THE
EARLY SAINT LOUIS
MOVEMENT in
Philosophy, Psychology, Literature.
Art and Education

Centennial Appendix
Illustrated

YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

A BRIEF REPORT
t)f the Meeting
Commemorative of the Early
Saint Louis Movement

Philosophy, Psychology, Literature, Art
and Education

E

In Honor of Dr. Denton J. Snider's Eightieth Birthday
Held January 14th and 15th, 1921
At Vandervoort's Music Hall
St. Louis, Missouri

B

D. H. HARRIS
Chairman and General Manager

Introduction
The central location of St. Louis ; its railroad and river
facilities of transportation ; its business enterprise ; its com
mercial importance; its industries; its wealth, all combine to
insure its future growth and prosperity as one of the most im
portant inland cities of America.
But of still greater importance is its leadership in the
trend of modern philosophic thought and the intellectual and
spiritual progress of its people.
Emerson tells of the shot for freedom and independence
that was heard around the world. So in the following pages
is reported that wonderful liberation of spirit and the progress
and advancement of the "St. Louis Early Movement" — in phi
losophy, art, literature, psychology, and education, which was
developed here about forty years ago, and which has had such
a profound influence in St. Louis and throughout the west, and
has spread to the eastern seaboard and become international
in its scope.
Briefly sketched here are the lives and works of Jhe great
men who originated and contributed to what is known as the
"Early St. Louis Movement," notably, William Torrey Harris,
Henry C. Brockmeyer, Denton J. Snider, Thomas Davidson,
Adolph Kroeger, J. Gabriel Woerner and others.
It is regretted that the interest and spirit of the occasion
cannot be adequately reported.
It will be interesting to study these men in their various
tendencies, as the speakers have viewed them from different
standpoints, thus affording us an unique and more general con
sideration of their work and influence.

VV M. T. HARRIS

DENTON J. SNIDER

Index of Contents
Brief Opening Address by D. H. Harris  2
Address of Welcome — Mayor Henry W. Kiel  10
Philosophic Schools — St. Louis, Jacksonville, 111., Concord,
Mass., Chicago, by Louis J. Block  13
The Early St. Louis Movement and The Communal Uni
versity, by Mrs. D. H. Harris  31
Henry C. Brockmeyer, by Mrs. Denton J. Snider (collated
from Dr. Snider's work — The Early St. Louis Movement) 51
Thomas Davidson, by Percival Chubb  59
Adolph Ernst Kroeger and History of Music in St. Louis, by
E. R. Kroeger  69
J. Gabriel Woerner, by Wm. F. Woerner  81
Reflections on The Early Movement, by Francis E. Cook  89
The Influence of The Early Movement on Education, by
W. J. S. Bryan — Substitute  98
The Early Journals, Magazines and Writers of St. Louis, by
Alexander N. De Menil (a brief note)  99
History of Musical Development in St. Louis, by Frank
Geeks   103
The St. Louis Public Library, by Dr. Arthur E. Bostwick  Ill
Copy of a Letter Written to Dr. Snider, by Rev. James
W. Lee  119
Most Remarkable Man, by Rev. James W Lee.:  120
Miss Susan E. Blow and the Kindergarten, by Miss Mary
C. McCulloch  127
The Psychology of Music, by Richard Spamer  137
William Marion Reedy, by A. A. H  14-6
Poem — Dedicated to Dr. Denton J. Snider on his Eightieth
Birthday, Jan. 9th, 1921, by Katharine Higgins Sommers-147
Lincoln's Mother, by Mrs. Katharine Higgins Sommers, in
spired by Dr. Snider's extensive treatise on Lincoln  147
In Memoriam — Miss Amelia C. Fruchte, by Mrs. Adeline
Palmier Wagoner  :  148
A Man for All Ages, by Mrs. Adeline Palmier Wagoner  148
The St. Louis Tercentenary Shakespeare Society, Mrs. Adeline
Palmier Wagoner  149
In Memoriam — Miss Amelia C. Fruchte — Chester B. Curtis....l53
Letters from Friends  .-.  158
Address at the Banquet — G. R. Dodson  159
7

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Page
Wm. T. Harris  3
Denton J. Snider    •.  5
Vandervoort's Music Hall  ,  9
Mayor Henry W Kiel  .,  10
Louis J. Block  11
Hiram K. Jones  21
Mrs. D. H. Harris   29
Wm. G. Eliot  .... 33
Mrs. Rebecca N. Hazard   37
Henry C. Brockmeyer   49
Georg Wilhelm Frederich Hegel    53
Thomas Davidson  57
Percival Chubb  63
Adolph Ernst Kroeger..  67
E. R. Kroeger  „ 71
P G. Anton     75
J. Gabriel W oerner  79
Wm. F. Woerner       83
Francis E. Cook   87
Rev. Dr. R. A. Holland  91
Wm. M. -Bryant  95
Frank Geeks  101
Arthur E. Bostwick  107
Central Public Library...  109
Frederick Morgan Crunden  113
Rev. Dr. James W. Lee  117
Miss Susan E. Blow  123
Des Peres School — First Public School Kindergarten  125
Miss Mary C. McCulloch  131
Richard Spamer  135
William Marion Reedy  145
Miss Amelia C. Fruchte  151
Chester B. Curtis  155
D. H. Harris  161

VANDERVOORT'S MUSIC HALL

A Report of the Early St. Louis Movement
The first session convened at Vandervoort's Music Hall, at '2
P. M. Friday, Jan. 14, 1921, Mr. D. H. Harris, presiding:
He congratulated the audience upon this occasion, stating
that the earl)- movement did not begin with large numbers, as
we may have at this meeting. It had a few great men, but little
known to the world at that time, who were inspired by the im
perative need of checking the rapidly increasing influence of
materialism and agnosticism.
They deeply felt the importance of preserving and utilizing
the great universal works of philosophy and literature, filtered
through generations of the cumulative genius of the human race.
They also felt the need of developing and establishing, in ad
dition to these treasures of thought, new systems that are de
manded as the natural outgrowth of our modern civilization.
He said that it is eminently fitting that on an occasion like
this that we should call upon the highest executive of our city
to give a word of welcome : I, therefore, take great pleasure in
calling upon our Mayor, the Honorable Henry W. Kiel, who
happily responded as follows :

HON. HENRY W. KIEL
Hon. Henry W. Kiel: "I am proud of our great city and it
gives me much pleasure to welcome delegates here. I think
this is an important occasion, and is worthy of the attention and
attendance of all who are interested in the vital subjects here
considered." "It is due to the men and women of the early days who had
the vision to look forward and see our real needs that enables
us and qualifies us to meet and discuss these important sub
jects. From time to time our brainy men and women adopted
certain methods that have been developed into national systems."
"I must congratulate you upon this occasion and I wish to
encourage the people of St. Louis along the particular lines that
are your object and purpose today."
"I wish my time was not so limited. I know you have a
long program, but this is a subject I would like to discuss with
you, indeed, but your chairman has limited me to a few words.
I am glad to be here, and I thank you for the great privilege you
have accorded me." 10

LOUIS J. BLOCK

The Philosophic Schools of St. Louis, Jack
sonville, Concord and Chicago
By Louis J. Block
Mr. -President, ladies and gentlemen : I think every
body who ever makes a speech of any kind finds this difficulty,
that he- discovers that it is next to impossible for him, however
careful he may be and however admirably he may attempt to
speak, to reach the sort of eulogistic introduction with which he
is presented to an audience. I find myself very much in that
difficulty this morning, and now I shall have to live up to a cer
tain standard which my good friend, Mr. David Harris, has
presented. I am here to tell a very plain and simple story, a story that
in my opinion ranks in importance and in intrinsic character with
any similar story that is to be told within the entire range of
time. I am perfectly aware of what I am saying, and if the point
of view may seem to you large and the intimation made rather
extensive, I believe that the facts, spiritual, educational, phi
losophical, will entirely bear me out.
I have made acquaintance with philosophical movements
at different times and in different parts of the world, and al
though I may, as I say, make a statement that seems very large
and may seem difficult to prove, I do not hesitate, however, in
stating that the great movement which occurred in the city of
St. Louis some thirty or forty years ago, and whose leaders and
protagonists were men whom some of us have known inti
mately, Mr. William T. Harris, Mr. Denton J. Snider, Mr.
Thomas Davidson, Mr. Adolph Kroeger, Mr. George H. Howison,
of whom I think I shall have the privilege later of saying a few
words, in importance and in far reaching results, ranks with the
greatest movements of the kind that we can find in all history.
I have often wondered, and I believe that I have ventured
sometimes at a difference of opinion with Mr. Denton J. Snider,
in his naming his last book, "The St. Louis Movement". I may
say I lived the first years of my life here in the city of St. Louis.
I practically began my life here, I think I was two years old
13

when they brought me here, and I lived here until 1 was about
twenty-one. I had the privilege of attending the great public
schools of this city, and afterwards went to Washington Univer
sity where I graduated. So I have nothing in the world against
St. Louis ; St. Louis is as dear to me today as it was in the olden
days when with other boys I wandered along the banks of the
Mississippi River and climbed into the ferry boat and went over
to Venice and the other places on the other side to take a plunge
in its rather murky and somewhat forbidding waters.
I have often wondered why this movement should receive
the limiting name of the "St. Louis Movement" There were
reasons doubtless in the character of the city in those early days
why the ambitious and high minded young men found it desirable
to come to St. Louis, and it was the coming together of men who
were then alive to the deepest interests of the time and to the
deepest interests of all time. They came together in St. Louis,
they formed the group here which worked together. They
developed that system of thought which has illustrated and
which to some of us has made St. Louis a kind of a Mecca, to
which we have looked for enlightment and for illumination in
the dark places which we all find in the progress of our lives.
If one may go back a little and study the history of philoso
phic thought in the United States, one will find, I think, three
somewhat well demarcated divisions in the history. If one were
to write a history of thought in the United States, I think he
probably would discover that he would want to make in that
history, three sections. The first section doubtless would be a
section which would have characteristics of the following kind,
it might be called the "Primary Section", which is distinctlv
under the domination of some ruling dogma or some ruling
principle, which comes to it not from its own inner develop
ment, but actually comes to it from without.
There was that first movement of thought which was purely
dogmatic and dominated by .principles and by systematic pro
cedures that came to it not out of its own inner development,
but came to it exteriorly. It was the time of obediem.e to
authority, it was the time of the justification of authority, it was
the time when the whole system of thought moved within the
limitations of an external authority.
All the great people who came to this country and settled
14

on these shores, came with those dogmatic ideas fully imbedded
in them, they were the center of their life, they were the most
important things to them, they were the basis of all their spiritual
experience. It was a life dominated we may say — and not in any
harsh sense or in any sense that is not fully illuminating and
giving them just and fair treatment — by the influence of an
exterior authority, under what may be called a system of dogma.
The inevitable results, of course, had to follow from that,
because the human mind, it appears, cannot subsist in that con
dition — the revolt ensues. Of course, I could mention some of
the great minds and great people who belonged to that first
period, perhaps it is not necessary to do that.
But the second and the antithetic movement' necessarily
came to pass. The dogma no longer was satisfactory, and par
ticularly the imposition of external authority no longer could
be endured. The. revolt ensued, and the revolt produced what
in the ordinary understanding is the greatest period of our
philosophic and literary history. That is the great time when in
New England the "Transcendentalist," published the "Dial",
and the whole antithetic and liberating movement began to ap
pear in philosophic thought, in literature, in poetry, in the novel.
To that liberalism and to that development, wholly, we owe the
men and the women to whom we still look up ; that is to say,
probably you and I look up to them, I most assuredly do, what
soever the enlightenment of the younger minds who are now
figuring in the literary field may say about it. But I still, as
I did when I was a mere boy, sit at the feet of the great and the
serene and the noble Ralph Waldo Emerson.
I still look back upon the times when my own illumination
and my qwn development took me to the great writers of New
England ; Emerson, Lowell, Margaret Fuller, Hawthorne,
Thoreau, are the great liberators of the United States. We all
owe them that indebtedness. They freed us from the extjerior
authority which was dominating everyone of us and which we
felt impossible longer to endure.
But it may be said, perhaps, that any revolt of that kind
carries with it something of the elements and something of the
preceding characteristics against which it arose, and that how
ever liberalistic it may appear, it yet assumes in different phases
something of the character of the period that anteceded it.
IS

They were not wholly free. That was a battle and a fight
and it was a great battle and a great fight. What it did for this
country we all know. It gave freedom to this whole land. They
were the center of the great abolitionist movement, they in
spired the great man of his time and of his country. They gave
the spirit and the soul to Abraham Lincoln, they liberated all of
us. And yet, the elements were not quite fully mixed, it needed
a greater liberation yet. They accepted more or less certain
fundamental doctrines without giving them the entire and com
plete examination which they deserved.
There had to come a third, a greater and a larger movement,
a movement of absolutely free thought that felt that the first
thing it had to do was to find out what its awn presuppositions
were, and. to find a justification in free thought for whatever
justification there was. That was an entirely free movement of
free thinking, and that free movement of free thinking was made
by the men in whose honor we are having this celebration here
today. And not any one of them, deserves a higher mention
than the man in whose presence we stand.
This was the appearance on this continent of absolutely free
thought ; thinking itself wholly and entirely and systematically,
thinking its own presuppositions, building up its own develop
ment, and culminating in its own entire complete self recogni
tion and creative activity. It was a movement of free thought
comparable with the great movement of free thought in Athens
when Aristotle and Plato and Socrates emancipated the Greek
young man and the Greek manhood altogether. It was a move
ment of thinking entirely comparable with the greatest move
ment of the Middle ages. However, the Middle Ages may have
come under the influence of what may be called dogmatic ele
ments, nevertheless the great thinkers of that time, if they will
be closely investigated, will be found to be as liberalistic as any
that lived anywhere.
The great thinking movement of the Middle Ages that
centered around St. Thomas Aquinas was a liberalistic move
ment in every sense of the word. The St. Louis movement is
comparable with that one, and especially is it comparable with
the other great movement, the great movement in modern times.
the great movement which influenced these men so profoundly
and so deeply, the great movement in Germany, the great move
ment whose leader was the immortal Immanuel Kant. Then
16

came the young enthusiasts, on the one side, Fichte with his
moralistic idealism and his profound sense of the right and of
duty. He may be called a subjective idealist, but if that is
subjective idealism, I should think that all of us would like to
get as much of it as we can. There was the other young man
who took the other side, the one who studied nature so profound
ly and built up a system of nature, Schelling. Then, greatest of
all, the wisest philosopher in the whole history of time, Hegel,
at whose feet honorably and nobly sat the young men who began
life here in the city of St. Louis.
The "St. Louis Movement", therefore, in my opinion should
be characterized in the first place as a great national movement,
and, while no one has any objection to calling it the "St. Louis
Movement", because it did start and originate here ; neverthe
less, it belongs organically and properly speaking to the entire
history of philosophic thought in the United States. It is the
third in the series, as the first was the dogmatic movement, the
second was the revolt, and this is the concrete, full recognition
of the significance of thought, of free thought within the mind
of man, also outside there in the great world of nature, also
above and surrounding all of us within the Divine in Whom we
live and move and have our being.
We shall not understand the St. Louis Movement aright,
I believe, unless we take it in that proper sense; and we shall
also further have to take it as a new revelation to mankind of
all that is positive, of all that is spiritual, of all that is the very
essence and the very life of the spirit of mankind and of every
one of us. As I said, there was connected with that movement
the inspirer, Mr. Brockmeyer, whom I knew very slightly. But
I met the other inspirer, I met the other man more intimately,
who seemed to me to have walked out of the Paradise of Dante
and who has been like the great St. John who, at the very last
moment of the whole paradisiacal experience took Dante and
showed him the illumination in the heavens above. That man I
knew very well, and that man always has been to me as the
representative of an ideal and of a nobility and a profundity of
thought that surpasses in many respects any other man whom I
have known. You know whom I mean. He walked your streets,
he taught in your schools, he took care of your little children, he
did every task that the ordinary man would do, but he lived ever
lastingly and eternally in the presence of the vision of the im
mortal. I speak of William Torrey Harris.
17

Now another man we have with us, and I look at him now.
I think of him as I have known him for all these many years, I
speak of him just as he was when I first began to know him.
Every great movement of this kind must have in it a man like
Denton J. Snider, and the function of a man like Denton J. Snider
is indispensable to every movement of this kind. First comes
inevitably the profound revelation in the discovery of truth ; next
comes the application of all this great truth in all the fields of
life ; third, and above that, comes the creation of a new world, a
new world of art, a new world of thought, a new world of re
ligion. There comes the necessity of complete and adequate
expression, the new wine has to be put into new bottles, and the
new bottles must go all over and around the world.
There must be the finder and the discoverer of the ever
lasting idea, there must be a man who will tell and speak and
utter and express the everlasting truth to all mankind. He
is the great writer, the great expresser, the one who mediates
between the everlasting truth and the great audiences who are
expected to hear it. In that place and in that function stands
the noble man in whose honor we are met here today and, when
the work is estimated aright, and it is placed in comparison with
the work of any other one of the great expressers of the world —
because in every epoch and every time, and wherever there has
been any philosophy the great expresser has come, the expresser
here today ranks entirely and completely (in the estimates of all
those who are worthy to know and to give an opinion) with the
greatest men that have figured in that field since time began.
The three St. Louis leaders appear to me as follows: Brock
meyer brought Europe with him, he translates the logic of
Hegel; Harris antithetic to Europe brings New England and
America with him; the unifier and medium of expression, the
giver of the system to the world is Denton J. Snider. It is onlv
incumbent upon all of us to say this and to express what we feel.
Denton J. Snider has been to everyone of us, what Denton T.
Snider increasingly is going to be to all mankind, I am just as
sure of it as I am of standing on this platform, that those books
belong to the everlasting possessions of the human race, the
human race will never let them go, they will be in all libraries
and they will have readers upon readers, and everybody will
feel that again, as he himself has said, speaking of the literary
bibles, "We have another revelator, another messenger, another
18

angel of the Lord with us who has delivered his message and has
set it down in writ for everyone of us."
Now, I have been asked to talk on another subject. I believe
I have about exhausted my time, and the other subject that I
was asked to speak about was the Philosophical Schools having
their origin in the St. Louis Movement. It will carry out the
thesis which I have been attempting to develop and carry out
further the meaning and significance of the St. Louis Move
ment, and also carry out further the way in which it has been
going from one end of this country to the other.
I knew a number of these movements quite intimately, I
was part of them, I was in them, so I can speak from first hand
knowledge. I shall do this very briefly, because I do not care
to take up much more of your time.
The first one of these so-called philosophical schools that I
wish to speak about is one that had its center in one of your
neighboring cities. I have been asked to speak about the phi
losophical schools of the city of St. Louis, I must express my in
ability to do that, some person who knows the philosophical
schools of St. Louis much better than I do must speak on that
subject. All that I can tell you is that when I was a young man
in Washington University here, filled with my own ambitions,
trying to write poetry and reading all kinds of things, and in
trying to find a way out of terrors of different kinds that came
to me, the terrors of a purely subjective knowledge which shut
me up within my own self, and I did not know how I was going
to get out of my own head and find anything out of myself.
I was made an associate member of the Philosophical
Society of St. Louis, and I attended a number of those meetings.
I remember one meeting particularly in which the guest of honor
was Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Emerson read a very remark
able and beautiful paper on that occasion. Emerson was not by
nature a controversialist, he disliked that very much, I have heard
him say so himself. I think it was on that occasion he was rather
severely taken to task by a gentleman who probably is unknown
to anyone of you here, I think he has passed into that grateful
oblivion into which all such controversialists should pass. But
nothing was more beautiful than the way in which the philoso
phers came to the rescue of the visitor, and especially was the
rescue made by my own teacher, Professor George H. Howison,
of Washington University. 19

