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for intellectual veracity as partners in a common search for truth, proving all things and holding fast what is good. It is strange that any community which has learned to insist on the supreme importance of veracity in commercial exchanges, and in stating the facts of physical science, should be less concerned for intellectual veracity in its estimates of human thoughts, motives, and characters. To redeem one's self and others from the mischievous illusions under which, in consequence, one half of the community often lives regarding the other half-like that church-going party man who insisted that his pastor, being of the other party, could not preach the pure Gospel-is surely an urgent concern for every one who knows that regard for the reality of things is essential to a truly rational life.

The Commonwealth

VIII. The Teacher

The progress of the world sometimes seems to an impatient spirit very slow. We forget that each new generation begins life afresh and has all to learn. How far the acquired qualities of the parent are transmitted to its offspring is a disputed question among biologists; but if qualities. The babe comes with are inherited, experience is not. wholly unused powers into a wholly unknown world. If it were not for the teacher, he would have to repeat all the blunders of his predecessors and learn again by the same misfortunes the lessons they had learned by theirs. By the teacher's aid he acquires some of the results of experiences which he has not suffered, and receives, through abbreviated processes, wisdom which it has taken the world generations to acquire. Earlier generations cleared away the forest, dug out the stumps, carried off the stones, plowed and subsoiled the ground, harrowed and planted it.

Under the guidance of the teacher the present generation enters with its sickle and reaps a harvest which others have prepared for its reaping. The saying, "Fools learn by their own experience, wise men by the experience of others," indicates the function of the teacher in the com

monwealth it is to make available, to such as are willing to learn, the experience of past ages.

There is even now, and there was formerly much more than now, a great deal of memoriter teaching which is relatively useless. We have known of a teacher in philosophy who required, or at least expected, the pupils to repeat verbatim the pages of the text-book, and teachers in geometry who were best pleased with a similar verbal We do not say that accuracy in geometrical recitations. such memoriter exercises are absolutely useless, because, for aught we know, they may have some effect in develop ing a purely verbal memory, and even a purely verbal memory, though the least practically important of acquirements, is not without its uses. But this is not teaching philosophy or geometry. Such a teacher should label his class, Class in mnemonics.

Philosophy is taught only when the pupil apprehends the thoughts of great thinkers who have lived before him, and thinks their thoughts after them. Geometry is taught only when the pupil perceives the logical sequences in the demonstration and understands why the conclusion is reached and why there can be no other from the premises given. The memory is a valuable faculty, but it is only a means to an end, and when it is made an end in itself it is not a valuable faculty. The memory is a convenient storehouse wherein one keeps facts and principles assorted and arranged and ready for use. If it is retentive, and keeps them carefully and effectively, and

if it is responsive, ready to give them up at any moment on call, it is invaluable. But it must be discriminating; must know what to remember and what to forget; and if it retains merely words and not ideas, and those words only long enough to give a good recitation to-morrow, it is quite useless. The pupil is not a phonograph, to give out on one day what has been spoken to him the day before.

The function of the teacher, we repeat, is to give to one generation the reservoired results of the experience of past generations, and thus facilitate and expedite human. development. This the true teacher does, chiefly, in two ways: first, by imparting the results of such experiencethat is to say, learning; and, second, by developing, in the process, the faculties of the pupil, and thus adding to his mental power—that is, to his wisdom. No teaching is of much use, we might almost say no teaching is of any use, which does not increase either the learning or the wisdom of the pupil-either his store of knowledge or his power to make good use of such store as he possesses. Thus the study of literature, rightly conducted, first of all acquaints the student with the great thoughts of great

thinkers and enables him in some measure to make them his own; secondarily, enables him to think high and noble thoughts himself, or to express clearly such thoughts as he possesses; and, finally, to perceive the real life of humanity as it is interpreted by the great revelators of human experience. The study of history makes the student acquainted with the progress of the development of the race thus far, records its various experiments, indicates its failures and its successes, and gives the pupil, if he has been truly taught, the vantage-ground of familiarity with the past in his own endeavors to add to the world's well-being in the future, prevents him from repeating the blunders of his predecessors, shows him the highway of travel, guards him from straying off into experimental side paths which lead nowhere, and prevents him from thinking himself a discoverer of a new continent when in truth he is only following in the track of a host of previous explorers. The study of natural science puts the student in possession of what the world has already learned concerning the secrets of nature, and at the same time and by the same process develops his powers both of observation and of deduction; and so enables him to pursue still further the study of nature from the vantage-ground of knowledge won by others.

