplishment. However this may 
 be, Russia absolutely prohibited any intimate relation be- 
 tween the Mervis and Persia, enforcing her command by 
 the occupation of Tejend, an oasis strongly fortified, lying 
 one hundred and twenty miles from Askhabad, and ninety 
 miles from Merv, This occupation took place in October, 
 1883 ; though the Russian officials at St. Petersburg denied 
 all knowledge of it as late as January, 1884. England's 
 protestations were of no avail, and thus everything was ready 
 for a grand swoop upon Merv, when the time should be ripe 
 for such action. One morning hi February, 1884, Alikanoff 
 rode out of Tejend at the head of a small company of cav- 
 alry. Arriving at Merv, they were cordially received, and 
 were presented, according to Russian authorities, with a peti- 
 tion to the effect that his Imperial Majesty the Czar would 
 take Merv under his protection and government. Possibly, 
 if the facts were all known, it would appear that the presence 
 of a large force not a hundred miles away, and the impos- 
 sibility of sustaining a prolonged siege, had some influence 
 in prompting this voluntary submission. Certain it is that 
 when the main line of the army approached, a few days later, 
 they were attacked by a strong band from the city, who 
 
/RUSSIA IN ASIA. 8 1 
 
 withdrew only after a severe skirmish in which the Mervis 
 were utterly routed. A Russian governor was established in 
 Merv, and the Turkoman district was elevated to the posi- 
 tion of military province, under the name of Transcaspia, 
 equal in rank to Turkestan, and having its capital at 
 Askhabad. The home government, notwithstanding its pre- 
 tended ignorance of what its generals were doing, rewarded 
 the plucky Alikanoff with the governorship of Merv, and 
 Komaroff with the order of the "White Eagle" and the 
 command of the newly erected province. 
 
 The practical advantage in the possession of Merv is by 
 no means small. "The Queen of the World," though in 
 ruins, is still a great commercial centre^ lying in the path of 
 the caravan trade between Persia and Bokhara, and India 
 and Central Asia. Its conquest makes a complete whole of 
 the scattered Turkomans, and gives Russia a cordon entirely 
 around Bokhara and the small part of Central Asia not yet 
 owning her sway. Its importance as a strategic point has 
 been acknowledged by all great Asiatic conquerors. In the 
 opinion of most military men of the present day, it is the 
 natural key to Herat, from which fortress it is distant only 
 two hundred and forty miles, almost three hundred miles 
 nearer than England's nearest outpost, Quetta. Merv is not 
 separated from Herat by impassable mountains, but con- 
 nected with it by easy, or not difficult, roads wending 
 through the Murghab Valley. Thus it would seem that 
 Russia at Merv is a continual menace to English influence 
 in Afghanistan, and English power in India. 
 
 But Merv was by no means the limit of Russian advance 
 in 1884. Eighty miles to the southwest of Merv, on either 
 side of the Hari-Rud River, lie Old and New Sarakhs. New 
 Sarakhs is held by the Persians ; Old Sarakhs, in ruins during 
 
 6 
 
82 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 the last fifty years, was seized by the Russians. Many 
 thought it ridiculous that Russia should, twice within the 
 year, possess itself of heaps of ruins ; but Komaroff was 
 sagacious enough to see its value as a terminal point for the 
 railroad already completed from the Caspian to Askhabad, 
 and as a means of access to Herat. Sarakhs, too, is forty 
 miles nearer Herat than Merv, lies on the same river, and 
 is at the meeting of the three frontiers of Persia, Afghanistan, 
 and the Turkoman country. By the surrender of Sarakhs 
 all of Central Asia was in the power of the Russians. There 
 were abundant pretexts, on each successive occasion, for the 
 annexation of the Khanates and the Tekke-Turkoman re- 
 gion ; would there be equally satisfactory reasons for the 
 annexation of farther territory? At Sarakhs, Russia stood 
 on the very frontier which she had acknowledged, since 1875, 
 as the border of the Ameer's territory. A short time before, 
 she had crossed the Oxus, which had been agreed upon 
 between England and herself as the line which was to be 
 eternally the " thus far, but no farther ; " would she also 
 cross the Afghan frontier? The answer came before the 
 dawn of the year 1885. England, alarmed, and at last 
 thoroughly aroused, entered into negotiations with Russia for 
 the appointment of a commission which should finally de- 
 termine the Afghan boundary. Sir Peter Lumsden was 
 selected to represent the English, and left London for that 
 purpose in September ; before he could arrive at Herat, 
 Russia had forced her boundary still farther to the south. 
 
 Two rivers flow from Afghanistan into the now Russian 
 country, — the Murghab toward the east, the Hari-Rud to the 
 west. By either valley is there ready access to the heart of 
 Afghanistan. Near the close of this most eventful year, 
 Komaroff pushed from Sarakhs up the western valley, and 
 
RUSSIA IN ASIA. ^T^ 
 
 his lieutenant, Alikanoff, departed from Merv to force his 
 way up the Murghab to Ponjdeh, if possible. The western 
 advance moved through the Zulfikar Pass, — the same 
 through which Alexander the Great led his conquering 
 forces twenty-two hundred years before, — and reached Ak 
 Robat, seventy miles from Herat ; the eastern division, 
 under the new governor of Merv, reached Sari-Yazi, only 
 fifteen miles from Penjdeh, to which place the Ameer's 
 forces had, in the mean time, advanced. These two Russian 
 parties were confronted at Penjdeh, as I said, by the Ameer's 
 troops, and at Gul-ran, but little way from Ak Robat, by Sir 
 Peter Lumsden and the English escort. Here they stand, 
 practically, as they did two years ago, save that the boun- 
 dary commission was a fiasco, owing to the dilatoriness of 
 the Russian ministers and the remarkable energy of Russian 
 generals, and therefore Sir Peter and his attendants have 
 gone back to their homes. Here they will stand glaring at 
 each other until Russia moves forward another step, — not a 
 long stride, only seventy miles, — and plants her foot in 
 Herat. 
 
 Why is Herat of such importance, — why the objective 
 point of Russia's hopes and England's fears? First, histori- 
 cally speaking, it has been reckoned the gate, or to change 
 the figure slightly, the key, to India. Alexander, Genghis 
 Khan, Timour, Nadir, and Ahmad, each in turn occupied 
 Herat before, and that he might take possession of India ; 
 and Colonel Mallison, as quoted by Mr. Marvin, declares 
 that had not Herat been successfully defended against him 
 in 1837, Mohammed Shah, the Persian prince, would have 
 made himself also master of India. Second, geographically 
 speaking, Herat commands the roadways to Western Turke- 
 stan and Afghanistan, and with the railway extending at 
 
84 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 present to Askhabad, only four hundred miles distant, com- 
 pleted to Herat, via Old Sarakhs, Herat would be brought 
 near to the Russian borders of Europe. Toward the south 
 it looks upon the only way to India, whose border city, 
 Quetta, hes but little more than four hundred miles away, 
 by no difficult road. Third, strategically, Herat gives its 
 possessors the command of the approaches to India, — a 
 command hardly to be disturbed. It is a fortified city, in- 
 closed by a wall set on an earthwork fifty feet in height, and 
 a moat, and overlooked by a strong citadel which is situated 
 near the centre of the city, and is also surrounded by a 
 moat. All these defences combine to make the town ex- 
 ceptionally advantageous as a military stronghold. Fourth, 
 add to these three reasons another, and perhaps the great- 
 est : that Herat lies in the very heart of a fertile country, 
 abounding with milk and honey, corn and wine, and capable 
 of supporting, for almost any length of time, an army of at 
 least one hundred thousand men, and you see its importance 
 to any power which would gain, or long retain, control of 
 India. 
 
 No more eminent authority can be quoted than Sir Henry 
 Rawlinson, the geographer and general, who wrote fifteen 
 years ago : " It is no exaggeration to say that if Russia were 
 once established in full force at Herat, and her communica- 
 tions were secured in one direction with Askhabad through 
 Meshed, in another with Khiva through Merv, and in an- 
 other with Tashkend and Bokhara through the passage of 
 the Oxus, all the forces of Asia would be inadequate to expel 
 her from the position. Supposing, too, that she were bent 
 upon mischief, . . . she would have the means of seriously 
 injuring us (that is, England), since, in addition to her own 
 forces, the unchallenged occupation of Herat would place 
 
RUSSIA IN ASIA. 85 
 
 the whole military forces of Persia and Afghanistan at her 
 disposal." 
 
 The Russians, if not actually possessors of Herat, are at 
 its gates, and they are not likely to recede from their present 
 position ; nor, judging England from her past record, is the 
 government of the Queen of Great Britain and Empress of 
 India likely to give fight to the Russians on the score of 
 any danger threatened short of the actual occupation 
 of Herat. When the steppe was crossed in 1863 England 
 protested, and said she would declare war if the Russians 
 advanced farther into the three Khanates. GortschakofTs 
 circular, already quoted, allayed English fears, and when 
 Russia, soon after, occupied a part of Khokand, no war was 
 declared. Several times this farce was repeated, but when 
 at last Russia, by the annexation of Khiva, planted herself 
 firmly on the right bank of the Oxus, both parties agreed 
 that ^the crossing of that river by the power of the North 
 should be a '* casus belli." Soon after the Oxus was crossed ; 
 Geok Tepe, Askhabad, Merv, Sarakhs, the Zulfikar Pass, Ak 
 Robat, Sari Yazi, passed under Russian control, — some 
 only oases, but others beautiful cities in fertile valleys, and 
 all places of importance, each bringing Russia nearer to, and 
 then into, the country of the Afghans, which has all along 
 served as a buffer between India and advancing Russia. 
 Yet England has not declared war, and the student of these 
 events begins to wonder if, after all, the Czar will not soon 
 lay his measuring rod along the boundary line of the Indies. 
 
 Whatever one's opinion as to the justice of Russia's occu- 
 pation and claims, or the honorableness of her methods, he 
 cannot but express wonder and admiration at the persistent 
 maintenance of a purpose conceived nearly two centuries 
 ago with almost infinite foresight, and executed in the face 
 
86 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITIXGS. 
 
 of frequent defeat, danger, hardship, barbarism abroad, and 
 dissatisfaction and threatening anarchy at home, — a plan 
 devised with shrewd cunning, and persevered in by brave, 
 devoted, ambitious, unscrupulous, audacious generals. 
 
 Russia seems to have a genius for colonization. The land 
 that she has gained she has made her own. Russian soldiers 
 have conquered the peoples ; but Russian husbandmen and 
 merchants and manufacturers have occupied the countries. 
 Great manufactories of cloth have sprung up ; vast mercan- 
 tile operations have been undertaken and successfully con- 
 tinued ; the wilderness has been made, if not to blossom as 
 the rose, at least to bring forth fruits and cotton, so that 
 from the three Uzbeg States alone Russia imports to Europe 
 annually more than ^3,000,000 worth of products. The 
 wild nomads have, to a considerable extent, been brought to 
 a settled life, and taught industry and the arts of civilization. 
 Peace and order prevail, and a European form of govern- 
 ment is general. It cannot be denied that this government 
 is of military authority, and naturally enough works occa- 
 sional injustice, and burdens the people with taxes for 
 which sufficient return is not always made, and that little or 
 nothing has been done in the way of general education ; but 
 native religions are protected, sanitary measures are intro- 
 duced into the large towns and cities, and hospitals have 
 been erected in many places. After all, the greatest good to 
 the Asiatics must be extra-governmental, — a benefit seci^red 
 by continued contact with men who, by their European 
 education and liberal ideas, are on a higher plane than them- 
 selves, and who must sensibly and purposely, or uncon- 
 sciously and involuntarily, lift the people of Central Asia to 
 better manners, better modes of thought and life, and a new 
 pleasure in mere existence and business activity. The great 
 
RUSSIA IN ASIA. 87 
 
 civilizer, the locomotive, is doing its work. At an expense 
 of ^45,000,000 Russia completed her road from the Black 
 Sea to the Caspian. Ah-eady she has pushed her line to 
 Askhabad, and within a few weeks to Merv, and the cost of 
 completion to Herat by way of Sarakhs is estimated at only 
 $8,260,000. Should Russia hold Herat, and England ex- 
 tend her Indian railway system, now terminating in Quetta, 
 to the same place, a trip from London to Calcutta might be 
 made in ten days. Political reasons prohibit just now such a 
 junction of Russia and England by a five-foot band of iron ; 
 but the time will come, soon or late, when through the Zulfi- 
 kar Pass will rush the iron horse, a mightier conqueror than 
 Tamerlane, the exponent of a nobler civilization than 
 Alexander. 
 
 What does Russia purpose in all this increase of her 
 domain ? 
 
 Some say Russia's conquests have been planned to draw 
 away public attention from the tyranny and oppression of a 
 despotic government, and the consequent sufferings of her 
 own citizens, — sufferings so intense that an organized revolt 
 has been begun by the people, a revolt likely to end in all 
 that is implied in the name assumed by the revolutionary 
 party, Nihilists. 
 
 Another purpose assigned to Russia is that of securing to 
 herself the extensive commerce of China and of all Central 
 Asia. Much of the latter is already in her hands, and more 
 must fall to her share now that the railway from Askhabad 
 is extended northwest to Merv and into the very heart of the 
 country of the Khanates. 
 
 Other writers have expressed the opinion that the Czar 
 has made this detour in order to secure possession of long- 
 coveted Constantinople. If Asia should become his, and he 
 
88 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 approach the confines of India, England in alarm — so say 
 those who hold this opinion — will at last give her consent 
 to the realization of Peter the Great's fondest dream, the 
 Russian occupation of the proud city on the Bosphorus. 
 
 Still a fourth answer is returned by many in England : 
 that Russia has from the first looked to India, and means to 
 include that fertile country under her sovereign sway. It 
 would appear to the casual observer that this would not be 
 so very difficult a feat. The Russian army on a peace foot- 
 ing numbers 800,000 well-disciplined troops, and in time of 
 war she can call into active service, says Towle, 3,200,000, — 
 a prodigious body, one twenty-fourth the whole population 
 of European and Asiatic Russia. Her ships of war are 
 among the best in the world, and number, including armored 
 and unarmored men-of-war, frigates, and transports, nearly 
 four hundred vessels, manned by more than 26,000 officers 
 and sailors. A commanding position upon the southern 
 seas, the control of the richest commerce of the East, a 
 victory over her old enemy, England, the glory and renown 
 of military conquest, the wealth of the Indies, extension of 
 power, are tempting prizes just beyond the frontier line, and 
 thus far Russia's territorial greed has overmastered any objec- 
 tions to her progress raised on the mere question of right. 
 
 It is possible that Russia's true purpose is a commingling 
 of those just named and others. A restless, ambitious^'peo- 
 ple, fierce, with enough of old barbarism in them to delight 
 in war as a profession and for its own sake, they probably 
 have not questioned too closely their purposes in acting upon 
 impulses natural to their individual and national character. 
 