I can tell you very little about the philosophical schools of
St. Louis, but I can tell you more about some of the philosophical
schools outside of this city. I know there was a great phil
osophical school, a very remarkable movement in the city of
Quincy, Illinois. This was under the guidance of Mr. Samuel
Emery, and Mr. Samuel Emery had around him a group of men
and women who met once a week for the study of fundamental
thought. The book that they used was a translation made by Mr.
Henry C. Brockmeyer, and that was a translation in manuscript
of the logic of Hegel. They were studying, these men and
women, business men leaving their business, women leaving
their various avocations and coming together once a week in
Ouincy to study the logic of Hegel. That was one of the out
growths of the St. Louis Movement.
I am endeavoring to demonstrate, and what I wish to show
is that the St. Louis Movement was not an isolated fact here in
this city on the banks of the great Mississippi, but it was having
its influence all over this land, and that everywhere groups of
men and women were awakened to know intellectual effort of
the highest kind by the word that came from this group of men
who were in the city of St. Louis.
In a neighboring town, where I lived for some ten years and
where I had the honor of constant association with my good old
friend, David Harris, in Jacksonville, Illinois, there was another
movement. Jacksonville is perhaps the "pearl city" of Illinois,
it is a beautiful town, and it has had for a long time a great
many educational institutions. They seem to have grouped them
selves there, and the people all around in that neighborhood and
that vicinity have, after having built up such competency as they
thought desirable, gone to Jacksonville to live, to spend their last
days there, and they bring with them their families. It is, there
fore, a rather selected community.
I remember the ten years I lived there with an interest that
I can hardly express. I never had ten happier years in all my
life, and no matter what may happen to me in this world or in
any other to which I go, I know I shall not meet anywhere
nobler men or nobler women.
In that town had established himself a man who was born
in Missouri and then had gone over to Jacksonville, had attended
20

¦ , ' . ' ~ ~ ~ 1 i
ill ' '•••''' '

DR. HIRAM K. JONES

Illinois College, and after graduating from Illinois College, he
had become interested and had gone deeply into Greek studies.
He went through his medical course and became a doctor, he
developed into the most remarkable physician of that town, no
other doctor could be placed in comparison with him, and he
had a rather curious practice which he developed and used with
every patient. When a patient came to him, the first thing
that he did was this : He gave him no medicines of any kind
whatsoever, he sat down by his bedside, he began to talk to him.
He has told me often that he could treat no patient until he
found out what his internal, his mental, his spiritual, his psycho
logical condition was. He talked with him over and over again
and talked with him on varying subjects, and very frequently he
gave no medicines of any kind whatsoever.
He left his patient with some healing and consoling vision,
and it was very remarkable all over that city that wherever the
doctor went, health and cure and consolation accompanied him.
Now, this Dr. Hiram K. Jones very soon after his graduation
and after his establishment there, in his function as chief phy
sician to the city — because he was that if ever any man was,
he needed no appointment from any official source, he had made
himself the doctor-in-chief, the developer-in-chief, the adviser-
in-chief, the healer-in-chief of that whole city — began the study
of Plato. He gradually brought around him a group of men and
women comparable with the group in Quincy, Illinois.
Mr. Harris and myself sat in that conventicle, in that holy
chapel, in that church where the message came from beyond and
descended straight from the throne. We sat there listening to
the words as they fell from the lips of Dr. Hiram K. Jones. The
dialogues of Plato were the text we studied, over and over again
did we go through those dialogues; we went through them
scientifically and fully, we studied them as they should be
studied. We had the original text, we had all kinds of translations,
but above them all, we had the man whose mind was akin to
Plato's own, and who, out of that kinship and out of that under
standing, came to us with the great message of the great
philosopher, noble and elevating, and we felt that we were
listening to the words of the great Greek himself.
Now, that was the group in Jacksonville, that group I knew
intimately. I cannot say that that group grew out of the St.
23

Louis group, that was an original center of philosophic thought
of its own. But the two groups met, and often visitations came
both from Quincy and from St. Louis ; from Quincy, Mr. Emery ;
from St. Louis Denton J. Snider and Thomas Davidson; these
gentlemen gave talks and lectures before the Plato Club.
The Plato Club met every Saturday morning at ten o'clock,
the lecture lasted from ten to twelve, and it met always in the
house of Mrs. Joseph King. That house is still standing there,
and I have gone sometimes to Jacksonville, and, although it is
now shut and the family have all gone away, I have stood in
front of it and I have thought of the great hours that were
spent under that roof in listening to the illuminated words of
the great thinker and great man.
Coordinate with Dr. Jones there came another man whom
we met and who came to us, and this man also, after graduation
from college, had been attracted through his Greek study to the
Platonistic philosophy. He did not, however, study Plato so
much as he became attracted to the great followers of Plato.
He was a New-Platonist. This gentleman lives in a little town
up in Missouri, I always intended to visit him —
Chairman Harris: He died a few months ago.
Mr. Block (Cont'd.) : I had not heard that. He was Mr.
Thomas J. Johnson, of Osceola. That was another philosophic
center. Then after the group here in the city of St. Louis had
somewhat disintegrated and separated, going to different parts
of the country, other groups were formed. I remember very dis
tinctly that Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, who came to
Jacksonville very often, by the way, and made us very prolonged
visits, William T. Harris and Dr. H. K. Jones met at Concord.
Whether this was a prearrangement with these men, I do not
know, whether it was one of those accidents which are not
accidents but milestones in the development of mankind.
They met in Concord and they talked it all over, and they
decided they would make a philosophic center in Concord and
out of that meeting came the Concord School. It was deter
mined on in this meeting, a meeting at which were present the
men whom I have mentioned, not only men but women were
there as well. Mrs. Jones, the wife of Dr. Jones, Mr. and Mrs.
Walcott of Jacksonville, Illinois, Mr. and Mrs. Denman, of
Quincy. They were present in Concord and they decided that
24

they would have the Concord school. Announcements were then
made and the Concord School met the following year.
I went to the Concord School. I was there during a number
of the sessions. Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered no lectures
at that time. I remember only one paper that he read once in
the church to which he belonged, and that was an evening meet
ing, not connected with the school itself.
Mr. Alcott was in all his glory and delivered a great many
lectures during the Concord School of Philosophy. Those who
were left of the great transcendental group, most of them came
to the Concord School of Philosophy; Mrs. Edna Dow Cheney,
Dr. Bartol, David A. Wasson, Colonel Thomas W. Higginson,
Frank Sanborn ; all these people came to the Concord School of
Philosophy. Mr. Emery broke up his home in Quincy and came
to live in Concord, and he was the moderator at the various
lectures. But this is the main point I wish to come to, and I wish to
come to it quickly because I must not prolong this lecture much
more. The men who were at the center of the movement in
Concord were the St. Louis men and the Jacksonville men. Dr.
Jones went there to lecture on Platonism, Mr. Snider was there
to lecture on the great poets, Mr. Harris was their leader and
shining illuminator in every field. So that the Concord School
of Philosophy, when properly understood and properly related
to the philosophic movement of this country, is part of and be
longs to the St. Louis Movement. It is a part of the movement
which began here in the city of St. Louis. That is another in
dication of how widespread the influence of the St. Louis Move
ment has been.
Then there was in Chicago, in the city of Materialistic
development and in the city which shows those characteristics
of push and rivalry and business that belong to so much of
American life, in that city penetrated once again the St. Louis
Movement. It came there in all its strength and all its vigor,
and Harris and Davidson and Snider established the literary
schools under the auspices of Miss Elizabeth Harrison, connect
ed with The Kindergarten College, for four years in succession'
they came and they had a Shakespeare and a Dante School and
a Goethe School and a Homer School, and it was once more the
illumination that came from St. Louis that established itself
there. 25

Then afterwards, Thomas Davidson bought a farm in the
Adirondacks, in an attractive place, and in that he built up a
summer school of philosophy, and once more the St. Louis
people came to that school. Mr. Snider, I believe never went
to Glenmore, that was the school of Thomas Davidson, and
Davidson and Harris were the great leaders in that school. So
once more the St. Louis Movement established itself under the
shadows and in the sunlight and besides the running streams of
the Adirondacks. That was a great school, and great men as
semble there. Mr. Josiah Royce, of Harvard College, Mr.
William James, of Harvard, Mr. Felix Adler, who lived in the
neighborhood, Thomas Davidson, William T. Harris. It was
a great and remarkable experience while it lasted, but it belongs
and distinctly is associated with the St. Louis Movement.
I come now to the last one about which I wish to speak, and
I feel about this one I should say a few words more, because
somehow or other the name of this man has not been mentioned
as often as in my own opinion it ought to be. While I was at
Washington University I had several teachers there, who filled
me with an admiration and with an affection that I shall carry
with me as long as I live. One was the great teacher of mathe
matics, Chancellor Chauvenet, the other was my teacher of
Greek, the strange and remarkable personality who came here
and went through this valley of tears under the name of Sylves
ter Waterhouse, possibly some of you remember him. Then,
inspiring was the professor of philosophy, George H. Howison.
I know of no man who can surpass him in the inspiring power of
utterance and in the nobility of his thinking. He was one of
the most remarkable men I think this country has ever produced.
I want to bring him in here because he has in a way spread
the influence of the St. Louis Movement very widely. Professor
Howison, after being here in St. Louis for a number of years,
went to the Boston School of Technology ; from there he went
to the University of Michigan, filling the place of Professor John
Dewey. Professor John Dewey, whatever his weight and in
fluence now is, got his inspiration, his start from the St. Louis
Movement and he belongs to the St. Louis Movement. He mav
not think that he does, and possibly if you spoke to him about it,
he might deny it, but nevertheless he does organically belong to
it. Mr. Howison went to the University of California, he be-
26

came the head professor of philosophy there, and he spent the
remaining years of his life there. He had around him a body of
most enthusiastic students, he established the Philosophic Union
there, a union made up principally of the advanced members
of his class. This Philosophic Union had regular meetings in
Berkeley, and it had as lecturers some of the greatest men that
have figured on both sides of the water, not only men of note
in philosophy iw America, but in Germany, England and France.
Professor Howison had a band of enthusiastic students,
and this is my final point in the illustration of the wide spread
influence of the St. Louis Movement. These pupils that gradu
ated under Professor Howison have become in their turn pro
fessors in the great universities of the United States, and the
president of the great university of the city of New York, the
second largest university in the United States, a university ac
cording to the latest accounts having eleven thousand students,
a university absolutely free and connected with the public school
system of the city of New York, the president of that great
university is Professor Sidney Mezes, a pupil and a graduate
from the classes of Professor Howison.
The head professor of philosophy at Yale College, Professor
Bakewell, an intimate personal friend of Davidson's, was a
student, a graduate from Professor Howison. The professor of
philosophy at Cornell University, Professor McGillivray is a
student and graduate of Professor Howison. The head pro
fessor of philosophy in the John-Hopkins University, Professor
Lovejoy, is a student and pupil of Professor Howison. Pro
fessor Overstreet of the University of New York is a student of
Dr. Howison. These are the young men who are spreading
philosophic thought all over the United States. They are at the
head of philosophy in these great institutions. They got their
inspiration from Professor Howison, and Professor Howison
belongs to the great group of men who flourished here in the
city of St. Louis.
So that the St. Louis Movement is more alive today than
it ever was, and its benign, its elevating, its ennobling influence ;
its high positive view of life ; its solution of the problems and the
difficulties that assail each one of us ; its justification of our
highest hopes and of our highest demands, of all our spiritual
nature ; its explanations of all the great problems of science, and
its elevation in the highest realm of thought and aspiration and
27

emotion, in uniting us with the everlasting, the eternal and the
Divine, the work is going on more and more. It is spreading its
ennobling influence all over this land; and the St. Louis Move
ment today is larger and wider and grander than it ever has been
before.

28

MRS. D. H. HARRIS

The Early St. Louis Movement and the
Communal University
Address by Mrs. D. H. Harris.
Dr. Snider insisted that I should speak at this meeting, as
he wished that all who had taken part and had shown deep
interest, in The St. Louis Movement should give their testimony.
I told him that we were not then living in St. Louis, but were in
close touch with it, so that we had. taken some little part in it.
Prof. Block of Chicago has just spoken, in such compre
hensive and eloquent terms it seems that there is but little left
for me to say about the general conditions. I can only give some
of its more concrete and intimate aspects and some account of
our personal experience and intercourse with those who were
engaged in it.
We were living in Jacksonville, Illinois, at the time, my
husband being Superintendent of its public schools with Pro
fessor Louis J. Block associated with him as Principal of the
High School, so that we shared in what he has described as that
most ideal life, and we were associated with those highly cul
tivated and congenial spirits, which secured for the city the
distinguished name of "The Athens of the West."
We hung as it were upon the fringes of the St. Louis Move
ment, and with the concurrence of our friends we invited the
great leaders to visit us there at our home.
Dr. Snider came to talk to us; Dr. Harris visited us; Mr.
Morgan of the High School ; Mr. Thos. Davidson ; also Mr. A.
Bronson Alcott, of Concord, Mass., all came to Jacksonville.
Mr. Emerson had lectured there earlier.
Dr. Snider talked to us on some aspects of the world's
literature and aroused warm discussion among the ladies when
he spoke of Goethes' ideas of the vocation of woman in Wilhelm
Meister. Dr. Snider was altogether stimulating and inspiring.
Mr Morgan was the elegant exponent of the classical culture
of St. Louis. Mr. Davidson came in the flush of his manhood, (
his overflowing spirits, his great good humor, extensive learning
31

and wonderful versatility, equally at home in interpreting the
Parthenon Frieze or discussing George Eliots' novels or analyz
ing a Greek tragedy or repeating a Scotch ballad, and charming
alike in all.
Dr. Harris came as a master of philosophic thought and
if any had expected that there would be a tilt of armored knights
as he and Dr. Jones met in conflict representing different schools
of philosophy they were disappointed, because Dr. Harris' tone
and temper were shown there. He was ever the reconciler. He
always sought to find points of agreement rather than difference,
that from a common vantage ground they might proceed to
greater insights into truth.
Mr. Alcott was the Socrates, not of the Agora, but of the
parlor, for those were the good old Victorian days when we still
had parlors. Mr. Alcott was the leader of a circle of cultivated
people met for discourse and the success of his "Conversations"
as they were called, depended to a large extent upon the intel
ligence and culture of his audience. He endeavored to treat
conversation as a fine art, developing it along the lines of grace
and beauty as well as insight and knowledge. He visited us two
or three times and always charmed us by his gentle lovely spirit.
Mr. Alcott was prouder of the attainments and genius of his
daughter Louisa Alcott, the author of "Little Men" and "Little
Women" than of his own achievements.
Jacksonville was dominated by the Platonic Philosophy of
which Dr. Hiram K. Jones was the leader and the exponent.
This Plato Club was confined in its interest and influence prin
cipally to Jacksonville.
The St. Louis Movement, the genetic center of that great
intellectual and spiritual development took place after the
Civil War. Mr. Harris, Mr. Brockmeyer, Mr. Snider and Mr.
Davidson were associated in this movement which began with
the Kant Class and Hegel Club and the study of Plato and
Aristotle, Art and Literature.
Dr. Harris tiegan with the study of Philosophy to stem the
tide of materialism and agnosticism which had swept over the
world after the introduction of the theory of Evolution and the
rise of the scientific discoveries of Darwin and the so-called con
flict of science and religion. Dr. Harris established his "Journal
of Speculative Philosophy" in 1867 to combat the ideas of Her-
32

WM. G. ELIOT
Founder of Washington University

bert Spencer in his "First Principles". The motto of the Journal
was from Novalis "Though Philosophy can bake no bread it can
procure for us God, Freedom and Immortality".
Many testimonials have been given showing the attitude of
the more advanced clergy toward this early movement, appre
ciative of the service it afforded in re-enforcing the faith of many
in this period of conflict and controversy.
It is generally known that Herbert Spencer's early theories
were finally discredited by himself and now no longer hold a
place as a system in the world of philosophic thought.
The broad free enlightening character of the movement in
St. Louis caused it to spread rapidly. Not the least notable
feature was the interest that women took in this development.
They had found the advantage of working together during the
Civil War and they now began to form clubs for study and
self-improvement. "Culture" became the watchword of the
time. Classes, Clubs, Reading Circles spread out from St. Louis
all over the country and there are now three millions of women
in Federated Clubs. Schools, Colleges, and Universities have been
increased many fold and women themselves have been lifted up
into a power and importance hardly dreamed of before. As one
candidate for election recently said before a group of women,
they are better fitted ' through their studies and acquaintance
with public affairs to take the reins of government than many
men. But women can truly say "That they do not want a
matriarchate, although they have a deep interest in the welfare
of the State."
The ladies who were associated and deeply interested in
this great work in St. Louis generously assisted the leaders.
Dr. Harris conducted classes largely attended by cultured
women ; Dr. Snider led classes in the Greek Drama for several
years, and he may be considered to America what Matthew
Arnold is to England, her really Greek Spirit, so thoroughly has
he assimulated its character and culture. Dr. Wm. G. Eliot
the founder of Washington University, whose remarkable char
acter sent that institution far on its way, was always the friend
and upholder of the women of our city in all their efforts for
advancement. Mr. Schuyler says the establishment of a perma
nent, chair of philosophy at Washington University at the be
ginning of the present century took the initial step through the
35

MRS. REBECCA N. HAZARD

influence of the leaders of the St. Louis movement. Society
women threw open their houses to the meetings; among them
Mrs. Rebecca N. Hazard, Mrs. Beverly Allen and her daughter
Mrs. Orrick, Mrs. Lackland and others. Mrs. Hazard's home was
for more than twenty years, almost until her death, the home of
a reading circle, where the "Literary Bibles" were studied,
notably Dante — Mrs. Hazard herself writing a monograph, "A
New View of Dante", which enlisted much interest and favor
able comment. St. Louis has stood back of her great leaders,
loyally sustaining them, with approbation and pride in their
achievements, until they have gained national and international
fame. Dr. Harris' part as the leader in the St. Louis Movement
was both as the practical Educator and Philosopher. One has
said: "Dr. Harris' philosophic influence in America began just
when it was most urgently needed. It was just as the doctrine
of Evolution, pregnant itself with such infinite enlightment and
good came in, inextricably bound up for the time with English
and German philosophy, which saw little beyond secondary cause
and destined in that combination to do mischief for a generation.
It was imperative that at such a time the youthful speculative
minds of the country should be thrown back into companionship
with the real lords of thought and taught that the great influx of
new science could be subsumed and only adequately subsumed
under a commanding idealistic philosophy.
This service Dr. Harris rendered America. He compelled
a new generation to open again, when there was danger of
its forgetting it, the pages of Hegel, Kant, Aristotle and Plato
and to supplement its reading by real thinking. He did it through
his "Journal of Speculative Philosophy," through multiplied
courses of lectures, through the Concord School of Philosophy,
where he Was from the first the central and dynamic and really
shaping influence and through his many books and pamphlets
which kept coming from him all the time. For he was a pro
digious worker and worked till the last, and his work and in
fluence will still go on."
He wrote extensively upon philosophy, psychology, educa
tion, social science, art and literature, — giving hundreds of lec
tures to the most cultivated audiences of our country.
Among his most important books are; The Introduction to
39

