So glory's thrill is o'er,
And hearts that once beat high for praise
Now feel that pulse no more."
Interest in these things so then developed that Mr. Caldwell had to compose dialogues of a spicy picturesque character for our public use. He incited his scholars to enter into the spirit of their single pieces and dialogues and his exhibitions surprised and delighted the audiences so admirable became the performance of children and youth. Fine declamation was to him what painting is to an artist, or melody to the musician, it was a passion, and nerved him for effort. Scholars still live all about who can "witness if I lie." The stage afterward must have claimed many of those actors for they showed unquestioned genius for the art of theatrical representation. The conditions were primitive, but for the platform we must have curtains, so when the eventful moment came, sheets and table-cloths instead were pulled aside, these being the only curtains that were available and we had to live with what we had. The "stage properties" were hastily gathered from the homes of participants.
Fitted for a Day Sure to Come
As the parents attended these exhibitions, the contagion caught them and then followed the lyceum. It swept the town, it was the most popular thing ever. I distinctly remember the evening when they discussed Neal Dow's Maine liquor law, my father participating. One of our neighbors carried the honor of out-talking the whole field. Let his thoughts slide into the familiar current and they flowed on easily and indefinitely. For debate they caught at Bulwer's dramatic sentence, The pen is mightier than the sword, and they argued the pros and cons without getting a verdict, leaving thus to Germany and the Allies to bring the time honored discussion to an end with a demonstration that no one will ever be able effectively to question. To these meetings each man brought a candle but no candle-stick. From the lighted end, he would drop a little tallow on the desk, and thus set up the candle, that it would give light to all that were in the house. What a sight greeted us the next morning.
The Isles of Greece!"
Friction matches, which according to Faraday, were the most useful invention of the age were not then sold, loose in boxes, but were made in cards, each match being detached only a part of its length from the others which stood with it in a thin layer of wood. The word, Lyceum, marks an era in the United States. It means a great school of debate, a college that grants no degrees. It gives me a sadness that is not akin to pain, to hear a young person designate a building as Lyceum Hall, using the word as if it were Grampian Hall or Hamilton Hall, having no glorious, clear conception of what the name of the hall signified to the early community. Tradesmen, farmers, professional men, themselves readers and thinkers, above all restless and eager disputants would meet night after night to discuss the unselfish problems of life. At first they were not allowed to speak upon irritable subjects. They tried to escape both the Scylla and the Charybdis of religious and political contentions, but in early days narrow was the way. Some sanguine souls sought to build a suspension bridge over the foaming waters of controversy and to find a way of union for the bitter strife and dissension that only cases of conscience can supply. This little community-university was co-educational. The women too were welcomed, not only to the meeting where their presence was a stimulus to the debaters, but to participation in the conduct of the lyceum paper, which, read by one of the sterner sex, often contained contributions by the women. In it were witty conundrums, based on local names and conditions, pointed suggestions, humorous hits at the hardships they were at the moment experiencing, which enabled the people to laugh at their own privations. Deep feeling and marked literary ability were often shown in the contributions to this unprinted paper. It was for just such pages as these that the first poems of Lucy Larcom were produced, and she says that if she had learned anything by living it was that education may proceed "not through book learning alone, sometimes entirely without it."
Flights of Oratory
The outstanding feature of the lyceum was the report of the critic. He must be a bright glad witty man without a shade of vulgarity, a perfect master of all those nice little arts which give zest to conversation and a quaint coloring and a good deal of it, to his thoughts. I have a pleasant record of him. His chief theme was always, The Ladies. No one of them could do anything poorly enough to get anything but a warm encomium. If the debaters did well it was because the ladies by their presence gave just such cheer as bands of music contributed to Napoleon's army, when getting their heavy cannon over St. Bernard Pass. This critic never had the affrontery to lecture the participants. "Who made thee a ruler and a judge over us?" Mathew Arnold came over here to lecture us, from the know-it-all point of view, and began his work without any specific preparation for any evening, discussing no sympathetic theme, and the people declined to hear. The great benefit of the lyceum, to say the least of it, was that the whole conduct of it rested solidly on the men who blended in it and habitually attended it. It came right up out of the intellectual force, the convictions, the good neighborhood feeling and intelligence of the community. These debates developed leaders in the various departments of mental effort. It sent debaters straight into the State legislature. It was like running a magnet over a dust heap, in that it revealed metal, and drew it out, and this was what people were looking for. Any one who looks over the surface of our towns finds many minds, endowed by nature with brilliant faculties and framed by their Creator for great usefulness and honor, waiting to have their energies awakened and invigorated.