 In 18 7 1 Sir Henry Ravvlinson wrote these words: "She 
 [Russia] certainly has not contemplated anything like an 
 invasion of India ; but it would be to convict her of political 
 
JiUSSIA IN ASIA. 89 
 
 blindness to imagine her ignorant of what is patent to all the 
 rest of the world, that if England has any vulnerable heel it 
 is in the East ; that in fact the stronger may be the position 
 of Russia in Central Asia, the higher will be the tone she can 
 command in discussing with us any question of European 
 policy." Yet twice during the present century has the in- 
 vasion of India been proposed, — once by Napoleon the 
 Great to Paul I., and a few years later by the same general 
 to Alexander ; it is said on tolerably good authority that the 
 same proposition was seriously considered by Czar Nicholas 
 in the early days of his reign. 
 
 Russia openly disavows any such design ; but on no other 
 hypothesis is it easy to explain satisfactorily her later ad- 
 vances directly toward the Indian frontier, where, as some 
 recent writer has said in substance, her presence must be a 
 perpetual menace to the prestige of English government and 
 arms, and a constant injury to English commercial prosperity. 
 
 It is no business of this paper to discuss the position of 
 England, her resources, her means of defence, or the strange 
 indifference of her policy, and we must rest the subject here. 
 If the struggle for the final possession of India and Con- 
 stantinople must come, we can but wish that the Anglo- 
 Saxon blood of Western Europe may gain the victory over 
 the descendants of the old Tartar race. Should the advance 
 of Russia be stayed at Herat, we would hope that the great 
 nation which now possesses more than one-half of Europe and 
 considerably more than two-fifths of all Asia, and which has 
 a population of one hundred million souls, may learn the 
 lesson of freedom and justice, and may teach it in turn to 
 the barbarian hordes of the conquered lands, and so do its 
 part toward bringing on the day of peace and of faith in all 
 that is true and noble. 
 
90 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 Russia is the youngest as well as the vastest nation of 
 Europe. Her national life began hardly two hundred years 
 ago, her national literature no more than one hundred. 
 " She stands," says one of the bishops of her Church, " on the 
 threshold of the morning." The danger that threatens 
 India and Europe is not that of Russian aggression, but of 
 Russian absolutism ; if this danger be averted, the day of 
 liberty and light opens for her and her subjects ; the ques- 
 tion of Russia in Asia will no longer disturb EngHsh states- 
 men, but will be determined in the interests of the state and 
 of humanity. 
 
THE TEACHER. 
 
 THE teacher is the most important factor in all educa- 
 tional theories. Without the intelligent cooperation 
 of a clear-brained and judicious teacher, the best plans of 
 school work are inoperative, and the most logical methods 
 are useless. He is the medium of knowledge, the example 
 of living, the inspirer of new ambitions, the nurse of mental 
 growth, the developer of budding talent, to the school boys 
 and girls of this land. Upon the teacher is laid the burden 
 of intellectual training for the coming generation. What 
 should he be that he may perform his duty? How shall he 
 become what he should? 
 
 I. The teacher is the thinker. Much thinking is done 
 at second hand. We use the thunderbolts of some Jove, 
 shaped in a Cyclopean forge, while we allow our own mental 
 furnace to lie idle and cold. The age of superstition dark- 
 ened the world so long because men could not or would not 
 think for themselves, and now the world is threatened with 
 a darker age of infidelity because in the rebound from 
 superstitions and creeds many irrationally prefer the views of 
 some clever maker of bright or witty sayings to the accurate 
 conclusions of deliberate and independent thought. I be- 
 lieve a great intellectual calamity threatens our profession 
 and the youth in the public schools of our land, a danger 
 partly the result of overwork of the teacher, partly the fault 
 
92 APPENDIX SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 of the times, and in part consequent upon the teacher's own 
 indifference ; it is this, — the loss of power of thought. The 
 average pedagogue must meet so many demands for infor- 
 'mation, for social life, for this, that, and the other, that he 
 goes before his classes with knowledge hastily gathered, 
 poorly arranged, undigested, and half assimilated, and can 
 make but a partial success of his instruction. This is a day, 
 too, of abstracts and compendiums ; people grasp at the 
 facts hung upon a diagram or chart, and hardly question, 
 why or how. The same trouble is creeping into the 
 schools. The mechanical work of performing a hundred 
 examples is not so good as the careful and clear analysis of 
 ten. A comprehensive understanding of the causes of a 
 single historical event is worth intellectually much more than 
 the ability to give the dates of a thousand battles or to recite 
 the names of all the monarchs of Europe during the past 
 three centuries. 
 
 The study of logic and its laws is not essential to thought. 
 Logic presupposes thought as truly as geometry presupposes 
 magnitude, and the study of either is ineffectual to make 
 good existing deficiencies in brains or brain power. As the 
 first step in the mental self-culture of the teacher, — think : 
 exercise the mind as you do your limbs, freely, independ- 
 ently, frequently. In all the operations of Nature taking 
 place in this world, which most admit has been formed and 
 still exists in accordance with some great plan born in a 
 mind far transcending in power the human, we naturally seek 
 for unity, consistency, and reason. We cannot guard too 
 carefully against a confusion of some accidental effect with a 
 great cause, or against an easy and unquestioning acceptance 
 of phenomena without any understanding of the why and 
 wherefore. "The search for causes," some one has said, 
 
THE TEACHER. 
 
 93 
 
 "is characteristic of every normal human intellect." But 
 the teacher who must know something of a large number 
 of widely different subjects is in special danger of confusion. 
 In matters of mere physical science it may not be so difficult 
 to understand or explain causes ; but in the field of morals 
 or politics or social science or education, where facts are 
 more complicated aild truth less easily demonstrated, it is 
 sadly common to see reasons vitiated by false assumptions, 
 or a careless understanding of causal relations. 
 
 On questions which interest us professionally, — the best 
 methods, the order of studies, the capability of the child's 
 mind, — our reasonings are not less certain than in the demon- 
 stration of a proposition in Euclid ; they are more difficult, 
 and the dangers to be avoided are partial observation, hasty 
 conclusions, and the distortion of vision caused by personal 
 passion or prejudice. It is all-important, then, that the 
 teacher cultivate a habit of careful, impartial investigation, 
 and an unerring method of reasoning. 
 
 2. Next in worth to the power of protracted and logical 
 thought ranks a well cultivated memory. Probably none of 
 man's faculties is capable of so high a culture, or is so per- 
 sistently abused, as this of memory. In the multiplicity of 
 books of reference, of handy volumes of science, art, philoso- 
 phy even, of almanacs that are political handbooks, of census 
 reports that fill twenty volumes, one has some excuse for 
 saying, "Why should I trouble myself to remember that 
 which is always just at my hand?" This is an age of sta- 
 ' tistics, yet nobody can give statistics ; an age of literature, 
 but few learn the classics. 
 
 In the early days, the youth of the world, the Homeric 
 poems — the Iliad, of 15,619 lines, and the Odyssey, of 
 about the same number — were handed down from bard to 
 
94 
 
 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 bard by word of mouth. A half century ago Macaulay, the 
 statesman, historian, essayist, said, " If every copy of Milton's 
 ' Paradise Lost ' were destroyed, I could restore the whole, 
 word by word, from my memory." Are we of an effeminate 
 race because we should fail, most of us, to repeat one hun- 
 dred lines of our favorite English classic, or to give accu- 
 rately fifty dates from general history. The value of a 
 tenacious and ready memory, reckoned intrinsically or as 
 indicative of mental strength, is hardly to be over-estimated. 
 Upon this depend the safe guarding of those stores of knowl- 
 edge which we may accumulate, the value of our experience, 
 and the consequent usefulness of our mental acquirements. 
 
 Fortunately, this is the faculty capable of the readiest 
 development. One may cultivate the circumstantial memory 
 by an artificial system of mnemonics or catchwords, or better, 
 the philosophical memory based on the higher laws of cause 
 and effect, and which is so prolific of suggestive power. The 
 two most effectual aids to memory are classification and 
 repetition. To know the class is to know the essential 
 characteristics of the individual. In memory, repetition 
 conquers. If one can't remember by once repeating, let 
 him repeat seven times, and till seventy times seven times. 
 Says Blackie in his most excellent book " Self-culture," " Our 
 faculties, like a slow beast, require flogging occasionally or 
 they make no way." The results of painstaking practice in 
 the exercise of memory richly repay all labor. 
 
 3. The teacher should be observant. Notwithstanding 
 the ponderous discussions of school lyceums and village 
 debating societies on the question which affords the more 
 knowledge, reading or observation, the fact remains that the 
 great majority of men go through the world with their eyes 
 shut or but half opened. Before us the great mother of us 
 
THE TEACHER. 
 
 95 
 
 all spreads the open page of her book, printed in fairest 
 letters ; the lesson of to-day unlearned, the time spent, the 
 page is turned to make way for another written in the same 
 character but expressing different thoughts. 
 
 More and more mankind is coming to be dependent for 
 its comforts and even necessities upon an understanding of 
 the great facts of natural science. To the progress and dif- 
 fusion of a knowledge of natural phenomena we owe in 
 great part the progress of civilization, even the nourishment 
 of the peoples of the earth ; to this we owe our emancipa- 
 tion from superstition, — and yet in our schools and among 
 our teachers this practical study and the habit of observation 
 engendered by it receives but a small portion of attention. 
 In poetry and art, in morals and religion, science has its 
 place. Says Herbert Spencer : " Think you that a drop of 
 water, which to the vulgar eye is but a drop of water, loses 
 anything in the eye of the physicist who knows that its ele- 
 ments are held together by a force which if suddenly liberated 
 would produce a flash of lightning ? Think you that what is 
 carelessly looked upon by the uninitiated as a mere snow- 
 flake does not suggest higher associations to one who has 
 seen through a microscope the wondrously varied and ele- 
 gant forms of snow-crystals? Think you that the rounded 
 rock, marked with parallel scratches, calls up as much poetry 
 in an ignorant mind as in the mind of the geologist who 
 knows that over this rock a glacier sUd a million of years 
 ago ? The truth is that those who have never entered upon 
 scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which 
 they are surrounded." 
 
 Those studies are really primary which teach the use of 
 the eyes, — botany, physics, physiology. The study of no 
 branch of knowledge is so pleasing or useful as that of some 
 
96 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 of the so-called natural sciences. By lack of training the eye 
 becomes dim, the ear deaf, a slavish dependence on books 
 takes the place of the freedom of thought which observation 
 gives. 
 
 We have come now to the true value of education — a 
 value that must be appreciated and possessed by the teacher 
 as a condition precedent to his success. Skilful training 
 may produce a new growth of teachers and children, just as 
 surely as skilful grafting and culture may result in a hitherto 
 unknown species of apple or rose. New additions may be 
 made to a man, as real as if new senses were given, or new 
 limbs or seven league boots or an Aladdin's lamp. A new 
 faculty of sight is given to the trained eye, and new powers 
 are called into play, that have had before but an unknown 
 existence ; by the training of the observation, the stupid 
 schoolmaster feels a new pleasure in life and in his labor as 
 he sees the hitherto unsuspected power in himself; and the 
 gain is his pupils. There is no incapacity for observation. 
 A sense of our duty, a love of our work, an appreciation of 
 the gain in teaching power, are all that is needed. 
 
 4. Although enforcing the necessity of observation, I 
 should not be understood as underrating the usefulness of 
 books. In them is stored, as in a reservoir, the thought of 
 the world, ready for our use. But think not to read every- 
 thing or without a well defined plan. 
 
 Great danger arises from desultory reading. An omnivo- 
 rous reader cannot gain much good unless he have the 
 memory of a Johnson, or an ostrich-like mental digestive 
 power. We cannot know all things, and by divine ordination 
 what we do know we acquire by patient and laborious study. 
 The great thinkers of the world have been men of few books. 
 Read then the few books that have influenced history, that 
 
THE TEACHER. " 97 
 
 contain immortal truth, the seed that can germinate in the 
 mind and bring forth fruit. For ethics we look to the Bible, 
 for poetry to Shakspeare, for biography to Plutarch, for 
 philosophy to Bacon, for science to Farraday, — books as 
 grand as the everlasting hills, as eternal as human thought 
 itself. 
 
 Every teacher should select some line of study or reading 
 outside of the routine of school-room work, and follow this 
 systematically and perseveringly. The benefits of such a 
 plan are apparent , — the change of work and the partial rec- 
 reation attendant upon such change, broadening of mind 
 and culture, a lessening of the class isolation that is apt to 
 separate our profession from other people, at least in sym- 
 pathy of tastes and pursuits, and lastly the real addition to 
 our knowledge. 
 
 If there were no other ground on which this branch of our 
 subject could be urged, this alone would be sufficient to 
 justify the strongest exhortation. When the schoolmaster 
 has ceased to learn, he has ceased to understand the difficul- 
 ties in the way of a pupil who engages in the acquisition of 
 knowledge ; he therefore ceases at that instant to be capable 
 of assigning lessons judiciously, and becomes incompetent 
 to measure the scholar's mental power or progress. Indif- 
 ference to knowledge is the one thing you must dread in 
 your pupils, dread that most in yourselves. Roger Ascham, 
 " Schoolmaster " to Elizabeth, characterizes his ideal teacher 
 as a lover of work, or " one who hath lust to labor." Three 
 hundred years have passed, but the characterization is ever 
 true ; the profession is still laborious, and yet the weariness 
 of the tired teacher comes from wrong or mismanaged labor, 
 or that which is distasteful, or which we are conscious of 
 doing ill, not from labor which is well organized and suc- 
 
 7 
 
98 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 cessful. There is a delight in the exercise of power, in a 
 sense of difficulty overcome. 
 
 In the four broad fields of history, mathematics, language, 
 and natural science, one can never fix his stake and say, 
 " Thus far will I go ; this much learning will be sufficient 
 for my purpose." Discoveries are constantly being made, 
 vast realms of recently conquered territory may be added to- 
 morrow, and the honest instructor must go up and possess 
 the land which is his rightful heritage. You dare not sell 
 your birthright for a miserable mess of pottage. 
 
 One thing else should not be forgotten, — the duty of 
 preparation for the daily recitation work. The simplest 
 lesson, the most familiar subject, can be taught to far better 
 advantage after a few moments' preparation by the instructor. 
 This should include a mastery of the subject matter, a care- 
 ful consideration of the best manner of presenting it, with 
 special reference to the individual peculiarities of the mem- 
 bers of the class, full understanding of its relations to what 
 has preceded and what is to follow in the course of study. 
 
 I am by no means certain that all of us recognize the 
 necessity or advantage of a full and accurate knowledge of 
 the subjects which we teach. Allow me to quote from a 
 lecture recently delivered in England upon this theme : 
 " There is a large percentage of waste and loss in the very 
 act of transmission, and you can never convey into another 
 mind nearly all of what you know or feel upon any subject. 
 Before you can impart a given piece of knowledge you must 
 yourself not only have appropriated it, you must have gone 
 beyond it and all around it ; you must have seen it in its 
 true relations to other parts or truths ; must know out of 
 what it originated, and to what others it is intended to lead. 
 If you want to teach well the half of a subject, know first for 
 
THE TEACHER. 99 
 
 yourself the whole or nearly the whole of it. Have a good 
 margin of thought and of illustration in reserve for dealing 
 with the unexpected questions and difficulties which may 
 emerge in the course of the lesson, and look well before the 
 beginning, not only at the thing you want to teach, but at as 
 much else as possible of what Hes near it, or is akin to it." 
 