J

the Study of Philosophy, Hegel's logic, The Genesis of the
Categories of the Mind, The Spiritual Sense of Dante's Divine
Comedv, The Psychologic Foundations of Education.
That was a great day for the philosophers of our country
when they realized their long cherished dream in the Concord
School of Philosophy. As Mr. Wm. Schuyler says "The Concord
School of Philosophy may be considered as the national expan
sion of the local movement".
The St. Louis Movement advanced upon the early seats of
learning and culture of our country and occupied their orig
inal strongholds. Here were met the great thinkers, educators and
philosophers of the whole country, from the east and west, seek
ing to solve the great problems of thought and life. It was con
sidered one of the most notable gatherings of recent times.
We were there for a while and participated in the privileges
of the great movement. We chanced to arrive in Concord the
evening of the day of their Annual Regatta, celebrating the
Fourth of July, which had been postponed on account of the
attempted assassination of President Garfield. It was in this
refined and artistic way that the Concord people expressed their
patriotic impulses and now the whole town with all the visitors
and attendants at the school were out to see this charming sight
so vividly described in some of her annals of this interesting
town by Miss Alcott. The little boats brilliantly lighted, each
picturing some scene from fancv or history, all moved down
on the meandering waters of the Concord River, past the historic
statue of the "Minute Man" by French, to the enchanting- strains
of music and the admiring applause of the multitude.
We spent our nights under what had been the Alcotts' roof
with reminders of "Little Men" and "Little Women" all about us.
The morning sessions of the School were devoted to lectures
and discussions on man}- interesting and profound philosophic
themes. Among the speakers were our own Dr. Jones from the
west, discoursing on Plato's Dialogues and Dr. Snider reading
from his "Walk in Hellas" which charmed alike by its content
as by its form, with its peculiarly rythmical prose.
Among other lecturers were Wm. James of Harvard, also
Josiah Royce and John Fisk, the great American Historian,
Louis J. Block, Geo. H. Howison and many others of note from
Universities, Colleges and various seats of learning. There were
40

many notable women present also, Miss Blow from St. Louis
with Miss McCulloch of Kindergarten fame, and Miss Fruchte
and others of the High School ; Miss Peabody, Mrs. Edna Cheney
and Mrs. Julia Ward Howe of Boston were representatives of
the eastern women.
It was noteworthy, the interest of the newspaper press in
getting reports of all the sessions and discussions and their dis
tribution of them over the entire country.
The Concord School made a profound and lasting impres
sion upon the intellectual life and character of our people. This
was one of the great achievements of the St. Louis Movement.
There were two other great achievements, the "Journal of Spec
ulative Philosophy," the first of its kind ever published in
America, which has been mentioned ; it became a bond of intel
lectual interest with the European centers of learning. St. Louis
was for the time the World's Center of Philosophic thought and
it is said to have aided the interest in our great "World's Fair."
The other and third achievement was our St. Louis System
of Public Schools, so thoroughly organized on such a scale of
broad comprehensive, educational culture that it is considered
the most rounded and complete in its curriculum, methods and
scope, furnishing the American Model, not only for schools at
home, but for foreign nations looking to us for help in con
structing their own educational systems.
One of the great results of the St. Louis Movement is still
continued and is now upon us in the great new system of thought
that Dr. Snider has just given to the world in his System of
Universal Psychology — comprised in three volumes :
I. Psychology and the Psychosis ; The Intellect.
II. The Will and its World ; Psychical and Ethical.
III. Feeling with the Prolegomena.
He states that philosophy has run its course and that there
is a call for a new discipline to take its place. Not that philoso
phy is to be discarded or discredited; but that there is a de
mand for a new formulation of thought. It is not to be expected
that America should be satisfied with the philosophy of Europe.
America must have a different discipline of thought. So there
is Psychology. To be sure, Wundt in Germany, had begun an
41

Experimental Psychology and Wm. James was beginning to
lecture on the theme at Harvard and there were others of com
paratively recent times. It was in the air when Dr. Snider made
his announcement, but there was no such work as he has given
us. This new Discipline isdeclared to be Psychology, the Science
of the Self. It is no longer to be subordinated, but a free science,
to make its own method and reveal it in all the creations of the
Self, human and divine. The human being, when he begins
thinking, recognizes first the Universe as a whole, it enfolds him
and he sees its three primal divisions, God, World, Man, the
three original fundamental elements and strives to formulate
them in each of the three comprehensive disciplines ; Religion,
Philosophy and Psychology. The fundamentals of the Universe,
God, World, Man, are in a process together and it corresponds
to the Self or Ego in its three stages as implicit, self-separating
and self-returning self. This process is called the "Psychosis."
The fundamental process of the All or Universe is also a Psy
chosis or "All Psychosis or Pan (or "Pam") Psychosis". It is
through this process that we come upon the norm of the All, the
Universal process of man's thinking. It is this norm that Dr.
Snider evolves, unfolds, elaborates, illustrates and applies in the
most masterful and convincing manner in his Universal Psych
ology and when we have really grasped it we have the key of the
Universe. This is really what the old Greeks meant when they
said "Man know thyself". All knowledge centers there.
Dr. Snider has applied his Psychological principles to every
department of thought and reorganized the whole field of human
knowledge, Philosophy, Nature, Art, Institutions, History and
Biography. These works with the "Literary Bibles" and mis
cellaneous Volumes of poems, "The Lincolniad" and the volumes
on the Kindergarten and miscellaneous works make in all about
fifty volumes, showing him a most prolific writer. As a side
light to his genius and philanthropy it is an interesting fact that
all of his writings are preserved in electrotype plates, so that they
may be reproduced at any time in the future when interest may
demand it".
These volumes form the text-books in that "Communal
University" that Dr. Snider established and has conducted for
the past sixteen years. 42

These classes were at first started at the residence of Mr.
and Mrs. D. H. Harris and afterwards transferred to that of
Professor Francis E. Cook and wife, who for about three years
extended to us the beautiful hospitality of their home. Later
in larger classes at the Public Library auditorium and the St.
Louis Public School Teachers Society of Pedagogy, Professor
Cook gave the whole system of Dr. Snider's psychology cover
ing a two years course with his own inimitable charm of manner
and breadth of culture frequently with an attendance of more
than a hundred in this one class or department of the Society.
In 1894 the Society of Pedagogy had been reorganized up
on a plan drawn up by Professor Wm. M. Bryant on the lines
of University Extension and was probably the largest Educa
tional organization of the kind in the West, numbering about
fifteen hundred members.
Miss Amelia C. Fruchte later became president of this
Society of Pedagogy of the Public Schools for two years, and
organized and conducted it on the general plan of the Universal
Psychology in a most complete organization and brilliant manner.
It is thought by competent judges that the results of her work
in this society were the best of any of similar nature in the whole
country. Professor W. J. S. Bryan said "It was wonderful be
cause for the first time here was an instrumentality that bridged
the difference and the distance between the School and the home."
There was often an attendance of more than two thousand
persons, teachers and parents, at the different sessions where
classes and lectures were arranged on different lines of study,
gaining the interest and attendance of parents of pupils and the
friends of the schools as well as of the teachers.
The later home of the Communal University was for a num
ber of years in the assembly or lecture room of the Cabanne
Branch Library where on Monday evenings might be found
from twenty to one hundred persons deeply interested in the
subjects presented. The principles of Psychology were elucidat
ed and applied to every department of knowledge. Dr. Snider
gave us in Nature, "The Cosmos" and "The Diacosmos", the
great material world and the invisible forces that move it; in
"The Biocosmos", man as a physical being and his relation to the
material world, of absorbing interest in the light of modern sci
ence. In Art he states the High Building to be America's con
tribution to Architecture, resting on its solid foundation which
43

corresponds to the implicit stage of the Self or Ego, it rises up
and divides out into all its many apartments ; opening to light
and air as the elevators open to the numerous floors. As the
elevators circulate through, they give it life and movement in
their course from foundation to roof and return, a marvelous
process of activity. Those who have seen the Woolworth build
ing in New York know how admirably it lends itself to adorn
ment in form and color and how beautiful it may be made. It
is the most wonderful thing in America, it seems to foreign eyes,
the triumph of modern art in architecture. Dr. Snider has a
remarkable treatise on Music which Mr. Spamer has presented,
ably treated in this report ; showing us that it is the thrill of the
self-separating — self-returning — self, awakened by harmonious
sounds that gives us all those emotions and thrills that have such
infinite power in our spiritual life. It is the threefold movement
of the self that stirs us, illuminates, stimulates and inspires us.
Dr. Geek has also illustrated his principles of the interpretation
of music. Dr. Snider gives in his Social Institutions, the psychology
of the Family, the Church, the State. Also the Educational In
stitutions which he has added to Hegel's formulation and which
our modern life requires. In "The State" he elaborates the Psy
chology of law and government in their various forms and func
tions. When after an absence of six years I returned to St. Louis
and attended the great Worlds Fair then in progress, I was
impressed with the frequency and earnestness with which the
St. Louis speakers referred to the social institutions. No other
phase of the St. Louis Movement seems to have impressed them
more deeply. How earnestly they spoke of the family, of the
church, of the state. Man can realize his spiritual nature, his
highest possibilities only through institutional life. As I said
to Dr. Snider recently this is what ought to be revived and now
taught again, when Bolshivism begins to raise its head here in
America and lawlessness and disorder attack us, we must oppose
them with a return to the teaching of his work on Institutions.
Dr. Snider gave us a very complete Psychology of Historv,
beginning with Herodotus, the Father of History, showing why
he is called the "Father", and extending this course through
European History and that of America. "The Ten Years War
of America" being the Iliod of our woes, which extended through
five years of western or Kansas border warfare and the John
44

Brown defiance of constitutional liberty, which culminated in
our Civil War. This last volume forms the back ground of his
Biography of Abraham Lincoln, the first of his great biographies.
He treats Biography as a special form of literature in his new
method and in it he gives Goethe's "Life Poem," Emerson's "Life
Essay" and Shakespeare's "Life Drama"
Under Autobiography he gives "A Writer of Books" and the
"St. Louis Movement". This last volume contains in the Ap
pendix a complete formulation of his system of Psychology.
First "The Psychological Organ on" ; Second "The World Psy
chologized"; Third "The Self Psychologized".
Aristotle's Logic, Bacon's Inductive Philosophy and Hegel's
Dialectic are the three great European Organa, and Dr. Snider's
"Psychosis" or Psychological Organon is the first that America
has given the world.
He has also given a group of poems, the expression of
his Greek period, "Homer in Chios", "Delphic Days", "Agamem
non's Daughter", "Prorsus Retrorsus", also the "Johny Ap-
pleseed Rhymes", giving the American Myth, a story of Ohio.
Also a book of war Poems, "The House of Dreamery" and "The
Shakesperiad," unique in its form and spirit. His most ex
tended poem is "The Lincolniad" in four volumes; "Lincoln in
the Black Hawk War", "Lincoln and Ann Rutledge", "Lincoln
in the White House", "Lincoln at Richmond".
Dr. Snider considers the complete literary treatise of Lin
coln's career one of the most persistent and wide spread aspira
tions of our time. Hence he adds "The Lincolniad" to his prose
biography as an expression in poetic form of that which prose
is unable to convey. This gives the complete picture of the
great American Hero. He portrays the whole round of Lin
coln's experience.
Drinkwater's drama suffers by comparison, as it makes no
mention of Ann Rutledge, which is the very heart of it as giving
the psycological basis of Lincoln's life ; for his love for Ann
Rutledge was the transfiguring power in Lincoln's experience.
lifting him up out of the ordinary, almost into the divine, in the
depth and power of his love for the suffering, the helpless, the
oppressed. Those deep furrows on his face cannot be under
stood except by the overwhelming, never-to-be-forgotten loss of
45

Ann Rutledge. Dr. Snider has gone beyond any other biograph
er of Lincoln in this story.
Then there is a group of Kindergarten books on "Froebel's
Life and Work" and lastly a miscellaneous group comprising "A
Walk in Hellas", with an international reputation, by many con
sidered his most charming book; "The Tour in Europe"; "The
Chicago Worlds Fair Studies" ; also two novels "The Freeber-
gers" and "Castle Esperance".
The Literary Bibles formed the basis of Dr. Snider's Liter
ary Schools in Chicago, Milwaukee and other cities. They give
the profoundest insight into the meaning of the four great
world poets, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, that has ever
been given and they were studied from time to time in the Com
munal University of St. Louis to the delight and profit of all
present. Mr. Snider calls them Literary Bibles, as they are next
to the Sacred Bible of Revelation, the highest utterances in liter
ary and artistic form of the race. They justify the ways of
God to man, and confirm man's faith in a Supreme Being, and
for this reason they are of enduring worth and veneration.
These subjects have formed the curriculum or basis of the
course at the "Communal University". As these free lectures
were not extensively advertised probably many who might have
availed themselves of this great opportunity and secured a com
plete outline of the great fundamental facts of the entire history
of the world in its development and progress in civilization and
thought, also of the classic world; of philosophy, literature and
art, perhaps many have lost a lifetime opportunity, yet all
who are interested may avail themselves of these works which
may be obtained from the Public Library. Yet without the
personal sponsor.
The Communal University afforded a liberal education for
all who would take it along broad lines and it was inspiring
to every one who participated. In his munificence Dr. Snider
has written and published all the text-books and furnished them
free to his classes and as a return has only exacted a promise of
study and regular attendance at all of the sessions. He has
pursued not the method of the lecturer but always the Socratic
method of question and voluntary answer as insuring the most
thorough understanding of every subject. There has always
been an open forum for the discussion of every topic of general
interest to the community. 46

It is rumored that these classes that have been interrupted
for a time will be opened again with some additional teaching

ivt a. unit win uk. vjpciicu agdiu v>
force. The classes are open to all.

I feel myself, with Mr. Harris, obligated to give this tribute
of gratitude to Dr. Snider for all that we have received from
this "Communal University". As the years go by, as students
and thinkers become acquainted with these great works of
formulated thought they will be accepted and more fully ap
preciated; this will insure the perpetuity and the Immortality
of the "St. Louis Movement".

HENRY C. BROCKMEYER

Henry C. Brockmeyer's Place in the St.
Louis Movement
Compiled of extracts from Denton J. Snider's book, The St.
Louis Movement, by Mrs. D. J. Snider.
The germinal starting point of the St. Louis Movement was
a man and a book. The man was Henry C. Brockmeyer, Ihe
book was Hegel's Larger Logic.
"This book was Brockmeyer's one Supreme Book; it meant
to him more than any other human production, and was pro
bably the source of his great spiritual transformation from
social hostility and inner discord and even anarchism, to a re
conciliation with his government and indeed with the World
Order, after his two maddened flights from civilization."
To Mr. Brockmeyer belongs the unique distinction of having
made the only translation of Hegel's Larger Logic in its en
tirety into English.
"Brockmeyer began the translation in 1860. He was then
lodged somewhere on the old South Market in a single bare
attic, boarding himself and sleeping on the floor, (so I have
heard him with humor dilate). He had been frugally pensioned
with bread and room rent by W. T. Harris and a group of friends
to make the translation of Hegel's Larger Logic (the Book of
Fate) which was also intended to be a world stormer. The
strange fact is that it has not been printed, and still stays unborn
in manuscript after nearly sixty years of waiting. Indeed one
is inclined to think that this translation of Hegel's Logic has had
a peculiar doom hanging over it from the moment of its first
written line. I have watched it more than half a century, now
rising to the surface, then sinking out of sight as if under some
curse of the malevolent years. Thus the creative book of
Hegel's system was never put into English type, and has remain
ed quite inaccessible to the English speaking student. This to
my mind has been the chief fatality in the propagation of the
work and its doctrines, for it always has had and always will
have its distinctive appeal to certain minds and even to certain
times." 51

GEORG V/ILHELM FREDERICH HEGEL

Two men from Illinois were daring enough to carry Brock
meyer's manuscript translation of Hegel's Logic from the banks
of the Mississippi to the shores of the Atlantic, where it collided
with America's most famous philosopher, William James of
Harvard University, who mentions the fact in one of his essays.
"He (James) announced the arrival in a philosophical club
at Boston of two young business men from Illinois, enthusiastic
Hegelians, 'who with little or no knowledge of German had
actually possessed themselves of a manuscript translation of the
entire three volumes of the Logic made by an extraordinary
Pomeranian immigrant named Brockmeyer'. Such is the faint
rather spectral glimpse which the Harvard Professor has caught
of the St. Louis Movement and of its big "Book of Fate". Brock
meyer, by the way, was not a Pomeranian but a Prussian of
Minden. Moreover, James observes that the said Club, of which
he was a member, had gone over a good part of Hegel's Logic
under the self-constituted leadership of those two green phi
losophic suckers from Quincy, Illinois, who had never been at
a German University, and who could not even read the original
text of their master, digging laboriously their knowledge of his
doctrine up from Brockmeyer's barbarous Teutonic-English.
It could only be deemed an act of unparalleled presumption on
the part of those insolent Westerners, as we may hear in an
under-tone out of the epithet self-constituted, and some other
nuances of style."
"Now I am inclined to believe that just this meeting of
James with these two fervent believers in Hegel and their one
Great Book was an important epoch in his philosophical develop
ment. He did not say so and probably did not think so, and
might even have resented such a statement, still be bore the
impress of this experience through life, even if by way of op
position. For he now saw men who had a living faith in Phi
losophy, and were ready to impart it with a missionary zeal, ex
pounding it to him and the Club from the strange hieroglyphs
of the "three big folios" of their manuscript Bible. Moreover
he had brushed against the greatest German world-book of
Philosophy, not excepting Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, of
which, it is indeed the sovereign remedial corrective, bringing
intellectual restoration after overcoming man's ultimate denial.
I dare think that Professor James must have gotten lasting,
even if unconscious value from the scene and the man thus de-
55

scribed by him : 'A more admirable homo unius libri than one
of them with his three big folios of Hegelian manuscript I have
never had the good fortune to know.' Doubtless this passage
is tuned to an ironical note, still the writer of it never forgot,
never could rid himself of the impressive fact which he here
witnessed at least from the outside— -the fact of the world's
thought unified, inter-related, and organized into one complete
system, and one man's unshaken belief in such a system."
It was mainly for the purpose of printing Mr. Brockmeyer's
translation of Hegel's Larger Logic that the St. Louis Philoso
phical Society was organized in January, 1866, with Henry C.
Brockmeyer as president, and W. T. Harris as Secretary. It
failed in this purpose, yet was otherwise a success, for it grew
to be not only a pervasive influence in the community, but be
came known throughout the world by means of Dr. Harris'
Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
Having spoken of the germinal starting point of the St.
Louis Movement, I think that I ought at least to mention before
I close its culmination — nothing less than a new world discip
line, Psychology. Since the transition into this new system of
Thought was evolved mainly out of Hegel's Larger Logic, the
necessity of printing Brockmeyer's translation becomes appar
ent. Brockmeyer made a second translation of this book about
1890-5. This translation, after careful comparison with the
original German text and correction for publication by Prof.
L. J. Block, has been placed in the keeping of the Missouri
Historical Society, by D. H. Harris of St. Louis. Let us hope,
it will be printed some dav.

