manner they soon mastered that, together with 
the and can. They had then learned and could 
put together the sentence, “ The cat can run.” I 
next bestowed a little praise, (which is far better 
than the “ beechen rule,”) dividing a little fruit 
among them, saying I would do the same the next 
time they read as well. As they went quietly to 
their seats, prouder people lived not, for they had 
not only taken one step towards conquering the 
world of letters, but had also gained the approval 
of their teacher. I afterwards proceeded in the 
same manner, and in a few days they could read 
in the Readers, thus avoiding a summer’s drill in 
the A B C’s and abs, which to them contained as 
little sense as does the Japanese language to us. 
Sodus, 'Wayne Co., N. Y., 1859. S. B. 
THE “CHILDREN’S MINISTER.’ 
L. B. Towsley, for more than a score of years 
has labored in Western New York for the good of 
the children and the Sunday Schools, as Agent of 
the American Sunday School Union, during which 
time he has endeared himself to the hearts of 
thousands of little ones, and earned the title of the 
“ Children's Minister ,” though only a lay preacher. 
In removing an old barn about a year since, he 
was struck by a falling timber, and so injured in 
the spine as to be helpless, and his life was a for a 
long time despaired of. He still lives, but is un¬ 
able to perform labor of any kind. The children, 
to show their gratitude to one who loved them so 
much, and had served them so long, and to allevi¬ 
ate his great affliction a3 much as possible, raised 
in the various schools over one thousand dollars, 
which they presented to Mr. Towsley. In stating 
this fact, it seems, by the following note from an 
associate of Mr. T., that by some freak of the 
figures, which are said usually to tell the truth, 
the sum was made altogether too large: 
Eds. Rural :—In your paper of the 18th of June, 
appears the following :—“ L. B. Towsley, the 
Children’s Minister, has received, since the injury 
which disabled him, the sum of $13,197, contribu¬ 
tions from various Sunday Schools.” While our 
Brother Towsley feels deeply grateful for the 
numerous and substantial tokens of interest and 
sympathy received from the children in every part 
of the State, where he has so long and efficiently 
prosecuted the work of the “ Children's Minister 
and will ever be ready, so far as figures can do it, 
to acknowledge to the full extent these favors, he 
may well be pardoned for being unwilling to have 
a statement so wide of the mark as the above, go 
uncorrected. 
The facts in this case are, as I recently learned 
from Bro. Towsley, that the “contributions of the 
various Sunday Schools ” above alluded to, at this 
time (August 3d) amount to thirteen hundred and 
eleven dollars, ($1,311,) instead of thirteen thou¬ 
sand. By giving publicity to this statement, you 
will greatly oblige all concerned. 
P- G. Cook, Missionary of the Am. 3. 3. Union. 
Buffalo, N. Y., August 4,1859. 
The Annual Meeting of the National Teachers’ 
Association was held at Washington during the 
second week of August. The Association was 
welcomed to that city by the Mayor, who gave a 
history of the free school system at Washington. 
A committee was appointed to confer with the Sec¬ 
retary of the Interior, to ascertain what additional 
statistics on the subject of education, may be 
obtained when taking the census. 
The vai’ious addresses were delivered, as an¬ 
nounced, after which officers were chosen for the 
ensuing year, as follows: 
President — J. W. Bulkley, of Brooklyn, N. Y. 
Vice-Presidents —T. W. Valentine, N. Y.; D. B. 
Hagar, Mass.; Wm. Roberts, Penn.; T. C. Taylor, 
Del.; Elbridge Smith, Conn.; Daniel Read, Wis.; 
Isaac Stone, Ill.; A. K. Rikoff, Ohio; C. S. Pen¬ 
nell, Missouri; J. N. McJdton, Md.; Sylvester 
Scott, Va.; C. C. Nestlerode, Iowa. Secretary — 
Z. Richards, District of Columbia. Treasurer —0. 
C. Wight, District of Columbia. Counsellors — 
James Cruikshanks, N. Y.; J. W. Allen, Conn.; 
H. C. Hickok, Penn.; Wm. McCathran, D. C.; 
John G. Elliott, N. C.; S. J. C. Sweezy, Ala.; Wm 
E. Theldon, Mass.; Daniel Reed, Wis ; J. D 
Yeates, Md.; F. M. Edward, Va.; I). McNiel Tur¬ 
ner, Fia. ; A. Drury, Ky.; Wm. B. Stark, Mo.; 
Asahel Elmer, Ill.; L. C. Draper, Wis.; B, W. 
Smith, Ind.; R. McMillan, Ohio. 
