CORRESP OXDENCE. 



553 



looked upon it as an extraordinary state- 

 ment, and in one of our journals the follow- 

 ing criticism appeared : " Will President 

 Eliot offer the public some fuller explana- 

 tion of his meaning ? What training to the 

 powers of observation is given by the study 

 of the mother-tongue? What training to 

 the art-faculties ? What to the knowledge 

 of abstract truths ? What to the faculties 

 which deal with abstract truths? What to 

 the power of reasoning? Does President 

 Eliot mean that an acquaintance with the 

 mother-tongue trains every faculty which is 

 trained by mathematics, science, metaphys- 

 ics, and {esthetics or does he mean that 

 the training of these faculties is not essen- 

 tial to a. good education that education may 

 be partial and yet adequate ? " 



The statement, President Eliot after- 

 ward remarked, " can easily be misunder- 

 stood," and was misunderstood, and is still 

 used to prove something that he did not de- 

 sign it should be used to prove. There can 

 be no dispute as to the correctness of the 

 remark that " an accurate and refined use 

 of the mother-tongue is an essential part of 

 the education of a lady or gentleman." No 

 one would consider an education complete 

 without this part of it. A violation of the 

 rules of grammar in speaking or writing the 

 mother-tongue would at once show an imper- 

 fect education. 



The Rev. Lyman Abbott published Mr. 

 Eliot's explanation. In an article in the 

 "Christian Union" Mr. Abbott remarked: 

 "Our readers may remember an editorial 

 paragraph calling attention to a reported 

 utterance of President Eliot, of Harvard 

 College, on the subject of education. We, 

 at the same time, addressed him a private 

 note, to which we have received the follow- 

 ing reply " : 



" Harvard College, Cambridge, Mass., I 

 July 26, 1879. j 



" Mr dear Sir : Your obliging note of 

 July 3d arrived just after I had left Cam- 

 bridge for a yacht-cruise on the Maine coast. 

 Hence the long delay of this reply. 



" I do not feel inclined, in these blessed 

 vacation-days, to write even the shortest 

 article not even to justify a statement of 

 mine which, it seems, can easily be misun- 

 derstood. I did not say that a study of the 

 mother-tongue supplied a complete mental 

 training ; but only that no one was a gentle- 

 man or a lady who had not a refined and 

 accurate use of the mother-tongue. That 

 attainment I find essential to my conception 

 of a gentleman or a lady. A gentleman or 

 a lady will have other mental acquisitions ; 

 but these will not be essential, as that is. 

 To illustrate : salt is an indispensable article 

 of diet ; one may, further, eat bread, or beef, 

 or oatmeal, but salt one must have, what- 

 ever the other articles consumed may be. 



Moreover, neither bread, nor beef, nor oat- 

 meal, is indispensable in the same sense. 



" But, as you suggest, the remark quoted 

 and questioned in your paper was incidental ; 

 and I am quite willing that it should go for 

 what it was momentarily worth. 

 " V r ery truly yours, 



" Charles W. Eliot. 

 "Rev. Lyman Abbott." 



We can accept President Eliot's expla- 

 nation that, as salt is necessary in all our 

 food, so the mother-tongue should appear 

 in its refined and accurate use in all our 

 studies rather than suppose an incidental 

 remark should be used against the study of 

 the classics. It would be singular, indeed, 

 if the president of a great university should 

 be placed in opposition to the study of sub- 

 jects which are assigned so large a place 

 in its curriculum as the ancient languages ; 

 rather would it be supposed that he would 

 say with Dr. Seelye, of Smith College : " The 

 relation, however, of the classics and mathe- 

 matics to intellectual growth, if correctly 

 apprehended, rests on unalterable facts in 

 the history of man and the constitution of 

 nature. They are to be studied, not because 

 the college demands them, but because they 

 are an essential condition to the broadest 

 mental culture. Unless they are early taught, 

 the chances are they will never be acquired. 

 Those who wish to pursue a higher educa- 

 tion will find themselves embarrassed every 

 step forward without them." 



It is evident that the remark of Presi- 

 dent Eliot was thrown off parenthetically in 

 the address before the young ladies of Smith 

 College, and was never intended to be used 

 as it has been by writers and speakers on 

 the subject of classical studies since the day 

 it was uttered. 



We think it is due to classical study and 

 its friends that this explanation should be 

 made in your widely-read " Monthly." 

 Yours, truly, 



Traill Green. 

 Easton, Pennsylvania, June 9, 1880. 



A SHOWER OF DUST. 



Messrs. Editors. 



From two to five o'clock on the morn- 

 ing of March 28, 1880, we had a storm 

 of wind and rain in this part of Indiana. 

 After daylight a remarkable deposit of 

 brown or slate-colored dust was found to 

 have fallen on porticoes, flat roofs, etc. 

 It was also observed, in places, on the 

 earth's surface. The phenomenon was no- 

 ticed by our citizens generally, and it was 

 spoken of in some of our papers. Profes- 

 sors Wylie and Newkirk, as well as myself, 

 collected quantities of the dust. Some 