Humanity is a very slow pupil. It is extraordinarily reluctant to learn from the experiences of the past. It repeats over and over again, with dismal monotony, experiments the sole value of which is to confirm by new disasters lessons taught by previous disasters. That it makes any progress, learns anything, does not continue merely trying the same experiments and repeating the same failures generation after generation, that, though very gradually, it does learn something, that each generation takes some. advantage, be it ever so little, of the work of previous generations, is due to the teacher. He harvests and stores the experiences of the past for the benefit of the future.

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Good-by!"

The Spectator on the Great Lakes

A year or two ago the Spectator happened to see, in one of those vast welters of miscellany that force themselves upon us under the guise of Sunday newspapers, an item to the effect that the second greatest port in the world for the shipment of iron ore was the town of Escanaba, Michigan. The Spectator had never heard of the town of Escanaba, Michigan, and knew nothing of the Lakes as a medium for the transportation of ore. He had supposed, indeed, that the principal function of the Great Lakes was to supply water for Niagara Falls. The reading of the paragraph about Escanaba marks for the Spectator a great awakening. Before this he had imagined that, since the United States had abandoned commerce on the high seas in its own vessels, the coastwise and river traffic was the field in which our ships were mainly engaged; he found that, on the contrary, the majority of the large steam vessels of the country are now plying the waters of the Lakes. He had believed that the Suez Canal was by far the most important in the world; he learned that there is a canal officially called the "St. Mary's Falls Canal," between Lakes Superior and Huron, through which last year passed a total of 17,956 vessels, as against 3,334 through the Suez Canal; and that the total tonnage of vessels passing through the Suez Canal in the twelve months of 1895 was but 8,450,000, in round numbers, against 16,800,000,000 passing through the "Soo" Canal in the eight months of the same year during which it was open for navigation. He had wondered what had become of the American sailor and the American ship-builder who manned and built the white-winged clippers of old; he found that the

Meeting a Sister Ship

American sailorman now sails the Lakes instead of the sea, and that at the beginning of this year more vessels were under contract in Lake ship-yards than had been built in the entire country during 1894 or 1895. The amazing proportions and growth of the Lake commerce are, in fact, realized by scarcely one in a hundred intelligent Americans, to whom the words "inland seas" have never taken on their full significance since they were first heard in the misty atmosphere of longgone school-days.

Another surprise that awaited the Spectator when he had decided to take a voyage on the Great Lakes was that there are magnificent passenger vessels on the Lakes. A trip on the Lakes does not mean close confinement on a slow, deep-laden, grimy ore-carrier. Any one who will glance at the picture at the head of this column will perhaps share the Spectator's disillusionment as he gazed at the great steel steamship, spotless in her white raiment, and suggesting a beatified "commerce-destroyer," as she lay at her pier in Buffalo. Here was a vessel built exclusively for passenger traffic, carrying no freight, in every respect equal and in many respects superior to the finest transatlantic liner. Outwardly he that has eyes may see this; of the ship's interior, he that has ears may hear of her woodwork in solid mahogany; of her parlor staterooms, with brass bedsteads, cheval mirrors, Persian rugs, and private bath-rooms; of her

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handsome saloon cabin,
with its luxuriously up-
holstered sofas, its Stein-
way piano, its carved
writing-desks, and its
library wherefrom one
may cull, according to his
taste, American Politi-
cal Ideas," "The White
Company," "A Little
Book of Western Verse,"
or a little book of East-
ern verse called the "Ru-
baiyát "-an old friend
whose acquaintance the Spectator immediately renewed; of her white
and gold dining-room, wherein one might almost fancy himself at
Delmonico's or the Waldorf; and, if he is so minded, of her great
engines, her ice-machines, her huge cold-storage rooms, and her-no,
not her cook's galley, but her chef's culinary plant. This beautiful
vessel is the "North West," of the Northern Steamship Company,
and is under the command of a typical yet peculiarly genial represent-
ative of the "fresh-water sailor," Captain George Minar.