THE DUTY OF OWNING BOOKS. 
no patch of flowers in the yard, we were suspicious 
of the place. But, no matter how rude the cabin, or 
rough the surroundings, if we saw that the window 
held a little trough for flowers, and that some 
vines twined about strings let down from the eaves, 
we were confident that there was some taste and 
carefulness in the log cabin. In a new country, 
where people have to tug for a living, no one will 
take the trouble to rear flowers, unless the love of 
them is pretty strong — and this taste blossoming 
out of plain and uncultivated people is, itself, like 
a clump of hare-bells growing out of the seams of 
a rock. We were seldom misled. A patch of flow¬ 
ers came to signify kind people, clean beds, and 
good bread. 
But, other signs are more significant in other 
states of society. Flowers about a rich man’s house 
may signify only that he has a good gardener, or 
that he has refined neighbors, and does what he 
sees them do. 
But men are not accustomed to buy books unless 
If, on visiting the dwelling of a 
.HoNLAhO- 
tain any such information as could be made availa¬ 
ble at home. It is impossible for us to detail his 
labors while acting as Secretary of the Educational 
Board. He wrote twelve long Annual Reports, of 
one of which—the tenth—the Edinburgh Review 
says, et This volume is indeed a noble monument 
of a civilized people; and if America were sunk 
beneath the waves, would remain the fairest pic¬ 
ture on record of an Ideal Commonwealth.” 
On the 23d of February, 1848, Mr. John Quincy 
Adams, who was a Representative from the Con¬ 
gressional District in which Mr. Mann resided, 
died in the United States House of Representatives, 
which for almost twenty years had been the theatre 
of his labors. A successor was to be chosen and 
the task devolved upon Mr. Mann. On the 30th of 
June he entered Congress, and in the ensuing No¬ 
vember he was re-elected by an overwhelming 
majority, receiving eleven thousand out of about 
thirteen thousand votes, and was re-elected again 
in 1850, against two opposing candidates. 
In September, 1852, Mr. Mann was chosen Presi¬ 
dent of Antioch College, at Yellow Springs, Ohio. 
He was also President of the Northwestern Chris¬ 
tian University of Indianapolis. Thus employed 
he received the final summons—and a well-spent 
life was fittingly closed in labors calculated to 
stimulate Educational Progress and Christian 
Knowledge-. i 
In the issue of the Rural for August 13th, we 
made brief mention of the decease of the Hon. 
Horace Mann, at the same time furnishing our 
readers with such an epitome of his life and labors 
as space would permit. It was our intention to 
again recur to the subject in detail, and we now 
gladly avail ourselves of the present opportunity 
to present (in connection with a life-like portrait,) 
a biographical sketch of one who has probably 
done more for the educational interests of our 
country than any individual now upon the stage 
of active life. 
Horace Mann was born in the town of Franklin, 
Mass., May 4th, 179G. His father, Thomas Mann, 
who was a farmer, died when the subject of our 
remarks had attained his thirteenth year, leaving 
his family little beside the example of an upright 
life. The educational advantages of the children 
were very limited. In commenting upon this 
point, the editor of Life Illustrated remat ks. 
“They were taught in the district common school; 
and it was the misfortune of the family that it be¬ 
longed to the smallest district, had the poorest 
school-house, and employed the cheapest teachers 
in a town which was itself both small and poor. 
When the obscure boy of this obscure school after¬ 
wards became Secretary of the Massachusetts Board 
of Education, it is well known with what earnest¬ 
ness he used to dwell uffvm^ho importance of 
school-house architecturif'ami with what graphic 
they want them, 
man of slender means I find the reason why he has 
cheap carpets, and very plain furniture, to be that 
he may purchase books, he rises at once in my es¬ 
teem. Books are not made for furniture, but there 
is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house. 
The plainest row of books that cloth or paper ever 
covered is more significant of refinement than the 
most elaborately-carved etagere or side-board. 
Give me a house furnished with books rather 
than furniture! Both if you can, but books at any 
rate! To spend several days in a friend’s house, 
and hunger for something to read, while you are 
treading on costly carpets, and sitting upon luxu¬ 
rious chairs, and sleeping upon down, is as if one 
were bribing your body for the sake of cheating 
your mind. 
Is it not pitiable to see a min growing rich, and 
beginning to augment the comforts of home, and 
lavishing money on ostentatious upholstery, upon 
the table, upon everything but what the soul needs? 
We know of many and many a rich man’s house 
where it would not be safe to ask for the common¬ 
est English classics. A few garish annuals on the 
table, a few pictorial monstrosities, tegother with 
the stock of religious books of his “persuasion,” 
and that is all! No range of poets, no essayists, 
no selection of historians, no travels or biogra¬ 
phies— no select fictions or curious legendary lore: 
but then, the walls have paper on which cost three 
dollars a roll, and the floors have carpets that cost 
four dollars a yard! Books are the windows thro’ 
which the soul looks out. A house without books 
is like a room without windows. No man has a 
right to bring up his children without surrounding 
them w ith books, if he has the means to buy them. 