 May I add, that the teacher who only keeps ahead of his 
 classes, and is barely able to pass a superintendent's examina- 
 tion, is next to useless in the school-room, a hindrance in the 
 way of advancement, a disgrace to the profession? Whether 
 teaching is to take rank as a profession or not depends 
 largely upon the broad culture of the pedagogues, or the 
 lack of it. The clergyman deals with the deepest questions 
 that the mind can attempt, — problems of God and the 
 human soul. The physician grapples with facts of Nature ; 
 he learns to observe keenly and draw conclusions accurately ; 
 he becomes broad with the very breadth of his science. The 
 law, in many of its branches technical and artificial, in others 
 leads out into the grand arena of human rights and liberties, 
 and deals with large questions. These demand a liberal 
 education, a complete curriculum. In teaching alone, whose 
 work is the education of what Plato calls the /3ao-tXtKos voDs — 
 the royal mind — has the tendency been to narrow and make 
 technical our training. In the past there seems to have 
 been no middle ground between the pedantic schoolmaster 
 who talks of shop, who smells of his fusty, musty record 
 books, as an inveterate smoker does of tobacco, and the 
 young boy or girl graduate who is keeping school, the one 
 to earn a little money to carry on his study, the other to get 
 the means for a few extra dresses. 
 
 But courage ! the mere lump must fall behind ; the grip 
 of the dead hand is weakening ; the man and woman of 
 
 LofC. 
 
lOO APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 brain, of generous soul, of broad culture, of ready sympathy 
 with the wide awake life of to-day, is called for ; the place 
 stands ready for these and they come. The past stands 
 shadowed and breathless and silent save for the falling of 
 some old error once enshrined. 
 
 "Whatever of true life there was in thee 
 Leaps in our age's veins. 
 The present moves attended 
 With all of brave and excellent and fair 
 That made the old time splendid." 
 
 5. The teacher of the future — would it might be of the 
 present ! — will be Pauline in one respect at least, " apt to 
 teach." Socrates said that if any one had anything worth 
 saying he would find a way of expressing himself. Granted 
 that this is true, we cannot afford to neglect the acquisition 
 of some art of expression. One may have his mind filled 
 with treasures of knowledge from every department of human 
 thought, and possess but buried gold. For lack of this art 
 of teaching many a child turns thirsty and unsatisfied from 
 that which should be a fountain of water of life ; many a 
 teacher leaves the room at night weary and discouraged see- 
 ing her partial success and hardly knowing how to remedy 
 the fault. The faculty of ready narration and apt illustration 
 is sometimes natural, generally acquired, gained by long and 
 tedious drudgery on the part of the teacher and expense on 
 the part of the pupil. One may find encouragement in the 
 example of the greatest orator of ancient Greece, whose 
 thunder disturbed the Macedonian monarch on his distant 
 throne, who is said to have acquired something of his power 
 by practice on the sea beach with pebbles in his mouth, and 
 in a gloomy cave with a naked sword hanging over him. 
 Only a quack delights in his own words, but the school- 
 
THE TEACHER. lOI 
 
 master cannot afford to underrate the ability to illustrate well, 
 to explain readily, and to state exactly. 
 
 The best training for the formation of a ready style is 
 familiarity with good speakers and writers. A man's vocabu- 
 lary depends upon the company he keeps. Read the best 
 compositions of lofty-minded men, and you cannot fail to 
 catch much of their spirit and power of expression. 
 
 If so much had not been said before this Institute with 
 regard to the teacher's care of his health, I should like to 
 dwell at length upon that very important subject ; but I pass 
 that and proceed to speak of some of the qualifications of 
 the teacher which, not merely intellectual in their nature, 
 belong rather to the heart and soul of man. In no other 
 profession does the man stand so far above his mental 
 ability and acquirements. Among the exploded theories of 
 the past is one which found utterance in the maxim, 
 " Knowledge is power." At no time has mere knowledge 
 accomplished much ; the most learned man may starve ; 
 and he deserves to starve unless he can prove his fitness to 
 live by his real work for mankind, by the benefits his knowl- 
 edge has conferred on his fellows. One of our lawyers 
 has put it thus : — 
 
 *' Then is knowledge power ? If I were a saint, 
 I 'd say that some is, and that some of it aint; 
 But much more depends, you '11 find out, my son, 
 Upon how you happen to catch and hold on." 
 
 For lack of knowledge the teacher may fail, but with a per- 
 fect encj'clopedia of information at his instant disposal he 
 may make a failure the more ignominious because of his 
 great information. 
 
 What then are a few of the extra-intellectual qualities of 
 the schoolmaster? 
 
I02 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 1. Sunniness of disposition, if not natural, may and must 
 be acquired. Put your choice plants into a room wliere the 
 sun never shines and you will have weak, white, dwarfed 
 slips without buds of promise, with hardly the signs of life. 
 Take them from the dark room and put them in a sunny 
 window. They spring up ; they put forth leaves ; they bud ; 
 they reach out their tendrils toward and around their sup- 
 port ; they turn the faces of their leaves to the sun, great 
 source of heat and light and life. So the little plants given 
 to us will instinctively turn toward the sunny face and words 
 of the cheerful teacher, or dry up and wither in the gloom 
 of the severe face and repelling power of one who brings 
 his worry and care into the school-room. The intercourse 
 and work of the teacher is with the young, the buoyant, the 
 happy; and a good fund of animal life and spirits in the 
 master puts him on good terms with the children and gives 
 him a power over them attainable in no other way. If the 
 teacher, standing before his class as the embodiment of eru- 
 dition and of the best of life, is gloomy, visibly worried, and 
 impatient, the consequence to the pupil must inevitably be a 
 dislike of study, and an idea that after all life is not beautiful 
 or worth the having, — a conclusion which, when we con- 
 
 .sider his premises, we must admit is fairly rational. 
 
 2. Closely united with this cheerfulness of manner is the 
 need of an even temper. It may be that my judgment is 
 not impartial, but I often think that it is not possible that, in 
 any other profession than our own, there are so many causes 
 which operate daily and almost hourly to try the patience. 
 Forgetfulness, lack of attention, sublime indifference, stupid- 
 ity, approaching sometimes almost to idiocy, and even 
 occasional disobedience, unite to tempt the instructor to lose 
 all equanimity and even self-control. Unless we are pre- 
 
THE TEACHER. IO3 
 
 pared to take pains with ourselves and cultivate the divine 
 gift of forbearance, we are surely out of place in the teacher's 
 profession. Results come slowly ; habits of memory, dili- 
 gence, apphcation, submission to constituted authority, are 
 not easily acquired by children. We must be willing to help 
 Nature and watch with patience for the gradual working out 
 of the divinely ordained plan. Unkindness breeds unkind- 
 ness ; hasty temper in the master begets passion in the 
 child. Every act of petulance on the teacher's part will 
 have a formative influence on the pupil, and will be repro- 
 duced a hundredfold in his tyraimy toward his inferiors, if 
 not in his impudence to his superiors. Dr. Channing has 
 said : " A boy compelled for six hours a day to see the 
 countenance and hear the voice of a fretful, unkind, hard, or 
 passionate man, is placed in a school of vice." 
 
 3. Next in importance of these virtues stands that of en- 
 thusiasm. Let me here quote the words of one of the most 
 enthusiastic and successful men who has ever been in the 
 ranks of the profession, gone now to his reward. A short 
 time before his death, Paul A. Chadbourne said : " Without 
 enthusiasm no teacher can have the best success, however 
 learned and faithful and hard-working he may be. Enthusi- 
 asm is the heat that softens the iron so that every blow may 
 tell. Enthusiasm on the part of the teacher gives life to the 
 student, and an impulse to every mental power. When this 
 is accomplished there is no more waste in lifting, dragging, or 
 driving." I can imagine your saying, " Enthusiasm over 
 h-a-t hat ; over the rule of three ; enthusiasm over monthly 
 reports and examination papers ! " The greater the drudgery, 
 the greater the necessity of that for which I plead. Nothing 
 less than enthusiasm can supply the energy that accomplishes 
 success. If you would arouse the dormant mind of a pupil, 
 
I04 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 you must be awake ; if you would kindle a flame in his 
 breast, you must be on fire yourself. No house was ever 
 warmed by a gilded ball or a painted screen. The great 
 teachers of the earth have been enthusiasts, — Socrates, who 
 went barefoot and subsisted on a crust that he might teach, 
 his disciple Plato, Jesus, the great teacher of mankind, 
 Abelard, Erasmus, Colet, and Neander. Need I mention in 
 our own day the wonderful Agassiz, or the eminent Draper, — 
 men whose enthusiasm was chilled only by the cold hand of 
 death? Energy that gives power to the arm, steadiness to 
 the hand, balance to the brain, force to every act, is the 
 teacher's essential and fundamental quality. 
 
 It is proper here to speak of one thing which I have some- 
 times feared we may forget in our zeal for new methods and 
 frequent boastings of the great advances recently made in 
 education. There is no method, however excellent, that 
 does not need an occasional modification, no rule which 
 does not need frequently new statement and fresh spirit in 
 its application. Over and over again in the history of the 
 world has it happened that a protest against formalism and 
 conservatism has come to have its own watchword and pecu- 
 liar usages, until the reform has grown as formal, as spiritually 
 dead as that against which it protested. The method which 
 to-day is novel and bright and helpful, tends to become a 
 mere rule of action ; from this results routine which is always 
 easier than intelligence, — and the routine of the traditional 
 methods and of the conservative class is not one whit worse 
 than that of a method first created in the brain of an enthusi- 
 ast and set to some positive rule that it may be imparted to, 
 and adopted by, the plodding and uninspired folk who think 
 that they may learn any method as they would learn to oper- 
 ate a telegraph key. For the living enthusiastic teacher it is 
 
THE TEACHER. 
 
 105 
 
 an impossibility that the formulas of the normal school or 
 the institute should be more than a spur to further acquire- 
 ment and an incentive to greater exertion, but it is quite 
 probable, nay more, it is unavoidable, that to the dull and 
 unambitious those very rules should become a hindrance, a 
 dead hand on all his work. The real teacher will succeed in 
 the school-room of the last generation, with its whittled 
 benches, its high windows, its red-hot box-stove, its fifty or 
 sixty pupils of ages ranging from five to twenty-five years ; 
 while the dilettante, the mere learner of rules, will fail in the 
 best appointed room of our modern school-house. A {Q\'i 
 years since Mr. Garfield gave utterance in Washington to the 
 following : " If I could be taken back into boyhood to-day, 
 and had all the libraries and apparatus of a university with 
 ordinary routine professors offered me on the one hand, and 
 on the other a great, luminous, rich-souled man such as 
 Dr. Hopkins was twenty years ago, in a tent in the woods, 
 alone, I should say give me Dr. Hopkins for my college 
 course. The privilege of sitting down before a great, clear- 
 headed, and large-hearted man, and breathing the atmosphere 
 of his hfe, and being drawn up to him and lifted up by him, 
 and learning his methods of thinking and living, is in itself 
 an enormous educating power." 
 
 After all what is the end of education and of the educator's 
 work? 
 
 Says the eminent Frenchman, Rousseau : " What does it 
 matter to me whether my son is destined to the sword, to the 
 Church, to the bar? Before the guidance of the parents, 
 Nature calls him to human life. To live is the trade I wish 
 him to learn." " Non sibi, sed toti." 
 
 The greatest Teacher of the ages proclaimed the purpose 
 of his work by saying : " I am come that they might have 
 
106 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 life and have it more abundantly ; " and this should be the 
 aim of every one who attempts to instruct the young. Our 
 business is to give a richer life to the generation of pupils 
 under us. As it is a grand work, it demands grand qualifica- 
 tions. Not the least of these are the moral. The teacher 
 must become in some way an incarnation of the great prin- 
 ciples of living taught and exemplified by Him whose words 
 I have just quoted. Science and art are less than character. 
 He is weak and inefficient in the school-room whose daily 
 struggle is not toward a higher plane of living. The schol- 
 arly attainments of our ideal teacher must be exceeded by 
 his comprehension of the highest truth, his worldly wisdom 
 by his knowledge of the beautiful, his mental excellence by 
 his moral goodness. 
 
 From the far East and the olden time come these wise 
 words : " The good teacher must resemble the earth in four 
 particulars. The terrestrial globe is vast and of bulk un- 
 known, — so must his love be. The earth is strong, shrinks 
 from no weight, and carries its burdens buoyantly, — so must 
 he be. The earth is patient : whether birds peck it, or 
 moles bore it, or hoe smite it, or the plow tear it, it beareth 
 all, — so must he endure the diversified provocations which 
 his pupils may bring to bear upon it. The earth is fertile 
 and yields to the tiller according to his work, — so must he 
 yield in exact proportion to the capacity and extractive 
 energies of his scholars." 
 
THE PUBLIC SCHOOL AND G'lTIZENSHIR 
 
 ONE hundred years ago John Adams said, "The instruc- 
 tion of the people in every kind of knowledge that 
 can be of use to them in the practice of their moral duties as 
 men, citizens, and Christians, and of their political and civil 
 duties as members of society and freemen, ought to be the 
 care of the public, and of all who have any share in the 
 conduct of its affairs." 
 
 It is the business of the school to teach methods of think- 
 ing, and doctrines which may direct one in all the affairs of 
 life, especially to train individuals to be good members of 
 the Commonwealth. 
 
 The school is a State institution established in accordance 
 with the principles of democratic government ; a legitimate 
 and highly prized means to the accomplishment of the 
 chief purpose of all democracy, — a government of the 
 people by the people. 
 
 The school being a public institution, the government has 
 the undoubted right to demand from it certain definite re- 
 sults in the way of training for the duties of citizenship. 
 
 What makes a good citizen ? 
 
 I . Obedience, — that spirit which teaches and enforces 
 submission to constituted authority, which abides by the 
 decisions of lawful arbiters, even when such yielding causes 
 inconvenience or serious loss. 
 
I08 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 2. Respect for honest toil. A belief that not the work 
 but the manner of it brings disgrace or honor. 
 
 3. Honesty of purpose, of act, not of speech alone. Of 
 tliought and life as well ; what is known sometimes as a 
 moral sense. 
 
 4. A sufficient knowledge of books to enable the voter to 
 read his ballot, and so to cast it with some intelligence. 
 
 5. A knowledge of our government, its history, and its 
 possibilities. 
 
 6. Such economy as will aid him to live comfortably 
 within his means, whether he be a millionnaire, banker, or 
 day-laborer. 
 
 7. The true nobility of man. The thought of Browning 
 should be bred into the very life of every public school 
 
 pupil : — 
 
 " A man for aye removed 
 From the developed brute, — 
 A God, though in the germ." 
 
 I. Do we see a generation of boys and girls who do not 
 know the meaning of that old word " obey " ? Upon this as 
 a foundation-stone has been laid the greatness of many 
 empires, and I am old-fashioned enough to believe that 
 upon no other foundation can the structure of successful 
 government be reared. 
 
 Children come to school with little idea of obedience. 
 Sentiment, or some worse thing, has taken the backbone out 
 of parental authority, and the child is overwhelmed with 
 astonishment to find that in the school-room all wills must 
 be, in a large part, under the domination of one controlling 
 will. The primary educational purpose of school-room gov- 
 ernment is to make the pupil self-governing. This is most 
 clearly apparent to the boy when he reaches the high school. 
 