"The Gazing Rustics Ranged Around"

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"Inland seas" indeed are these lakes, but one does not realize this immediately on leaving Buffalo. The difficulty of getting clear of the mole that protects shipping from the storms that sometimes sweep Lake Erie reminds one of the troubles of the earliest steamboat in the same waters, when, as Schoolcraft narrates, "two miles after leaving Black Rock a very heavy rapid is encountered, in ascend

A Lake Lighthouse

ing which the assistance

of oxen is required." Our oxen take the form of clumsy but officious little tugs, which lend their aid to nearly all large vessels. Once out on the open "sea," however, we shake ourselves free from all attendants, and rush through the shallow waters of Lake Erie at a speed of twenty miles an hour.

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The ordinary lake craft are not built for speed, and the only vessel on our whole three days' trip that puts us to our mettle is a handsome pleasure yacht that meets us on the picturesque waters of the Detroit River. The Lake has produced a peculiar type-or rather several types-of naval architecture. There are few exclusively sailing craft. One occasionally sees a combination of sail and steam, but as a rule a vessel's masts are used mainly for tackle, and on many, as in our own ship, there is no provision for sails. On the most novel contribution of the Lakes to the ship-building art-the whaleback-there are, of course, neither masts nor sails. The whalebacks, however, are not so numerous as the Spectator supposed they would be. The lakemen are prejudiced against them. "If I had money enough to build a ship," said one old freight captain to the Spectator, "I'd build a ship, and not one o' those blame scows!" While the whaleback is well shaped to withstand the elements, it is apparently not so well adapted for the comfort of the crew, whose quarters are very close and uncomfortable. The kind of craft which now seems to be most popular is the large three-masted iron or steel freighter, with the engines in the stern. Some of these, like the Sir Henry Bessemer, are over four hundred feet long, and carry four or five thousand tons of freight. They are ocean steamers--though never passing out of the Lakes-in all but draft. They seldom draw more than fourteen or fifteen feet, that being the usual depth of the shallowest channels.

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It is in the navigation of these shallow channels that the lakeman shows his skill. The lake captains, as a rule, know but little of the science of navigation. They never need to "take the sun." They steer from headland to headland, and are rarely out of sight of land. But in the art of handling their boats they are past masters. They can bring a great ship up to a wharf, if need be, so neatly that she "wouldn't crack an egg." They are their own pilots. The "salter" gives up the command of his ship when he nears the land, and the pilot guides his vessel. That is just the time when the "laker" comes up from below and takes charge. And what an art is the management of a great ship in one of the narrow channels between the Lakes! There is an endless succession of orders such as "Starboard a little!" "Slowly!" Stidday!" "Port engine half speed astern!" "Stop her!" "Start your starboard engine!" "Port a little!" Faster!" 66 Hard over!" "Starboard!" "Catch her!" "Stid-day!" And that this is not mere sailor's jargon, but is meant for a purpose, and is necessary, every word of it, if the ship is to get safely through the tortuous channel, is emphasized by the three spars sticking out of the water near the Sailor's Encampment," mute testimony to the neces

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sity of caution if we would avoid a like fate.

"How do you like this life on the Lakes?" the Spectator asked of a sailor off duty one morning. The Spectator uses the word sailor advisedly, for this man had sailed on "salters" on the great Pacific. "Well," was the reply,

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A Cool Morning on Lake Superior

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"it's a pretty good job for the summer, but the season's short and a fellow's likely to be stranded in the winter. No, a man don't get much more of a chance to see his family here than on the salters.' Then the watches here are longer, and I don't like that. And I've never been forrard on this boat. On the Pacific, when you ship on a vessel, they send you over her with a 'pilot,' so you'll know the lay of things. But here you've got your own place, and don't know about anything else." This remark may indicate the " system necessary on a vessel whose crew numbers nearly two hundred. As a rule, however, the Spectator observed less formality and less red-tapeism among the lakemen than are usually seen among the salt-water sailors. There is an air of Western democracy about these men. The messenger says to the mate, "Nine o'clock and all's well, sir," in a tone which indicates his distrust of the antiquated formula, and the mate addresses his men as "Dick" or "Bill" in an undertone which shows that he is on very friendly terms with them, and doesn't in the least desire the impersonality of the relations between officers and men on, say, a man-of-war. They are mostly well-spoken, straightforward men, these fresh-water sailors, with little of official dignity, and are not too self-important to answer sensible questions-though it does seem a little strange to them that anybody should get enthusiastic over the mere scenic attractiveness of a trip on the Lakes.