It is a wrong to his family. He cheats them!— 
Children learn to read by being in the presence of 
books. The love of knowledge comes with reading, 
and grows upon it—and the love of knowledge, in 
a young mind, is almost a warrant against the in¬ 
ferior excitement of passions and vices. 
Let us pity those poor rich men who live barren¬ 
ly in great bookless houses! Let us congratulate 
the poor that, in our day, books are so cheap that 
a man may evefy year add a hundred volumes to 
his library for the price of what his tobacco and his 
beer would cost him. Among the earliest ambi¬ 
tions to be excited in clerks, workmen, journey¬ 
men, and, indeed, among all that are struggling up 
in life from nothing to something, is that of own¬ 
ing, and constantly adding to, a library of good 
books. A little library growing larger every year 
is an honorable part of a young man’s history. It 
is a man’s duty to have books. A library is not a 
luxury, but one of the necessaries of life.— Henry 
Ward Beecher. 
A LITTLE SYMPATHY FOR DOGS, 
Friend Moore :—There have been two or three 
articles written and published in the Rural, in 
favor of the total destruction of dogs. I differ from 
the writer, for this reason, if no other, God made 
all things and pronounced them good. Now, I think 
we poor weak mortals ought to stop and think 
whether wo have any right to wish the total de¬ 
struction of anything, much less for the reasons 
that friend P. gives. They kill sheep and do other 
mischief. Take that as the true principle to judge 
from, and what would become of even the human 
family? Don’t they steaLand kill sheep, besides 
being the cause of a great [many other serious 
evils? “They bow-wow-wow, and disturb us 
nights and bark at us when we travel.” I have 
traveled lately, some twe or three hundred miles 
by my own conveyance and I have no recollection 
of a single dog coming out|to bark at me. Per¬ 
haps they did, but I seldom if ever notice them, 
and if I did I should say that nine times out of ten 
their masters where more to blame than they. I 
have no doubt that there are a great many so ner¬ 
vous that if they could, they would pull a chimney 
down to kill a cricket, so their noise would not keep 
them awake. It is better to let ninety and nine 
guilty go unpunished, than to punish one just per¬ 
son, and why not carry a little of that principle to 
dogs, and punish the guilty even with death, but 
to couple the innocent with the guilty, it would 
lack the true principles of humanity and justice. 
Friend P. thinks occasionally there is a dog that 
is of some benefit to his master. I think so, and 
I will name two or three circumstances known to 
me. I have frequently heard my father and moth¬ 
er speak of a dog they had when they first com¬ 
menced keeping house. My father’s business call- 
ICEBERGS.—DANGERS OF THE SEA. 
navigation. His letter is dated “ Mid-Ocean, July 
4th,” and he remarks: 
“ Then came fog, fog, for three days and nights, 
until one thousand miles were passed, Cape Race 
and New Foundland Banks. Here the air began 
to be very cold, requiring thick winter clothing, 
indicating that we were approaching the region of 
icebergs. Sure enough, on the afternoon of the 
9 th, while we were at dinner, the cry of ‘ icebergs’ 
was heard through the cabin, (a convenient excuse 
for many to leave the table, as it was a little rough; 
this cry was well understood afterwards, when it 
became necessary for any one to leave before 
meals were over, and often accompanied with con¬ 
siderable amusement;) but to the icebergs. We 
rushed on deck, and there, far, far away over the 
sea, was a dim mass of white substance, which we 
could not distinguish from land, then another 
came, very large and grand, about ten miles dis¬ 
tant—a great mountain of ice like a huge, bold 
promontory, jutting out into the wild waste of 
waters, while the waves dashed in foam and spray 
upon its cold and barren sides. 
“ Then the sunlight flashed over glassy heights 
with a dazzling brilliancy, reflecting all the colors 
of the rainbow from peak to peak, until the mass 
passed into a shadow, and then appeared like a 
gr eat mountain of snow, of the purestjwhiteness 
untouched by that which defiles and darkens.— 
One, we passed within half a mile, and could with 
great distinctness see its huge sides, cut into ridges 
S and gullies by the streams that were trickling 
down to the ocean ; on the summit there seemed 
the form of a house, indeed there was anything 
there that the imagination could picture out of 
such fantastic shapes and strange appearances. 
The cold gushes of wind that swept the ice fields 
came over our vessel like a wintry blast, producing 
the intensest cold. They say sailors can tell when 
they approach icebergs, even in the darkest night, 
Written for Moore’s Rural New-Yorker. 
TEACHING THE A B C’S. 