56

THOMAS DAVIDSON

Thomas Davidson
By Percival Chubb
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen : I have a personal
story to tell you, the story of one man ; but let me first relate that
one man to the group of whom you have heard today, and to the
event which brings us here. Coupled with the name of Thomas
Davidson, of whom I am to speak, must be that of Denton J.
Snider whom we meet to honor, and others associated with
them both to whom we would pay tribute because they were
men who endured to the end ; men who under the temptations
and the pressure of the great commercial movement with its
mighty prizes, yet spurned anything that did not serve their
own ideals.
My story links St. Louis with London and Europe. It tells
of the man who, when he departed from St. Louis, was known
familiarly among his peers as "Tom Davidson", but who before
he died became Thomas Davidson, not of St. Louis, not of
America, but of the modern world : the man who, when he died,
was characterized in the pages of the London "Spectator", as
"the last of the wandering scholars".
Assuming the background of the earlier years of Davidson's
life in St. Louis already sketched in for you, I begin with a meet
ing in 1882 at the then recently established Aristotelian Society
in London. It was not long after there had been a visit to that
Society about which a word should be said. Enter a tall, rather
gaunt but distinguished figure, who sat down beside the presi
dent, listened attentively to the paper, and was then called upon
somewhat in this fashion : "We are honored this evening by the
presence of a man well known to all of you, William T. Harris,
of St. Louis ; well known because he is the editor of the "Journal
of Speculative Philosophy" : This distinguished St. Louisan
closed the meeting with an interesting speech. ,
It may have been a year later: Enter a man who was, let
us say rotund, rubicund, and genial, with a merry twinkle of the
eye. That man was Thomas Davidson. At the close of the
meeting he too was asked to speak, and, as it happened (you
will have to pardon the personal reference), following a paper
59

which I had read, — for that was the evening of my terrifying
debut as a philosopher before the Society. My youthful paper
on Plato's Ethical Theory amused Thomas Davidson, — so much
so, in fact, that he invited me to come over and have a talk at
his hotel. The sequel was an invitation to visit him in a beauti
ful little villa on the hillsides of Domodossola, just over the
Simplon, in Italy.
He was there, after studying the medieval commentaries on
Aristotle, to prepare a book on the modern Catholic philosopher,
Rosmini, who had cast a spell upon him. ' His learning had made
its deep impression upon the scholarly people he had met in
Rome, and he had every door thrown open to him. He had
come here with his books and belongings in order to get what
help he might from the Rosminians whose monastery was
located in this spot.
Davidson had an extraordinary sympathy with young fel
lows who seemed to be moving along the path which several
of us were at that time exploring, the path that beckoned toward
social renovation. On this theme we talked as we wandered
" over those mountain slopes. I feasted on his helpfulness and
kindness, and learned to know the range of his scholarship and
the religious earnestness of his spirit. He helped me in my
beginner's Greek and Italian, and we indulged our common en
thusiasms for certain leaders of revolt and reconstruction. For
Davidson was firmly convinced that a time had come in the
development of society when those spirits who felt its short
comings and had any Utopian idealism should join together and
form a society dedicated to the service of the new life of their
vision. When he came back to London, not long after, we gathered
, together for him a group of kindred spirits, who met in his
lodgings in Chelsea, near where Carlyle and George Eliot had
lived. Out of these gatherings two organizations resulted: the
first was called "The Fellowship of the New Life," — later, "The
, New Fellowship." Differences of opinion led to the friendly
secession of the more politically-minded, of the group who pro
ceeded to form another organization which they called the
Fabian Society, — a now famous body, which has recently played
an important role in helping to formulate the program of the
British Labor Party.
That visit of his to London was made partIyjn_order to see
60

through the press, books which Davidson had just produced. To
one of these I must pay particular attention, because it forges
that link which I spoke of between St. Louis and Europe. It is
entitled, "The Parthenon Frieze and other Essays" ; and it has
this dedication : — "To the memory of Arthur Amson (born in
Missouri, July 1, 1855: died at Leipzig, July 7, 1875), whose
early loss no future earthly gain can ever make good to me, — I
dedicate these few gleanings from the field in which he was so
eager and so well fitted to be a reaper, as a small tribute of an
affection in which time has no inheritance." One of his school
boys of St. Louis, was this gifted youth, Arthur Amson. How
far Davidson was responsible for his going abroad I am not sure ;
but how deep and fine was his feeling for the lad is evidenced
by this dedicatory sonnet, which opens another window upon
Thomas Davidson's gifts, showing him to be a skilled poet :
"Upon a broken tombstone of the Prime
When youths, who loved the gods, were loved again
And rapt from sight, two human forms remain.
One, shrunk with years and hoary with their rime,
Gropes for the hand of one who sits sublime
And, calm in large-limbed youth, prepares to drain
The cup of. endless life. In vain ! in vain !
He cannot reach beyond the screen of time.
So, Arthur, as our human years go by,
I stand and blindly grope for thy dear hand,
And listen for a whisper from thy tongue.
In vain ! in vain ! I only hear Love cry :
'He feasts with gods upon the eternal strand' ;
For they in whom the gods delight die young.' "
The scene now shifts from Europe to New York, where he
later settled down to lecture and write. Here I joined him, to
begin, with his generous assistance, my new life in this country.
At the dock to greet me, amid the rejoicings of the 4th of July,
he took me straight to the Summer School which he had estab
lished at Farmington, Connecticut, where he gathered a choice
group of people. Many followed him in that second and more
famous venture of his, the Summer School at Glenmore in the
Adirondacks. Here is another link with St. Louis ; for among
those who enjoyed his hospitality on the estate which he had
bought, was his old friend Dr. William T. Harris, who erected
61

PERCIVAL CHUBB
Popular Leader of the Ethical Society of St. Louis

a cottage on it. There came other St. Louisans, including Miss
Amelia Fruchte, so well known to you here.
Many people looked in upon him in his mountain home,
where his life now centered. They delighted in the picturesque
ness of the man who, like a Scottish laird of his clan, was fre
quently seen in his kilts, and gave great delight by his recitations
of Scottish poetry. Simplicity was the keynote of the life there,
as it was of the man himself. Every morning he might be seen
going to the little stream that trickled from the hill-top, his towel
over his shoulder, to perform his ablutions before breakfast ; and
at noon making for the pool at the brook for a bracing splash in
its cold, cold waters. For the most engaging account of him in
his habit as he lived there, I must refer you to that back number
of McClure's Magazine in which one of his most valued visitors,
William James, paid the genial tribute of a friend and a philoso
pher to one of his compeers.
The scene changes now to the lower East side of New York. '
Davidson had been invited, I think by Mr. Joseph Pulitzer, of
St. Louis memory, whose friend he was, to speak to an Easts
side assemblage of young Jews. He was to give them a lecture
on history. When he had finished, those young socialists, full of
dogmatism and daring, "went for" this up-town academician.
When they had done pouring their hot shot into him, he replied.
He had been much interested. They had been very dogmatic ;
and he could tell them that for much of what they had said there
was no basis of fact. They were evidently ignorant of history,
and had not earned the right by the study of it to have an. opinion
about most of the things they had discussed. But he liked their
spirit. If they were willing to learn, he was willing to teach.
They accepted the invitation, and thence came the establishment
of The Bread Winners' College. There was a complete cur
riculum in the humanities there. Davidson worked night and
day in this new cause. I once heard him say, "I consider that
everything I have done up to this time has been but a prepara
tion tor this work." He spent himself royally on those young
men and women. Later on, he invited them to (jienmure, and
some of them came. It was his intention to devote that beauti
ful Academe to this work: but he died before he had matured
the plan. After Davidson died I was honored by an invitation to help
out with those young people. Every Saturday night the assem-
65

bly room of the Bread Winners' College was filled to capacity
with an eager throng, books in hand. We studied the poem
which Thomas Davidson ranked with Homer's epics, Dante's
Divine Comedy and Goethe's "Faust" as epochal — Tennyson's
"In Memoriam," using Davidson's own commentary on it,
still the most stimulating among many. Here was conclusive
testimony as to the power of his influence.
He died learning, and teaching. He was buried in that
beloved place, up in the woods among the birches and the firs,
at Glenmore. I do not recall the exact words of the tablet set in
the boulder which marks the spot ; but it always suggests another
tablet — that on which Ruskin pays this tribute to the memory of
his father: "He was an entirely honest merchant." Of Davidson
I would say, "He was an entirely honest scholar" — fearlessly
honest. I never knew him to make a compromise with the truth
as he saw it. If anything, he was too militant. He had an un
faltering courage.
Let me close, as I began, on this note. I am here today
to pay my tribute to that great man, to his surviving friend, Dr.
Snider, and to their friends of that early St. Louis group. He
and they endured to the end. They made no capitulation to
the mighty material forces that so often array themselves against
those ideals which to Davidson and his friends were of supreme
worth — -knowledge, truth, justice ; and the courage to live by
these.

66

ADOLPH ERNST|KROEGER

Adolph Ernst Kroeger
From an Address Given by His Son, Professor E. R. Kroeger
He was born December 28th, 1837 at Schwabstadt, Schles-
wig. His father, the Rev. Jacob Kroeger, a Lutheran clergy
man, was obliged in the revolutionary turmoil of 1848 to come
to this country bringing with him his family, his son Adolph
being then about eleven years of age. The family settled down
on a farm near Davenport, Iowa. From that time till the de
ceased was fifteen years old, his father, an eminent scholar, super
intended his son's education. At the age last mentioned Mr.
Kroeger entered the banking office of Cook and Sargent, in
Davenport. While there he devoted his leisure hours to literary
and philosophical studies. In 1858 he went to New York and
obtained a position as editorial writer on the New York Times.
The following year he' was sent to St. Louis by that paper as its
correspondent, which position he occupied until the outbreak
of the war, when he was appointed on the staff of Gen. Fremont
as Lieutenant. He was afterward promoted to be Captain. He
remained on Gen. Fremont's staff until the latter was superseded.
In September, 1861, he married Miss Eliza B. Curren, the
daughter of an English civil engineer. He devoted himself en
tirely to literary pursuits, especially in establishing, in con
junction with Mr. Wm. T. Harris, the Journal of Speculative
Philosophy, to which he was from the first an active and valued
contributor. Perhaps his greatest literary effort was his transla
tion of Fichte's "Science of Knowledge" and "Science of Rights",
both of which were an entire success and were regarded by
critics as remarkable productions of these great German works.
After his death, the publishers issued his translation of Fichte's
"Science of Morals". Subsequently, he translated a great num
ber of German love songs of the Minnesinger period, a volume
of which was published by Hurd and Houghton, under the title
of "The Minnesingers of Germany". The poet Longfellow
greatly esteemed Mr. Kroeger's peculiar talent for translating
the productions of the Minnesingers, and in a volume of transla^
tions from various languages Mr. Longfellow embodied several
of Mr. Kroeger's translations, commending them very highly.
To all of the St. Louis newspapers Mr. Kroeger contributed
from time to time valuable articles. Among those were the
69

E. R. KROEGER

Missouri Republican, the old Democrat, the St. Louis Times,
the Globe-Democrat, etc. Mr. Kroeger also wrote many articles
for the Southern Magazine, the Boston Commonwealth and
other monthly periodicals. As a Musical Critic Mr. Kroeger
had rare judgment, and in that branch of art he was profoundly
versed. Mr. Kroeger was a man of singularly bright and clear
intellect, a true philosopher and scholar, one who was esteemed
and respected by such men as Emerson, Longfellow, and others.
He died March 8th, 1882 in his forty-fifth year. His widow
survived him over twenty-five years. The date of her death
was November 1st, 1907. There were four children, all born at
Saint Louis. They were as follows : Ernest Richard, Alice
Bertha, (died October 31st, 1909), Julia Beatrice, (died April
16th, 1921), Adolph Evelyn.
The following tribute by David H. MacAdam published in
the Missouri Republican, April 16th, 1882 is appended.
"The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, conducted and,
indeed, originated by Professor W. T. Harris, afforded a for
tunate opportunity to the ever active mind of Kroeger, and for
several years he was one of the most valuable contributors.
He- supplied many admirable translations from the German phi
losophers, his work being marked by singular lucidity and force
of language. He was also the author of several original essays
that appeared in this periodical. Mr. Harris, one of the most
acute philosophic minds that this country has produced, was
quick to appreciate the genius of Kroeger and happily extended
to him the very best opportunity for addressing the thoughtful.
Through the pages of this journal he became known abroad and
had many admirers among the learned circles of the East. In
1873 he published "The Minnesinger of Germany", being a
volume of translations from the early poetic literature of Ger
many, rendered in the form of English verse, accompanied by
critical notes and historical explanations. The volume was pub
lished by Hurd & Houghton in New York, and in London ap
peared under the auspices of Trubner & Co. The learning it
displayed upon a somewhat obscure subject and the rare felicity
of the translations, together with the skill evinced in English
versification, at once commanded attention. The poet Long
fellow personally complimented the author, who, if he did not
acquire much pecuniary advantage from the volume, certainly
extended his reputation and made a valuable and enduring con
tribution to literature. Among the mass of our citizens, how-
73

P. G. ANTON

Preceding his address, Prof. E. R. Kroeger rendered on the piano,
accompanied by Prof. P. G. Anton on cello, the andante
movement of one of his own compositions that
was received with great applause.

ever, Kroeger became best known by his articles in the Repub
lican, which embraced a large variety of subjects. He was a
German, but he preferred to write and think in the language of
the country of which he was a citizen, and by this wise course
the number of his readers and his influence were greatly ex
tended. In an intellectual sense he fitly represented the rich,
strong genius which the German race has contributed to Ameri
can Society. Within the last twenty years what a brilliant com
pany of writers and thinkers have appeared in St: Louis and
vicinity in connection with that portion of our population !
Muench, Bernays, Kroeger, Hecker, Schurz, Brockmeyer, Boer-
stein, Palm, Koerner, Kribben and others, without naming the
talented gentlemen now associated with the German press.
Several of those named were writers for the Republican, and
became generally known through its columns. For brilliant
and miscellaneous literary work Kroeger stands pre-eminent
among German-American writers, and in power to grasp pure
philosophical ideas was rarely equalled."

77

J. GABRIEL WOERNER

The Early St. Louis Movement
Some of the Early Leaders
By William F. Woerner
The honor of participating in this commemoration of the
"Early St. Louis Movement" on this 80th birthday anniversary
of Dr. Denton J. Snider, doubtless has been accorded me not be
cause of individual activities therein on my part, but because
of the good fortune that has been mine in having come in such
close contact with the great leaders of that movement in my
own father's home.
There may be many who may be referred to as having been
participants in that peculiar movement. But to me the four
great pillars that are the main support of the great intellectual
structure that we today commemorate loom up as the giant
minds of Henry Clay Brockmeyer, William Torrey Harris, J.
Gabriel Woerner and Denton Jaques Snider. These four were
men of totally diverse personality, individuality, appearance and
environment, yet they met upon the same common ground of a
supreme intellectual and spiritual world; their very differences
made for the great profit of each during their joint lives, marked
by a close and beautiful friendship extending over half a century.
Three of these intellectual giants long ago passed away to
that bourne from which no traveler returneth. Though death
has claimed them, yet are they deathless. Though their voices
are hushed, yet do they speak forever. And so will it be with
him who is still physically with us in the full vigor of his strong
mentality. The so-called "St. Louis Movement" was no spectacular
event heralded by trumpets and clamor, but it was and is of
more far-reaching consequence in the intellectual life of our city
and our time than the product of any hundred mere millionaires
that ever lived in the world. The millionaire lives and dies and
is gone. The thinker lives and his spirit never dies.
All four of these men were philosophers of the highest type.
Yet not one of them lived the life of an esoteric spiritual hermit,
apart from the world, in the realm only of abstract thought. For
each of them knew the force of what all the disciples of Dr.
81

Snider so often heard from him, that a man lives a true and
useful life only as he imparts what is best in him to others, that
he must universalize himself to the extent that his human limi
tations permit. And each of these four men appreciated that no
spiritual principle or ideal, however true as an abstraction, has
indeed any reality unless it finds its application to the concrete
in life — unless it has its incidence upon some human relation
ship. Or, to use the philosophical nomenclature, the universal
has no existence without the particular in which it finds ex
pression. In this sense there can not only be no Creation with
out the Creator, but no Creator without Creation; no only not
Man without God, but not God without Man created in his
image; not onlv must the true "particular be raised to its uni
versal consecration", but the universal must be truly reflected
in the particular.
Governor Brockmeyer perhaps was endowed with a mind
as profound as any of these four. It is certain, however, that
he imparted to the world in a less degree the fruits of his great
genius than did the others. But he did exert a powerful in
fluence upon the lives of his three friends, who in turn passed
it on to the world at large. It is characteristic of the man that in
his younger years he fled from all human society and, while
living a hermit in the woods, read and translated into English
from the original German that most difficult and profound of the
Hegelian works, the "Larger Logic". The work as translated
has unfortunately never been printed, though it is now intact
in possession of the Chairman of this meeting. Brockmeyer's
was probably the only mind that had the grasp equal to this
stupendous task.
Dr. William T. Harris, brother of our worthy chairman,
honored St. Louis by his presence from 1857 to 1880, and be
came a man of international fame as an educator. He left his
mark indelibly in a number of directions, but so far as St. Louis
is concerned he achieved his most effective results as superin
tendent of the public schools here up to 1880. The direction
and management of the public schools is the highest trust con
fided to a democracy. The life of the republic in the future
depends upon the training of the youth of each preceding genera
tion. The work of Dr. Harris in this field is of inestimable
benefit today. It seems like a crime against the children of this
day and a betrayal of our most cherished hopes and ideals, that
82

WM. F. WOERNER

the sinister interference of selfish politicians threatens the effici
ency of our school system today and has forced the withdrawal
of the present splendidly able and competent Superintendent,
John W. Withers.
I will not here discuss, but leave it to others, the activities
of my father, J. Gabriel Woerner, in connection with the early
participants in the "St. Louis Movement." But I may say that
the effect of his studies of the Hegelian philosophy is distinctly
traceable in, if not the inspiration of, his great law book, "The
American Law of Administration." And perhaps I may be
pardoned in saying that this work is the pioneer book on probate
law in America, that it is an authority recognized to the four
corners of the Republic.
And it is appropriate on this occasion further to say that in
his novel "The Rebel's Daughter," Judge Woerner portrays
with startling vividness some of the individuals of "The St.
Louis Movement" whom he knew so well. Indeed nearly all
the characters of that novel are veiled characters taken from real
life. In the Victor Waldhorst of the novel he gives a picture
of himself and of his own life up to the Civil War. And no one
who knew Brockmeyer can fail to see him depicted in the Rauen-
fels of the novel, nor fail to see Dr. Snider in the character of
Dr. Taylor, nor Dr. W. T. Harris in that of Professor Altrue.
And now for the last of this quarternary, our Dr. Denton
J. Snider, our guest of today. We are gratified that he has been
spared us in person, and that we have this opportunity to do him
honor. He has, like a thread of golden thought, run through
this "St. Louis Movement" from its inception down to the
present; in fact, he is identified with it as its soul. I knew him
when I was a boy, when he came to my father's house as he did
to his own. He was my instructor at Central High School ; I
was with the private classes he led in his "works ; I was a mem
ber of his public courses and lectures. I have read his works,
of which there are about half a hundred. I have had the honor
of myself leading one of the classes studying his works, and I
say that in my humble judgment he is a man who in the in
tellectual world stands today with hardly a living peer. The
perusal of his books is alone and in itself a liberal education for
his readers. His genius is comprehensive and more diversified than that
85

of any author, living or dead. In his works he has traveled
and illumined the whole literary field. They cover the com
mentaries on the world's four literary bibles, Homer, Dante,
Shakespeare, Goethe ; the world of poetry, of ancient and modern
philosophy, of European and American History, of American
Constitutional Law, of Social Institutions, of fiction of a high
order, of biography, of autobiography, of Architecture, of Music
and the Fine Arts, of the "St. Louis Movement" itself. And
in some realms of thought he is still the sole pioneer and dis
coverer, the Columbus of a New World of Thought, namely the
Sniderian psychology. Therein he transcends even the Hegel
ian philosophy and makes an epoch in human thought that will
be more truly appreciated a century hence than in our own times.

86

PROFESSOR FRANCIS E. COOK

Reflections on the Early Movement
By Professor Francis E. Cook.
At one of its earliest meetings, on motion of Dr. Harris,
I was chosen President of the Kant Club, an honor which was
continued and became permanent; let me, therefore, say that I
deem Mr. Schuyler's record in Washington University Bulletin
1893-4 so satisfactory as to leave little for me to add; it is sub
stantially correct. Allow me to say, however, that our proceed
ings were not entirely given over to high and hard thinking,
our closing moments being generally characterized by relaxation
and jollity; as an instance of which let me cite the following: —
One evening, just before adjournment, I happened to remark
that it was reported in the press that Tennyson, the poet, had
declined a Baronetcy — which act — I presumed was prompted
by his "Kind hearts are more than coronets" conviction. To
this Dr. Holland demurred, saying that "The declension was
probably because the title was not high enough, saying, if
Victoria had offered to make him a Lord, or an Earl, he would
not then have declined." Here Mr. Garland, an inveterate and
happy punster, joined in, saying, in his inimitable way, "I see
now more vividly than ever before the deeper significance of that
line of the poet. "Call me Earl-y, mother dear !" Dr. Holland
adding "And how tenderly the poet alludes, in that line; to the
'Queen-mother.' "
By the way, Dr. Holland's remark proved prophetic, for
Tennyson did eventually accept the title, Lord, when offered.
Again, it was always delightful to note the altruistic at
titude of these high thinkers, Dr. Harris remarking that he con
sidered Dr. Snider's commentaries on Shakespeare's dramas, as
great, in the field of ethical criticism as Shakespeare was in the
realm of dramatic poetry — and Dr. Snider, in referring to Dr.
Harris' splendid report, as United States Commissioner of Edu
cation, on the "Correlation of Studies," pronounces it — "the
masterpiece of its author, the greatest educational document
that America has produced, and ranking very high in the world's
literature of education. More profoundly than any pedagogical
writer hitherto, this author grounds the elementary branches
89

REV. DR. R. A. HOLLAND

of the Common School upon their infinite value in unfolding the
pupil without neglecting their finite value in the utilities of
human life."
Dr. Harris was the founder of the Kant Club, and as its
former President, I wish to call your attention to what I have
done to have what I deem a most fitting inscription, taken from
his essay on Dante, placed upon a memorial tablet at the Harris
Teachers College.
This I have suggested already to the late Superintendent
of Instruction, Ben Blewett, also to Ex-Superintendent, Dr. John
W. Withers, also to Dr. E. George Payne, Principal of the
Teachers College, and to several others. I repeat it here, hoping
that some of your number may see fit to co-operate, if you agree
with me, in bringing to pass this, to my thinking, consummation
devoutly to be wished..
"To the soul who has learned so much of the freedom of the
will as permits him to see that all influences from its environ
ment — all the arrows of fate, all the stings of fortune — may be
made use of by the soul to purify itself — to such a soul no evil
can happen. He has solved the problem of life."
This account must certainly include the revered and dis
tinguished name of the late Dr. William M. Bryant, who entered
our circle eminent as a Scientist, and who, under the compelling
influence of our Club, ran rapidly to the generally recognized
highest rank in Philosophy and Universal Psychology, as is
attested by the following list of his published writings : — "The
World Energy and its Self-conservation," "The Philosophy of
Landscape Painting," "Goethe as a Representative of the Modern
Art Spirit," "Historical Presuppositions and Foreshadowings of
Dante's Divine Comedy," "Eternity, a Hand in the Weaving of a
Life," "A Syllabus of Psychology," "A Syllabus of Ethics," "Pos
sibilities of a Pedagogical Society" (his famous reorganization of
the Society of Pedagogy on lines of University extension.) "The
American Scheme of State Education," "Hegel's Philosophy of
Art, Translation with Introduction," and "A Textbook of Psy
chology" (in preparation at the time of his death). All this,
despite the presence of constant neuralgic pain, under which
many another would have bent and broken. It was indeed a joy
to have known this heroic soul and to have had the blessed
93

WM. M. BRYANT

benefit of the encouraging ideas that came from his sympathetic
and stimulating voice and pen.
Now we come to and conclude with this, our tribute to the
very great man whose birth-anniversary we are met to com
memorate. Dr. Denton J. Snider, on his return to our city,
completed and crowned the St. Louis Movement by his great
Trilogy or better, Organon of feeling, will and intellect through
which he psychologized the worlds of nature, life, man and psy
chology itself, by lifting it out of its time-worn place as a de
partment of Philosophy into the all inclusive realm of its own,
thus reaching beyond that "Mighty architectonic genius,
Hegel," himself, and making his Universal Psychology the un
doubted discipline of the Occident America, as Philosophy has
been the discipline of Europe and Religion, that of the Orient —
His "Psychosis," human, and divine ("Parapsychosis"), are
unquestionably the last words in the solution of all the possi
bilities of self-activity on the way to God, Freedom and Immor
tality, and it is a source of the greatest gratification that I was
permitted to play an humble part in this culmination of the St.
Louis Movement and to have received the recognition and ap
probation of the very great thinker, to whom I owe more, in
tellectually, than any other man I have ever known.
To me three names, representing three indissoluble person
alities, stand out alone in connection with the St. Louis Move
ment, Brockmeyer, Harris and Snider, constituting a triple-star
in the firmament of pure thought, each resplendent with its own
light. Wfho can gauge their mighty influence, as time's last eons
onward roll?