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walking-matches on deck-two laps to a quarter of a mile; the dark deep water, beautifully blue and clear as crystal, stingingly cold as we catch its spray on the lower deck when it breaks from the sharp steel beak of our mighty onward-rushing mass; above all, the sense of having around one an illimitable sea of this sparkling, precious liquid, enough to supply the cities of the world, to revivify Sahara, or to irrigate a continent if it could only be utilized-this new sensation of "water, water everywhere" and every drop good to drink-make one (saving the contradiction) almost intoxicated, inebriated with the proximity of the boundless blessings of pure water and pure air. The blessing of pure water is not, however, appreciated by the native boy to the extent which would seem natural. The Spectator saw no happy, skylarking boys bathing in these icy waters. He talked with a summer visitor on Isle Royale who had "taken a dip," but who did not wish to repeat the experience. This young man said that he had asked the Captain of a Lake Superior steamer why he carried life-preservers, the water being so cold that one could not long survive immersion. "Oh," was the nonchalant reply, "we carry the corks so that it will be easier to recover the bodies!" It is said that Superior's waters do

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Ocean voyages usually grow monotonous; not SO a trip on a fast steamer on the Lakes, for there is a constant succession of novelties to rouse the attention. It may be historic Mackinac, with its picturesque headlands and its deca

dent fort, last year finally abandoned by the Government; it may be the St. Clair River, with its "little Venice" of cottages and clubhouses, the resort of Detroit's water-loving citizens; or a glimpse into Canada, with a hint of French and Indian in such an inn as the "Ashiganikaning, Leon Bellair, Prop. ;" or a view of the famous copper country on Lake Superior, with the smoke rising from the "Calumet and Hecla," the richest copper-mines in the world; or here and there a whaleback, a lumber-barge, or a "sandsucker;" it may be, at night, the vast dim luminosity on the far horizon that indicates some large city, like Cleveland or Duluth, soon to appear to the groups of watchers on deck; it may be the antics of the eager newsboys at Detroit, throwing their rolled-up papers to the high hurricane deck of the steamer, and nimbly catching the profitable nickel in return; lastly, it may be the great Government locks at Sault Ste. Marie Canal-the canal which every year passes thirty per cent. more freight and twice as many vessels as enter and leave New York Harbor-where the passenger has an opportunity to go ashore and stretch his legs and wonder at the huge locks and their mechanism, and, if he chooses, to take an exciting trip in a canoe through the "Soo" rapids. And if this is not enough, the insatiable seeker for recreation may play shuffleboard on the ship's deck, or pitch quoits, or-take kodak pictures, or talk with his fellow-passengers, or write letters, or even (if he gets just a little weary of excitement after the long day) stretch himself out on a steamer chair on deck at night and look at the quiet stars, and the rippling waters, and the dim shores, andbe still. In any event, the tourist who makes the trip of the Lakes is sure to come back a wiser, healthier, happier man, with new ideas as to ocean travel in his own land, so to speak, and with a memory full of pleasant reminiscences to hearten him for his daily work.

Duluth High School (Head of the Lakes)

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John H. Vincent.

The Founder of the Chautauqua Movement

By William R. Harper, D.D.

President of the University of Chicago

T is a difficult and delicate task to write about one's friend, one's colleague, one's honored chief. It is difficult because, however strong may be the desire to appear and to be impartial, the temptation comes at every step to consider things from a special point of view. The task is delicate because one hesitates to reveal to the public his inmost feelings; in other words, to tell the whole truth as he regards it. The task, however, has been undertaken, and, though difficult and delicate, must be accomplished. There may be disadvantages in the study of a living subject, but surely there are also advantages, if it has been one's privilege to know the "subject" intimately and for a long period.

Is it true that one's early environment is a foreshadowing of later life? But what are the elements which enter into childhood's environment? It seems to me that all are included under two words-home and education.

The early home life of John H. Vincent was in many respects ideal. It was likewise exceptionally well adapted to his particular temperament. The principal elements which constituted this life were, in climactic order, an atmosphere of calm and quiet, characterized by religious vigor, sturdy adherence to principle, and high intellectual ideals; a father of Huguenot descent and Huguenot character, strong and sympathetic, zealous for right living and religion, stimulating in the highest degree the best elements. in the character of his children; a mother whom the son himself calls "an incarnation of consistency, fidelity, selfsacrifice, and serenity," who "never uttered a rash or foolish word."

