1905 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



1253 



ness, pilots the nation through the darkest voyage 

 she ever took. Illustrations of this nature from 

 secular and religious history confirming this fact 

 are constantly occurring, so that we are com- 

 pelled to acknowledge that child instruction is a 

 theme of vital importance. 



Fifty years makes many changes, but none more 

 radical than the changes in literature touching 

 childhood. Fifty years ago books were written by 

 giown people for grown people. Authors were the 

 denizens of a childless world. Science, art sr 

 invention took no notice of children. One of the 

 things for which the close of the 19th century will 

 always be noted is the discoz'ery of the child. For 

 the first time men began to realize the value and 

 irnportance of the utterance of Him who said, 

 "Efxcept ye be converted and become as little chil- 

 dren" — in sincerity, humility, simplicity, faith and 

 genuineness — ve cannot even see the kingdom of 

 God. 



God ordained three institutions to bless mankind. 

 The first is a government. To secure the peace, 

 prosperity, and safety of a nation, a government 

 is necessary. The second institution was the church. 

 But before either of these was possible there was 

 instituted the family. Even heathen moralists in- 

 sist upon the family as necessary to public virtue. 

 There can be no true public life where the family 

 is corrupt, any more than there can be a solid 

 structure where the foundation stones are soft. 

 Society rests upon the family. Social morality de- 

 pends upon true family life. Christianity emphasizes 

 the necessity of a normal family life. Greece and 

 Rome violated the law of the family, and impurity 

 and selfish indulgence sapped the life of these 

 great states. Where family life decays, the state 

 is in danger, and civilization rests upon quick- 

 sand. 



A close ally to the family in the development of 

 the young is the public schools. In another week 

 you will have heard the buzz of voices, the song 

 of the school-bell, and teachers will be able to tes- 

 tify out of a full heart, that forty children in a 

 single room have enough pent-vtp energy to run a 

 dozen Corliss engines. The most significant day in 

 a child's life is its spiritual birthday, and the next 

 most important is its intellectual birthday. What- 

 ever your children may accumulate and acquire in 

 the future, their one inalienable possession will be 

 their education. 



The only orders of nobility that are possible _ in 

 a republic are education and character. Education 

 is the process that makes fully developed men and 

 women. Someone asked an old philosopher to de- 

 fine man. He said, "Man is a two-legged creature 

 without feathers." But when a clever wag brought 

 the philosopher a plucked rooster he had to recast 

 his definition. ISIan is a creature with a body 

 which is inhabited with a mind, heart, and will. 

 The condition and development of that body, mind, 

 heart and will determine a man's happiness and 

 his usefulness far more than any outward posses- 

 sion. It is the pride of the nation that the re- 

 public provides every child a chance to secure a 

 libera! education. It is sometimes the shame c f 

 our nation that some do not make a better use of 

 their opportunity. Every new school year is the 

 beginning of a new epoch for children, parents and 

 teachers. Broadly speaking, a child can have any- 

 thing he wishes, but he cannot have everything. 

 He must make choices. He must believe in the 

 doctrine of election. The better must always be 

 sacrificed for the best. It is fitting, then, that, on 

 the threshold of the school year, we should think of 

 the relations of the home and school. 



Washington Irving has given us an account, in 

 perhaps the most charming English ever written 

 by an American, of the school and schoolmaster of 

 Sleepy Hollow. I trust you are all familiar with 

 Ichabod Crane, his short sleeved coat with flapping 

 tails and his pantaloons which came to an end so 

 prematurely; his nasal psalm-singing and vast ap- 

 petite for dinners ard ghost stories, and his fond- 

 ness for little children who had good cooks for 

 mothers or pretty grown-up sisters. His school- 

 house, locked by slanting stakes and twisted wil- 

 lows, harmonizes with the picture. Within, the 

 pedagogue perched upon a high stool teaches the 

 "three r's" — reading, riting_ and rithmetic: mean- 

 while, wnth the redoubtable birch rod, he watches the 

 buzzing pupils who con their lessons half aloud, 

 for Ichabod is a firm believer in the maxim that 

 "to spare the rod was to spoil the child;" asd, as 



Irving quaintly remarks, Ichabod's children were 

 not spoiled. The inventory of the schoolmaster's 

 property and library after his luckless wooing and 

 n'ysterious disappearance from Sleepy Hollow is 

 suggestive as to the pay and literary qualifications 

 of such a position. "Two shirts and a half, two 

 slocks for the neck, a pair of worsted stockings, a 

 pair of corduroy small clothes, and a rusty razor;" 