THE PUBLIC SCHOOL AND CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 109 
 
 There he finds that the strict rules of action to which he has 
 been accustomed in the lower grades give place to a broad 
 rule of quiet attention to one's own business and an insist- 
 ance upon the right of every pupil to be left free to 
 work unmolested by mischief, and undisturbed by noise of 
 whispering or play. Obedience to this broad rule must 
 be insisted upon with an unflinching firmness. Every day 
 and hour of the school course should be a protest against 
 the lawlessness that destroys the comfort of many homes, 
 and that leads logically to license and anarchy. 
 
 Self-restraint breeds self-respect. The completion of the 
 course should bring to the day of graduation a young man 
 trained by habitual self-restraint for the sake of others as 
 well as himself. Such a one will give ready obedience to 
 constituted authority, and be quick to defend the State 
 against the aggressions of lawless violence, 
 
 2. Said Mr. Lowell, in his admirable address at the Har- 
 vard anniversary two years ago, " The motto ' Christo et 
 Ecclesiae,' wlien rightly interpreted, is the same as a ' Veritas ; ' 
 for it means that we are to elevate ourselves to the high- 
 est conception we have of truth, and to the preaching 
 of it." 
 
 Not science for its facts, literature for its forcefulness, art 
 for its beauty, — are the true end of a school course ; but 
 truth for its own sake, " that we may devote ourselves to 
 the highest conception we have of it." 
 
 Any clever boy or girl can learn more in a month out of a 
 good encyclopedia about government, civil polity, legal 
 rights and privileges of a citizen, as well as more about the 
 theory of a dozen other things, than he will get from a 
 four years' course in the best school in the land ; but he 
 won't learn much that ought to go with it. Honesty of 
 
no APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 purpose, unselfishness, sincerity, — all that is comprehended 
 in the broadest meaning of the word " truth." 
 
 Arnold's first act when, as a young man, he took charge of 
 Rugby, was to lay down one only rule, " Be earnest." His 
 last words to his boys on that beautiful summer's day when 
 England's sons came down to the school to do him honor at 
 the end of his twenty years' service, were, " Be manly. Be 
 sensible. In every point of honor, nice." 
 
 When the record of the nineteenth century is closed, 
 above the names of England's statesmen, priests, and 
 scholars shall be written, " Thomas Arnold." His pure, 
 manly, true life has become a part of Britain's crown of 
 glory, to be perpetuated through all those who sat under 
 Arnold's teaching. " It matters little what you learn ; the 
 question is with whom you learn," said Mr. Emerson, mean- 
 ing thereby that books are of little worth compared with 
 the higher moral forces of truth and virtue, which can be 
 drawn only from the man or woman of generous sympathy 
 and spotless life. 
 
 3. It is the business of the school by precept and exam- 
 ple to magnify honest work. It is occasionally charged 
 against education that it operates to make the boy disinclined 
 to manual employment, as beneath the dignity of the would- 
 be gentleman. It is likely that the introduction of manual 
 instruction, which is becoming so general, will tend to make 
 this charge untrue even if it were not so before. It is 
 noticeable that this complaint has not been made chiefly 
 by the laboring people, but by their more aristocratic 
 neighbors. 
 
 A short time since a series of eight questions was sub- 
 mitted by the United States Bureau of Education to promi- 
 nent manufacturers and to leaders of the labor movement. 
 
THE PUBLIC SCHOOL AND CITIZENSHIP. I I I 
 
 One of the questions was : " What do you regard as the 
 effect of mental culture upon the personal and social habits 
 of persons who have been in your employ ? Do they, as a 
 class, live in better houses or with better surroundings? 
 Are they more or less idle and dissipated than the untaught 
 classes? How will they compare for character, for economy, 
 morality, and social influence, with their fellows?" 
 
 To this Mr. S. P. Cummings, of Boston, Massachusetts, 
 Secretary of the Massachusetts Grand Lodge of the Order of 
 St. Crispin, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the In- 
 ternational Labor Union and of the State Labor party, replied : 
 " Inventive culture, as a rule, increases the self-respect and 
 improves the social habits of working men. Educated work 
 ing men live in better houses, have better surroundings, and 
 are in all respects superior to those whose education is 
 limited and defective. They are less idle and dissipated 
 than the untaught classes. As regards economy, morality, 
 and social influence, educated laborers are pre-eminent 
 among their fellows. I may add one general observation, 
 that while I was foreman of a shoe factory employing forty 
 hands, I always got better work, had less trouble, and, as a 
 general rule, paid better wages to the more intelligent work- 
 men. The more ignorant hands were continually giving me 
 trouble, either by slighting their work or failing to appear in 
 a fit condition to work after pay-day. They were, many of 
 them, coarse and vulgar, drank liquor, grumbled, and were 
 in all respects disagreeable. I am so well satisfied with the 
 inestimable value of education to the laborer that I would 
 make it compulsory. No man should be allowed to go into 
 the arena of life until he has at least a decent English 
 education." 
 
 The discipline of school energizes the whole mental na- 
 
112 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 ture, making it capable of applying itself in various direc- 
 tions. Whatever becomes of the facts it has learned, the 
 mind does not soon, perhaps never, lose the new life of 
 perceptive and reasoning powers which had its genesis in 
 the school-room. Applied to what you will, this power 
 brightens the eye, strengthens the arm, guides the hand to 
 a wiser use of tools and materials than before. The work, 
 be it never so lowly, is exalted, sometimes glorified by a 
 comprehension of its relations and services to other depart- 
 ments of toil. 
 
 Four years ago, inquiry among the high schools of Massa- 
 chusetts showed that pupils upon graduation entered at once 
 into the ordinary avocations of the communities in which 
 they lived. In commercial centres, they went into the banks, 
 stores, and offices ; in manufacturing towns, they also took 
 places in the mills, " doing work requiring," so says the 
 report, " a higher degree of intelligence." The report con- 
 tinues : " That they do not gravitate in large numbers to- 
 ward the less remunerative kinds of manual labor is 
 doubtless true. That the children of parents employed in 
 such labor aspire to cleaner hands and better clothes is 
 perhaps true. The parents aspire for them, and make sacri- 
 fices to send them to the high school that they may not be 
 mere drudges." 
 
 Sometimes a boy fresh from the high school thinks certain 
 labor menial and unworthy his talents. Either he has been 
 badly taught, filled with false, pernicious views of life's great 
 business, or he really feels within him the possibilities of 
 more skilful service than digging ditches. 
 
 Shame and disgrace be upon that school or that teacher 
 who makes a pupil feel that humble service is not his 
 noblest duty ; equal shame upon him who teaches not that 
 
THE PUBLIC SCHOOL AND CITIZENSIHP. I I 3 
 
 within each lies the possibihties of greatest achievement in 
 the fine or mechanical arts. 
 
 4. Extravagance is characteristic of this generation. 
 Money easily got is easily spent. Boys and girls who do 
 not know by actual experience the worth of a dollar can 
 hardly be taught it as they are taught a principle in physics. 
 And yet an effort must be made to accomplish this, else the 
 spirit of extravagance in expenditure will bring about its 
 legitimate result, — recklessness in the assumption of pecu- 
 niary obligations, carelessness in their hquidation, and final 
 bankruptcy. 
 
 To teach economy, not for the sake of the money, but for 
 the money's better value, not for coats, and gowns, and 
 clubs, and plays, but for the highest needs of the soul's 
 poverty, and for the material needs of our bodies and of 
 God's poor whom we always have with us ; to value gold, 
 not for itself or position or sensuous pleasure, but for its 
 power to bring us a better good of literature and art, for its 
 power to add to the material comfort of the world around, 
 to build roads and bridges and factories, and above all, for 
 its ability to increase man's spiritual well-being by schools 
 and churches and libraries, — to do all this is not only a 
 lawful ambition, but the bounden duty of a school main- 
 tained by public tax for the public good. Simple tastes, 
 contentment, frugality, are prime virtues and should hold a 
 prominent place in the institution. 
 
 5. In nothing is the evolution of public sentiment as to 
 public schools more manifest than in the continually widen- 
 ing reach and number of studies in the curriculum. The 
 three "R's" are and ever must be the basis of work; to 
 these have been added history, geography, language, the 
 elements of the natural sciences, something of higher mathe- 
 
 8 
 
114 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 matics and foreign languages. It is sometimes said that 
 this evolution has over-reached the proper function of the 
 school. Let us see. Never was the pressure stronger upon 
 the schools for a practical education ; constantly shifts the 
 ground of attack, the cry remains the same, " Give us the 
 practical." Reading, giving the ability to get the sense from 
 a page of manuscript or book ; writing, giving the ability to 
 express one's thoughts for the perusal of others ; and arith- 
 metic, giving the ability to reckon or compute with numbers, 
 — are on all sides acknowledged to be essentials. But one 
 cannot express himself with credit or clearness who has no 
 knowledge of the structure or skill in the use of his mother 
 tongue. This can be acquired only from exercise and dis- 
 cipline such as the boy gets from the accurate study of his 
 own and other languages in the school-room. 
 
 Again, we live in a day when hand labor has given place 
 to steam and electric power controlled by the wise and 
 carefully trained brain. It becomes therefore the business 
 of the educator to introduce his pupils into those domains of 
 Nature with whose products or powers they may be called 
 upon to deal. 
 
 Physics, chemistry, and physiology touch upon the most 
 important and practical affairs of every-day life in the 
 manufactures, agriculture, commerce, and bodily health. He 
 would be a bold man who should deny that that boy will 
 make a better citizen and more useful member of the com- 
 munity, who knows something of the physical geography and 
 climatic condition of his own country, who has a few defi- 
 nite ideas of the political and physical divisions of other 
 countries, and above all, who has learned lessons of public 
 policy and personal propriety by familiarity with the biogra- 
 phy of great men and nations. 
 
THE PUBLIC SCHOOL AND CITIZENSHIP. I I 5 
 
 Not facts make a man wise, much less useful. The public 
 school should give that discipline of mind which enables the 
 man to grasp new ideas, and properly judge their relations 
 to the past and their probable influence on the future. No 
 system of education which results in this is useless. Every 
 system which does this, or even honestly attempts it, is a 
 proper object of support by public tax in any free govern- 
 ment whose first instinct is self-preservation. 
 
 6. Of late a new word has been introduced to the public, 
 — " Civics." It is found printed in courses of study ; it 
 may be seen in the professional journals ; it has forced its 
 way before the public through the " American Institute of 
 Civics," — a society that is doing a good work in the propaga- 
 tion of knowledge about its purposes and methods. As the 
 word is new, though standing for an old idea, it may be well 
 to define " civics." It is understood to be the science which 
 treats of government, its origin and development, its func- 
 tions, its conduct and principles of action. The study of 
 civics thus includes a study of the Constitution, — its creation 
 and development, — the political history of the country, 
 political economy in its usual signification, and in its wider 
 application to all relations of the citizen with the State. 
 Every American should hail with delight the renewed in- 
 terest daily manifested in these studies and the general 
 incorporation of them into the curriculum of the public 
 school. 
 
 When one stops to question himself on the single subject 
 of the extent of the power of the federal government over 
 state legislation, he is surprised at the smallness and indefi- 
 niteness of his knowledge. Leaving out of account the 
 members of the two professions, — law and teaching, — I 
 venture that two-thirds of those who read this article will 
 
Il6 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 give an unqualified negative to a number of such questions 
 as these : May any state abolish the grand jury system ? 
 The federal Constitution declares that, " No person shall be 
 held to answer for capital or otherwise infamous crime unless 
 on a presentment or mdictment of a grand jury." [Amend- 
 ment, article v.J Yet any state may, as one already has 
 done, abolish the grand jury system. 
 
 The Constitution of Wisconsin, as amended November i8, 
 1870, reads, section vii. art. i : " No person shall be held 
 to answer for a criminal offence without due process of law." 
 " Due process of law " means in Wisconsin, either a prelim- 
 inary examination before a justice of the peace, or informa- 
 tion given in due form to the district attorney. A dozen 
 similar questions might be asked, to every one of which most 
 people would say, "No;" yet a careful study of our polity, 
 as outlined in the Constitution, would show the only possibly 
 correct answer to be, " Yes." These questions may become, 
 as one of them did in the late Chicago anarchist trial, of 
 vital importance to the public welfare. In such case, it is 
 proper that every citizen should have certain knowledge of 
 the correct answers. 
 
 Let us illustrate this point by two other instances greatly 
 affecting public policy, questions which are being very gen- 
 erally discussed at the present time. What is the relation 
 between the right of suffrage and citizenship? At first 
 thought one would answer, "Citizenship carries with it the 
 right to vote, and no one can vote who is not a citizen." 
 Yet second thought shows that every State in the Union has, 
 for purposes of general elections, disfranchised half its 
 citizens above twenty-one years of age, and several other 
 States insist that citizens shall have certain educational or 
 property qualifications before they can vote. Besides this. 
 
THE PUBLIC SCHOOL AND CITIZENSTHP. ny 
 
 fifteen states grant suffrage to those who are neither citizens 
 of the state nor of the United States. 
 
 On the all-absorbing topics about which every one except 
 the professional politician is eager both to inform and ex- 
 press his mind, protective tariff and free trade, the differences 
 of opinion are so conflicting as to force me to the conclusion 
 that one must be right and the other wrong, both in morals 
 and policy ; and yet I more than suspect that the majority of 
 those holding either view do so from motives of selfish in- 
 terest, or the hardly less reprehensible principle of mere 
 sentiment. 
 
 The above illustrations are sufficient to show a cliaotic 
 condition of mixed knowledge and ignorance on matters of 
 which this new old science, civics, treats. 
 
 Consider that every ballot cast at the polls for an executive 
 or legislative ofificer has its influence in determining the 
 policy of the local, state, or federal government on some of 
 these questions, or others similar in character and of hardly 
 less importance. Then consider the need of an intelligent 
 brain to guide the hand that casts the ballot. Then we shall 
 impress upon ourselves, and urge upon school authorities, the 
 necessity of proper teaching in the school. 
 
 So far I have considered questions of long standing in- 
 terest. Turn now to the two problems of the future, — the 
 labor movement, so called, and its near ally, socialism. 
 L?.bor organizations have assumed the right, as they have 
 the power, to dictate terms to their employers. They de- 
 mand, for instance, an increase of wages. The manufacturer 
 cannot afford to give a larger percentage of his gross gains 
 to the laborer ; competition allows him now but small re- 
 turns on his investment ; on the other hand he cannot 
 afford to shut down his works and allow a plant costing 
 
I 1 8 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 thousands of dollars to stand idle ; and besides if he closes 
 his doors, he incurs danger to life and property from the 
 attacks of brutal men, rendered furious by poverty and 
 threatening starvation. 
 
 Not only does the labor union dictate financial terms, 
 which perhaps is their right, but it says to the capitalist, 
 " You shall not employ this man ; he is not a member of our 
 league, or order. We will not work under John Smith as 
 foreman, or boss ; he discharged such a man and we will 
 no longer serve under him." No matter how competent 
 John Smith is, he must step down and out, to give place, 
 perhaps, to a lazy, stupid, and dishonest man, acceptable to 
 the union, or the employer will find himself some bright 
 morning without a workman in his shop. Supposing the 
 laborers make a demand for higher pay at just the time when 
 the capitalist can well afford to close his factory or mills, 
 then the workmen find themselves face to face with the 
 terrible struggle with poverty, — a poverty made worse by the 
 bitter cold of a Northern winter. The result is the agony 
 of disrupted and starving families, crime, and the disgrace 
 of the penitentiary. 
 
