1902.] THE EDUCATION OF BOOKS AND OF NATURE. 283 



hands which will give the results we want, and which will 

 help to make them useful citizens, and their lives rich and 

 glad, and worth while; which will open their minds, and 

 enable us to tell them all the many things we long to do in our 

 schools, whether in the country or city, and to give to these 

 children who have come to us so trustingly and cast their 

 fortunes in with ours all the things we long to give to our 

 own children through our public school system." 



I have sometimes thought, as an old teacher, if I could 

 choose for the girls, some of your daughters in college, and 

 the little girls in the schools, and the young, high-souled and 

 ardent men that I see thronging by the thousand past my 

 door every day- in Cambridge, and in and out of Harvard's 

 halls, I would set a watch over the little primary schools, and 

 so on to the university, and as these children were passing 

 through who so soon are to have our future in their hands, 

 I would make sure of certain results from what we call pri- 

 mary education. Indeed, without going into the schools, I 

 have sometimes thought if I could venture to be so bold as an 

 old teacher that -I would venture to lay down, perhaps, three 

 rules that being kept could never fail to produce a happy life. 

 When we think of our own lives, we want our children to 

 have happy lives, and I think it is well, therefore, for us on the 

 school committees of the districts, and on the boards of the 

 cities, when we appoint teachers, and elect the governors of 

 schools, and plan courses of study, to ask ourselves whether 

 in what we do we are producing the source of a happy life as 

 well as a useful and practical one, because a happy life, in a 

 large sense, is always a useful and practical one. And so 

 I come back, as I said, to my three rules for happiness. If I 

 could make sure that every girl I love as an old teacher would 

 every day of her life, not skipping one, learn something worth 

 remembering; if it w-ere only one line of a great psalm, or 

 one verse of a great poet, or one noble thought of some 

 splendid, loyal orator or statesman; even if it Were so little 

 that it took only a minute while she was washing the breakfast 

 dishes; if I could make sure that she would store away in 

 her memory some such great gift out of the splendid past of 

 books which will never die, she would have a source of 

 unfailing interest and pleasure, a solace in trouble, and of 

 strength in weakness which would always go with her, even to 

 the day she died a happy death. 