Choosing the Front Subject
The thing that made the lyceum was in the air. What is discussed now in the papers was then a theme for argument, evenings, in the stores and taverns. Our word caucus, is derived from the Caulkers, ship-builders, hardy, upright efficient men who gave tone and character to the meeting that they with others held, to discuss politics and the other live issues of the day. To increase the number of parts taken, certain grave, slow men, not likely to share in the discussions, noted chiefly for their moderation and caution, were named in advance as judges, and their decision was to be based first, on the weight of argument, and then on the merits of the question. To keep up the excitement, the decision was sometimes appealed to the house. If I close my eyes and open the chambers of memory I distinctly see the young men, with many signs of diffidence rising timidly to participate in the proceedings. At the earlier meeting, two persons had been appointed to maintain the affirmative and two other members were requested to maintain the negative. The free-for-all fray was let loose with the old time question, Does any one desire to debate that question? Sometimes we had "rough house" which was always followed at the next meeting of the lyceum by a capacity audience. As Samson found the honey, so these lyceums discovered talent where it would be looked for least. Men came to look for good in each other under these conditions, and that helped some. And there is a partial explanation of the fact that so many men, who became prominent in early politics, were from small towns. Great opportunity was given for discovering and developing latent literary and oratorical talent and for invigorating and confirming every germ of reform and political aspiration. Leaders were discovered in the various departments of investigation and of influence. It must be kept in mind that the communities were to an exceptional degree homogeneous and over-whelmingly American.
Educating Themselves
I never look upon the panorama of the past where vivid life forms have lost little of their original distinctness without thinking of the village oracles who exercised their eloquence in these local, free schools of debate. They gave a permanent bias and coloring to the genius and taste and style, in all their subsequent years, to men distinguished for their talents, whom the lyceums discovered and trained, who shone splendidly in after life. To find the place of the lyceum in the evolution of the debaters, we will eliminate genius. To draw a rude likeness was once genius. In mechanics genius ceased to be recognized as soon as labor could equal the result, once attributed to nature's gift, acting unaided. Whittier tells us that when he began life verse-making was a monopoly. Good citizenship is not a gift or an inheritance any more than is good soldiering. Courage alone does not make the soldier nor honesty alone the citizen. Training is essential to both. In the recent constitutional convention held in Massachusetts those who worked like Trojans, looked forward with apprehension, to the oratorical assaults, that would be made upon their results. They recognized the disproportionate advantage, but a real advantage never-the-less, of oratory, and this was not over-looked but acknowledged. For a fact, some excellent ideas went begging for the support of those who had talents and training for speaking exceptionally well. One who surpasses the ordinary standards, but a little, takes a position quite in advance of his fellows. Superiority on the race course is a matter of seconds and half-seconds. The honor bestowed by us on excellence in public address is greater than that attributed to men in literature or the professions, in business, or invention. The difference becomes so plain and is so conspicuous that it gains attention. The ablest speaker arouses the sympathies and gains the result. Where a cause is to be presented I have heard this formula. A poor cause, a good speaker. A good cause, any speaker. All of us have been present when a fine speaker having what may be called the wit of speech where a laugh was loaded with a principle where the address was clear, sparkling, above all things witty, wit being the rarest of qualities and surest of appreciation, the audience worked up by the rough and ready eloquence of a popular orator, reaching indeed an extraordinary pitch of excitement, has swept everything with the weaker side of the case. No accomplishment gains consideration for its possessor and his cause so speedily as public speaking. When billions were being raised in Liberty Loans, during the German war, the telling factor was the four-minute speakers that came out of the Phillips debating societies in the various communities, and these speakers having come to the front show some disposition to remain there.
