190'; 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



1313 



HOMLS 



*^^ byAJ.ROOT 



The spirit of Elijah doth rest on Elisha.— II. Kings 

 2:15. 



I wonder if the teachers of our land real- 

 ize the extent to which the impress of their- 

 characters and spii'it is left on their pupils. 

 Do our great teachers rtcognize the tremen- 

 dous responsibility that rests upon them as 

 they stand before their pupils? In speaking 

 of the way in which Prof. Cook has been the 

 means of impressing his many pupils with 

 the spirit of the man himself, 1 have been 

 thinking of other great teachers whom I have 

 known. When I was about twelve years old, 

 circumstances made it convenient to send me 

 to a high school in Wellsville, Columbiana 

 Co., Ohio. Iwas then full of enthusiasm for 

 chemistry and electricity, but I did not 

 "like" grammar. I shall always remember 

 the kind lady, Mrs. Udell, who took me in 

 hand; and under her gentle guidance and 

 exhortation I not only learned to love gram- 

 mar, but at the end of the term I stood at 

 the head of my class. Who can tell how 

 much this kind act on her part has been 

 worth to me in editing a public joui'nal like 

 this for so many years? 



When the winter was over, and I had re- 

 turned to my home in Medina, one of the 

 pupils wrote me that Mrs. Udell said to the 

 school that I had made greater progress dur- 

 ing the pi'evious winter than any other pu- 

 pil she had. Four years later my parents de- 

 cided to send me once more to the Wells- 

 ville high school. I was placed in the high- 

 est department, under the charge of the su- 

 perintendent — a very different person indeed 

 from the lady teac^her of four years before. 

 Professor Hitchcock, although a very good 

 man in some respects, sometimes gave way 

 to his temper, even in school. I took up 

 geometry that winter for the first time. My 

 teacher insisted on my repeating the prob- 

 lems and theorems in the exact language of 

 the book. Now, it has been a very hard mat- 

 ter for me all my life to recite any thing 

 word for word. 1 can give the subsUince of 

 a sermon pretty well in my own language. 

 Well, my teacher made fun of me before the 

 class because I, as he put it, presumed to 

 think I could improve on the language of 

 the book. This was not fair, and it was not 

 true. I would gladly have used the language 

 of the book could I have done so without 

 taking more time than seemed to me worth 

 while. Later on, there was a lesson that was 

 very hard for me to get through my head. 

 For some reason or other I was reciting 

 alone, and on that day I had a very short 

 lesson. When informed that that was all 1 

 had acquired as a lesson for that day the su- 

 perintendent threw the book on the floor 



with a bang, and declared that such short 

 lessons would not be tolerated. 



Soon afterward the winter term closed, and 

 I went back to Medina. I was a good deal 

 discouraged, and was almost inclined to give 

 up geometry because I was so dull and thick- 

 headed. During the summer I helped build 

 a house on the old farm. As I greatly en- 

 joyed carpenter work with my father for my 

 teacher, I did a great part of the house-build- 

 ing. An expert carpenter was employed, 

 however, to do the more particular finishing 

 work, and he gave me some excellent hints. 

 When I told him my trouble with geometry 

 he advised me to be sure to take a winter 

 term under S. G. Barnard, who was just 

 opening a noi'mal school in Medina for teach- 

 ers. I called on Mr. Barnard and told him 

 my troubles about geometry, etc. He gave 

 the boy of sixteen a kind and friendly talk — 

 a talk that I shall remember to the last day 

 of my life. He said that, while it was desir- 

 able to have the pupil give the language of 

 the book where it came natural and easy for 

 him to do so (as it is a good thing), yet he 

 added that he would give more for a boy who 

 could show the teacher in his own language 

 that he understood the lesson than one who 

 learned to repeat the words of the book with- 

 out a full understanding of what the words 

 meant. I think there were about a dozen 

 that winter in our geometry class, and there 

 were two in that class who rather excelled. 

 If you will excuse me for saying so, I will 

 say I was one of the two, and the other was 

 Professor Hendrickson, who has been all his 

 life in the employ of the government — a man 

 of great education and ability. Mr. Hen- 

 drickson not only understood mathematics, 

 but it seemed an easy matter for him to quote 

 the exact language of the book. 



Mr. Barnard was a great teacher. The 

 carpenter I have referred to gave me an il- 

 lustration. Previous to coming to Medina 

 Mr. Barnard taught in a smaller town. Be- 

 fore his term was out, somebody started a 

 I'eport that he spent a good deal of his time 

 on the streets, even while the school was in 

 session. The board of directors at one of 

 the meetings took him to task. He quietly 

 asked the committee if the pupils were not 

 making good progress. They looked from 

 one to the other, and finally admitted that 

 the children had never learned so fast before, 

 to their knowledge. 



" VV^ell, gentlemen, have any of the pupils 

 made any complaint of their teacher?" 



They looked at each other again, and Anal- 

 ly admitted something like this: 



"Our pupils never loved a teacher before 

 as they love you. They all seem anxious to 

 get to school on time, and they are sorry 

 when school is out." 



Then the teacher replied. "Gentlemen, it 

 z.s true I have been out of school a good many 

 times during school hours. It is part of my 

 plan. It is true, as some of the gossips have 

 said, that, instead of teaching the children, 

 I go out of the house and leave the older and 

 more proficient pupils in charge of the 

 younger ones. Much of my teaching is 