97

The Influence of the Early Movement on .
Education
By W. J. S. Bryan.
(It is greatly regretted that the loss of this paper by the
writer has prevented its publication in this report.
In part of the unused space allotted to it we have given from
another source a brief tribute to Dr. Harris' influence as an
Educator and executive : — )
"Dr. Harris*' administration of the St. Louis Public Schools
was remarkable for its conversion of a jelly-fish-organism into
a giant with bones.
"He was the most practical, the most constructive-minded,
scholarly man I ever knew.
"He was great in all the qualities that go to make up an
ideal manager.
"He comprehended the value of Greek thought and life,
joined with a profound knowledge of the Roman World."
"Dr. Harris was familiar with the religious writings of the
world, the educational systems, the philosophies, the worlds'
great literatures ; music and the other fine arts, physics and
natural science. He excelled in higher mathematics, he was
interested in astronomy and constructed telescopes in earlier
years with which he could see the belts of Saturn and the moons
of Jupiter and other objects beyond ordinary vision.
"He Confirmed Gbethes' theory of colors and studied out a
new explanation of the action of the Gyroscope.
"As an outcome of this vast knowledge he introduced an
"Oral Course of Lessons in Natural Science" into all of the ward
schools of the city.
"Through his influence copies of the worlds' great masters in
sculpture and painting were placed in the school buildings. The
musical curriculum was expanded and improved by the intro
duction of classic music.
He paid careful attention to the temperature, humidity,
ventilation and lighting of the school buildings.
"Sometime the historian of the future will, when calling the
roll of Americas' most distinguished sons, write the name of
Wm. T. Harris high in the list." 98

The Early Journals, Magazines and Writers
of St. Louis
By
Alexander N. DeMenil.
Dr. DeMenil gave a very interesting account of the early
journals and magazines, together with the early writers of St
Louis.
No one seems better acquainted with these interesting facts
but for want of copy it is regretted that we are compelled to omii
publication in this report.

99

1

¦ #*«i

. k^^P- i

f
a. f% "%v
^
K'^^^^k
I iii fi
mB...(...
^^L. , . ^^
¦ r Mt£^ . M
^$& * ¥
DR. FRANK GECKS
Development of Music in St. Louis
By Frank Geeks.
It is good for us to sometimes pause and use a little retro
spection ; to temper the pride we take in our achievements with
acknowledgment of what our predecessors have done.
The City of St. Louis was founded, not by adventurous
pioneers, but by cultured people. The French who settled here
brought with them the culture of their home country, and a
great part of that culture was a love of music. Family groups
and occasionally larger gatherings cultivated the art of music
and we can truly say that there never, in the history of our
City, was a lack of musical endeavor.
In 1839 Henry Weber and his daughter Theresa, a splendid
pianist, came to St. Louis, and were soon followed by Charles
Balmer. Theresa Weber became the wife of Balmer and they,
together with Henry Weber, were great factors in the up-build
ing of music in the City. As early as 1839 they founded an or
chestra, which, we can imagine, was a very small one, but never
theless an orchestra.
In the 40's of the 19th century, and especially after the rev
olutions of '48 in Europe, when a flood of German scholars and
cultured people from other countries came to America, many
of them found their way to St. Louis and an added impetus was
given to the development of musical societies. It was a matter
of course that artists from abroad, violinists, pianists, singers,
were induced to come to St. Louis.
In 1850 William and Henry Robyn founded the Polyhymnia
Orchestra, composed of a small group of professional musicians
and a number of amateurs, doctors, lawyers, business men and
students, all interested in music, giving no thought to financial
remuneration, but through sheer love of music, studying orches
tral compositions.
In 1845 Charles Balmer founded the first Oratorio Society
in the City, and the Creation, the Messiah and other great choral
works were brought to the people. When a few years later the
Oratorio Society disbanded because of the lack of funds, which
103

seems to be the chronic trouble of such organizations, the Caecilia
Society was established. And always when such organizations
would crumble, others would spring into being and the interest
was constantly kept alive.
In 1846 the first German singing society, The St. Louis
Saengerbund, was founded and I need not tell you how many
such organizations eventually came into existence. They served
to spread musical culture to all parts of the City. Many of them
were composed of men in the more humble walks of life who de
voted at least one night each week to singing the best of music.
In 1853 the Germania Orchestra of New York, under the
direction of Carl Bergman, visited St. Louis and gave a series
of concerts that gave fresh impetus to the musical life of the
City. Traveling Opera companies paid frequent visits and finally
in 1858 was founded the Philharmonica Society the first attempt
at an organization on a large scale to produce the best choral
and instrumental works in the literature of music. Its director,
Edward Sobolewski, born in Konigsberg and educated in music
by the great Weber in Dresden, was a great musician and a
splendid organizer. Through his ability and his fine personality
he developed a first class chorus and a splendid orchestra.
When in 1866 Sobolewski resigned, Egmont Froelich was
brought from Stuttgart to take his place. He held the position
until the society disbanded in 1869.
In the '70s a German opera company played at the Apollo
Theatre on Fourth and Poplar Streets and, small though it was,
splendid performances were given which were a great boon to
the community. At the same time Hans Balatka became director of several
German singing societies. He was a splendid musician and
an indefatigable worker, and arranged many high class concerts.
During the '70s Severin Sauter, with whom I had the honor
to study, organized the Haydn Orchestra, an amateur organiza
tion which, with the assistance of professional musicians, gave
a series of concerts each winter. During the summer months
concerts were given at various gardens in the City and in the
course of time, Schnaider's Garden on Mississippi Avenue and
Hickory Street became the fashionable resort. These summer
concerts had always been small affairs and most of them by
brass bands. 104

In 1880 the proprietor of Schnaider's Garden suggested to
a group of the foremost musicians that they organize an orches
tra. The suggestion was carried out and the musicians organized
the St. Louis Grand Orchestra of some 25 members and chose
one of their number, Louis Mayer, director, and that was the
beginning of our Symphony Orchestra. The Orchestra met
with great success and in 1881 was augmented to thirty-five men
which was a blessing to quite a number of us, who, though on'y
boys, were taken into the organization.
August Waldauer and Dabney Carr frequently heard the
orchestra play and its artistic progress prompted them to in
stitute a series of symphony concerts during the winter of 1881-
82 and these concerts have not been discontinued since then.
At this time the Choral Society, under Joseph Otten, gave
several concerts with the orchestra each winter, and these two
institutions continued their activities separately for some ten
years and then combined as the Choral Symphony Society. Some
ten years later the chorus was disbanded and the present Sym
phony Society was organized.
That small group of musicians who, in 1880 founded the
Grand Orchestra, and whose endeavors were indeed a labor of
love, as the monetary return was ridiculously small, laid the
foundation for our splendid orchestra, and through their incen
tive we are where we are today.
I regret that I have not the time to go into detail. I could
only give a very cursory resume of musical endeavor in our
City, but, if I have called attention to the outstanding features
and have perhaps caused some of you to want to investigate a
little further, I shall have accomplished what I desired.

105

ARTHUR E. BOSTWICK
Present Librarian of the Public Library

03
Hr
oc

nMz
>r
dwr

r3so
>>
2O03
cz
zo

z

The St. Louis Public Library
Arthur E. Bostwick.
(Our great public library began as "The Public School
Library," under the leadership of Superintendent Ira Divoll, ably
assisted by his associate, Assistant Superintendent W. T. Harris,
and Miss Alice Bertha Kroeger, the latter serving seven years
as librarian. Later it came under the management of Frederick Morgan
Crunden who, ably held this position for about thirty years. In
reference to the liberal gifts to the library that have enabled it
to expand and so adequately meet the great demands of the
different sections of our growing city it is said "Andrew Carnegie
gave his millions and Mr. Crunden gave his life."
Since 1909 Dr. Arthur E. Bostwick has ably conducted this
important interest. His brief report of the work is presented
here : — )
This library now includes 607,617 books, housed in a large
central building and in 10 branches or sub-branches, and also in
temporary deposits in large numbers of schools, clubs, societies,
and in industrial and commercial plants. Through all these
agencies and through about sixty delivery stations in drug
stores and groceries, the library, now distributes yearly for home
use more than 2,000,000 volumes.
Its buildings have become to an interesting extent commun
ity centers, and are looked upon by nearby residents as places
where it is natural to assemble for all sorts of purposes — social,
educational, political, religious, and so on. In about 15 rooms
in the system, there are held during the year over 4,000 meetings
of these and other types. At the next election three of the branch
libraries are to be used as voting places by special request of
the Board of Election Commissioners.
The Library maintains a municipal reference branch at the
City Hall especially for the information and aid of members oi
the city government.
Its work with children is especially note-worthy, more than
1,000,000 volumes being given out to young people yearly in
rooms at the central and branch libraries, specially equipped '
111

&

r,.

FREDERICK MAN CRUNDEN

for this purpose. Careful attention is given to the selection and
purchase of children's books.
The Library has departments devoted to works on art,
architecture and decoration, on the applied sciences, including
engineering, technology and music, including scores of standard
and current compositions.
It is planning in co-operation with the Board of Education
to establish fully equipped branch libraries in three newly erected
school buildings.
The Library has taken active part in Americanization work
and its aim is to create interest and to give service in every work
that looks towards community education and betterment.

115

REV.

AMES W. LEE

Copy of a Letter Written to Dr. Snider
BY REV. JAMES W. LEE.

St. Louis, Mo., November 15, 1918.
My Dear Dr. Snider, —
I had a long talk last Monday with a group of our preachers
about you and your contributions, and among other things I
stated that if I didn't have my hands full of work, I would spend
my time the rest of my days in awakening interest in your
writings, because they had to do with a realm of thought and
of being that we were under the necessity of coming into, if
we were to ever get anywhere as a people or as a race ; that you
had given a program of individual, social and political life that
was not merely speculative, but was rather a series of reports
from one with sufficient spiritual insight to enable him to see
what had to be. I think it was Hegel who described himself,
not as arbitrarily writing a philosophy, but as a reporter of the
nature of reality.
I advised the young men to get at once and read your
books, and I do not propose to miss an opportunity to let minis
ters and others know of the vast value of your remarkable writ
ings. As I read them more and more myself, I am all the better
prepared to recognize what Dr. Wm. T. Harris used to say to me
about their value. I belong to a ministers' club here of about
eighteen of the leading preachers of the city, representing all
denominations, and I propose at my next time to read a paper, to
consider the value of your writings.
I have started on a review of your life work, and am sending
you a page or two of the first part.
With all good wishes, I am Sincerely yours,
JAMES W. LEE.

119

Most Remarkable Man
By Rev. James W. Lee,
Chaplain, Barnes Hospital.
Measured by the philosophical and psychological wealth he
has given to the world, Dr. Denton J. Snider of St. Louis is today
the most remarkable man alive on the planet. Those who are
not acquainted with him might suppose, upon first reading a
statement like this, that it was somewhat exaggerated, but those
who know the man, as I have known him for thirty years, will
agree with me completely in the statement.
Dr. Snider was born at Mount Gilead, Ohio, January 9, 1841.
so he will be seventy-eight years of age the ninth day of January
1919. He is the author of more than fifty volumes of books
covering fields of thought, of the existence of which only a few
people have any knowledge.
Emerson said that Plato could be read by only about one
thousand people in any generation, but that this thousand in
fluenced ten thousand below them, and that ten thousand in
fluenced one hundred thousand below them, and that one
hundred thousand influenced a million below them, and that mil
lion influenced millions below them, until finally Plato had such
a wonderful hold upon the thought of mankind that there was
not a laborer who plowed the fields but wore his hat one way
rather than another because of what Plato said.
So while Dr. Snider is not well-known, except to university
professors and thinkers, he is still having influence such as Emer
son represents Plato as having, because Dr. Snider has spent his
life in the philosophical fields first explored in a great way by
Plato and Aristotle. He will be far better known, a thousand
years from today, than he is now.
I make a pilgrimage to his house now and then, just to
get a glimpse of the livest man in the realms of thought I know.
Though he only lacks two years of being eighty years of age,
he is as young, seemingly, intellectually, as if he were but forty.
If I had money enough, I would be glad to place all the
books he has written in every university and college in this
120

country, and endow a professorship for the teaching of his phil
osophy. He is as orthodox as the laws of gravity and the
multiplication table, though he does not arbitrarily set out to be
orthodox with malice aforethought. He is orthodox because he
has the intuition and the mental grasp which enables him to
see clearly the way things are going, and there is not a sentence
in any one of his books that contradicts the fashion God has
followed in building the universe and in making man the highest
expression of his handiwork.

121

*---¦

MISS SUSAN E. BLOW

o z5jDasJOOIIueninH« HOh
tn WQ

123

Miss Susan Blow and the Kindergarten
By Miss Mary C McCulloch.
The chairman introduced as the next speaker Miss Mary
C. McCulloch, who spoke on Miss Susan E. Blow and the Kinder
garten. By way of introduction Mr. Harris said :
Miss McCulloch is one of the few persons present who has
enjoyed the privilege of being a student at the Concord School
of Philosophy where she mingled with such delightful people
as Emerson, Alcott, Davidson, Miss Blow, Miss Peabody, W. T.
Harris and others. She also attended the Literary School con
ducted by Thomas Davidson in the Adirondack Mountains at
Glenmore, also many philosophic and literary classes in St. Louis.
Next to Miss Blow herself, pioneer of the Kindergarten work
in St. Louis, she has nobly devoted her life to this department
of Education. She is the supervisor of all the public kindergar
tens in our city and has held this position for many years.
Miss McCulloch has served as president of The St. Louis
Froebel Society, also president of The Kindergarten Depart
ment of the National Educational Association and is a charter
member of The International Kindergarten Union, and was
chosen for its first secretary. She has also held all of its im
portant offices in this world-known organization, including the
Presidency, and has served in many committees, loyally and
efficiently. Miss McCulloch spoke as follows :
Ladies and Gentlemen:
To the untiring efforts of Mr. David H. Harris, Chairman
of this meeting, we, who are gathered here, are indebted for the
privilege and pleasure of coming together to fittingly recognize
the eightieth birthday of Dr. Denton J. Snider.
His genius and literary ability are recognized all over the
world. As I listened to Mr. Block's reminiscences pf the Concord
School of Philosophy I recalled the fact that it was there that
Miss Susan E. Blow gave me an opportunity to meet and hear
Dr. Snider, whom I found in a circle of great thinkers — -Emerson,
Alcott, Dr. Wm. T. Harris, and Miss Elizabeth Peabody, a
pioneer kindergarten worker. Later I became an appreciative
127

student in classes organized by Miss Blow and received great
inspiration from Dr. Snider's interpretation of Homer, Dante,
Shakespeare and Goethe.
To Miss Susan E. Blow and Dr. William T. Harris honor
and gratitude belong for one of the greatest achievements the
history of the St. Louis Public Schools records, namely, the
introduction of the kindergarten into the public schools. Miss
Blow contributed to this achievement a mind aflame with a new
educational ideal, an ardent enthusiasm, and untiring devotion
to the cause of the "New Education." Dr. Harris aided the
kindergarten in its experimental stage with his clear insight
into the educational principles upon which the kindergarten is
based, his wise counsel and cordial co-operation in all that would
contribute to the success of the. new methods.
In September, 1873, Miss Blow, having spent a year in New
York with Mrs. Maria Kraus Boelte studying the kindergarten.
returned to her native city imbued with an appreciation of the
Froebelian ideals of education. She was eager to test them with
a group of little children and offered to the Board of Education
her services gratuitously to make the experiment. This offer
was accepted and a room in the Des Peres School placed at her
disposal. Thus did the kindergarten find its way not only into
every public school in St. Louis, but also into all the public
schools of large cities of the country where the kindergarten is
now recognized as an essential part of the educational system.
There are men and women who have happy memories of their
experiences as little children in, this first public kindergarten.
They recall with appreciation Miss Blow's sympathetic response
to the needs of each one of the children under her care as she
worked and played with them in an atmosphere of joyous activi
ty, and they recognized the beginnings- made in intellectual and
moral habits that have contributed to the usefulness and hap
piness of their lives. Many visitors found their way to the Des
Peres Kindergarten inl the early days, — 'mothers to tell of the
good results of the training of their children, young women to
discover in the new work a vocation that appealed and develop
ed the best within them. Educators from far and near were
attracted to this school in Carondelet by the reports of the work
that had been successfully inaugurated. They returned to their
home cities with enthusiastic endorsement of what they had
observed. This resulted later in bringing to our city earnest
128

students of the kindergarten who have become representative
kindergarten leaders. Thus there radiated from the Des Peres
Kindergarten influences that have blessed children, young
women, and mothers and proved a spiritual uplift to the com
munity. To indicate the open-minded spirit in which Miss Blow
began her great work I quote the following from her first report
to the Superintendent of Public Schools :
"It is in the question of method that Froebel'is superior to
other educational reformers. I do not agree with the kindergar
ten enthusiasts who can see no light save their own sun. I do
not think Froebel has announced principles which are not, at
least, implied in the writings of other philosophic educators, but
I do feel that he has shown great originality and wonderful in
sight in his application of principles, and that his answer to the
question 'How shall we meet the necessities of the child?' is the
most complete and comprehensive which has yet been given.
* * * Personally, I feel that the strongest claim to the kin
dergarten is the happiness it produces. If we create in children
a love for work we shall have no difficulty in making them per
sistently industrious. If we can make children love intellectual
effort we shall prolong habits of study beyond school years, and
if we can insure to children every day four hours of pleasurable
activity without excitement, we lay a foundation for a strong,
contented disposition."
In 1877 Miss Blow spent a year in Europe studying with
Baroness Marenholz Bulow and visiting German kindergartens.
Upon her return to St. Louis, she was placed in charge of the
Kindergarten Training School. I met her for the first time in
the Stoddard Kindergarten and vividly recall her appearance as
she entered the room. Her animated manner, her keen interest
in all the children were doing, and encouraging words to the
kindergartners in charge of the children are indelibly impressed
upon my mind. I entered her large Training Class of young
women each one of whom today feels a debt of gratitude to
Miss Blow that can neither be measured nor told. As we look
back to the years we were under her tuition, we realize thev were
the beginnings of an awakening to the true value of life, and that
what we may have accomplished that is worth while is largely
129

due to the inspiring influence of a great teacher. Miss Blow's
enthusiasm was contagious and created in her students a spirit
of consecration to their calling. No work was too arduous, no
sacrifice too great that contributed to the recognition of the
value of the kindergarten. The Saturday Morning Class at the
Eads School was largely attended by teachers and mothers, seek
ing the light that came from Miss Blow's interpretation
of "Mother Play" and great literature. She possessed the power
to set before the minds of all who listened to her the "open door''
of insight into life's meanings, responsibilities, and privileges.
Play, Art, and Work were her pedagogical by- words and she
believed firmly in her mission to promote this ideal of educa
tion, She said :
"My abiding conviction is that the order of historic develop
ment is Play, Art, Work. I claim that the progress of mankind
has been conducted under the inspiration of love, joy, duty, and
religion, and not under compulsion of bodily need. Thought is
not democratic and it is far from easy to spread it to many minds,
but the kindergarten could not only spread its ideals, but could
sing them and play them. It could illustrate them through the
free creation of little children. It could make the happy and
developed child its best missionary, and in forty years or more
it has preached, sung, and played itself into the heart and mind
of the American people, and from America it shall go forth to
redeem and bless childhood all over the world."
In the years that followed Miss Blow's active, earnest, and
courageous defense of the "New Education," she placed in per
manent form in her writings her insight into kindergarten
theories. The first book, "Symbolic Education," was published
in 1894, followed by translations of Froebel's "Mother Play,"
"Songs and Games," and "Letters to a Mother." Since 1895 Miss
Blow has served the kindergarten cause most effectively by il
luminating lectures given in many cities, interpreting not onlv
the philosophy of Froebel, but the philosophy of life as embodied
in the greatest thinkers of all ages, — Homer, Dante, Shakespeare,
and Goethe. Miss Blow was a member of the Committee of
Nineteen, and for many years rendered valuable service in the
discussion by prominent kindergartners of questions relating
to the theory and practice of the kindergarten.
The annual meeting of the International Kindergarteh
Union, held in April, 1910, brought Miss Blow to St. Louis. She
130