 These questions are daily growing in importance ; labor 
 and capital have each its rights. What are they, and how 
 to be adjusted when they are in conflict? Is it not the 
 province of the public school to afford by instruction in the 
 fundamental principles of political economy, and in the 
 higher principles of an altruistic morality, a solution of some 
 of these difficulties? The common school should send out 
 laborers and capitalists who can examine and adjudge these 
 difficulties by the clear light of truth, undimmed by inherited 
 prejudice or passion. 
 
 We are rapidly being pushed to an answer to the social- 
 
THE PUBLIC SCHOOL AND CITIZENSHIP. \ \ 9 
 
 istic problem of paternal government. Already socialism 
 has gained strong hold upon our legislation. In 1787 the 
 first session of Congress under our present Constitution 
 passed a high tariff bill " to afford protection to home in- 
 dustries." Paternalism began then in state laws attempting 
 to regulate the price of labor, the care of the poor, and many 
 others of a like sort \ the paternal theory of government is 
 supreme. The Granger movement of 1872, the Inter-State 
 Commerce Law of 1887, the much-debated bill for govern- 
 mental aid to education in the South, the proposition that 
 government shall assume control of telegraph and railroad 
 systems, are only a few of the many instances of the paternal 
 idea carried on toward its legitimate results. So socialism 
 grows, is embodied, not only in federal and state legislation, 
 but in state organic law, and for answer to the question, 
 " Where will it end? " we must look to the future voters now 
 being educated in our public schools. If socialism is to be 
 accepted as a rule in government, we need to understand it 
 in its relations. If it is to be rejected, though I hardly see 
 now how it can be, let us be able to give a reason for our 
 acts. 
 
 We have touched upon the realm of economics. Our 
 boys and girls need lessons here. Industrial life as pre- 
 sented to them is largely selfish, a question of gain or loss, a 
 scramble for money. Political economy if wisely taught may 
 turn the learner's mind from mere gain to use. 
 
 " I like to define political economy as the science of ser- 
 vices," says some one. Swedenborg says somewhere, " The 
 kingdom of heaven is a kingdom of uses." 
 
 Surely it is a high honor to so teach the young that they 
 may acquire the habit of unselfish service, that they may 
 look upon our social system as one to be maintained only 
 
I20 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 by the mutual interchange of service. When they learn to 
 give the best services without always hope of equal service 
 in return, they will have helped to bring about here on earth 
 that glorious " kingdom of uses," which is, if Swedenborg 
 be right, the very kingdom of heaven. 
 
 Here we have a work for the public high school. Its in- 
 fluence upon the community is enormous ; its graduates go 
 out to take the lead in the market, the legislature, the 
 church. Its training, broadening every year, qualifies those 
 who receive it for positions of influence. Its boys become 
 in a short time the acknowledged leaders in local politics, 
 and later in a wider political field. Its girls make up a large 
 part of the teachers in the lower grades of the common 
 school. Its teachings will be repeated and enforced through 
 the busy life of its one-time pupils. 
 
 It is then necessary that its curriculum should include a 
 course of study and reading in our federal and state con- 
 stitution, in the political history of our people, in the 
 elements of what is known as political economy. 
 
 American institutions, and their powers to Americanize 
 those who come imder their influence, are the safeguard of 
 this nation from the dangers of an ignorant foreign emigra- 
 tion. Among the first of these institutions, perhaps the very 
 foremost, is the public school. The community of interests, 
 caused by a common work under a discipline impartially 
 enforced, fuses heterogeneous elements into a homogeneous 
 mass. In the school, the child of European monarchy learns 
 the equality of a democratic people ; he learns to look first 
 with reverence, then with pride, upon our national heroes ; 
 he sings, and comes to love our national songs ; he is in- 
 spired by our patriotic poetry and oratory, — and in a few 
 short years is raised from the condition of an alien, and is 
 
THE PUBLIC SCHOOL AND CITIZENSHIP. 121 
 
 fitted to take upon himself the duties and enjoy the privileges 
 of an American. Not alone upon the foreigner, but on our 
 own children, does the school bring to bear its influence while 
 performing its functions to the State. 
 
 Hereby the teacher's work is ennobled. There is a higher 
 ambition than simply giving facts. It becomes the teacher's 
 rare privilege to raise up for his country, defenders, for his 
 nation, citizens. Training children for the republic requires 
 something more than a course in civics. It includes a com- 
 prehension of man's nature and existence, the constitution 
 of society, the duties of man toward man, and of man toward 
 God. 
 
 In the travail of our nation this utterance burst forth : 
 " We hold these truths to be self-evident, — that all men are 
 created equal ; that they are endowed by their Creator with 
 certain inalienable rights ; that among these are life, liberty, 
 and the pursuit of happiness." That sentence forever 
 makes the American a man subservient to none, equal to 
 all. Upon this foundation principle of a free government 
 we look with pride. To have given this doctrine to the 
 world, and to uphold it with proud simplicity, not in arro- 
 gant conceit, is better far than to develop even our unparal- 
 leled material resources or to display our marvellous ingenuity 
 and enterprise. 
 
 The greatest service the school can perform for the State is 
 to train character that shall endure the test of the fierce struggle 
 for pelf, the temptation to extravagance and peculation. 
 
 As upon the morning twilight of the heathen struggling 
 after truth rose the beauteous light of the Prince of Peace, 
 so upon this nation's history, stained by blot of private fraud 
 and official corruption, rises the possibility that our children 
 shall learn the simple dignity of worthy manhood. 
 
122 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 Of all created things man nearest approaches God. The 
 divine-human child must be developed to the divine-human 
 man, must be taught to recognize that part in himself and in 
 others, to love the pure because it is pure, the good and true 
 because they are true and good. When he learns to love 
 man for the God in him, then he will see clearly the solution 
 of these perplexing problems of personal responsibility and 
 public policy which will daily demand his attention. When 
 the public school gives its pupils the lessons of a rich, pure, 
 and noble life, then it will give to the State intelligent and 
 useful citizens, and then and not till then will the public 
 school be performing its whole duty. 
 
GEORGE ROGERS CLARK. 
 
 THE Treaty of Paris, 1 763, determined whether posses- 
 sion of the fair country west of the Alleghanies, reach- 
 ing from the Mexican Gulf to Hudson's Bay, should be under 
 the control of England or of France. Before the Treaty, this 
 imperial territory — now known as the West — was French ; 
 after the Treaty, English. The French had explored and 
 hithei-to had held it with no one to dispute their right. No 
 record of adventure can be more absorbing in interest, or 
 more inspiring to unselfish devotion, than the story of the 
 early French explorers and missionaries in the Mississippi 
 Valley. So long as civilization shall endure, men shall speak 
 with admiration the name of La Salle, and with reverence 
 that of Marquette. 
 
 The civilization brought and planted by these men and 
 their fellows was marked by ignorance, superstition, sub- 
 servience to authority, mediseval vassalage and its attendant 
 evils, — a system utterly at variance with the coming democ- 
 racy of America ; at variance with the spirit of liberty, revolt 
 from feudalism, and intellectual regeneration, which in 
 Europe marked the close of the eighteenth century. 
 
 The French and Indian war, which in America was 
 a dispute for territorial possession, may also be consid- 
 ered a contest between American progress and European 
 conservatism. 
 
 At the war's beginning France stretched from Quebec to 
 New Orleans. From the mouth of the St. Lawrence through 
 
124 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 the great Lakes, across a narrow portage in Wisconsin or 
 Illinois, down the Mississippi River to the Gulf, three thou- 
 sand miles of almost unbroken waterway her boats could go, 
 and pass no shore on which the missionaries of the Roman 
 Church had not set the cross, and over which I^ouis did not 
 exercise a nominal control. 
 
 Great Britain's possessions were confined between the 
 Alleghanies and the sea, bounded on the north by the St. 
 Lawrence Valley, and on the south by the Altamaha, a small 
 stream of Southern Georgia. Ticonderoga, Montreal, Que- 
 bec, Detroit, Niagara, Fort DuQuesne, — now Pittsburg, — 
 all belonged to France. These and other posts formed a 
 cordon around the English, reaching in a somewhat broken 
 line from the North Atlantic to the Gulf. Hedged in by 
 these posts, and by a people who were able and not seldom 
 ready to lead against them the howling savages, the English 
 colonists were debarred from the conquest of the wilderness. 
 A wilderness this region would have remained, unless at- 
 tacked by the fearless energy of the Saxon race that has 
 always found delight in the subjugation and development of 
 a new country. 
 
 At the close of the French and Indian war the political 
 geography was entirely changed. England's territory reached 
 to the Mississippi. France had yielded to her conqueror 
 and hereditary foe the country east of that river, all of the 
 St. Lawrence Basin, and to Hudson's Bay ; while Spain gave 
 up to England the two Floridas, and received in payment 
 therefor, at the expense of France, the immense territory, 
 whose resources we hardly yet comprehend, known as 
 Louisiana. 
 
 The question of political control settled, there were in this 
 valley two people now brought face to face in a short and 
 
GEORGE ROGERS CLARK. 
 
 125 
 
 swift struggle for moral supremacy, — the French and Ameri- 
 cans. The French had become lazy, and had so far cultivated 
 the Indians that they had almost sunk to the level of the 
 savages, for whom they professed so brotherly an affection. 
 In all the region between the Lakes and the Ohio and Mis- 
 sissippi Rivers, they numbered hardly ten thousand, — weak 
 and helpless beings, though living in the very garden of the 
 earth. 
 
 Across the Alleghanies, toward the east, were the Ameri- 
 cans who had cultivated the barren soil and learned thence 
 lessons of frugality, manhood, and courage, and so had be- 
 come more than a million strong and vigorous people. 
 
 It will easily be seen then that the Treaty of Paris did 
 more than change geography. It determined the destiny of 
 America. It made possible the war of the American Revo- 
 lution. It gave room for development to freedom and 
 individual rights, to that spirit which found utterance in the 
 opening sentence of the Declaration of Independence, and 
 in the Emancipation Proclamation, — a spirit that shall find 
 its realization when from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from 
 the wheat fields of the North to the cotton plantations of the 
 South, every act of ruler and of ruled shall exemplify the 
 brotherhood of man. 
 
 Great Britain had now three dependencies beside the 
 thirteen American colonies. These were East and West 
 Florida, and Quebec. The last included that portion of 
 Canada to the east of Lake Nipissing, a small lake lying 
 northeast of Georgian Bay in Lake Huron. Over the 
 country between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi, and the 
 great Lakes and parallel 31° north latitude, or the northern 
 boundary of the Floridas, no government was established. 
 In the eyes of the law there were no white settlers there. 
 
126 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 This country was left to the wild Red Man. The only gov- 
 ernmental functions exercised were those without the sanc- 
 tion of law and of a semi-military nature. The old French 
 law, so far as enforced, was in the hands of lieutenants who 
 acted as justices of the peace, and sergeants who acted as 
 constables. The French "habitants" were little disturbed 
 by this state of affairs, but to the enterprising colonists it was 
 a more serious matter. 
 
 By the same order that established the boundaries of the 
 other provinces, this region was closed against colonization. 
 In the order of council, dated October 7, 1 763, we read : 
 
 " And whereas, it is just and reasonable, and essential to 
 our interest and to the security of our colonies, that the 
 several nations or tribes of Indians with whom we are con- 
 nected and who live under our protection should not be 
 molested or disturbed in the possession of such parts of our 
 dominion and territories as, not having been ceded to, or 
 purchased by us, are reserved to them, or any of them, as 
 their hunting-grounds, we do therefore, with the advice of 
 our privy council, declare it to be our royal will and pleasure 
 that no governor or commander-in-chief in any of our colo- 
 nies of Quebec, East Florida, or West Florida do presume, 
 upon any pretence whatever, to grant warrants of survey or 
 pass any patents for lands beyond the bounds of their 
 respective governments, as described in their commissions. 
 . . . And we do hereby strictly forbid, on pain of our dis- 
 pleasure, all our loving subjects from making any purchases 
 or settlements whatever, or taking possession of any of the 
 lands above reserved without our special leave and license 
 for that purpose, first obtained. And we do further strictly 
 enjoin and require all persons whatever, who have either 
 wilfully or inadvertently seated themselves upon any lands 
 
GEORGE ROGERS CLARK. 
 
 127 
 
 within the countries above described, or upon any other 
 lands which, not having been ceded to, or purchased by us, 
 are still reserved to the said Indians as aforesaid, forthwith 
 to remove themselves from such settlements." 
 
 Three reasons are suggested for this order, — First, there 
 was the desire to conciHate the Indians, who had hitherto 
 sided with the French, by assuring them undisturbed pos- 
 session of their hunting-grounds. There may too have been 
 in part the intention to protect his Majesty's " loving sub- 
 jects " from attacks by the savage tribes. But it would ap- 
 pear that the principal purpose of the order was to prevent 
 the growth of the colonies. Their power, displayed in the 
 war just closed, had surprised the home government and 
 given it a feeling of uneasiness lest the child should soon 
 grow so strong that it might with safety start in life for itself. 
 Many of the charters originally given to the colonies con- 
 tained a grant of land " from sea to sea," and it now, for 
 the first time, seemed possible that the colonists might rise 
 and possess their heritage. 
 
 The continued presence of the French inhabitants in this 
 territory now left without a government was of course a 
 violation of the law, which was, however, winked at by 
 those in authority. But the order was occasionally broken 
 in a more active way, both with and without the knowledge 
 or consent of crown officers. So far was this true that on 
 the eve of the Revolution, Burke, standing in the English 
 House of Commons, said : " Already they have topped the 
 Appalachian mountains. From thence they behold before 
 them an immense plain, one vast, rich, level meadow, — a 
 square of five hundred miles. Over this they would wander 
 without a possibility of restraint." 
 
 In 1765, at the close of the Pontiac war, the French flag 
 
128 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 was lowered and the English raised over Fort Chartre. 
 Endand had crushed France. France had left the Indians 
 
 O 
 
 to irretrievable ruin by the tumultuous force of an onsweeping 
 emigration. The order of 1763 failed of its purpose, but 
 just before the words of Burke, quoted above, were uttered, 
 England made one more attempt to drive back the increas- 
 ing tide of emigration. By the " Quebec Act," in 1774? all 
 the old French Territory, south to the Ohio River, was made a 
 part of the Province of Quebec. The old " Re'gime" — that 
 is, the system of government brought from France, but now 
 under English control — was restored. Representative gov- 
 ernment was abolished ; trial by jury was done away with ; 
 French laws were reordained ; the extraordinary grant of 
 power to the Roman Church was reconfirmed ; and again the 
 capital of the Mississippi Valley was located in the St. 
 Lawrence basin. The end attained by this Act was such a 
 separation of the East from the West that the one should be 
 French, and by feelings of gratitude allied to ruling Eng- 
 land ; while the other was thus to be thwarted in its plans 
 for aggrandizement and self-government. Thus did mother 
 England in a short-sighted policy attempt to dwarf the 
 growth of the American nation. 
 