A New Impetus
Here is brought to light the reason, that those northern states in which these elementary schools of patriotism and freedom have existed, cling so tenaciously, for local government, to the old town meeting. In this country where the motive power is public opinion, the ability to help in forming it is greatly to be coveted. The power of the lyceum would be instantly admitted, if we could use it for a moment as a negative quantity, and show how completely unfitted for public work many of our strongest factors would have been, had these little schools of oratory never opened their doors. I share in the well expressed opinion that there are four kinds of human activity for which a man must have a natural preparation, music, the sculptor's art, the painter's art, these three, and the highest forms of oratory. For these, most successful men must have aptitude. But to a person with the gift of utterance, occasion must say, Oratory, come forth! Money does not talk. Culture not wealth is the mark of distinction. Take a man whose father was poor and also the descendant of poor men with all their ideas of life associated with conditions of extreme poverty. The atmosphere and practices were such that Henry Wilson besought the legislature to change his name from Jeremiah Jones Colbaith to that one that he made famous as United States senator and as vice-president being elected on the ticket with Grant. He had known what it was to ask his mother for bread when she had none to give. Before he was twenty-one he had never had but two dollars and had never spent more than one dollar. At the end of an eleven years' apprenticeship to a farmer, he received a yoke of oxen and six sheep which he sold for eighty-four dollars. During these eleven years he never had more than twelve months schooling. The turning point in his life was the lyceum which he attended, following the lines of argument, but lacking courage to share in the debate. But one evening when the discussion was thrown open to the audience he engaged in it to the delight of his friends. His pastor called upon him and expressed his gratification and the lyceum increased in popularity as a place to hear him. His pastor urged him to seek an education. The lyceum had awakened his dormant powers. His special forte, his biographer says, was extemporaneous speaking and debate. In meetings held once or twice a week he acquired the drill he needed for coming conflicts.
The Onward Upward Course
Henry Clay rose to fame, by a sudden impulse at the meeting of a lyceum in Lexington. He overcame timidity and embarrassment, that had oppressed him, and in this favorite forum for the display of youthful talent, first exhibited the evidence of his extraordinary powers of oratory. His hour had struck. In this school for the highest powers of debate he discovered himself. He used a very common expedient and made it great and was proud to descend from the summit of political preferment to honor that arena, such as any community can provide, in which any ambitious young man can educate himself. Both Mr. Beveridge's brilliant oratory and Dolliver's success, as the greatest campaigner America has produced, are proof, that a training field is an indispensable condition of getting results, in the study of eloquence and in the art of oratory.
CHAPTER V
SEEN THROUGH THE LONG VISTA OF DEPARTED YEARS
In Bates Hall in the old public library in Boston, lying open on one of the ledges to any visitor, was an Ignorance Book, in which any one could ask a question on which he desired information, and after an interval, return to find it was answered. The Redwood library at Newport, R. I., has had, upon a commodious desk, a book by means of which readers can take their intellectual needs to those who have the ability to meet them. The Lyceum was once a great solvent. Nothing has taken its place. It was an evil day when this profoundly useful educational institution closed its doors. People are sitting on its front steps awaiting a reopening. They have, before them, a new map, a new world, and a new set of questions.
What is Your Problem
Can a person change his disposition? The features of children are as diverse as their faces, all have the family likeness, but each has his own peculiar temperament.
Is it the brain, and not the soul, that does the thinking? Is man a machine and not a living spirit, inhabiting a physical body? Do people speak advisedly who use the expression "Keeping soul and body together?"
Why did not the slaves in the South do more for their own emancipation?
Why does a minister use a text? This custom prevails among pulpit orators who do not believe in miracles or in the inspiration of the Scripture or in the authority of the Bible. There's a reason. What is it?
Our teachers, in faithfulness and friendship, used to stand next to our parents and are entitled to and will ever receive our most grateful recollections. They are happy men whose natures sort with their vocations. On revisiting the earth there was one instructor who beside exercising a benign and stimulating personal influence had high qualities and remarkable fitness for his noble profession, whom I would cheerfully make a sabbath day's journey to honor. Let me preserve his name, S. H. Folsom. Schoolmaster was about the right word for him for he was master as well as teacher. His severity is to be attributed to the times rather than to him. It is said that a drowning man can in two minutes live over again every incident in a long and checkered career, and a boy does not doubt the possibility of such phenomena, if he has been publicly requested, by the master, to remain after school to be whipped. We all remember him with kindly feelings and there are hundreds of his pupils living who have not lost their sense of indebtedness to him.
On the Road to Learning
A boy lays up nothing against a noble, faithful, patient teacher who whips him. Pain is nothing to boys. They give it, and suffer it, in their sports, many of which have penalties. They uplift tearful eyes, but it is in entreaty, and not in rage. It was from him I acquired a life-long practice of the little economies of time. We are now so interlocked with others, we are so far from living or laboring alone that our time is much disposed of by other people. "Do you ever reflect how you pass your life? If you live to seventy-two, which I hope you may, your life is passed in the following manner: an hour a day is three years. This makes twenty-seven years sleeping, nine years dressing, nine years at table, six years playing with children, nine years walking, drawing, and visiting, six years shopping, and three years quarrelling."