MISS MARY C. McCULLOCH

ice in the city was seized as a favorable opportunity to give
liss Blow a richly deserved ovation. The program of the Inter-
ational Kindergarten Union included a play festival at the
iederkranz Club. The hall was beautifully decorated with
lants for the occasion. Miss Blow led the march of the kin-
srgartners until she reached the stage where she had an ex-
:llent view of the band of five or six hundred kindergartners
i they marched by her singing spirited songs. Miss Blow's
ce was radiant as she waved her hand in recognition of the
reefing given to her by each one of her loyal followers. Her
ip of joy was full and as she watched the kindergartners from
ifferent cities play their groups of games, she must, in some
easure, have realized the growth and development of the work
:gun by her forty years ago.
This sketch of the life-work of the great kindergarten
ioneer gives an inadequate comprehension of the power, beauty,
id genius of Miss Blow's rare personality. She was endowed
Y nature with a wonderful mentality that helped her to inter-
¦et the thoughts of the greatest philosophers accompanied by
loving heart and sympathetic attitude toward human joys and
>rrows. She could with keen enjoyment intelligently partici-
ite in discussions of philosophic themes, or with delight enter
ito the plays of a little child. Her soul was large enough to meet
ich individual upon the plane of her development and with an
ispiring ideal lift her above the commonplace through the. in-
ght she awakened and the efforts she stimulated. All who
ere associated with her honored her spirit and recognized that
le had a vision of truth that she longed to share with every-
le. Her optimism and faith in the final outcome of the good
lade her a tower of strength to those who appealed to her for
le solution of their problems. She was a loyal friend, never
.iling to extend a word of sympathy in the hour of sorrow, or
: encouragement and recognition for a successful achievement.
liss Blow lives in the affections of those who knew her as a
^rsonal friend ; she lives in the happiness of thousands of little
lildren who have been blessed with kindergarten training; she
ves in the hearts of thousands of young women to whom she
as revealed the spiritual meaning of life and the sacredness of
leir calling; she lives in the ideals suggested to many mothers
lat have helped them in the nurture of their children.

RICHARD SPAMER

¦iiv

The Psychology of Music
By Richard Spamer.
Mr. Spamer : Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen : I first
want to express my truly heartfelt thanks for the opportunity
to participate in these exercises. I am one of the post graduates
of the Sniderian System of Philosophy. I came to this city
when it was in its flowering epoch, far back in 1877, when the
men and the women of whom you have been told so far in these
exercises were in their veritable prime, and when they accom
plished what they did not know they were accomplishing, name
ly, the putting of this community— for political reasons called
the City of St. Louis — upon the intellectual map of the entire
world. (Applause) I do not know of any other epoch, from the
time they spilt the tea in Boston Harbor until the time that the
empires of Central Europe were overthrown, that had more
significance for the people of America than the work of Dr.
Snider, Dr. Harris and the rest of those truly great ones who
were among us in those spacious days.
The request comes to me to say something about the psycho
logy of music. That is a subject which it would be difficult for
me to treat with any lucidity, if I did not as a newspaper man
seek, and as a newspaper man have found the short cut, and that
short cut, ladies and gentlemen, is in Dr. Snider's own book.
(Applause) He has, and I hope you all have read it, a book
entitled "Music and the Fine Arts" ; a Philosophy of the Aesthe
tic. The word "aesthetic" is generally used in its adjective form
and also in the plural by most of us, we speak of politics and we
speak of aesthetics and we speak of acoustics or, as I prefer to
say, "a-kous'tiks". That is confusing. Dr. Snider does not fall
into that error of giving it in the plural, aesthetic to him is a
great rubric in philosophy, because while aesthetic is a basic
source, philosophy applies to and regulates the conduct of men ;
the aesthetic is one thing higher, just like in physics we have
the things of the material world and in metaphysics something
higher, the world of the spirit that knows no bounds, and that
is always being emendated and explained and compared, and
for which we really have no foundation except as it exsists in
ourselves as individuals. 137

Now, with this somewhat prolific introduction, I will read
to you and comment as I go on, that chapter in the work I have
just quoted on the "Philosophy of Music." Before I get to that,
let me say something about music in the language of my dear
departed friend, William Marion Reedy, who really should be
with us today. (Applause) "He is gone, who seemed so great,
gone, but nothing shall relieve him of the good he made his own
being here, and we believe him somewhat far advanced in state,
and that he wears a truer crown than any mortal hand might
make." Billy Reedy used to say about psychology and music and
various things that he regarded abstruse — although fully under
stood, as instanced in his writing — that he knew all about the
abstract, the concrete and the asphaltum. (Laughter) He knew
about the asphaltum because he walked the streets of St. Louis,
morning, noon and night (applause), and that was just at the
time when we were changing from granitoid streets to as
phaltum streets. (Laughter).
Now, I am somewhat in the same relation to this subject
of psychology, but this has come to me since I have looked into
this book, that I never would have known what psychology
means if I had not read Dr. Snider's book, I get that out of his
book in reference to what I have absorbed out of other books
that I have read, because of the lucidity of his exposition and
the fact that everything he has written has been written ac
cording to a pattern, as he has found that pattern in his own
mind. (Applause) That is the tremendous value of the work of
Denton J. Snider. If you will go back in your memory, if you
can recall now what books have done you the most good, what
works of man have appealed most to you, from Aristotle and
Jesus down to the present day, if your mind is as nimble as
all that (I am not saying mine is, I am simply operating now),
if you have done that, you will find that all of these great men
have had a pattern and if that pattern is recognized by the reader
he gets the heart of the thing; and if he does not recognize that
pattern, he does not, and that is all there is to be said about
it. (Applause) The value of Dr. Snider's operations in the immeasurable
field of philosophy, but more particularly in the illimitable field
of psychology, are based upon his thorough grounding in the
pedagogic art. The school-master, my friends, may not be with-
138

out honor save in his own country, he will pass that all over
he will not talk to you about what public education means in
the United States today, what it has meant in past time and
what it is likely to mean in the great time now before us, that
would go beyond even psychological bounderies, but this we can
say ; that when a man appears among us, like this wonderful
man, full of years and honors and still active in the field, know
ing that that field is only partly tilled and waits the labors of
the husbandman, when such a man comes among us and we
detect in our own finite and dubious way how he accomplished
that which he has done, then we say for ourselves in a time like
this, at a moment of what we might properly call public con
fession, that he has done us — me, you and all of us, a great
service by this great scheme of psychological enlightenment that
we find in his books. (Applause)
But, to get down to what I have been asked to speak about
— music. Now, music is only known to us, most of us as what
we might call an audible functioning, but Dr. Snider gives us
an entirely different, a farther idea, he answers every question
about what music is by not saying a single thing about com
posers or about musicians. Get that, if you please. He has
nothing to do with that at all in this book on the "Psychology
of Music. That he could write as good a history of music as any
man in the United States, I am well persuaded, and part of my
daily work "from day to day for many years" has been to read
about music, to listen to music and to write about it, and on
that line he has given me nothing because he has offered noth
ing, but on the inherent facts, on the central idea of what music
really is in the psychological scheme of things, he has given me
so much that I would not now lay my verbal hands upon it,
but give it to you as I find it in the books, and then we can
possibly get together on this.
Now, Dr. Snider says here : "Can we bring to light the
original constructive principle of the total edifice of music?
We seek first of all to grasp and unfold the primal germ out of
which it grows from its earliest bud to its latest flowering. And
as music is the most psychologic of all the Fine Arts — 'Stands
nearest to the Psyche and responds most readily and intimately
to the process of the same — we may well deem that a preliminary
study of its ultimate nature will be the best preparation for a
139

fundamental survey of all Art, especially from the psychical
point of view."
I will digress here to bring home what he says about the
study of music as being the fundamental part of all art. He
divides art into three great classes, the fine arts, he so divides
Poetry, Painting and Music, but the greatest of these is music.
Now, that is a point that we ought to talk five or six days about,
fo thoroughly imbue ourselves with it. I have glimmerings of
a light there myself, I have to study a little more though to agree
with him, because I know I must ultimately agree with him. He
says :
"Music is the third and highest of the Fine Arts, Poetry
and Painting being the other two. What is the genetic unit of
Music, the original basic unit of which music is constituted?
Music is not a stationary thing which we can examine under
the microscope; its essence is movement." He has not said a
word yet about the whole theory of sound, which he knew back
wards and knows forwards. "It is a process incessantly going
on." Music is movement, and movement is the only manifes-
ation of the cosmos. "When the motion stops, the music stops;
it has to be active, yea, self-active in an external way, and hence
it is the most adequate outer artistic manifestation of our
mind's self-activity and of that of the universe, too."
We are talking about music, we are not talking anything
about the creation of the world, but we are talking about music
in these wonderful pages. He says :
"Now, the peculiarly striking, as well as significant fact
about music is the recurrence of sound always and everywhere
taking place in it, through sweeps large and little." As if in
between all of these physical motions of the ear which respond
to our aural apparatus in the form of sound, and that subdivision
of sound called music ; as if there were in between them in that
tonic contact and repulsion, something which the human ear
cannot fathom, cannot apprehend, and which puts us right at
the one blind door in the creation of the cosmos.
I do not think that Dr. Snider quite knew when he wrote
these lines how deep they are. Always there is a blind spot
in the universe, and now we are talking about music as the mani
festation of certain imponderable forces, certain imponderable
powers. He says : 140

"Music is a series of tone-cycles embracing the whole as
well as the smallest unit of its composition. Indeed it would
not be truly artistic, nor attune the human soul to a concordance
with itself, unless it had in its least part the tonal process of the
whole, we may say of the all." I wish I had five or six days
to explain all this to you. (Applause)
"Accordingly, the genetic unit of music is the recurrence of
sound which is ever going forth out of itself and ever coming
to itself again." Isn't it wonderful, this cycle, this great orbit
and cycle of sound, he calls it music; what have we known before
of music until we have read these pages ? There is another sub
ject. "This is what elevates sound, which is of itself partial
and broken, into its musical entirety ; sound made whole be
comes the tone which is the ultimate harmonic constitution of
the total structure of music — the beautiful well-shaped block
of marble of which the vast cathedral is to be built."
Do you get that, all of these sounds that are flying around,
he compares to a vast block of marble out of which ultimately
the whole structure called the cathedral is to be built, out of
which ultimately through divinely gifted men and women that
wonderful structure called music is to be created. These various
inarticulate sounds that surround us, veritable angel voices we
might say.
The musical tone, therefore, has in it, as its essential char
acteristic, this cycle of sound, of self-separating and self-return
ing in an outer process of the sense of hearing, which is to carry
it within. But to what inner sanctuary does the ear carry this
cycled tone-world, and for what purpose? Soul, Self, Ego, it is
variously called, which also has its process, which Dr. Snider
calls the "Psychosis", corresponding with the tonal process of
music. There is no closer searcher, no keener eye, no greater force
in all the universe than that which by means of music reacts
upon the human soul ; that is the philosophical idea that he con
veys here when he mentions the "psychosis" ; he simply men
tions the function of the soul, its receptivity to outward things.
He might, if he were a musician, a composer, say that the
psychosis is simply that which we call harmony in music, but
harmony in music has man-made rules ; harmony in music does
not quite explain what the psychosis is, what the reaction of the
141

human soul to music is when music comes to us through the
outward processes.
Here is where we get a clear idea as to what the psychology
of music is, that harmonious sound reacts upon the soul in a
harmonious way ; and inharmonious sounds in an inharmonious
way. For that reason, if I wanted to descend right down to
practical things, I would say that Richard Wagner is a great
composer, because he understood the laws of human harmony,
and those who came after him and wanted to improve upon him
did not do so because they did not understand the laws of har
mony in the psychological sense.
"Here we have the two sides which are to come together
and produce the one concord, the physical and the psychical ;
these form the happy pair which give up their two foldness, unite
and kiss and marry in the rapture of music."
Thus is, by music, established harmony. What a wonder
ful word it is today in this war disturbed world !
"Here we may see the musical purpose of the rounds of tone;
they stimulate the soul to symmetrical rounds of its own which
it feels as its very self in activity.
"Such is th^e correspondence between the outer tone-cycle
and the inner soul-cycle ; they agree, and so Music is often said
to be agreeable — to whom or to what? To the Ego which is
roused thereby to its own elemental process or psychosis in
response." Somebody has said, and I think it was our friend, Ralph
Waldo Emerson, "Trust things". Every human heart regards
that as the voice of a harp and responds to its invitation; har
mony within and of music can give us that ; no wonder that it
is the wonderful art; that it will continue to be.
"We may conceive the Ego as stirred by music to be itself,
to be its own primal process of self-activity, yea, in a degree its
own self-creation. Snch is the first musical pleasure, the earliest
thrill of the inner psychic harmony responding to the outer round
ed pulsation of the tone-world.
"The soul is an instrument which is played upon bv the
cycles of music, truly it is the instrument upon which all musi
cal instruments have to play at last, stimulating it to its ele-
142

mental activity which may be called pure feeling or even emo
tion." Dr. Snider tell us not to be emotional, but to have pure
feelings. Nice distinction there. Another afternoon might be
devoted to that. "But we should add here that this soul is not
simply the passive recipient of musical tones, from the outside;
it is that universal instrument which goes back to all special in
struments and constructs them for its purpose which purpose
is essentially that their notes not merely move forward but also
come back, and thus are made musical."
Just a few words more and we will close this chapter. In
developing this theory, he says: "Indeed it is just at this point
that music begins to be a matter of art, and not simply a thing
of nature. Art turns the sound into a cycle, and thus attunes the
same to itself, to its own process, which makes it a musical tone
capable of intimate fusion and concordance with the inner psyche.
"In some such way we seek to grasp the genetic unit of
music as the tone, self-separating yet self-returning; vibrating
outwardly by nature toward the infinite, yet brought back to
its starting point usually, but not always, by Art. Such is the
primal sensation of music ; the soul hears the fleeting sound re
stored to itself out of its flight from itself, a kind of outer self-
restoration after a tonal self-alienation. This process it hears
not once but many times, brought over into all sorts of sequ
ences, forms, and musical iridescences. But this outer diver
sity of tones has at bottom the one unitary principle, the tonal
cycle, which stirs the Psyche to its own similar unitary pro-
cessess, the Psychosis."
This Psychosis, as Dr. Snider explains, in its simplicity, is
the primal act of human consciousness, the original making of
selfhood, which has ever to be repeated. Music stimulates to a
new creation the primordial self, which is perpetually renewed
and re-created in the conscious act. That is, Music reaches back
and starts afresh the first origination of the Ego in man, which
act gives him creative pleasure, the foundamental pleasure of
music, as this makes the Ego feel its own rise into being through
its self-generative act.
So music, as its ultimate fact, stimulates the first creative
process of mind, renewing its very birth into consciousness.
143

Such is the simplest stage of the purely psychical act; hence we
may say that music in its primordial round, stirs the elemental
Psychosis, or process of Self, starting the same to its eternal re
creation. And this psychical process may be said to be running
through and holding together all Art. (Applause)

144

WILLIAM MARION REEDY

William Marion Reedy
By A. A. H.
The character and career of the late Mr. Reedy made him
distinctively one of the outstanding figures in the intellectual
and literary life of St. Louis. His experience took him through
every phase of its lights and shadows and he mixed and mingled
- with the good and bad ; but he and his paper rose gradually
superior to untoward influences.
Prom a boy-reporter on the great dailies he became the editor
of the "Mirror" which was so thoroughlv the exponent of his
personality that it became "Reedy's Mirror" and while its base
was St. Louis, from which nothing could tempt him to a larger
sphere, his thought was reflected over the world. The Mirror
was found in London,, Paris, Vienna, and on the news stands
of all the great centers of European civilization. It was not a
purveyor of news, but it was devoted to observation and com
ment, to criticism and instruction. His wide knowledge of
men, of events, of politics, of books, of the thought of the times,
his generosity to struggling aspirants for literary recognition,
his keen humor, his salient wit, his lucid style, brilliant and
scintillant — all combined in the unique genius of Reedy to make
the Mirror the success that it was.
As a speaker Mr. Reedy was as fluent and forceful and de
lightful as in his writings. He was frequently chosen by St.
Louis, as its spokesman on civic occasions. On his last public
appearance, at "The Missouri Authors Week" at Vandervoorts
Music Hall he presided with ease, grace and propriety as was
his wont. His genial manner, his flow of wit and wisdom all
gave charm and distinction to the occasion.
His departure is felt with keen regret, not only by his per
sonal friends, but by the city itself.

146

Poem
Dedicated to Dr. Denton J. Snider on his 80th Birthday, January
9th, 1921, by Katharine Higgins Sommers.
Through a veil of misty radiance
I watch the snow flakes fall.
Pure, and beautiful, they flutter over shrub and house, and all.
With ermine mantles they wrap the leafless trees,
Then softly hide themselves among the leaves.
Your work of eighty years they whisper me
"Obey the Universal law and thus be free."
You taught me to transcend all earthly ties,
To look at life, and all created things with psychic eyes.
One must catch the elemental sounds he hears,
And find within himself the music of the spheres.

LINCOLN'S MOTHER.
By Mrs. Katharine Higgins Sommers.
Inspired by Dr. Snider's Extensive treatise of Lincoln.
Her day began as amber-tinted dawn
Shot yellow streaks through virgin forests brown,
And ended when the searching stars looked down.
Awaking music stored within her soul
Shedding Heavens rays of magic light
Revealing vistas of the infinite.
While natures' wind-harps chanted "DeProfundis"
Forests for her, their wonderous secrets, trace
And scented silence taught her poise and grace.
Birds filled the space with sweetest song;
Symphonic mid the beauty of their lay,
The tender coos of nearby doves re-echoed all the day,
Flattery's fawning face, nor grandeur's show
Nor greedy passions of the noisy mart
Nor fortune's pride of place corrupt her heart.
Bringing water from the wayside spring,
Teaching lessons to her growing child,
She reigned supreme within the rugged wild
And when at last her lowly tasks were done,
She gave to all mankind, yet left forlorn,
A matchless son, for Freedom born.147

IN MEMORIAM.
Miss Amelia Fruchte.
To know her was to love her, a heart so full of truth,
A mind so stored with beauty, with great ideals, for sooth,
It could not harbor malice, but overflowed with good
For those who sometimes faltered, she always understood.
The glory of her nature, for years and years to come,
Her joyful, helpful friendship, we'll cherish, every one.

