14 ENVIRONMENT AND EDUCATION-I 



saddened, kept his temper. He did not, like the great 

 and good Arnold of Rughy, under similar provocation, 

 knock the offender down with the text-book. 



Still another agency in my development was the de- 

 bating club, so inevitable in an American village. Its 

 discussions were sometimes pretentious and always crude, 

 but something was gained thereby. I remember that one 

 of the subjects was stated as follows: "Which has done 

 most harm, intemperance or fanaticism." The debate 

 was without any striking feature until my schoolmate, 

 W. O. S., brought up heavy artillery on the side of the 

 anti-fanatics: namely, a statement of the ruin wrought 

 by Mohammedanism in the East, and, above all, the de- 

 struction of the great Alexandrian library by Caliph 

 Omar ; and with such eloquence that all the argumentation 

 which any of us had learned in the temperance meetings 

 was paralyzed. 



On another occasion we debated the question: "Was 

 the British Government justified in its treatment of 

 Napoleon Bonaparte f" Much historical lore had been 

 "brought to bear on the question, when an impassioned 

 young orator wound up a bitter diatribe against the great 

 emperor as follows: "The British Government was jus- 

 tified, and if for no other reason, by the Emperor Napo- 

 leon's murder of the 'Duck de Engine' " (Due d'Enghien). 



As to education outside of the school very important 

 to me had been the discovery, when I was about ten years 

 old, of " ' The Monastery, ' by the author of * Waverley. ' ' ' 

 Who the "author of 'Waverley' " was I neither knew nor 

 cared, but read the book three times, end over end, in a 

 sort of fascination. Unfortunately, novels and romances 

 were kept under lock and key, as unfit reading for chil- 

 dren, and it was some years before I reveled in Scott's 

 other novels. That they would have been thoroughly 

 good and wholesome reading for me I know, and about 

 my sixteenth year they opened a new world to me and 

 gave healthful play to my imagination. I also read and 

 re-read Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," and, with plea- 