I now save the time I used to spend in going to the postoffice. I used to reckon how many trips would make twenty miles. Still the flight of time grieves me. I must draw tighter and tighter every string. The school that I attended was a mere vest-pocket edition of the one which, year by year, like a starling, keeps adding to the nest, on which Mr. Folsom now looks down in benediction. This building has a telephone switchboard. I recognized only the switch which in my day was a weeping willow. When a gone feeling was experienced, a boy could dig up a small coin, go to a grocery and buy a pickle, but now schools have a buffet car attachment supplied by the woman's club.
The By-product of Development
It was an unrealized deprivation, but I do not seem to remember, when I was under the ferule, the teacher's maid, such as waits upon the children at the new training school here, nor do I seem to recall the school physician, such as the city now elects, nor the piano, nor the victrola, nor do I remember any free transportation to and from school except by "punging" when we had to take what came in terms of the sleigh driver's whip.
The principle of the Declaration of Independence was taken literally that all are created equal, which makes in education a Procrustes' bed and every boy or girl in a class, supposed to be equally capable, as they were not, was to be stretched to learn lessons of equal length. They trained up a child in the "way." The way was first fixed. It was a grown up theory. They thought more of the way than of the child. The child's primitive nature had no play. The process often lost the scholar his childhood. He was robbed of his birthright. The old maxims even, also taught that anything saved from sleep was so much saved.
With his pen, Mr. Folsom could, with unerring grace, draw an eagle, put an inscription into his mouth and thus stir in his pupils astonishment and patriotic feeling. In writing he made a specialty of capital letters, which had the last touch of nicety. Any line of his writing was as neatly molded as Spencerian copy. We had thus two epochs in our school, the Ciceronian and the Spencerian periods. One was distinguished by the graces of speech, the other by waves of ink. We have always been given to understand, that if the cradles in a neighborhood were assembled the occupant of one of them would call those present to order. It is thought to be a wonder that an American is born knowing how to conduct a public meeting. He early learns how to make motions. It is instinctive to know that a motion cannot have more than two amendments offered, at the same time, and to know the order in which they must be put, the second amendment before the first. When we wonder at some of the traits of colts we are told that they are born with their peculiarities; so with boys. The crown of everything was public declamation.
Best When Most Catching
All paths led to the exhibition as we have seen. Other studies were subordinated to the all absorbing preparation for it. Other branches suffered from eclipse. The taste for it became very great. It fixed the boy's bent. The men having a lyceum, the boys took the infection and even had a relapse. In our community they formed a lyceum, and among the questions discussed was this: Which is preferable, city or country life? Having the stern rule that the less favored one must also stand up I was invited at the age of ten to share in the deliberations. I became so absorbed in some of the follies, presented by my opponents, and so lost sight of the occasion, that, when called upon by name, I was startled. The boys took sides in the universal conflicts of opinion. Nobody could find rest on a fence. It was a picket fence. The ground was the only safe place to stand on. As a regiment takes on the character of its colonel, so a school in a particular degree, reflects the teacher. I cannot tell how we all came out of the craze. When penmanship was the rage and writing became epidemic the scholars developed the villainous habit of scribbling always and everywhere. As stationery was not plentiful they used the leaves and margins, not only of their own books, but those of the others. They decorated the walls and desks. As the nights were extremely cold, the ink would be turned by the frost from a liquid to a solid state. Hence the bottles were placed on the stove for thawing purposes and would sometimes decorate the ceiling or empty their contents on the stove and floor, accompanied by a detonation like that of a pistol.
The Love of Conquest
Now this man Folsom understood human nature in its initial stages. His insight showed him that boys and girls crave some reward and recognition, so when he could approve a youngster's conduct and application, he would award him a diminutive ticket on which, in his beautiful writing, was the word Perfect. By touching up emulation he ruled the school. When ten small tickets were carefully acquired they would be proudly cashed up into a somewhat larger chromo with the same device. Before we call anyone lucky, who takes a prize, let us call him unlucky, who is without the desire to make the effort to win it. It is fine for him to contend to the uttermost for even the meanest prize that is within his reach, because by such strenuous contention, his nature grows and by lack of it, nature decays. A poor boy cannot rival the wealthy, in items of luxury, but in a school he finds himself in a little republic, where the prizes do not fall to the rich, because they are such. A boy out of an humble home may have lacked recognition and to receive it makes him a new creature. To find himself appreciated and well-liked touches a spring at the center of his being. A boy is often made over by the quickening thought that to him might fall one of the little early prizes of life.
