37 



be from every county, four students selected every two years by the county 

 commissioners from among- those who had the strongest recommendations in 

 the graded or other public schools for diligence, progress, and morality. Thus, 

 if the course lasted two years, there would be in Indiana, which has 92 

 counties 4 X 92=368 students, besides the orphans, making a total attendance 

 probably of between four and five hundred at the two institutions. 



There is a plan by which the expense may be diminished, or rather the 

 means increased. The farm is to be worked by the students, under the direction 

 of the head farmer and his two farm hands ; the garden and orchard are also to 

 be cultivated by the students, under direction of the head gardener, and assisted 

 by such professors as desire to improve their physical health and energies. 

 The proceeds of this labor, if everything is well managed, ought to be, at least, 

 from one to two thousand dollars per annum. This sum may go to swell the 

 column for annual expenditure ; but it is suggested, as better, that it should be 

 used to keep up a boarding-house, at which unmarried professors and students 

 could board at a fair price, thus creating at once a market for their own pro- 

 duce. But the chief advantage of this plan yet remains to be explained : That 

 the children rendered orphans by the war (whether the lower graded school 

 for orphans be adopted or not) should, besides here receiving gratuitous in- 

 struction to fit them for occupying highly respectable positions, be also gra- 

 tuitously boarded out of the profi s of the farm, garden, and boarding-house. 

 A thorough education would benefit them and the community much more 

 effectually than a donation of land or money. 



I ought not to omit mentioning that every opportunity should be- embraced 

 (professors sharing the labor equally and making themselves the attached com- 

 panions of their pupils) to take a class or two at a time, say Saturdays, to see 

 the useful arts and manufactures carried on, by visiting the neighboring print- 

 ing and bookbinding establishments, foundries, dye-houses, cotton and woolen 

 mills, grist mills, tanyards, breweries, &c. ; and if it is a walk of five or six 

 miles to these, so much the better. 



The students should also be encouraged to imitate what they see by making 

 models in wood, sometimes modelling in clay or wax designs they may have 

 sesn ; also in painting, in the cheap and rapid distemper style, above alluded to, 

 typical forms, tabular views, &c. 



If any one objects to the main feature of the above plan, the education of 

 the eye, as claiming undue pre-eminence, I have one argument, which, to my 

 mind, is very powerful, and may be so to that of others. I hope, therefore, I 

 shall be pardoned for introducing it here, even by what may appear a digres- 

 sion. 



The nerves give energy and direction to all organic and animal life in man- 

 The nerves of the special senses, emanating from the brain, are the chief 

 sources, or means, of knowledge arid enjoyment. Of the 12 pairs of cranial 

 nerves, the second pair, (optic nerve,) the third pair, (motores oceulorum,) the 

 fourth pair, (patheticus,) the ophthalmic branch of the fifth pair, (tri-facial,) 

 and the whole of the sixth pairs, (abducent cs^) are devoted to the various func. 

 tions and motions connected with the "windows of the soul/' the eyes. The 

 ear is supplied by the auditory nerve, a few filaments from the facial, with a 

 minute ramification from the pterigoid branch of the trigeminus. The nose re- 

 ceives a single pair, the olfactory, and a minute branch of the ophthalmic, while 

 our whole taste is dependent upon the gustatory nerve, a small ramification from 

 the third branch of the fifth pair, aided slightly by a portion of the glosso- 