Not long since I observed in the Educational 
Department the account of a very learned and 
talented gentleman teaching the usually uninter¬ 
esting and much dreaded A B C’s to a large class, 
by drawing upon the blackboard a representation 
of some familiar object, printing its name and 
telling the letters of which it is composed. A 
district-school teacher with from thirty to fifty 
scholars, — nearly all having different books,— 
would scarcely find time to draw horses, dogs, 
fishes, etc.,—neither are there many who could 
surpass the idea of them already stamped upon 
the child’s mind, if time would allow. I have 
tried a similar, and, I think, a more simple way. 
At the commencement of my spring term, I had 
a class of ten small children, mostly those who 
had never learned a single letter. I tested several 
ways to gain their attention, but while I was 
teaching one, the others would look around or 
play with each other, and then, before I could get 
back to this one again, he would forget what it 
was. At length, when almost discouraged, I hit 
upon this plan :—I arranged them in front of the 
blackboard, and asked how many of them had a 
cat at home. They all raised their hands (my 
usual affirmation.) I then asked what colors they 
were, what they were good for, etc.—each answer¬ 
ing accordingly. After talking a few moments 
about them, perhaps telling a short, amusing 
anecdote, I told them I would print cat upon the 
blackboard, and wanted them to look and see 
which could learn it first. Now they were all 
animation, their before expressionless eyes glis¬ 
tened with pleasure, and every nerve seemed 
Btretched to its utmost—each tried to vie with the 
other in being the first to see it. 
After they were able to tell the word upon 
seeing it in any book, I told them it was composed 
of letters, and they must learn those too. I next 
asked them what a cat would do if it saw a mouse? 
Some answered it would catch it; others, it would 
run after it. I then printed run, and in the same 
Education in Ireland. —The 24th Report of the 
Commissioners of National Education An Ireland 
shows that at the end of 1857 there were 5,337 
schools in operation, an average daily attendance 
of 268,187 children, the average number in the 
rolls being 514,445. There were thirteen district 
model schools and 106 national agricultural schools. 
The total receipts of the commissioners amounted 
to £302,224 and their expenditure to £269,425. 
companion, but an earnest assistant ana sympa- puere; in tueir own language, mey can smeu 
thizer in all his educational labors. them. 
The political career of Mr. Mann began in 1827, 
when he was elected a Representative to the Legis- How a Rain Cloud Forms.— Prof. Wise, describ- 
lature of Massachusetts. In 1833 he removed to in S his lasfc balloon voyage, says:-We plainly 
Boston, and at the first election after becoming a saw that the southeast wind below, which drove 
resident of that city, he was chosen to the State us to the northwest at starting, had now supplied 
Senate. By re-elections he was continued in the the atmosphere with moisture enough to make a 
Senate for four years. In 1836 that body elected growing rain cloud. Slowly, but interestingly, 
him its President; and again, in 1837, in which the vapor assumed a milky hue. Presently it 
year he retired to enter upon a new and more con- assumed the appearance of a vascular cloud; thee 
genial sphere of labor, and in June, 1837, accepted it spread out and bulged down in the middle, and 
the office of Secretary of the Board of Education, soon it had the appearance of a great udder, wit! 
Immediately on accepting the office he withdrew the water oozing through it, but more copiously 
from all other professional and business engage- a t and around its protuberant centre. It was ar 
ments whatever, that no vocation but the new one interesting phenomenon, and it seemed as though 
might burden his hands or obtrude upon his con- nature was unbosoming her mammal to give th( 
templations. He resolved to be seen and known | earth some sustenance. I have noticed these 
only as an Educationist. I udders and water spouts before. 
In 1843, under the auspices of the Board of Edu- j -- 
cation, (but at his own private expense,) Mr. Mann t It is less pain to learn in youth than to be igno- 
visited Europe, to examine the schools, and to ob- 1 rant in old age. 
American Books. 
-Mr. Hilliard, in a letter from 
Liverpool to the Bostoa Courier, states that in the 
examination of traveler’s luggage by the officers of 
customs, American reprints of English books are 
absolutely excluded; they are taken away and de¬ 
stroyed. Thackeray was in this way deprived of 
his copies of the Appleton’s reprints of his own 
works. 
Discipline not one faculty exclusively, for thou 
hast many. If thou canst not use the optic glass 
in the dark, take the ear trumpet—by day reverse 
them.— Jean Paul. 
Education makes more difference between man 
and man, than nature has made between man and 
brute.— John Adams. 
A man passes for a sage, if he seeks for wis¬ 
dom ; if he thinks he has found it, he is a fool. 
Perfect Happiness. —It is heaven upon earth 
to have a man’s mind move in charity, rest in 
Providence, and turn upon the poles of truth. 
