262 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the charge of Mr. T. W. T. Curtis, and the classical department un- 

 der Mr. S. M. Capron. These teachers were equally remarkable, 

 although in different ways, for their excellent influence on the 

 pupils under their care. There was an honesty and candor about 

 both of them which were very healthful in example. They did 

 very little " preaching," but their demeanor was in all respects such 

 as to bear watching with the scrutiny of school-children and only 

 gain by it. Mr. Curtis had great skill in the catechetical method, 

 being able to lead a scholar by a series of questions over the track 

 which must be followed to come to an understanding of the subject 

 under discussion. Mr. Capron united dignity and geniality in a 

 remarkable degree. The consequence was, that he had the most 

 admirable discipline, without the least feeling of the irksomeness 

 of discipline on the part of his pupils. On the contrary, he pos- 

 sessed their tender and respectful affection. Mr. Capron was a 

 man of remarkably few words, and he was a striking example of 

 the power that may go forth from a man by what he is and does 

 in the daily life of a school-room. Both these gentlemen em- 

 ployed in the school-room all the best methods of teaching now so 

 much gloried in, without apparently knowing that they had any 

 peculiar method at all. Prof. Sumner has often declared in pub- 

 lic that, as a teacher, he is deeply indebted to the sound traditions 

 which he derived from these two men. 



He graduated from Yale College in 1863, and in the summer of 

 that year went to Europe. He spent the winter of 1863-'64 in 

 Geneva, studying French and Hebrew with private instructors. 

 He was at Gottingen for the next two years, studying ancient lan- 

 guages, history, especially church history, and biblical science. In 

 answer to some questions, Prof. Sumner has replied as follows : 



"My first interest in political economy came from Harriet 

 Martineau's ' Illustrations of Political Economy.' I came upon 

 these by chance, in the library of the Young Men's Institute 

 at Hartford, when I was thirteen or fourteen years old. I read 

 them all through with the greatest avidity, some of them three 

 or four times. There was very little literature at that time with 

 which these books could connect. My teachers could not help me 

 any, and there were no immediate relations between the topics 

 of these books and any public interests of the time. We sup- 

 posed then that free trade had sailed out upon the smooth sea, 

 and was to go forward without further difficulty, so that what 

 one learned of the fallacies of protection had only the same inter- 

 est as what one learns about the fallacies of any old and aban- 

 doned error. In college we read and recited Wayland's ' Political 

 Economy/ but I believe that my conceptions of capital, labor, 

 money, and trade, were all formed by those books which I read in 

 my boyhood. In college the interest was turned rather on the po- 