 We think of the Revolution as a war fought on the 
 Atlantic slope, and for a country bounded by the Eastern 
 watershed. Had that been all, think how meagre the re- 
 sults of seven years of bloodshed, seven years of agony ! 
 Think liow impossible a great people, how impossible our 
 expansion, how nearly impossible our national existence ! 
 
 Perhaps it is not exaggeration to say that upon the char- 
 acter of one man, and the success of one undertaking, 
 depended the future greatness of the West. That man was 
 George Rogers Clark ; his undertaking, an expedition from 
 
GEORGE ROGERS CLARK. I 29 
 
 Virginia into the Illinois country against the little French 
 towns of Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes, then held by 
 the British. "This was an enterprise," says Bancroft, 
 " which for the valor of the actors, their fidelity to one 
 another, the seeming feebleness of their means, and the great 
 result of their hardihood remains forever memorable in the 
 history of the world." 
 
 Thirty days before the Declaration of Independence was 
 promulgated, the settlers west of the mountains and south of 
 the Ohio, in a meeting at Harrodsburg, elected George 
 Rogers Clark and Gabriel Jones delegates to the Virginia 
 Assembly, then in session in Williamsburg. These men were 
 instructed to ask Virginia to assert its claim to Kentucky, 
 and to make it a county of the Commonwealth. After a 
 perilous journey through the wilderness, Clark and Jones 
 arrived at the State capital only to find American Independ- 
 ence declared, and the legislature adjourned. Jones went 
 away on other business ; but Clark sought out the Governor, 
 Patrick Henry, and secured from him a letter to the Council 
 of State, favoring the petition of the Kentucky frontiersmen. 
 Provided with this letter Clark returned to the capital and 
 laid before the Council his modest request for five hundred 
 pounds of gunpowder, to be used in the protection of their 
 dependent territory. The Council refused to acknowledge 
 the dependence of Kentuck)', but offered to loan Clark, on 
 his personal guarantee, the powder for which he asked. 
 This offer was rejected by Clark, who said, "If Kentucky is 
 not worth defending, it is not worth claiming." Hereupon 
 the Council gave an order for five hundred pounds of gun- 
 powder to be delivered to Clark at Fort Pitt, now Pittsburg, 
 and to be used under his direction for the defence of the 
 frontier. The grant of powder evidently gave the Council 
 
 9 
 
130 APPEND/X: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 more interest in the new settlement, for a {^vi months later 
 the legislature created a new county under the name Ken- 
 tucky, and Clark and Jones having accomplished their 
 mission went home to their constituents, not forgetting to go 
 by the way of Pittsburg and get the powder. 
 
 During the next year Clark pondered over the possible 
 conquest of the Illinois country. The British posts at 
 Kaskaskia, Vincennes, and Detroit were the source of ma- 
 rauding and murderous expeditions of Indians, who, ren- 
 dered more savage by the inhuman policy of their British 
 allies, often swept over the country in a whirlwind of desola- 
 tion, murdering alike men, women, and children, burning 
 and laying waste whatever the white settler had builded or 
 sown. Could these posts be brought under American con- 
 trol, Indian ravages would cease, peace come to the strug- 
 gling pioneers, and a heavy blow be struck at the power 
 against which the colonies were contending at terrible 
 disadvantages. Clark was so far influenced by these con- 
 siderations, that early in the summer of 1777, on his own 
 resj)onsibility, he sent spies to the posts to learn the true 
 state of affairs. The spies reported that the British were 
 very active in promoting Indian raids against the Americans ; 
 but they also reported that the inhabitants, and in some 
 regions the Indians themselves, were favorably disposed 
 toward the Americans. Convinced now of the necessity 
 and feasibility of a successful attack on these posts, Clark, 
 in mid-summer, went again to Virginia, and laid his plan 
 before Governor Henry. Clark's purpose was warmly 
 approved and arrangements were soon made. He re- 
 ceived a commission as Lieutenant-Colonel from the Com- 
 monwealth of Virginia, and the following instructions were 
 issued : — 
 
GEORGE ROGERS CLARK. 131 
 
 LiEUT.-CoLONEL George ROGERS Clark, — You are to pro- 
 ceed without loss of time to enlist seven companies of men, 
 officered in the usual manner, to act as militia under your own 
 orders ; they are to proceed to Kentucky, and there to obey such 
 orders and directions as you shall give them for three months 
 after their arrival at that place ; but to receive pay, etc., in case 
 they remain on duty a longer time. 
 
 Given under my hand at Williamsburg, January 2, 1778. 
 
 P. Henry. 
 
 This was little, but the same day other orders were issued 
 bearing the mark, "private." Hereby Clark was authorized 
 not only to raise troops, but to attack the British posts, to 
 demand aid from the commandant at Fort Pitt, and most 
 important, to keep his real purpose secret till time for final 
 action. In the following passage from the secret orders, the 
 humane spirit of the Virginia Executive is favorably con- 
 trasted with the barbarity of Hamilton, the British Lieutenant- 
 Governor stationed at Detroit : " It is earnestly desired that 
 you show humanity to such British subjects and other per- 
 sons as fall in your hands. If the white inhabitants at the 
 coast and the neighborhood will give undoubted evidence of 
 their attachment to this State (for it is certain they live within 
 its limits) by taking the test prescribed by law, and by every 
 other means in their power, let them be treated as fellow- 
 citizens and their persons and property duly secured. 
 Assistance and protection against all enemies whatever shall 
 be afforded them, and the Commonwealth of Virginia is 
 pledged to accomplish it. But if these people will not 
 accede to these reasonable demands, they must be made 
 to feel the miseries of war under the direction of that hu- 
 manity which has hitherto distinguished Americans, and 
 which it is expected you will consider as the rule of 
 
132 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 your conduct, and from which you are in no instance to 
 depart." 
 
 Two weeks later, — Bancroft is mistaken in saying two 
 days, — Clark left Williamsburg, and after many discourage- 
 ments in the enlistment of men, finally set sail down the 
 river with one hundred and fifty followers. Their immediate 
 destination was the Falls of the Ohio, opposite the site of 
 Louisville. Here Clark hoped to meet Captain Smith with 
 at least two hundred men. He was disappointed. Clark 
 thought the reason of this failure lay in the machinations of 
 many who, being personally hostile to him, went about dis- 
 suading men from enUsting under him. The true reason 
 was perhaps that they did not care to enlist in any service 
 the real purpose of which was unknown. Back of this rea- 
 son, or that assigned by Clark, was a prevailing indifference 
 on the part of isolated frontiersmen to general or national 
 interests, caused not so much by a lack of patriotism as by 
 the stern necessity of daily provision for the support and 
 protection of their families and firesides. 
 
 On Corn Island, then, at the Falls of the Ohio, the small 
 force, not more than two hundred in all, was rested and 
 drilled. Here the object of the expedition was disclosed. 
 Whereupon one company, having no stomach for untried 
 perils, ingloriously deserted ; some got away ; some were 
 caught, brought back, and compelled to serve. 
 
 On June 26, 1778, the small but brave and hardy band of 
 one hundred and seventy men left the Island and rowed 
 down to Old Fort Massac, forty miles from the river's 
 mouth ; here they concealed their boats and began a march 
 of one hundred miles across the country to Kaskaskia. When 
 half the distance was covered, the guide lost his way in the 
 level "meadow," as Clark calls it. Says Clark: "I could 
 
GEORGE ROGERS CLARK. I 33 
 
 not bear the thoughts of returning ; in short every idea of 
 the sort put me in that passion that I did not master it for 
 some time ; but in a short time after our circumstances had 
 a better appearance, for I was in a moment determined to 
 put the guide to death if he did not find his way that even- 
 ing. I told him his doom ; the poor fellow, scared almost 
 out of his wits, begged that I would stay awhile where I was 
 and suffer him to go and make some discovery of a road 
 that could not be far from us, which I would not suffer him 
 to do for fear of not seeing him again, but ordered him to 
 lead on the party, that his fate depended upon his success ; 
 after some little pause he begged that I would not be hard 
 with him, that he could find the path that evening. He 
 accordingly took his course and within two hours got within 
 his knowledge." 
 
 On the evening of July 4th this small party came within 
 sight of Kaskaskia, — the goal of its journey. How to cross 
 the river which ran between them and the town, and how to 
 do this and not arouse the inhabitants, were the questions. 
 Some of the older accounts have asserted that there was a 
 fort named Fort Gage on the east side of the river, and that 
 Clark divided his force into three companies, keeping one 
 on the east bank to take and occupy the fort, while the 
 other two crossed the river and attacked the town. Clark's 
 own record shows nothing of this ; and Dr. W. F. Poole in 
 his recently published papers proves, as it seems to me, that 
 there was then no such fort on the bluffs opposite the town. 
 
 In a letter dated June 27, 1779, nearly a year after the 
 capture by Clark, Major de Peyster says to General Haldi- 
 mand : " The Kaskaskias is no ways fortified. The fort is 
 still a sorry pinchetted enclosure round the Jesuits' Colledge 
 with two plank houses at opposite Angles," — a statement 
 
134 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 which determines beyond a doubt the position of the fort 
 inside the village of Kaskaskia, and is besides good evidence 
 that there was no other fort about. 
 
 Having then secured a farm-house and its people, and 
 made a levy on the farmer's boats, Clark soon crossed the 
 river with his little army, found the village unsuspicious of his 
 arrival and hence utterly unprepared for resistance. Clark 
 divided his men into two bands, — with one he surrounded 
 the village ; with the other attacked and captured the fort 
 and got possession of the governor, a certain Frenchman 
 in the English service, by name Rocheblave. In fifteen 
 minutes the fort was secured and runners sent through the 
 town warning the people to keep within doors on " pane " 
 of death. Before daylight the town was disarmed and the 
 people thoroughly convinced that they were helpless in the 
 power of an enemy that was likely to lead them to execution 
 on the dawning morrow. Their terror was increased by a 
 clever trick of Clark, who ordered his men to howl through 
 the now deserted streets as if they were wild savages. This 
 was only a ruse, for in truth the American conqueror had no 
 more relish for the shedding of their blood than had the poor 
 Frenchmen themselves. His advantage lay in attaching 
 these people to himself and to the American cause. 
 
 In the morning a delegation of old men, headed by the 
 parish priest, waited upon Clark and asked permission to hold 
 one more service in their little church. The request was 
 granted, and the people turned out to a service that must 
 have seemed almost like a requiem Mass, so certain were 
 they of the cruelty of their new master and of their own 
 swift destruction. 
 
 Clark finally called the principal men of the town to meet 
 him. ''They came in," he says, "as if to a tribunal that 
 
GEORGE ROGERS CLARK. I 35 
 
 was to determine their fate forever, cursing their fortune that 
 they were not apprised of us time enough to have defended 
 themselves." Clark explained that the expedition was an 
 attempt to bring the country under American control, and so 
 to protect the innocent inhabitants from slaughter by the 
 savages under British domination. He said that would they 
 give assurance of their allegiance to the American cause, 
 they should immediately enjoy all the privileges of American 
 citizens. '' No sooner had they heard this than joy sparkled 
 in their eyes, and they fell into transports of joy that really 
 surprised me, — they should be happy of an opportunity to 
 convince me of their zeal, think themselves the happiest 
 people in the world if they were united to the Americans." 
 
 Thus by this zeal, and that of a brave man and skilful 
 leader, was the American flag raised in an enemy's territory 
 without the shedding of blood ; again the people went up to 
 the house of the Lord, now to celebrate a festival of joy. 
 This was the first time that the American flag had been raised 
 in what is now the State of Illinois. From that day to this 
 the national emblem has floated over this fair State ; God 
 grant it may never be lowered. The reason for Clark's easy 
 victory is not far to seek. At best the attachment of the 
 French habitants to ruling England was slight, a matter of 
 circumstance, not of principle or feeling. It was, therefore, 
 an easy matter to convince the simple villagers that their 
 real interests lay with America rather than England. The 
 strongest argument that could be found was at hand. Across 
 the ocean that country to which these people were united 
 by the strong ties of kinship, customs, and religion had just 
 concluded a treaty of closest friendship with the struggling 
 nation whose servant Clark had the honor to be. The 
 diplomatic Clark did not fail to urge upon the villagers the 
 
136 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 action of France as good reason why they should close at 
 once with tlie friendly offers of the American people. 
 
 Kaskaskia was the French capital of this region, and its 
 most important town. It was a good base of operations for 
 Clark's further work. From Kaskaskia to Cahokia, or, as 
 Clark calls it, " Cohos," was an easy step. Major Bowman 
 and a party of men mounted on horses that must have been 
 furnished by the villagers, — since Clark brought none with 
 him, — set out for Cahokia. Several Frenchmen were of the 
 number, and these upon entering the town called out to the 
 people " to submit to their happier fate ; which they did 
 with very little hesitation." In a few days all the inhabitants 
 in the vicinity had taken the prescribed oath of allegiance, 
 and " seemed to be very happy," Clark adds ; correspondence 
 of a friendly nature was begun with the Spanish governor at 
 St. Louis, and all things bid fair for a continued success in 
 the prosecution of his great plans. From an unusual source, 
 aid came to Clark. To the village priest, Pere Gibault, is 
 largely due the credit for the next victory achieved. Clark 
 was in no condition to make an advance on Vincennes, or 
 Post St. Vincent, as he calls it ; but Vincennes must be cap- 
 tured. The priest, willing to save the lives of his spiritual 
 flock, and evidently not unwilling to assist in the good work 
 of releasing these people from British control, offered to go 
 to Vincennes and gain his friends there to the American 
 cause. Clark was quick to take advantage of favoring for- 
 tune, and he gladly accepted the proffered assistance of this 
 man who, he says, " gave me to understand, that although 
 he had nothing to do with temporal business, he would 
 give them such hints in the spiritual way, that would be very 
 conducive to the business." After a few weeks the priest 
 returned, having accomplished his errand and made the 
 
GEORGE ROGERS CLARK. I 37 
 
 Americans masters of another important town and its sur- 
 rounding territory. In praising Clark we should not forget 
 that to a priest of the Mother Church the United States 
 is largely indebted for its possession of the Northwest 
 Territory. 
 
 Clark was now master of an immense territory ; already, at 
 the age of twenty-seven, he had displayed the sagacity of a 
 veteran general, and had won a stupendous military advantage 
 without the loss of a single life. 
 
 A new difficulty now presented itself to our indomitable 
 hero : the time of service of many of his men had expired, 
 and they wished to return home. He succeeded in re-en- 
 listing about one hundred of them, and to avoid the appear- 
 ance of helplessness, he gave orders to the rest to go back to 
 Virginia as a guard to his chief prisoner, Governor Roche- 
 blave, who in contrast to the people whom he was sent to 
 govern, refused to acknowledge or to treat with the Americans. 
 ** At the urgent request " of the French, Clark remained with 
 the four companies whose quota of men was soon filled by 
 the French volunteers. Clark's position seemed almost des- 
 perate ; separated by a great distance from the possibility of 
 military succor, a wilderness behind him, furious savages all 
 about him, with the frail support of one hundred American 
 soldiers and a like number of French volunteers, and the 
 weaker aid of a timid and ignorant French population, he 
 never faltered, but laid his plans for a council of Indians and 
 for an attack upon Detroit. 
 
