1 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 



truth, an abiding interest in history of the past and in the 

 making, were some of the many things impressed indeHbly 

 upon his pupils. 



During this time he took an active interest in the little 

 missionary church of St. James which had been built while 

 he was away at college. It was three miles from Springvale 

 near the village of Falls Church. He served as acolyte when- 

 ever necessary. He undertook the practical, not the musical, 

 management of the choir, who were volunteers from the con- 

 gregation ; he purchased the music, saw that order was main- 

 tained and that reverence ruled in the choir loft. 



After three years in the Georgetown preparatory school 

 Andrew entered Georgetown College in the fall of 1874. 

 His whole educational career lay along singularly fortunate 

 lines. We have seen what his early schooling was in the 

 little country school near his home. It is true that he had 

 not the presumed advantages of modem methods, such as 

 smooth the path of learning for the psychological child of 

 the present hour, but he enjoyed plain straightforward teach- 

 ing and drilling in the rudiments known as the three R's, and 

 his mind was trained to realize that knowledge was to be 

 acquired by mental effort and not absorbed as amusement. 

 This was an asset of value which the elder teaching possessed, 

 whatever it lacked as measured by the pedagogic novelties 

 that set the fashions of to-day. The drudgery of learning 

 is just as essential as the drudgery of ploughing. No young 

 mind was ever allured into the path of knowledge as an easy 

 and roseate way and remained there for long. Andrew Ship- 

 man was fortunate in being schooled in his early years to 

 the method of mental work and earnestness, and the sincerity 

 and genuineness of his character readily yielded the golden 

 vein to the process. With what a handicap he might have 

 been burdened had his young powers been pampered and 

 jellified by the uncertain psychological experiment now-a-days 

 counting its victims by the tens of thousands. 



Von Degen's persuasion of the elder Shipman to send 

 Andrew to Georgetown was another happy circumstance. The 

 classical drill and prescribed curriculum of the Jesuit system 

 gave mental system, balance and the habit of diligence. There 

 was no line of least resistance by way of electivism on the 

 part of the pupil. He took the prescribed course willy-nilly 



