Pri;paratory to Ri;si:ARc;n Cari:i-r 35 



wall with a shotqun. The sufTcring and confinement of prisoners 

 was a melancholy sight to him. Often while on duty he would 

 repeat to himself an old couplet: " Be the day weary, be the day 

 long, It ringcth at last to evensong." 



He took this position because, since he had to work to go to 

 school, there was an opportunity to study between rounds. He was 

 working then on the catalogue of Michigan plants. He was prob- 

 ably reading also in sanitary science. 



Smith began on October 30, 1878, what he called his " Index 



Rerum." His introduction read: "In every book I read, I find 



^ some valuable things along with a great deal of to me useless 



matter. By keeping an Index book the wheat can be separated 



from the chaff and made available for future use . . . ." 



Into this was written no abstract or material from state health 

 board reports. In 1881 when a school journal, the Michigan 

 School Aloderator,'^^ published his review of the Michigan board's 

 report for 1880, he suggested that these reports were "valuable 

 for study and reference and ought to be in every teacher's library. 

 The school room," he said, "is the proper place for instruction in 

 Hygiene." Nor was anything of public school interest included 

 in his "Index Rerum." From Ionia, on November 17, 1881, this 

 young scholar, himself once a school teacher, supplied to the 

 School Moderator '^'^ a short, informative argument on behalf of 

 the teaching of " Physiology in Common Schools." " Now is the 

 time," he urged, " for the district teacher to agitate forming a 

 class in physiology [to] understand the laws of health." Physi- 

 ology without hygiene was like Hamlet without the Prince. He 

 recommended several texts on human physiology — Gray's Anat- 

 omy; Flmt's, Dal ton's, or Carpenter's; and said, for "various 

 reasons" he preferred Dalton's. 



Erwin believed. 



It is not so much the possession of great libraries as it is the faithful use 

 of small ones, that makes men learned. I cannot think the Bible, Shake- 

 speare, and the dictionary sufficient for a man's education, as some have 

 declared ; but I have learned that a few books carefully read are better than 

 hundreds of volumes carelessly thumbed. Someone says of Carlyle's library 

 that the books were few but " worn and battered as if thrown at the ages." 



^"Founded at Grand Rapids, Michigan, October 27, 1881, as The School Moder- 

 ator. Smith's review, " Health Report for 1880," was published in vol. 1, no. 11, 

 p. 803. 



2 (12): 820, December 1, 1881. 



11 