 The policy of the British had been to stir up the Indians 
 to cruelty against the " Rebels." In a letter to General 
 Haldimand, written soon after the capture of Kaskaskia and 
 Cahokia, Lieutenant-Governor Hamilton says that, by smooth 
 speeches and presents of rum, the Delawares, Ottawas, 
 
138 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 Illinois, and others had been urged to strike at the American 
 posts on the Kentucky. At a council held eight days later, 
 of which a full account is given, the savages swore their aid 
 against Clark and his followers. In a letter written by Major 
 Bowman to Colonel Hite, July 30, 1778, instructions from 
 Quebec and Detroit are quoted urging Rocheblave to use 
 every effort to set the Indians upon the whites, and thirty 
 days after the fall of Kaskaskia a plaintive appeal goes up 
 from Lieutenant-Governor Hamilton to General Carleton for 
 means, to support the Wabash Indians, " who," as he said, 
 " are the only barrier at present against the inroads of the 
 Rebels." No man recognized more clearly than Clark the 
 need of securing the friendly alliance of the Indians, and 
 none had more cleverness in treating with them. Therefore, 
 while the Indians were not yet recovered from their aston- 
 ishment at his sudden appearance and success, Clark called 
 them to a council at Cahokia. With some of his forces at 
 Vincennes under Captain Helm, with others at Kaskaskia, 
 and a few near him at Cahokia under Major Bowman, this 
 brave man, knowing it must be weeks, possibly months, be- 
 fore aid could come from Virginia, sat down to meet the 
 representatives of a dozen Indian tribes. The Kaskaskias, 
 Peorians, and Michigans immediately asked for peace. The 
 treaty was made after a speech which Clark says had greater 
 effect than he could have imagined, and did more service 
 than a regiment of men. From all the region the Indians 
 flocked to Cahokia. One tribe attempted foul play, but 
 were so thoroughly frightened at the quick knowledge of 
 their design and speedy arrest of their purpose, that on their 
 knees the proud Red Men begged the pale face's pardon, and 
 promised friendship. It is a dramatic picture, one slight, 
 boyish man, backed by a handful of his own sort, facing fear- 
 
GEORGE ROGERS CLARK. I 39 
 
 lessly the savage bands, exposing with unsparing tongue the 
 treachery of those who had attempted his murder, holding 
 up before them the bloody war belt and the belt of peace, 
 offering the choice to all the tribes except to the one he had 
 found false, daring them to take the war belt, and even when 
 they chose the belt of peace delaying the making of treaty 
 till it should suit his supreme pleasure. Peace was Clark's 
 only salvation, he could not have fought a week against the 
 overwhelming number of savages ; yet so cleverly did he 
 manage the negotiations that they sought peace, and humbly 
 submitted to a man who apparently preferred to fight them. 
 They were petitioners, he the benign master ; they the con- 
 quered, he the conqueror. How did this young man have 
 such wisdom ? Like Washington, bom a Virginian and trained 
 a surveyor, his youth was familiar with the study of human 
 nature, as illustrated in a developing country. As com- 
 mander of a company in Dunsmore's War, he had led the 
 right wing in the advance against the savages, and had there 
 become familiar with their mode of warfare and their char- 
 acter. From this he had turned to hfe on the Kentucky 
 frontier, where the events of every day tended to sharpen his 
 wits, to make him prudent, cautious, and self-controlled. In 
 such a school, aided by fearless courage, extraordinary 
 sagacity, was Clark fitted to meet and master the Indians of 
 the Mississippi Valley. In five weeks he had made peace 
 with ten or twelve tribes and, "much fatigued," returned 
 to Kaskaskia, leaving Bowman in command at Cahokia. 
 Though weary, Clark had no rest. In a short time he had 
 disciplined his troops (including the raw French recruits who, 
 as I have said, had volunteered their services) , kept spies at 
 Detroit, sent off a party to capture Ouatinon, — now Lafay- 
 ette, — secured this post together with forty prisoners and 
 
140 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 some stores, and so had gained complete control of the 
 Wabash River. 
 
 Meanwhile the English, who writhed under the continued 
 success of a handful of backwoodsmen and were chagrined 
 at the loss of four important posts, were not idle. Urged on 
 by the Quebec authorities, and by his keen sense of disgrace 
 at so easily letting slip the control of the Mississippi and 
 Wabash Valleys, Governor Hamilton, soon as word came to 
 Detroit of the British losses, took steps toward the recovery 
 of the lost ground. In much haste a large force was 
 equipped for an expedition against Clark. Everything ex- 
 cept the weakness of Detroit seemed to favor the British. 
 Detroit was almost defenceless in case of attack. From a 
 letter written shortly after Hamilton's departure we learn 
 that there was a population of 2144, of whom only 564 were 
 able-bodied men, — a small military force, — and the com- 
 plaint was often made that the people would not lend a hand. 
 The allowance of flour was short, thirty thousand pounds, 
 and the necessity of help so great that " unless it is sent the 
 consequence may be fatal." Barring this danger, Hamilton 
 spoke with reasonable ground for his courage when he wrote, 
 three days before setting out : " The Spaniards are feeble 
 and hated by the French ; the French are fickle and have 
 no men of capacity to advise or lead them ; the Rebels are 
 enterprising but want resources ; and the Indians can have . 
 their resources but from the English, if we act without loss 
 of time in this favorable juncture." The expedition, number- 
 ing four hundred whites and Indians, begun under auspices 
 apparently so favorable, and with so much hope on the part 
 of the leader, had an ignominious end. Reaching Vin- 
 cennes after a hard journey they demanded its surrender. 
 ** On what terms? " asked the valiant commander, standing 
 
GEORGE ROGERS CLARK. 141 
 
 with a lighted fuse by the breech of the loaded cannon. 
 " You shall have the honors of war," was the reply. The 
 fort surrendered, and Captain Helm and his garrison of one 
 soldier marched out in possession of their arms and their 
 colors flying. And this was all. While Clark was absent in 
 Cahokia an English force was sent to Kaskaskia to recon- 
 noitre, and to capture Clark if possible. He hurried back to 
 his post, decided to burn a part of the town near the fort, 
 and so defend the people there through a siege which he 
 anticipated would last four or five weeks. His position was 
 desperate, he says. When the people saw the town burning 
 and their supplies in danger of destruction, they quickly 
 brought them to the fort, and soon it was stocked with pro- 
 visions ample for six months. Spies sent out by Clark 
 brought back word that the attacking party had been fright- 
 ened away and had gone home empty handed. The Ameri- 
 can flag was still unfurled over the little picketed enclosure 
 near the Jesuits' college. 
 
 Pleased by this, Clark was yet more encouraged by the 
 news brought from Vincennes by Colonel Francis Vigo, a 
 Spanish merchant who was friendly to the American cause. 
 Colonel Vigo had been to Vincennes, possibly sent as a spy 
 by Clark, and while there was arrested by the British com- 
 mandant. He was, however, released on condition that he 
 would '' do nothing injurious to British interests on his way 
 to St. Louis." This promise he kept, but on reaching St. 
 Louis he immediately re-embarked for Kaskaskia, lent Clark, 
 so it is said on rather doubtful authority, twelve thousand 
 dollars, a large sum for those days, and gave him information 
 concerning Hamilton's position. Hamilton's force had been 
 greatly reduced by sending out exploring and marauding 
 parties, and they were entirely careless of danger, thinking it 
 
142 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 impossible that they should be attacked in mid-winter. Un- 
 less prompt action should be taken, the Illinois country- 
 would soon be again under English rule. Clark must either 
 take Hamilton, or be taken by him. Therefore, Clark 
 resolved upon an undertaking which was more hazardous 
 and difficult than the first attack on Kaskaskia. He decided, 
 notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather, to attack 
 Hamilton at once. A boat was sent around by the water 
 way. This carried, besides provisions, two four-pounders, 
 four swivel guns, and a small company of men under Lieu- 
 tenant Rogers. The next morning, having received absolu- 
 tion from the priest, who accompanied them to the edge of 
 the town and gave them a parting blessing, four companies, 
 two of volunteers, and two of American troops, numbering 
 barely two hundred, set out for a march of two hundred and 
 forty miles across a roadless prairie, made nearly impassable 
 by swollen rivers. Three days were occupied in crossing the 
 Little Wabash. For five miles, in the stormy February 
 weather, they were obliged to walk in water three feet deep. 
 '* This would have been enough to have stopped any set of 
 men that was not in the same temper that we were," says 
 the commander. In the evening of the 17th of February 
 they halted ten miles from Vincennes, — ten miles, nearly 
 every foot of which was under water. They encamped on 
 a little rise of ground, with water all around. The agony of 
 the days from the i8th to the 24th cannot be told here. 
 Four men sent out to steal boats lay all night in the water, 
 clinging to logs to keep themselves from drowning. The 
 18th and the 19th no provisions, and the boat with supplies 
 not yet in sight. On the 20th a deer was shot and furnished, 
 — what a repast for two hundred men. On the 21st it 
 rained all day ; the water was getting higher and still nothing 
 
GEORGE ROGERS CLARK. 
 
 143 
 
 to eat. For a league they marched through water up to the 
 neck. The next day, the 23d, the weak ones were pushed 
 along in canoes, while those stronger marched on in the 
 water. That night they spent in a sugar camp, and then 
 marched on through a plain four miles wide covered with 
 water. There was no way but this, and when the men 
 looked across the four miles of dreary wading, they were 
 almost ready to give up and go back. But Clark placed his 
 little drummer on the shoulders of a stalwart sergeant and 
 sword in hand stepped first into the water ; by his side was 
 the sergeant bearing the drummer boy. Animated by such 
 courage the men with cheers followed at the word, and 
 pushing aside the floating ice came at last to a little hill near 
 the town. Here they halted about noon, took captive a 
 duck hunter, and sent by him word to the townspeople 
 warning them to keep within their houses. Here is the 
 letter sent by a starving man to the town he hopes to 
 capture : — 
 
 To the Inhabitants of Post St. Vincents : 
 
 Gentlemen, — Being now within two miles of your village 
 with my army, determined to take your Fort this night, and not 
 being willing to supprise you, I take this method to request 
 such of you as are true citizens and willing to enjoy the liberty 
 I bring you, to remain still in your houses. And those, if any 
 there be, that are friends to the king will instantly prepare to 
 leave the post and join the hair-buyer General and fight like 
 men. And if any such as do not go to the Fort shall be dis- 
 covered afterward, they may depend on severe punishment. 
 On the contrary, those that are true friends of liberty may 
 depend on being well treated, and I once more request them to 
 keep out of the streets ; for every one I find in arms on my 
 arrival I shall treat as an enemy. 
 
 [Signed] Geo. R. Clark. 
 
144 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 At sundown he marched on the town. The British were 
 taken completely by surprise ; for no sane man could suppose 
 that a force had marched through the water from Kaskaskia. 
 So incredulous were the occupants of the fort, that even 
 after firing began they thought for a time that it was the 
 work of drunken Indians. But they were no drunken sav- 
 ages that had taken possession of the town, surrounded the 
 fort, thrown up an intrenchment, used houses for barricades, 
 captured a band of troops returning from a reconnoisance, 
 and now kept up a constant fire throughout the night, 
 wounding inany in the fort but losing not a single man. At 
 eight o'clock on the morning of the 24th, Clark sent forward 
 a flag of truce with a proposition to General Hamilton for 
 surrender; firing ceased, and while negotiations were in 
 progress the unflinching heroes got their breakfast, — the 
 first full meal in six days. After some correspondence, in 
 the last of which Hamilton sneeringly said that he and his 
 garrison were not disposed to be awed into an action un- 
 worthy of British subjects, the battle began again. Even 
 British regulars and their savage allies were no match for 
 backwoodsmen who could walk in water for six days without 
 their rations, and soon another flag of truce appeared from 
 the fort, and a request was made for a three days' cessation 
 of hostilities. Clark's answer deserves a place beside that 
 of Grant to General Buckner in Fort Donelson : " Colonel 
 Clark's compliments to General Hamilton, and begs to in- 
 form him that he will not agree to any other terms than that 
 of Mr. Hamilton's surrendering himself and garrison pris- 
 oners at discretion." The fort was surrendered uncondi- 
 tionally, and all the occupants became prisoners of war. 
 Hamilton spent the night following in the arrangement of his 
 papers, " while," as he says, " mortification, disappointment, 
 
GEORGE ROGERS CLARK. 
 
 145 
 
 and indignation had their turn." Clark and his men spent 
 the night in rest. Well deserved it was. After twenty days 
 of toil, bitter chilling water below and falling from above, 
 hunger, and discouragement, they could rest happy in the 
 sense of duty well performed, and victory grandly won. At 
 ten o'clock Hamilton and his men marched out of the fort. 
 Clark and his band marched in, and again the American flag 
 floated over the stronghold of the Wabash, and an American 
 force once more held possession of the eastern half of the 
 Mississippi Valley. 
 
 Clark had no commission from Congress, but held one 
 from the Commonwealth of Virginia. With rare determina- 
 tion, and as rare military sagacity, he had boldly struck out 
 into an unknown wilderness to take and hold for Virginia 
 and the Union the fairest portion of our country. Virginia 
 accepted the gift of her heroic son, and in October following 
 the capture of Kaskaskia all the territory lying north and 
 west of the Ohio River was made a county of the " Old 
 Dominion," under the name of Illinois. Thus made a part 
 of the State, it was freed from the English yoke, and freed 
 from the danger of Spanish possession. 
 
 When Vincennes was captured, the way lay open to De- 
 troit. Hamilton had left Detroit with equipment that was 
 generous for those days. Ten bateaux laden with supplies 
 for the British and Indians, while coming down the Wabash 
 River, were captured by a party of men whom Clark had sent 
 from Vincennes for that purpose. All eyes looked toward 
 Detroit. The British there felt the danger. Lenault, the 
 commandant, although he had 17,520 gallons of rum to 
 help keep the Indians friendly, — the usual amount was ten 
 thousand per year, — still wrote to his superior ofiRcer : "This 
 most unlucky shake, with the approach of so large a body of 
 
146 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 Virginians advancing toward St. Duskie, has greatly damped 
 the ardour of Indians." He complained that the Canadians 
 were rebels almost to a man, and the town ill-prepared for 
 an assault. The anticipated assault never came. Clark 
 waited for reinforcements from Kentucky under Major — 
 now Colonel — Bowman, which were to meet him at Vm- 
 cennes on the 20th of June. In May, Colonel Montgomery 
 arrived at Kaskaskia with less than half the number of men 
 promised. Notwithstanding his disappointment and morti- 
 fication, Clark decided to go back to Vincennes and wait 
 there till the time agreed for further troops, and then march 
 upon Detroit. Reinforcements did not come, and from 
 month to month the advance on Detroit was postponed. 
 Clark chafed under this policy. Three years before, Con- 
 gress had advised the capture of Detroit ; Washington had 
 carefully considered it and believed it a possible and advan- 
 tageous move, and had twice advised immediate action. A 
 Virginian had captured the Illinois, and Virginia, proudly 
 announcing this fact to Congress, urged pushing on to De- 
 troit. Governor Henry, in his letter to Congress, dated 
 November 14, 1778, said: "Colonel Clark's success has 
 equalled the most sanguine expectations ; he has not only 
 reduced Fort Chartres and its dependencies, but has struck 
 such a terror into the Indian tribes between the settlements 
 and the lakes that no less than five of them have bound 
 themselves by treaties and promises to be peaceful in the 
 future." This letter closes with the recommendation noted 
 above. 
 
