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LECTURE VII.

THE SOUTH AT SCHOOL.

BY REV. A. D. MAYO, Massachusetts.

HE word of the Lord (which in my copy of the "improved version" includes the

command of our honored president of the American Institute of Instruction) came to me last week, resting under the maples of Wellesley, saying, "Gird up the loins of your mind and go to St. Albans, to stand in the place of one whom everybody is always eager to hear, and try to make the people forget that he is away." The foremost virtue of a good schoolman is a reasonable consent to be "supervised"; and after ten years' training by Secretary Dickinson, who is said to have supervision on the brain, I have at least learned the art of swift and gracious obedience. So I am here, not to stand in anybody's place, or to make anybody's speech save that which is given me to deliver on my own account. To ask me to compass the height of the grand theme assigned to Judge Tourgee would be like a

summons to a tired man, on the piazza of a Lake Placid hotel, to spring up at a moment's warning and scale the rocky ramparts of Mount Whiteface. I shall attempt no enterprise so hazardous as that.

It was suggested by our president that I should "tell my experience" concerning my journeyings during eight months of the past year, through nine of the Southern States, on what I hope it is not vanity to call a "ministry of education." Certainly there is enough. to tell about this, the most interesting and the happiest year of my life. But when I begin to collect my reminiscences, I realize that you have been instructed this afternoon by one of the most distinguished representatives of education in the South; one who knows all that is worth telling of its past schooling, and who must know more than all of us concerning its present condition, aspirations, aptitudes, and pathetic necessities. I certainly shall not presume to repeat his words, and shall not attempt to speak in any positive or compendious way on the mighty theme, Education in the South. And when I would tell the little story of my own wanderings up and down a land which, even under the leaden skies of last winter, had always sunshine enough to build a pathway of light for one of its visitors, I am more at a loss than ever what to say. For on looking back over these months of pleasant occupation, I feel that much that I heard and

saw, and was permitted to do, was of a nature so confidential, sacred, and involved in the personality of myself and those who met me with such friendly welcome, that to write it out in the press or shout it from a summer-convention platform would be like rushing to the housetop and proclaiming a year's history of my own family.

But there is one line of remark which I may be permitted to follow to-night, without presumptuous interference with the theme of our distinguished absent or present friends. Possibly I know as much of Northern schoolmen, including school-women, as either of these eminent gentlemen; and though I know very little yet of the South in general, or the South at school, I am sure I know a great deal more than the multitude who are daily rushing to the front with loud and infallible prescriptions for all the ills that afflict that vast and varied community. Governor Seward told me that the most profitable investment ever made by the State of New York was the geological survey that demonstrated there were no coal beds within its imperial boundaries : henceforth no more fortunes would be wrecked prospecting for coal in New York. It will richly pay several years of observation, by more competent observers than myself, if the Northern schoolmen and Northern people can learn what cannot be done in this vast enterprise of schooling in the

South, by anybody outside itself or not virtually identified with its home life. But there are some things which we Northern teachers, representing especially the old North, can do; and these few things can be better told us, perhaps, by one of ourselves than by any man south of the Potomac or the Ohio. So I have concluded to occupy your attention during this evening hour by a very free, possibly a rambling talk; trying to keep in sight of the landmark I set up as my theme, "The South at School."

And my word on this theme will not be a word of criticism or comparison, or a tender of advice to the Southern people; rather shall I attempt to explore this interesting field to find out its green and vital spots. Especially would I learn how we, the schoolmen and teachers of the North and West, can show our friendly appreciation for all that is hopeful in Southern school-keeping; and how the people of the North can aid the people of the South in the mighty effort to put all their children, as soon as may be, at school.

I know that the besetting weakness of all Northern schoolmen is to be intensely preoccupied with some educational question which, like a silver dollar held before the eyes, may shut off the whole universe outside the little world at home. But the experience of the past year has brought me to the conviction that, however important may be such

local controversies and interests, neither one of them nor all together compare in importance with this radical question of the New Education through that imperial domain we call the South. I do not underrate the importance to New Boston of its chronic controversy on the proper administration of its splendid system of schools. I feel the great importance of the discussion, not yet closed, in the great Middle States, concerning private, corporate, and church education on the one hand, and the public school on the other; a discussion that certainly touched bottom in the late deliverance of Mr. Richard Grant White. I wore out ten contentious years in the vain effort to prevent the capture of the grand educational system of the most cultivated Western city by a politico-ecclesiastical "ring"; and I realize that for some years yet, the Western and Pacific States will be vexed by the persistent attempt of these pernicious combina. tions to administer the public school in the interest of ecclesiastical power and political plunder. Still, I am as sure of this as of anything: that if the education of the people goes wrong through that vast assemblage of States that stretch from Philadelphia to San Antonio, it will be comparatively of small importance who is superintendent in Boston; what university leads in New York; what methods of instruction prevail in St. Louis; or whether some monster of pedagogic depravity steals the examination papers in San Francisco.

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