"A MAN FOR ALL AGES."
Dr. Denton J. Snider.
By Mrs. Adeline Palmier Wagoner
The hands of the painter deftly draw
Pictures of things he never saw ;
The mind of the poet paints the thing
He dreams and weaves into a ring;
The soul of the singer soars above
To realms of beauty, joy and love.
Today we honor the man, fourscore,
Who's all these magic gifts of lore,
Who makes life glad for those who come
To learn his triumphs, nobly won.
If only our hearts and minds could tell
One half we know and feel so well,
The earth with clarion notes would ring
To laurel him whose praise I sing.
Adeline Palmier Wagoner 148

The St. Louis Tercentenary Shakespeare
Society
By Mrs. Adeline Palmier Wagoner

It was in 1916 that Mrs. Adeline Palmier Wagoner, inspired
by the writings of Dr. Denton J. Snider, the great Shakespeare
scholar, the almost half century Shakespeare teaching of Miss
Amelia Fruchte, conceived, collected and catalogued an Exhibi
tion of things pertaining to Shakespeare and his Portrayers to
celebrate the Bard's Tercentenary. Together with this most
interesting and instructive exhibition, there were daily Shake
speare Programs given in the Vandervoort Auditorium, to which
the leading Scholars and Musicians lent their talent.
Encouraged by the very large attendance at these entertain
ments, the work and moral support of Dr. Snider and Miss
Fruchte, Mrs. Wagoner arranged to give monthly Shakespeare
programs in the Vandervoort Auditorium, with the view of inter
esting the public in worth-while literature, and so was formed
The St. Louis Tercentenary Shakespeare Society, with Mrs.
Wagoner as Executive Chairman; Miss Fruchte, President; Dr.
Snider, Honorary President. After the death of Miss Fruchte,
Mrs. Wagoner became President of the Society, which now num
bers over one hundred members. As State Vice-President of the
National Shakespeare Society of Washington, D. C, Mrs. Wago
ner has already inaugurated a movement to interest the various
towns of Missouri in forming Shakespeare Societies to unite
with the Tercentenary in a State Federation which will be an
invaluable force in raising the Cultural Standard of Missouri.

149

PO" T#/)/r

PUSS 'AMELIA C 7&VCX&F-

In Memoriam
Miss Amelia G. Fruchte
By Chester B. Curtis.
It is an honor to participate in this programme dedicated
to the distinguished philosophers, educators and authors and to
Dr. Denton J. Snider, whose eighteith birthday we celebrate .
on this occasion. It is an added privilege to speak especially of
and for my friend Miss Amelia C. Fruchte, whose memory we
honor today.
Miss Fruchte dwelt on the plateau of life. She climbed
early to a high level of attainment and continued on the plateau
till death. She climbed the slope in eighteen years, catching
visions of future efforts, and inspirations for a half century of
achievement. A plateau is a plane appreciably above the general level
of territory, thought or character. Miss Fruchte lived on such
a plane, often seeing peaks and ranges of greatness towering
above, heights from whence came her strength, and occasionally
looking into an awful abyss of dejection. Life would be mono
tonous, even on a plateau, were it not varied by emotional exper
iences both dejecting and exhilarating. Hers was a nature of
tremendous intensity; one which sought expression in super
latives and in extremes.
Miss Fruchte lived on the heights. Her ideals were high,
as should become a teacher. Early in life she sought the personal
influence of those whose philosophy was deep and whose ideals
were high. She associated herself with Dr. Snider, Dr. Harris
and the Concord School of Philosophy — outstanding exponents
of mental and spiritual culture. In Psychology, Science, Liter
ature and Art she found the masterpieces, master minds, even
the masters themselves.
Her ideals were always evident in personal matters. In
bearing Miss Fruchte possessed a queenly dignity. She dressed
elegantly, though simply, always with an accidental, all the
more emphasized by an otherwise plain setting. A dash of red
against her black hair or dress was characteristic of her strong
tendency to contrasting extremes. 153

In social relations she revealed a nature demanding and ap
preciating the highest ideals of gentlemanly courtesy.
In books she loved the choicest editions ; in literature, the
best works ; in philosophy, the most profound ; in art, intrinsicial-
ly the best.
The plateau was nowhere more pronounced in Miss
Fruchte's life than in the realm of imagination. Once an idea
began to develop, it took the wings and motive power of an
aeroplane into the realm of Castles in the Air. She motored
on many a safe trip riding on the placid joy of imagination. Only
the landing — the coming back to earth — was difficult. If her
plans could have been realized with no more expense than the
Castles which she visualized, many more very considerable achi
evements would now be credited to her remarkable efforts.
Her interests were not restricted to the walls of the class
room. She entered into the social, sociological, educational and
even political fields of St. Louis, in some of 'them as a pioneer ;
in all an ardent worker.
Miss Fruchte participated in the organization of the Wednes
day Club, of the Teachers' Fellowship Society and in the de
velopment of the Society of Pedagogy, which enjoyed practic
ally a reorganization during her presidency, and in the organiza
tion of the Shakespeare Tercentenary Society.
Miss Fruchte did her real work and established her place
in this community as a teacher of Shakespeare at Central High
School. Thousands of our citizens came under her influence,
some appreciating to the full the character of her instruction,
others failing then, to realize what it was all about. A strong
character is always seen in asymmetric aspects. By some, through
the eyes of a cartoonist, by others with the vision a true delinea
tor. Her strong personality ; her marked and contrasting moods,
impressed our youth with the idea that Miss Fruchte was a
unique character. This impression was and is correct; but she
was as great as she was unique. Youth looks through cartoon
eyes, exaggerates impressions, draws hasty conclusions. Miss
Fruchte's true worth was in her staunch advocacy of high ideals
for boys and girls, standards of conduct which for her measured
their mental and moral development. 154

MR. CHESTER B. CURTIS
Former Principal, Central High School

Her true greatness as an instructor lay in her power of
interpretation of plot and counterplot, in the deliniation and
contrast of characters found in the plays of Shakespeare, through
which she tried to drive home to the youth of this city the
truths on which their lives might be directed. Such comprehens
ive teaching was not always understood by those whose method
was strictly memoriter. But it was a tremendously effective
method for pupils who possessed imaginative minds, a method
more appreciated by all students in after life than at the time
of the experience.
The influence of Amelia C. Fruchte will persist in St. Louis
throughout still another generation because she is an abiding
element in the character of our younger citizens.
Her name is inscribed on the parchment roll of history in
the City of St. Louis.

157

Letters from Friends
Many appreciative messages with congratulations from
friends especially interested in this meeting were read by Mrs.
Curtis B. Parker. Among- these were letters from Prof. L. A.
Kalbach of the National Bureau of Education, Washington, D.
C. ; Miss Elizabeth Harrison, Chicago, 111. ; Pres. Wm. W. Par
sons, of the Terre Haute Indiana Normal School ; Pres. John
R. Kirk of the Kirksville Missouri Normal School ; Prof. John
B. Wisely, Terre Haute, Ind.; Mrs. Ruth Morris Kersey, Rich
mond, Ind. ; Miss Mary E. Nicholson, Indianapolis, Ind. ; Miss
Susan V. Beeson, Farmington, Mo.
Lack of space compels us to exclude these interesting com
munications. The exercises of the meeting were concluded with a banquet
in the evening at the Planters Hotel arranged by Mrs. Harry
Wagoner; Wm. F. Woerner presiding, especially commemora
tive of the 80th birthday of Dr. Denton J. Snider, which was of
great interest, although Dr. Snider was detained by illness from
attendance. Addresses were made by distinguished citizens and
visitors. It is regretted that the spirit and marked interest of all the
meetings could not be adequately reported.
The chairman and managers of the meeting desire to express
their thanks to all who so cordially and efficiently responded
and helped to make it a success.
Our thanks are extended to the Central High School for
their music which added greatly to the occasion.
We hereby acknowledge our great indebtedness to the
Scruggs, Vandervoort, Barney Dry Goods Co. and especially to
the manager Mr. M. L. Wilkinson for the use of the Vandervoort
Music Hall, the artistic programs and general service.
D. H. HARRIS, Gen. Manager.

158

Address at Banquet in Honor of Dr. Denton J. Snider
A friend of mine has said that an ounce of taffy is worth a
pound of epitaphy. But there is something better than either,
namely, a sincere expression of admiration and affection. This
blesses him that receives and still more him that gives. I am
glad to be one of this company which has met to pay a tribute
of honor and esteem to Dr. Denton J. Snider. There are two
kinds of wealth, the material and the spiritual. Of the former
our factories and industrial enterprises, our farms and ships, our
railroads and mines are creators. But those who add to the
spiritual wealth of humanity are the thinkers and inspirers of
the world. We need both, but in this age the material is better
appreciated than the intellectual, moral and spiritual. And it is
well for us, citizens of a city of which we are proud, to appreciate
and show our appreciation of those who serve by deepening and
clarifying the thoughts of men.
Dr. Snider is a knight errant of the intellectual life, a remark
able figure in the noble company of thinkers. His career has
been one of complete devotion to ideal interests and his activity
and productiveness 'tremendous. Yet he is by no means a mere
thinking apparatus, and his philosophy is vastly more than a
soulless play of concepts. As we read his books, we realize how
true it is that it is the whole man that thinks. His life is like a
river, growing wider and deeper as it nears the end.
Although best known as a philosopher, many will regard
him primarily as a literary man. His powers of delineation and
characterization are remarkable. One of his most charming
books is that on the St. Louis Movement. He makes his char
acters live and presents them as intensely human, with their
faults as well as their virtues, yet he leaves the reader in sym
pathy with even the most imperfect of them. One feels all the
while that his author is a genial personality, whose affections
have remained unspoiled and whom one would like to know.
Time would fail me were I to speak of his philosophy, and
there are many excellent people who cannot fully appreciate him
because they do not take philosophy seriously. But we realize
its importance when we understand that it is a lifelong struggle
against one sided ideas of life, and is of extreme practical im
portance since it is the unseen framework of all we think or do.
We must, of course, think our own thoughts, but we do that
effectively only when we think in the light of other men's
thoughts, and know something of the evolution of the great ideas
of. the human race. Moreover, the knowledge of great and wide
truths is not only practically important, but it is worth while
for its own sake. The beatific vision is the supreme joy.
Dr. Snider has served well his city and country and will be long
and gratefully remembered by those whose intellectual eyes he
has opened and to whom he has been an open door of new life.
GEORGE ROWLAND DODSON.
159

D. H. HARRIS READING THIS REPORT
PLEASE DO LIKEWISE

Report of the
Early St. Louis Movement

Centennial Appendix

Illustrations

Introduction
As representative of the important movement presented in
this Report, we have been urged by state and local authorities
to participate in portraying these interests in this the Centennial
of the founding of our state.
We, therefore, present this Report of the Early St. Louis Move
ment and this Illustrated Appendix as showing its background
and environment in a partial and limited way ; yet giving in the
portraits of a few of its eminent leaders, notable buildings, and
other features, some idea of the part and importance that St.
Louis has had in the wonderful history of Missouri.
While St. Louis is the commercial metropolis of the state,
the market and distributing point of the great Southwest, the
most centrally located large city in the United States, the greatest
inland port of commerce, her interests are not confined to these
special activities.
To show the ample educational facilities of our public schools,
we add to what has previously been mentioned about our famous
Kindergarten system — the cuts or pictures of some of our great
modern schools, which are here presented — unexcelled in the
country. Also our numerous private schools, preparatory, col
leges, universities — all make St. Louis pre-eminent in education
and culture. Our many churches stand as the index of moral
and religious aspirations.
The facilities for refined amusement and entertainment af
forded by our country clubs, theaters, moving picture shows,
our various musical organizations — all indicate a favorable at
mosphere for those wishing to establish themselves where good
fellowship, congenial society and helpful, healthy environment
contribute to making delightful homes.
Many of the following facts, places and faces are already famil
iar to our citizens ; but this brief summary is historical and may
be of interest to visitors and strangers scattered over the whole
country, whom, we hope, this account may reach. It is intended
to create a larger acquaintance with St. Louis.
We take pride in saying that we are of no mean city.

165

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS— (Appendix)
Statue of St. Louis  167
Pierre Laclede, Founder of St. Louis  -  163
August Chouteau  170
World's Fair Directors  _  171
St. Louis Fair Monument  173
Municipal Open Air Theater  _  174
Forest Park Pavilion  176
Winter Sport in Forest Park  _  176
St. Louis Pageant and Masque  177
Halsey C. Ives  -  178
Art Museum  -  179
An Incident of the French Revolution — Julian Story  180
Jules Dupre — "In Pasture"  -  181
Entrance Hall — Art Museum — Sculpture    182
The Jefferson Memorial Building  -  183
Thomas Jefferson — Statue by Carl Bitter  184
Union Station  -  ....  185
The St. Louis Coliseum  186
Interior of Coliseum    18 7a
Hotel Statler  187
Arcade Building  _  188
Railway Exchange  —  _  IRQ
First National Bank  _  190
City Hall  191
Municipal Courts Building    192
Old Court House  _  193
Olive Street Canon  194
Kingsbury Place  _   195
Eads Bridge  196
Rev. Salmon Giddings  _  197
The First Presbyterian Church, 1855  199
The Present First Presbyterian Church    200
Rev. Samuel J. Niccolls  _  _  __  201
The Second Presbyterian Church  _  __  202
Rev. Truman M. Post  i  _„.  _  203
The Pilgrim Congregational Church  _  _  204
The Union Avenue Christian Church  205
The Westminster Presbyterian Church  206
The First Church of Christ Scientist  _..207
Rev. Daniel S. Tuttle  208
Christ Church Cathedral, Episcopal, Exterior  209
Christ Church Cathedral, Interior    _  210
Centenary Methodist Church  211
Grace Methodist Episcopal Church, Exterior  212
Grace Methodist Episcopal Church, Interior  213
The Second Baptist Church  _  _  214
Rev. W. C. Bitting  „  214
Rabbi Leon Harrison    216
Temple Israel  ,  21 7
Archbishop John J. Glennon  _  218
The New Catholic Cathedral, Exterior   219
The New Catholic Cathedral, Interior  _ 220
The Old Cathedral, Erected 1 831  221
Rev. Father D. S. Phelan  _  222
St. John's Methodist Episcopal Church  223
Chancellor Frederick A. Hall, Washington University  224
Washington University, Front View, Main Building  ,  225
Washington University and Campus  ;  226
Rev. Michael J. O'Connon, S. J., Pres. St. Louis University  227
St. Louis University  228
William Torrey Harris Teachers Training College  229
The Early High School Building  230
The Present Central High School Building  231
The Soldan High School Building  _232
The Cleveland High School Building  233
The Yeatman High School Building  234
The McKinley High School Building  235
The First Public School Superintendent — Ira Divoll  237
The Second Public School Superintendent — William T. Harris  238
The Third Public School Superintendent — Edward H. Long.  !..239
The Fourth Public School Superintendent — F. Louis Soldan  "..".'.240
The Fifth Public School Superintendent — Ben Blewett  241
Henry Shaw  J 242
The Missouri Botanical Garden, Interior View  ".244
The Missouri Botanical Garden, Italian Garden  '!!""245
The Missouri Botanical Garden, Chrysanthemums  246
The Missouri Botanical Garden, Palm Display  ".....247
The Missouri Botanical Garden, Tropical Lily Pools  !1.!™248
Thomas Hart Benton  _  ™..™25l
Missouri One Hundred Years Ago — At the Tavern Door  252
Missouri One Hundred Years Ago — Scene in the Epilogue  253
Mrs. George Gellhorn — "Missouri"   254
166

Statue of St. Louis
The Statue of St. Louis, for whom St. Louis was named, holds
the commanding position on Art Hill, directly in front of the
Museum. It is the work of the Sculptor Niehaus, and was mod
elled especially for the World's Fair in 1904. It represents Louis
the IX of France, surnamed the Saint, King and leader of the
Seventh Crusades in the thirteenth century, dying in 1270. He
was the son of Queen Blanche, of whom he said that "To her,
under God, he owed all that he had achieved in his character and
realm."

167

PIERRE LACLEDE

168

Pierre Laclede
St. Louis was founded in 1764 by Pierre Laclede Liguest, a
native of France and Auguste Chouteau, who came from New
Orleans to St. Louis, then a trading post. In 1809 it had grown
to a town with a population approximately of 2,000, and was
incorporated with a population of about 5,000.- St. Louis at
that time covered an area of about 385 acres. It now em
braces 40,000 acres and a population of about 1,000,000, including
suburbs. A fine statue of Laclede of heroic size by Zolnay adorns the
grounds of our Municipal Courts Buildings.

169

AUGUSTE CHOUTEAU

170

WORLD'S FAIR DIRECTORS
Pres. Wm. H. Taft, D. R. Francis and others taking first steps

The Louisiana Purchase World's Fair
In the brief space allotted it seems impossible to present an
adequate idea of the exhibit of the World's Fair held in St. Louis
in 1904. The magnitude and splendid arrangement, complete
gathering of entire world's achievements in industrial manu
factures, art products, education, social, secular and religious, and
political interests were displayed, summed up, indexed in a
masterful manner.
As a suggestion of its magnitude it may only be necessary
to state that there were separate buildings representing the
different nations and each of our 48 states, besides, those repre
senting special departments and products. The Agricultural
Building covered. 16 acres of ground, while others were quite
adequate for their purposes.
Hon. David R. Francis fittingly says in his remarkable report
of the World's Fair, the following:
"This exposition of 1904 holds a place in history more con
spicuous than its projectors anticipated. For the opening decade
of this century it stands a marker (record) of the accomplishment
and progress of man. So thoroughly did it represent the world's
civilization that if all of man's other works were destroyed, by
some unspeakable catastrophe, the records established at this
exposition by the assembled nations would afford the necessary
standards for the rebuilding of our entire civilization."

172

I;

y

ST. LOUIS FAIR MONUMENT
"Signing Louisiana Treaty"

173

MUNICIPAL OPEN AIR THEATRE, FOREST PARK

Forest Park
Our Forest Park of about 1,400 acres affords remarkable
facilities for open-air entertainments and recreations to large
numbers. Perhaps influenced by the great success of the Pageant and
Masque, held in this park in 1914, when over 150,000 citizens
witnessed this remarkable entertainment, it was decided to con
struct our open-air "Municipal Theater," which seats about
20,000, where the city now enjoys the leading dramatic and
musical performances that are so frequently given and so highly
appreciated. Our "Zoo" contains one of the largest aviaries in the country.
and the list of wild animals is up to the highest standard.

175

d

4*

# ¦-•> i " ' " ¦¦ SP^7

iHdiitffiti

,Jm**--

-,¦-' „ I .1:'
£, "mm*

¦%*¦ - ;- v ¦¦¦-
Stomal tiT't'**i*SMg*
*>¦¦¦*,?. •*." . . ?/*, "/ >w ¦ £&»*'''**
«&»¦.¦¦... /
\
FOREST PARK AND PAVILION
WINTER SPORT IN FOREST PARK
176
ST. LOUIS PAGEANT AND MASQUE
"St. Louis has the largest natural amphitheater in the world, directly in front of the Art Museum on Art Hill. It will seat
300,000 people, with additional standing room. The above photograph shows an actual attendance at the time the Pageant
was held in St. Louis, May 29, 30 and 31, 1914."

J&izszyc ives

Art Museum
The City Art Museum had its beginning in an evening draw
ing class organized in 1874 by the late Halsey C. Ives at Wash
ington University. In 1879 it became a new department of the
University under the heading of the St. Louis Museum and
School of Fine Arts, under the presidency of James E. Yeatman
and the directorship of Halsey C. Ives.
Through the generosity of Wayman Crow in 1881 it was pro
vided with a separate building at Nineteenth and Locust streets.
The present Museum building was constructed for the World's
Fair in 1904 as a permanent home of the St. Louis Museum,
planned by Cass Gilbert of New York. It is in strictly classic
style and is adorned with sculptured figures by many of the
greatest artists of the times.