His education, while not as formal as he himself has always wished it might have been, was, after all, an education of true and broad type. It included elements which even the best school life may not furnish. One can easily understand how every day spent in this home life was a day of educational progress. With a strong emphasis laid upon intellectual culture, with a library carefully selected and continually used, with the frequent visits of ministers and prominent persons, in accordance with Southern ideas of hospitality and entertainment, the whole surroundings were educative in the best sense. There was also specific training in the earliest years; under a governess in the Pennsylvania home after leaving Alabama, and in public school, in Milton Academy, and in the preparatory department of Lewisburg University. A discipline as valuable as any other was secured during four years of teaching, beginning with his fifteenth year, and in this first independent work there was shown an exhibition of spirit which explains much that became prominently characteristic in later life.

When almost ready to enter college, the young Vincent was persuaded by unwise friends to give up the thought of a college course and to enter at once upon his life-work of preaching. To use his own words, "college was abandoned through the pressure of church influence and of personal conscientious conviction." Beginning to preach at the age of nineteen, his study henceforward was carried on in connection with pastoral work. It is an interesting fact that during the early years of his ministerial life he was impelled by his own ambition to undertake severe courses of study, including practically all the subjects of the college course. Realizing that his work henceforward must be done by himself and without the aid of technical teachers, he seems

to have entered upon it with all the greater vigor because of the lack of direct assistance. Strangely enough, his instinct proved to be a correct guide. Nineteen men out of twenty who undertake to direct their own studies during this period of life waste the greater part of their time. It was not so with the founder of the Chautauqua movement. The ideals which had been placed before him in his earlier days, the conviction that in the providence of God he was to accomplish something-these, together with his unerring instinct, led him through a most vigorous and thorough discipline. Yet he himself says that the lack of a college education has been for him throughout life the "thorn in the flesh;" "one can scarcely conceive of the grief, made up of regret, discouragement, and mortification, which this fact occasioned me through most of the years of my mature life." It was only after a prolonged struggle that at last he gave up the thought of a college course. During this During this period of struggle, "effort after effort was made to bring conscience and circumstances into line with ambition and to break loose from the active ministry in order to complete a college course."

Can any one doubt that the Chautauqua movement owes its existence in large measure to the fact that its founder did not have the privileges of a college course of study, and to the almost morbid feeling which had its origin in this deprivation? In the history of his mature life one can see almost at every step the influence of this feeling. Every effort was put forth to secure that which would serve as a substitute for the much-desired college training of which he was deprived. It was out of this struggle-a lifelong struggle-that Chautauqua, in the broadest sense of the term, was born.

But before we leave this earlier life, which contained, indeed, the germ of all that followed, notice should be taken of the tendencies which manifested themselves most clearly, and of the ideas which seem to have exerted greatest influence upon his mind. Before he had reached the age of twenty-one, every important characteristic of his

later career had already exhibited itself. He had shown himself to be an indefatigable student, working then, as he has worked throughout life, whenever occasion or opportunity presented itself, occupying every moment of leisure for the acquisition of some new line of thought, for the mastery of some new author. The standard fixed in these years never afterward suffered change. He had likewise already developed the methods of the teacher, beginning at the age of fifteen, and continuing the work through four years. Here was gained an experience in the art of presenting truth for the instruction of others, which has more clearly characterized him than perhaps any other American preacher of modern times. If we had before us that picture of John H. Vincent in his earliest years, with his school gathered about him, not in the school-house, but in the grove, the pupils seated very comfortably upon the rough seats which he and they had provided, we should have indeed a picture of Chautauqua in miniature. But stronger than the tendency to be a student, more marked than the ability to teach, was the religious tendency of his mind, and his ability to preach. He was told that for this great work he had been set apart in infancy by his mother. It was his conscientious regard for what seemed to be a call from Heaven that led him to sacrifice his intellectual ambitions and undertake the work of the ministry. There is a tradition that while still a child the disposition to preach had manifested itself. The deep spirituality of his nature, the peculiar strength of the religious feeling which controlled him, the marked simplicity of his faith-these pointed unmistakably toward the work which, after all, was to be uppermost in his life. Throughout this period the influences to which he responded most easily, and by which he was most thoroughly controlled, were those of religion and of the natural world about him. The example and teaching of father and mother, together with a God-given appreciation of the value of religious faith and life, formed a character which was to continue its development in the same lines for many decades. But

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