 Now, in 1779, with Clark master of the "Illinois," it 
 seemed that the time was ripe. Clark himself was eager to 
 set the crown upon his work by the seizure of the city be- 
 tween two lakes. With consummate skill he won to his side 
 
GEORGE ROGERS CLARK. 
 
 147 
 
 SO many of the Indian tribes that he had a clear passage-way 
 through friendly nations from Vincennes to Detroit. Un- 
 aided by the general government or by the state troops, 
 however, he could not begin so important and hazardous an 
 undertaking. Detroit, therefore, remained British not only 
 until the end of the war, but until fourteen years after the 
 war had closed, when England reluctantly withdrew her 
 troops. Clark sorrowfully cries, " Detroit lost for a few 
 hundred men ! " Had he won Detroit he would have con- 
 quered and held the whole Northwest. Unable to attack 
 Detroit, he left the British free to push their forces down to 
 the Ohio River and so continually harass the American 
 settlers. The chief of several similar expeditions occurred 
 in 1780, under Captain Bird, who left Detroit in May with 
 one hundred and fifty whites and one thousand Indians. 
 They were hardly successful. Only two small towns were 
 ravaged, and the attacking party straggled back to the Cana- 
 dian town on the lake. Clark's swift vengeance upon their 
 Indian allies brought peace and quiet during the next year 
 to the white settlers. Just after the successful retaliation, 
 Jefferson, then Governor of Virginia, again urged upon 
 Washington the importance of helping Clark advance upon 
 Detroit. Finally, upon December 29, 17S0, orders were 
 issued by Washington to General Brodhead, the commander 
 at Port Pitt, directing him to equip Clark with men and 
 supplies, and send him to Detroit. But Clark, weary at the 
 long delay, had already gone to protect his own state against 
 the English invasions, and the opportunity was lost. 
 
 Here Clark sinks from notice. The remaining story of his 
 life is told in few words. He built on the Mississippi River a 
 fort known as Fort Jefferson ; he fought under Baron Steu- 
 ben against Benedict Arnold ; he led the expedition against 
 
148 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 the Indian towns on the Miami and Scioto, where, in 1 782, the 
 Red Men were so thoroughly frightened that never again did 
 they attack the Kentucky settlements ; he accepted, at the 
 hands of the notorious French Minister Genet, a commission 
 as general in the army of France, and acting on strength of 
 this, organized a force to march against the Spanish posses- 
 sions on the lower Mississippi. The terrors of the French 
 Revolution made conquest in the New World impossible, 
 and the expedition never set forth. Clark's glorious military 
 career was thus ingloriously terminated at the age of twenty- 
 nine. His services were recognized by Virginia in a gift of 
 land and the founding of a town which took his name. 
 
 But once again does our hero come into public notice. 
 The Commonwealth of Virginia sent him, at the hands of a 
 committee, a sword as a token of her appreciation of his 
 military service. Clark had bitterly felt his poverty and 
 obscurity, which was due, he thought, to the ingratitude of 
 the state. When the speech of presentation was ended, 
 Clark received the sword and exclaimed : " When Virginia 
 needed a sword I gave her one. She sends me now a toy. 
 I want bread." In scorn he broke the handsome gift and 
 dismissed the committee. He died at Louisville, and there 
 he is buried. 
 
 His life is of interest because of one great deed. In some 
 ways an ordinary man, untaught, unlettered, evidently on 
 his own showing brutal at times, careless of truth, egotistical 
 and domineering, he had a noble purpose, heroism, unflinch- 
 ing courage, a military spirit that made him quick to see an 
 enemy's weakness and quick to take advantage thereof; 
 above all, a comprehension of the nation's possibilities in 
 material growth and territorial expansion that allies him with 
 the true statesman, and a patriotism so enthusiastic and 
 
GEORGE ROGERS CLARK. 1 49 
 
 effective that it ennobles him in the mind of every American. 
 It is well to turn back across the century that has passed 
 over these fertile and now populous prairies, and consider 
 the trial and danger, the sacrifice and hardship, the heroism 
 and devotion, that were the price of our rich heritage, that 
 always were and always will be the price of liberty. 
 
 By the shrewd and daring spirit of one man, the five great 
 Northwestern States were saved to American progressive 
 spirit ; by the far-seeing wisdom of another, nine years later, 
 that territory won by heroic service was dedicated and for- 
 ever set apart to the God-given doctrines of freedom and 
 the brotherhood of man. Rarely do such stupendous re- 
 sults hang upon the deeds of one or two. In the eternal 
 providence of God it was given to a Kentucky frontiersman 
 to enlarge the bounds of a struggling people, and so extend 
 the influence of Puritan Plymouth to the Father of Waters 
 and the Golden Gate, and in a nobler day set this nation 
 " enthroned between her subject seas." 
 
MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS. 
 
 F7'om a Synopsis of a Paper on " Reading of Young People^'' 
 read by Mr, Ray before the Hyde Park Lyceum, in the 
 wi?iter of i2>2>']-2>%. 
 
 " T F a course of fiction is recommended to A., who is a 
 
 X hard-headed despiser of everything that is n't practical 
 and materia], it does n't follow that the same advice should 
 be given to B., who is a sentimental, romantic, sesthetic 
 maiden of eighteen to twenty summers." 
 
 " By a strange mental paradox the boy reaching manhood 
 outgrows the penny whistle and toy balloon, but does not 
 always outgrow a foolish enjoyment in books that are below 
 him and which minister only to his lower, perhaps even his 
 baser, nature. He dwarfs his intellectual growth who reads 
 down, not up." 
 
 " Amusement is necessary but not all-satisfying ; informa- 
 tion is useful only to that mind that is capable of applying it 
 to the highest needs of its daily life ; the real purpose of 
 reading is the training and culture of the mind. Mere 
 scholarship is useless, and a dreary thing." 
 
 " We find our real possessions not in broad acres and 
 corner lots, but in thoughts and feelings of which no adverse 
 fortune can deprive us, whose value no prosperity can greatly 
 enhance or calamity depreciate." 
 
MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS. I5I 
 
 " Shakspeare's Shylock is much more real to me than the 
 Jew Spinoza. Dickens's sweet and strong Agnes has influ- 
 enced my Hfe more than any woman of history, and George 
 Eh'ot's selfish and pleasure-loving Tito Melema is of more 
 vital interest to me than any one of the Medici with whom 
 Tito is made contemporary." 
 
 "The influx of current literature endangers purposeful 
 reading. Every morning twenty to forty columns of closely 
 printed reading matter is hurled at my front door, and to 
 many the temptation is by no means small to make the read- 
 ing of the daily paper take the place of all other literary 
 occupation." 
 
 " We read more than our fathers, but I don't think we are 
 much wiser. We read more and think less." 
 
 " Hasty reading means for most of us careless reading, 
 and I cannot agree with even so eminent an authority as Mr. 
 Lowell in thinking that any reading is better than none. 
 Reading is useless unless it begets thought. After one 
 has read a book or a chapter, nothing will more surely fix 
 it in his mind than to put into a few simple statements 
 the leading ideas of his author. The reading of hours may 
 often be condensed into half a dozen easily remembered 
 propositions." 
 
 " Read with reverence and love. This is quite possible if 
 we read only what is best." 
 
 "The worship of books that was so often seen among 
 scholars before the days of printing, had some reason in it, 
 and our boasted progress has left behind one good, in making 
 books so common that they attract no particular attention 
 from most folk. The fathers communed with noble souls. 
 We, in our careless reading, are more like serving-maids 
 who chatter with the milk-man at the curb and the cook 
 
152 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 in the kitchen, but are awed into a stupid silence in the 
 presence of the master-spirit." 
 
 " Books begin to be of the greatest service to us when we 
 have re-read them a few times." 
 
 " All books must be put in two classes, good and bad ; 
 there is no middle ground. The surest test of the goodness 
 or badness of a book is in ourselves, — the feeling with which 
 we leave it. If it has made us less religious, less sympa- 
 thetic, less fond of simplicity, less humble, less contented 
 with the lot which Providence has given us ; if it has weak- 
 ened our faith in God and man, made us sneering and cyni- 
 cal \ if it has excited unclean thoughts, — the book is bad. 
 If it has made us less selfish and less conceited, more child- 
 like in faith, more God-like in action, more willing to work 
 and fonder of honest fun ; if it has given us high purpose of 
 living and thinking, — it is good and safe. If it does n't do 
 all this, keep away from it." 
 
 From a Paper on " How shall our Academies and Seminaries 
 be Strengthened 1 " 
 
 " Civilization and culture are not the same things, however 
 constantly and persistently they are confounded. To civi- 
 lization belong the railroads, the telegraphs, the printing- 
 press, the loom, the industrial arts. To culture belong the 
 inner life of men, the soul, the divine. Ours is an age of 
 civilization, not of culture." 
 
 " The dignity of labor is not in kind, mental or manual, 
 but in spirit." 
 
 " If we would train our pupils to do the best work, whether 
 in the quiet seclusion of the library or the busy highways of 
 the world, we must impress upon them the spirit of moral 
 
MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS. 
 
 153 
 
 integrity, of Christ-like manhood and womanhood, of loving 
 sacrifice." 
 
 " It is as truly the duty of the school to develope the heart 
 and the conscience as the brain." 
 
 " All external appliances and internal methods fall flat 
 without the teacher's aid and direct agency. To us belongs 
 the work, upon us devolves the duty of strengthening the 
 schools in our charge, whether it be in the university or the 
 primary department." 
 
 " It is too much to expect of us that we be possessed of 
 ever ready tact, of endless patience, of the wisdom of the 
 ages ; but it is not too much to demand untiring zeal, fresh 
 enthusiasm, undaunted perseverance, thorough scholarship, 
 broad culture, moral purity, Christian consecration. If we 
 murmur, there come to us the words of the great Indian 
 teacher Guatama, — 
 
 ** * What good gift have my brothers, but it came 
 From search and strife and loving sacrifice ? ' " 
 
OUTLINE 
 
 PREPARED FOR USE IN A CLASS-TALK ON 
 "HOW TO STUDY." 
 
 I. How TO Study. 
 A. Objectively. 
 
 I. What are you to leam? State your subject definitely 
 to your mind. 
 
 (a) A lesson is to be learned in literature. For instance, 
 the meaning of a term is not known. Go to the dictionary, 
 make it your own, apply it by illustration, etc. 
 
 (d) Or the facts about a certain event are required. Go 
 to the history, look at the index, — no good book without an 
 index now-a-days. 
 
 (<r) A lesson in science. Look at the facts ; test each 
 by your personal experience. What conclusions are to be 
 drawn from each? Can you see them? 
 
 One reason why you don't learn things better is a lack of 
 purpose, or not knowing what. 
 
 (d) In Latin or Greek. 
 
 The thought, what is the author talking about? Can you 
 thmk what he is likely to say? Where is the subject and 
 predicate ? Is a noun in the genitive case the subject? 
 Have you seen the word before ? Does it suggest anything 
 to your mind ? 
 
 B. Subjectively. 
 
 The aim of education is two-fold, — discipline and knowl- 
 edge. Discipline should accomplish powers of concentra- 
 tion, perception, reasoning, and retention. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS. 1 55 
 
 Knowledge though small must be exact. The world has 
 no place for guessers. (A man tells me a story of a visit to 
 a California ranch, 1200-3200 sheep, etc.) 
 
 1. Concentration absolutely necessary. (Two monks 
 and the Lord's Prayer. "Pater noster, qui es in ccelus, 
 sanctificatur nomen tuum.") Nothing you can get out 
 of school will be half so much help to you. Great men 
 have it. (Archimedes at the capture of Syracuse. Sir 
 Isaac Newton — patient work — Horace Greeley.) It is 
 the only power that makes things go, and brings about 
 results. 
 
 To study a minute, then look at somebody, go to the 
 library, now to the reference table, is absolutely ruinous. If 
 you can't get power from school life, you might as well quit. 
 To acquire this, — 
 
 {a) Exercise the will. 
 
 {f) Be methodical as to subject, time, and place. 
 
 {c) Be independent. 
 
 (Betsy Bobbitt and the clinging kind.) 
 
 2. Learn to see differences. (The claws of a cat. How 
 does a horse get up and he down ? A cow ? ) 
 
 Mistakes in translation : second person, singular, future, in- 
 dicative, active, and second person singular, present, subjunc- 
 tive active of third conjugation may change a whole sentence. 
 Most of your mistakes are of this sort, a lack of precision. 
 It 's pretty nearly hopeless for a boy who gets up in class 
 and stumbles round in English, and finally sits down saying, 
 " I know, but can't tell it," to see the beauty and precision 
 of an inflected language that expresses nearly all relations 
 and ideas by the change of a letter or syllable at the end of 
 a word. (Thing, of Uppingham, tells the story of Turner 
 throwing pebbles into the water all day.) 
 
156 APPENDIX: SELECTED WRITINGS. 
 
 Perception of the ear as well as the eye. Why don't you 
 know whether a question is correctly answered, when you 
 could have answered it yourself? For the same reason that 
 twenty-five people get on the wrong train at Randolph or 
 Van Buren Street stations though the train men, with voices 
 loud enough to wake the seven sleepers, tell people that this 
 train goes to Kensington. 
 
 3. Reasoning. 
 
 To go from the known to the unknown. What an idiotic 
 thing to guess at answers about which you really know some- 
 thing or nothing. If you are to explore new fields, you 
 would prefer not to be tumbled into them from a balloon, 
 but come up from land you know, so that you might cover 
 your retreat in case of defeat. (A. Lincoln and geometry.) 
 To concentrate, to sharpen all the wits, to use all the God- 
 given powers, would make lesson-getting a pleasure. 
 
 2. How TO Read. 
 
 To read for a subject, which is much of the reading you 
 do in school : — 
 
 First, find where it is talked about, look down your page, 
 discard everything at a glance of the eye which has no 
 bearing on your subject. You can easily learn to read by 
 sentences, or at least by phrases. You will quickly scent out 
 what belongs to you. Then take your facts by groups. In 
 biography this is easy ; in the record of an event not always 
 so easy. What, where, when, why, results. A phenomenon 
 in science — what is it ? What follows ? 
 
 Then go over it and put it in your note-book. The man 
 without a note-book is lost in a wilderness. The man with 
 a note-book is lost too, unless he takes good care of it. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS. 1 57 
 
 Ninety-nine one-hundredths of the books printed are not 
 for you and me. A few pages may be for our help. Read 
 these and let the rest go. 
 
 3. How TO Remember. 
 
 1. Attend. Put all the power of your mind into what you 
 wish to retain. 
 
 This must be {a) Involuntary — interest. 
 
 {b) Voluntary — strong exercise of the will. 
 
 2. Repeat over and over again until habit comes. 
 
 3. Association — Philosophical memory worth more than 
 circumstantial. Event with event ; phenomenon with phe- 
 nomenon. (Example of Edward Everett.) 
 
 4. Use your knowledge to the utmost every day. Employ 
 all that has gone before. 
 
 (The illustration of the Mississippi River ; the boat, the 
 bank, the light of stars, the company, the toiling up the 
 river, the setting moon, the rising sun.) 
 
 Man's sun sets not. Work the secret of success. 
 
 THE END. 
 
f* LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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