NINTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART XII 699 
The test of the sterling worth of a school innovation is time. Fad is 
short-lived; merit rises above the cloud of doubt and uncertainty and as- 
serts its plea after the fanciful embelishments have been tried and for- 
gotten. "In union there is strength" is as true of schools as of states. 
This union is no new and untried thing; from Massachusetts along the 
Ohio road it has come triumphant through every trial. It has been tried 
in our own state and kept its successful record and time will bring it 
to us. 
The difficulty in making the change is no small problem. It is at- 
tended with expenditure of money, and, no matter how long its intro- 
duction is delayed, it will meet with more or less public disapproval. The 
American public rings true upon all matters of progress when once it 
understands; but, it has so many units, it is a cumbersome mass to mould 
into new ideas. The parent conservatism that blesses is not to be con- 
founded with the parent old fogyism that stubbornly clings to the old, 
not looking for advantages in the new. The partition between the two is 
so thin that sometimes the b^st of us break through into fogy hall 
without realizing exactly where we are "at." 
In life we must journey forward toward a better state of completion, 
each generation profiting by the onward march of others. Change is 
ever present, we must go. We can go near the lead singingly, helpfully, 
or we can be tugged along clutching and clawing at backward sureness 
like a cat being pulled along by the tail. This onward sweep forms new 
ties in families, and rends the old home to build the new; changes field 
methods as well as school methods. What a waste of vitality to go 
clutching and clawing! It takes no more energy to "right about face" 
in the general direction, and, besides, the clawing about is so apt to clear 
the reachable space of friends — the dearest comfort of the journey. The 
unyielding dispositions need the patience and pity — they will arrive and 
finally adjust themselves to the new way. Have they more affection 
because they thus reach so frantically backward? Not necessarily so; it 
is more adulterated with persistency. 
Who does not love the little school? Think of the sacrifice it took to 
plant it on "every hilltop." Were the pioneers looking backward when 
they built the rude shelter for the neighborhood children? What of the 
pioneer mother who was glad to put the corn bread and bottle of milk — 
all she had — in the dinner bucket and send her children away to the log 
palace of learning? There they wrestled happily for a few months of the 
year with what books they could get, and cut off arithmetic and self- 
reliance in large chunks. In time it gave way to the box-building, sided, 
painted, window-shuttered — the neighborhood's pride. On its teacher's 
platform, ably directing her audience, was a maiden, who, on the back- 
less seats of the old structure, had soaked in such a good education that 
she forgot about needing a diploma to herald its presence. Thither came 
the young men and the young women; they parsed, and ciphered, and 
hunted map rivers, and obscure capes, spelled the spelling book from end 
to end till they knew every word in old age, and debated till they kept it 
going in congress. Time passed and still the star of the little school was 
in the ascendency with forty to sixty pupils. It did its work well and 
out of it came many companions who walk the "long path" united. 