 and for the library "a book of psalm tunes. Cot- 

 ton Mather's History of New England Witchcraft, 

 a New England Almanack, a book of dreams and 

 fortune telling." Hans Van Ripper, as executor of 

 the estate, consigned the books to the flames, and 

 took his children out of school, observing that he 

 "never knew any good to come from this same 

 reading and writing." 



We may not know exactly what was Irving's in- 

 tention in writing this account, but he has given 

 us a weird and beautiful picture, an exquisite ro- 

 mance, and a faithful picture of an institution 

 which has ceased to be. Every American ought to 

 read about those wonderfully prosaic schools, with 

 their dirty rooms, their brutal floggings, their nar- 

 row routine of studies, the ignorance of teachers 

 an.d governing boards, the niggardly and super- 

 stitious teachers, and the communities with their 

 Hans Van Ripper who never saw any good in that 

 same reading and writing. You ought to read it, 

 not only as a matter of history, but to show you 

 what a hundred years of effort on th"e part of 

 teachers and educators has done for the public 

 school system. In the consideration of our theme, 

 then, there are three things I desire to emphasize. 

 I. Let us magnify the importance of an education. 

 There are fourteen and a hnlf million child>en 

 enrolled in the public schools of this country. 

 Tv.'enty-three percent of the entire population of 

 this country answers the call of the school-bell; 

 $2.24 every man, woman and ciiild pays for the 

 support of the public school system. The average 

 number of schooldays in a year in the whole coun- 

 try is 134. As a matter of preparation for citizen- 

 ship our nation requires that we attend school for 

 eight years. But when you remember that every 

 day of the average 134 schooldays, 36 out of every 

 100 pupils, or one in every three, missed school, 

 it does not seem as though education vyere as im- 

 portant to every father and mother as it is to the 

 state. Massachusetts has the best attendance in 

 the nation, and Minnesota is guilty of the sin of 

 having the worst. When your child is absent from 

 school for every ache or pain, or every time the 

 routine of the home is disturbed, you can hold the 

 public schools responsible for nothing. 



One says, "Knowledge opens the furrows and 

 sows the seed; knowledge curves the sickle and reaps 

 the sheaf; knowledge builds the mill and grinds 

 the corn and converts it into bread; knowledge 

 touches a forked stick and turns it into a steel 

 plow." We have it on high authority that wisdom 

 is better than rubies. The richest man of his day, 

 the king of his country, and the wisest man of all 

 time, declared that wisdom and knowledge havs 

 their own certain reward. 



When Matthew Arnold visited this country he 

 was struck by the democratic institutions of the na- 

 tion. One day he went into the reading-room of 

 the city of Boston, and saw a little bare-footed 

 newsboy sitting in one of the best chairs of the 

 reading-r«om. The great essayist was completely 

 astounded. "Ho you let barefooted boys in the 

 reading room," he asked. You would never see 

 such a sight as that in Europe. Mr. Arnold v ent over 

 to the boy and engaged him in conversation, and 

 found that he was reading the life of Geerge Wash- 

 ington, and that he was a young gentleman of de- 

 cidedly anti-British tendencies, and for his age 

 remarkably well informed. Mr. Arnold came back 

 to the desk and said, "I do not think I have been 

 impressed with anything else that I have seeti 

 since arriving in this country as I am now impressed 

 bv meeting "this barefonted boy in the reading- 

 rooim." What a tribute it is to democratic in- 

 stitutions to say that, instead of sending that boy 

 out to wander alone in the streets, they permit hira 

 t.^ come in here and excite his youthful imasrination 

 by reading sucli a book as the life of Washington! 

 The reading of that one book may be the means 

 of changing the whole course of that boy's life, of 

 making him a useful, honorable and worthy citizen 

 of his great country. 