178

179

ART MUSEUM
By JULIAN STORY
"An Incident of the French Revolution"

ST. LOUIS ART MUSEUM, JULES DUPRE, ARTIST
"In Pasture"

181

ST. LOUIS ART MUSEUM STATUARY

Inspiration Alma Mater
Angel of Death

Vulture of War
Lion and Serpent
Destiny of Red Man

George Washington
Michael Angelo
Gen. Hooker

182

The Jefferson Memorial
Missouri Historical Building stands at the main entrance of
Forest Park on Lindell and De Baliviere Ave. It contains valu
able historical collections.
It was constructed as a Memorial of the World's Fair held in
1904. It is purely classic in style and one of its chief features
is the heroic statue of Thomas Jefferson in white marble by the
late Carl Bitter of New York.

183

THOMAS JEFFERSON
By Carl Bitter

184

INTERIOR OF COLISEUM

• UNION STATION
The St. Louis Union Station is said to be the largest pas
senger depot in the world. The railroad facilities at the present
time are magnificent, distinctly superior to those of any other
city. The depot and sheds together cover six city blocks, the
total area is equal to ten acres, and 200,000 men could stand
under its roof at one time. All passenger trains entering and
leaving St. Louis, use this station.

185

THE ST. LOUIS COLISEUM
The Coliseum furnishes the auditorium for all the great occa
sions in the life of the city — Conventions, Lectures, Grand
Operas, etc. It is at Washington and Jefferson avenues, and
has a seating capacity of 13,000.

186

r

HOTEL STATLER
It has 650 rooms, each room with private bath, circulating-
ice water and other unusual conveniences. All rooms have
outside light, and air. It easily ranks as the "Leading Hotel"
of St. Louis.

187

A,
With, /**'/.'¦/ , !/! r

ARCftlTK.T:.
mint mhi-

ARCADE BUILDING
The Arcade Building represents 800 Offices and 200 Retail
Stores. It is a great center of business, and is remarkable for its
beauty and convenience. 188

RAILWAY EXCHANGE
This main building in its central location and size surpasses
all other business structures of our city. It covers a whole block
with its 21 stories in height and floor space of 31 acres.
189

MAIN FLOOR PLAN, FIRST NATIONAL BANK IN ST. LOUIS
One of the Largest and Most Convenient Banking Rooms in the World

1 , J
¦ \
rij

fcnn^, jk i

/

yPlM^SsS'BBi'-

*'* ' ; wiiifui .frill,-

71

* totiU

¦HB|1

a»«?

* I j

1 Hi- [IH Hi'-.H

ijjtf
HB5MMn^^^»»_- ^^
¦P-a * ~ -^ZJmWmX 
CITY HALL
General Grant Monument
191
MUNICIPAL COURTS BUILDING

192

iS

F.i-ri

IE " 3BSSS J
IMlltllfj
liftman

F**"~~**

COURT HOUsi

OLD COURT HOUSE

Built 1839. The ground was donated by J. B. C. Lucas and
Col. August Chouteau. It was adorned with paintings by Carl
Wimar. The public whipping post and the slave auctions were
at this place.

193

zo><z<o a
w
oo W
>»— I
o

KINGSBURY PLACE
St. Louis is noted for its beautiful homes

195

FAD'S BRIDGE
Its construction was an enterprise of the most noble character, and the bridge itself is one of the finest
in the world. It is built on solid rock and it is an invulnerable fortress, capable of bearing any weight and
withstanding the force of any flood. It consists of three graceful arches of steel, each 520 feet in length. It
took seven years to construct it, and it was finally finished in 1874.
Three other bridges have since been built and with their connection and terminals form one of the
most majestic conceptions of modern times.

REV. SALMON GIDDINGS, A.M.

197

Rev. Salmon Giddings, A.M., of Hartland, Conn., was com
missioned by the missionary society of Connecticut to labor in
the western country, especially in St. Louis.
The day after Christmas, 1815, snow on the ground, nothing
daunted, he started for St. Louis on horseback, preaching fre
quently on his long and tedious journey, through the thinly
settled country.
He established the first permanent Protestant Church in St.
Louis November, 1817, known as the First Presbyterian Church,
which became the honored mother of Presbyterianism and Con
gregationalism in the West.
Mr. Giddings also started a school that was much needed at
that time. He succeeded in establishing seventeen churches in
St. Louis and vicinity. He also did important work among the
Indians. His remains are deposited in a crypt under the church, where
it is held in sacred veneration.
The first edifice was erected on Fourth and St. Charles streets
in 1825. It is said that John Quincy Adams gave $25 towards the
enterprise and Thomas H. Benton and Alexander McNair were
members.

198

f::;i
5:1

WM

THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF ST. LOUIS,
Dedicated in 1855

199

PRESENT FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
It has had able leaders in the pulpit, maintained a wide influ
ence and is known as "Old First Church."

200

REV. SAMUEL J. NICCOLLS, D.D.

201

SECOND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
The Second Presbyterian Church was organized on October
10, 1868, by sixty members from the First Presbyterian Church.
The Rev. Samuel J. Niccolls of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania,
was called in October, 1864, and began his labors in the Second
Presbyterian Church in January, 1865. "Dr. Niccolls in his long
and able pastorate rendered signal service not only to St. Louis,
but to the cause of Christianity throughout the country, and the
world. A man of extraordinary gifts, of winsome spirit, of
splendid poise, of judgment, of, rare and sagacious leadership, of
great preaching- power and of unswerving loyalty to the funda
mentals of our faith, by his personal worth, his example of de
votion and. by his almost unprecedented period of labor in one
field, he enriched the entire denomination, and shed lustre upon
the religion of the Cross."
Dr. Niccolls died August 19, 1915, after having served as pas
tor for more than fifty years. His devoted people have placed a
bronze bust of their pastor at the entrance of the church he loved
so well; his benign countenance seems to greet them with a
perpetual benediction.

202

TRUMAN M. POST, D.D.
"Father of Congregationalism in St. Louis," preacher, writer,
patriot ; thirtv-seven years of service.

203

PILGRIM CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH
It is one of the largest and most influential of this denomina
tion in the city.
It has had as ministers some of the ablest divines of this
denomination.

204

UNION AVENUE CHRISTIAN CHURCH
Has a large congregation doing an extensive work with mod
ern methods.
An interesting feature of this denomination is that they have
concentrated their missionary work under the auspices of the
United Christian Missionary Society, combining all branches of
missionary and promotion activities, with offices in St. Louis,
from which radiates the great spiritual power exercised by this
church.

205

WESTMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
From its location and beauty of architecture, it is one of the
most imposing edifices of our city. It has had able, influential
ministers who have stood high locally and nationally.

206

FIRST CHURCH OF CH*RIST SCIENTIST
lt has a large congregation devoted to the teachings of Mrs.
Eddy. It is one of the leading churches of this denomination
in the city.

RIGHT REV. DANIEL S. TUTTLE
Bishop of the Episcopal Church of Missouri and Senior Pre
siding Bishop of the United States.

208

' 1

CHRIST CHURCH CATHEDRAL, EPISCOPAL
It is one of the largest and most influential of the down
town churches.

In the vast territory between the Mississippi River and the
Pacific Ocean — Christ Church was the sole Episcopal representa
tive in 1819.

209

E*S

ii

mi

• ^ 'tlwtj .' f*t'- if *','a

^v-^r%4 mfm%m

¥f'i n lift ,,: U,1!J J> '*** f- - J!*JMt' tf F.Hiii if?, } ?" ("V^
art T:Tf, ^_r !IHI( J .¦*¦ -MilMfflJj iq aumfl it -gj_.''m .'.A** -'-"m

aSac bub I iwi i "1
m Ip 'ills

CHRIST CHURCH CATHEDRAL (Interior)
The Reredos is the most magnificent in the country. It was
the gift of Mrs. Christine Graham, wife of the late Benjamin B.
Graham and daughter of the statesman, Frank P. Blair.
The artist was Henry Hems, of Exeter, Eng., after a design by
Kivas Tully. It is of Caen Stone and cost $50,000. The edifice
itself is considered to have the finest architectural proportions.

210

CENTENARY METHODIST CHURCH
It still holds its down-town location and numbers one of
the largest congregations of this denomination in the city. It
has been favored with the ablest divines in this denomination.

211

¦<
/ ^
Bft^b*
5§ If
''Mft' f
\ '
/ 4 'f
M
1 " ' 'TOm'iIIP^7*'^! I
ffffftA. <m
mh
f :" -¦ 231
ii- ¦ ««i|J|||. Si
- - A
B /A 1 'JS
': s
i '' id
i '-¦ • ffi- " TMli mB
¦ft — :tf M-fffffffftD' ~~ -'Al flBtfJ
BBT 1 ImS^H - 3^tff>Wfffl' v^^StfU
| ,-;-/'>£V jJ|^^B.-
tp ^^Erfytftfffffft i^B
GRACE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH
This church is a stately edifice. The interior decoration about
the organ and pulpit are in bas relief, expressive of grace and
beauty — embodying spiritual ideals.
This church has always shown civic and national loyalty
and maintained a high standard of ability in the pulpit
212
an™"
GRACE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH (Interior)

214

SECOND BAPTIST CHURCH
This is one of the most imposing church edifices in the United
States. It has two main buildings united by a front and rear
loggia with a tower rising from the center of the rear loggia.
It is built of brick and is fashioned after the architectural models
of Lombardy and North Italy in general. The coloring ranges
from a rich brown to the palest bufi> — the brick selected being
all of one burning; about one million used in the building.
The chromatic scheme is already pleasing; age will mellow
the structure and increase the richness of the coloring.
It is stated that few pieces of brick work in the United States
equal that which is revealed in these buildings and none sur
passes it.
This building was constructed under the inspiration and
direction of its present eloquent minister, the Rev. William
Coleman Bitting, D.D.

215

RABBI LEON HARRISON
Rev. Dr. Leon Harrison has for many years stood as one of
the most gifted and distinguished leaders of his race in the city
of St. Louis. His eloquent voice always pleads in every great
cause, civic and national.

216

TEMPLE ISRAEL
A specimen of classic architecture, massive and imposing in
its proportions.

217

ARCHBISHOP JOHN J. GLENNON
Archbishop of St. Louis
He is the popular head of the Catholic Church of St. Louis,
and is remarkable for ability in the administration and govern
ment of his archdiocese.

218

THE NEW CATHOLIC CATHEDRAL

The cost when completed will be about $3,000,000. The altar,
a gift of an individual, cost $100,000. It has a majestic and im
posing exterior, but its interior magnificence is still greater. It
is considered one of the finest churches in the country.

219

INTERIOR OF NEW CATHEDRAL
This high altar was the gift of Mr. William Cullen McBride, costing
over $100,000

220

?S-<L

•

1

:C2£Z) CttmZZWAZ, SFZpcriZ.MO
Erected in 1831
It' has many sacred associations, in its long history of
Catholicism.

221

REV. FATHER D. S. PHELAN AT 30 YEARS OF AGE
Editor Western Watchman, 1865-1915, fifty years' continuous
service. He graduated at St. Louis High School at 17 years of
age in the cjass of 1858.

222

ST. JOHN'S METHODIST CHURCH
It has always sustained an able ministry and has taken a
prominent part in the religious life of the city.

223

CHANCELLOR FREDERICK A. HALL
of Washington University

224

FRONT VIEW WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
225

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY AND CAMPUS
It was founded by the Rev. William Greenleaf Eliot, D.D.,
and a number of distinguished St. Louis citizens. The first group
of buildings was situated at 17th street and Washington avenue,
and college degrees were first granted in 1862. Since that time
the University has greatly increased in the number of buildings,
facilities and students. Chancellor Frederic A. Hall's present
administration has been marked by great success.
The total enrollment for the year, in all departments, was
3,838 students. This is a co-educational institution, which is in
the most prosperous condition of its history. It affords great
facilities in all of its departments.

226

MOST REVEREND
PETER RICHARD KENDRICK
First Archbishop of St. Louis — 1847 to 'his death
1896, mourned by all religious denomi
nations throughout the country.

REV. MICHAEL J. O'CONNOR, S. J.,
Pres. St. Louis University

227

ST. LOUIS UNIVERSITY
The foundation of St. Louis University dates back to 1818,
three years before Missouri became a state of the Union.
The number of students enrolled is about 1,800, with a com
plete faculty in all departments.
Its long history is of great interest.

228

WM. TORREY HARRIS TEACHERS TRAINING COLLEGE

EARLY HIGH SCHOOL

This was the early culmination of the public schools where
many of our leading citizens of today received their highest
educational opportunities and inspiration.

230

NEW CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL

231

SOLDAN HIGH SCHOOL
It has a large attendance from the West End of our city,
which embraces families of wealth and culture of the community.
The cost of the building was about $1,000,000.

CLEVELAND HIGH SCHOOL
This is the latest and most complete of our school buildings.
It is located on the South Side and has a large attendance of a
community highly appreciative of educational advantages.
The building cost $750,000.

THE YEATMAN HIGH SCHOOL BUILDING
This school was named after the late Jas. E. Yeatman, one of the great benefactors and philanthropists
of St. Louis. Winston Churchill, in his novel, "Inside the Cup," has delineated his character.

235

SU PERINTENDEN TS
The five following superintendents of the St. Louis Public
Schools, who have faithfully served and passed on, leaving a noble
record : 1 Ira Divoll, 1859-1867.
2 Wm. Torrey Harris, 1867-1880.
3 Edw. H. Long, 1880-1895.
4 F Louis Soldan, 1895-1908.
5 Ben Blewett. 1908-1917

236

IRA DIVOLL

237

WM. TORREY HARRIS

238

239

F. LOUIS SOLDAN
240

BEN BLEWETT

241

HENRY SHAW

242

MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN
It consists of 125 acres in the southern part of the city and was
formerly the private property and home of the Hon. Henry Shaw.
It has been turned over to the city since the death of this dis
tinguished savant and great benefactor, and this magnificent
gift has been changed in name from "Shaw's Garden," by which
it was so long and familiarly known, to the more comprehensive
name of "The Missouri Botanical Garden."
It contains 11,000 species of plants obtained from all parts of
the world.
It has splendidly equipped laboratories for graduate work in
Botany and allied subjects.
Its library contains more than 37,000 books and 49,000 val
uable pamphlets.
The scientific value of this garden in the number and import
ance of the great variety of specimens is thought unexcelled by
any other similar collection in the United States, and surpassed
only by the Royal Gardens at Kew, England.
A feature of interest is the Mausoleum containing the remains
of Mr. Shaw.
The charming arrangement and beauty of the floral display
make it one of the great attractions of the city.

243

> ^j^H^^

. j£a : h niitfi mfer

1 - "¦' . .

^SlT "' ' **ffltej.'l=|| fT"''' -'rSfflPP

MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN (interior view)
244
ITALIAN GARDEN, MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN

CHRYSANTHEMUMS, MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN

PALM DISPLAY, MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN

247

00

TROPICAL LILY POOLS, MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN

Missouri One Hundred Years Ago
The Saint Louis Missouri Centennial Pageant in commemora
tion of the One Hundredth Anniversary of Missouri's Admission
to the Union, under the general direction of William W. La
Beaume, written and produced by Thomas Wood Stevens ; Rob
ert Hanna, Chairman of the Productions Committee, with music
by Frederick Fischer — Noel Poepping — Gerald Tyler, with a
Symphonic Orchestra and the Saint Louis Pageant Chorus under
the direction of Frederick Fischer — a cast of 1,000 performers,
orchestra of 65, chorus of 150 and 100 dancers, was held at the
Coliseum on the evenings of October llth-15th, 1921.
This was an event of historic interest, marking a new epoch
in drama and pageantry, portraying the spirit of Missouri, her
people, resources, aims and aspirations and the political struggles
that finally terminated in her statehood when admitted to the
Union in 1821.
The actors in this spirited drama numbered many well-known
leaders among the women of the city and prominent professional
and business men who entered into the spirit of the play and
rendered their parts with histrionic excellence.
Among the leading characters were, "The Spirit of Missouri,"
Mrs. George Gellhorn ; "Saint Louis," Mr. David S. Friedman;
"Strife," Mr. W. H. Hoppe ; "The Spirit of Jefferson," Mr. R. W.
Bruner; "The Spirit of Napoleon," Mr. Edgar P. Shutz ; "Hamil
ton Rowan Gamble," Mr. Frank Somerville; "Mrs. Coalter," by
Mrs. William Scheville ; "Kibbie," Mr. Blanchard O. McKee;
"David Barton," Mr. Daniel Bartlett; "Alexander McNair," Mr.
John P. Sweeney; "Thomas Hart Benton," Mr. David O'Neil ;
"Pierre Chouteau, Jr.," Mr. Hector M. E. Pasmezoglu ; "Judge
J. B. C. Lucas," Mr. Harry McClain ; "John Scott," Territorial
delegate, Mr. R. W. Bruner; "Daniel Boone," Mr. Sam Goddard;
"Edward Bates," Mr. Culver Hastedt ; "Auguste Chouteau," Mr.
Henry de Lecluse; "Madame Chouteau," Mrs. Walter B.Douglas ;
"Mrs. De Mun," Mrs. George E. Norton; "Mandy," Miss Rhea
MacAdams ; "Charles Lucas," Mr. Percy Ramsey ; "Gov. William
Clark," Mr. Gustavus Tuckerman. Lack of space forbids the
mention of all the players.
The drama in two acts of two scenes each, showed the social
and political life of the time and place, the actual working of
slavery as a domestic institution, and in legislature and conven
tion, the clashing of local and national ideals of freedom. The
scene of the play is before a tavern, representing at various times
both the Mansion House and the Missouri Hotel in St. Louis.
The Masque as presented in the Prologue and Epilogue was
of great poetic and spectacular effect. The music was original
249

modern and appropriate. The Prologue presented Missouri, the
proud spirit of the land, moving amid the dance of the ever-
recurring cycles of nature feeling the touch of new forces, yet
getting no answer from the ancient manitous and meeting rivers
until Man comes. After the Indian, come Spain and France, bear
ing their flags, and with them come Slaves, bringing "Strife," a
threatening figure. Calling upon the nations as they pass and
view the scroll of her sovereignty, appears a vision of the Louisi
ana Purchase, and in the spirit of Jefferson she finds her future
and breaks forth into singing and rejoicing:
"Out of the strife — a state,
Out of the storm — a star."
The Epilogue presents Missouri, magnificent in the harvest
of a hundred years, greeted in Festival by Saint Louis. The
conflicting elements of political life are finally harmonized into
a unity of accomplishment and aspiration, transforming the ele
ment of Strife into Power — the high artistic and spiritual climax
of the Pageant. This last scene furnished a spectacle of grandeur
and beauty in which classical finish of form and splendor and
harmony of color were blended with grace and rhythmic move
ment in the dance to the sound of soul-stirring music that shed a
glory over all. unrivalled before on any stage.

250

.-."..- v ¦¦.^¦;.;r-:..-4i >

THOMAS HART BENTON

251

SCENE IN FRONT OF THE TAVERN DOOR
Upper row, left to right: Edward Bates, Mr. Culver Hastedt; Julia Coalter, Charlotte Coombe; Miss Caroline Coalter,
Miss Florence Walters; Charles Lucas, Mr. Percy Ramsey; Mrs. Coalter, Airs. Wm. Scheville; "Hostess," Mrs. R. W.
Bruner. Lower row, left to right: Auguste Chouteau, Mr. Henry De Lecluse; Dr. Farrar, Mr. Ray Mountain; Judge Lucas,
Mr. Harry McClain; Joseph Charles, Mr. Urban L. Dames; James Bridges, Mr. Gilbert C. Goodlett; McFerron, Mr. W. H.
Hoppe, Jr.

SCENE IN THE EPILOGUE
Left to right: Edw. Bates, Mr. Culver Hastedt; Mr. Hamilton Rowan Gamble, ATr. E. L. Applewhite; The Con
stable, Mr. Owen B. Tillay; St. Louis, Mr. David S. Friedman; Missouri, Mrs. George Gellhorn.

"MISSOURI"
Mrs. George Gellhorn

254

I hereby make acknowledgment to
the St. Louis Convention and Publicity
Bureau for their assistance and cordial
co-operation and to all others who have
in many ways assisted in this enterprise.
D. H. HARRIS

3 9002 00575 026'

YALE

Wwjfik 11