The Impulse From Incentive and Reward
The fire and the force to do great things were slumbering in Senator Wilson's soul.... "His future course of life," his biographer says, was affected by Mrs. Eastman, who handed him, when he was eight years old, a little book. "Now carry it home with you and read it entirely through and you shall have it." A book he had never owned. To him it was a golden treasure. He hurried home to read it. He coveted the prize. In seven days he called to say that he had read it from end to end. This little book, a Testament, he kept all his living days, saying, that the presentation of it was the starting point in his intellectual life. The reason, as Sir Walter Scott believed, why the passion for books so lifts up a poor boy, is that he makes himself a master of what he possesses, before he can acquire more. Queen Judith, a princess of rare accomplishment, promised a finely illuminated book of Saxon poems, to which, her son, Alfred the Great, when young had been listening with enthusiasm, to such of her sons as should the soonest be able to read them. The innate energy of those dormant talents of "the Darling of the English" was roused and he made his name the brightest that adorns Anglo-saxon history. He became the most illustrious monarch that ever filled the English throne. He founded the University of Oxford, established trial by jury, and sought to emulate the deeds, to the recital of which he so early loved to listen. It is said that when this promise of the book was made, "Alfred returning to Queen Judith, eagerly inquired if she actually intended to give the book to the person who would soonest learn to read it?" His mother repeated the promise, with a smile of joy at the question; the young prince took the book, found out an instructor, and learned to read, and soon recited all its contents to her.
The Fascination of Matching Abilities and Efforts
Oh for some angel visitant to stir the waters of the Bethesda of self-improvement as it was once done by the use of this principle of emulation in our class in spelling. Alphabetically the scholars were called out into a line, toeing a crack in the floor. Beginning at the head of the class the master puts out the word and those who have studied their lesson pass above those who have not. It is an unequalled revelation for a boy's later life. How came I at the foot? When one boy has competitors and they attend to their business and he does not, he will gravitate downward. I had been trained in the catechism to believe that it was first Adam and then Eve, but this theory was upset, when we stood up to spell. I can still see one of those girls stick to the head of the class. Blessed be the bad roads, "kind the storm" that housed the girl, for a day, as on her return she went to the foot. At length she modestly said to the master, "Put out any word in the book and I will spell it." With such proficiency we challenged the nearest district school to a spelling match.
The Tug of War
Before the interest began to flag, it was understood that as a final test, every body in the house should rise and spell down. With blushing honors, under the spell of emulation, this unobtrusive girl would rally her powers, and hold her timid self up to meet all comers by sheer force of a moral courage, unsurpassed by men who go over the top and look into the cannon's mouth. The audience grows breathless. She clings to her position like that which Oliver Wendell Holmes called The Last Leaf. Our best girl won. Our boys seeing any members of the defeated school would use their two palms for a trumpet and shout the pivotal word, on which our victory turned, "Phthisic." It was a great incitement to strive to equal or excel when a rival was seen to take a reward for doing what we might have done, but didn't. The name of the winner became a household word and was garlanded. I have felt depressed by my consciousness of the unworthiness of the response, that my life has made, to such an excellent instructor in penmanship and spelling. His name is embalmed in all our hearts. The terms of school soon ended. Beyond this we have no record of our eminent teacher's life and as Bunyan says of one of his characters "We saw him no more."
CHAPTER VI
WHERE WE PLAYED MUMBLE-THE-PEG
It is with diffidence that I name a suggestion that has been very much on my heart since retreading these streets and revisiting these early haunts. It is to get rich, not with dollars in the purse, but deposits in the bank of memory. No other human faculty can be more rapidly and strongly and surely developed than an ability to keep things in mind. Yet many people are making use of methods that impoverish recollection. Devices are increasing for memory-saving which have the effect of memory destroying. A faculty's development is arrested from want of use. The memory has not grown, but the habit of putting things down with a pencil has developed. Our schedule of work is not unfolded in the mind and committed to memory but is committed to little slips of paper. Things are not carried in the brain but in the pocket and are in danger of being laid off with one's apparel. We feel dependent on the memoranda. Our best power, that likes to be trusted, that responds to discipline, has no growth, but wastes away instead, owing to defective nutrition, and lack of exercise. The memory falls into a stunted and partially disabled condition. That minister, the most widely read of any American clergyman, sharply points out, that a capacity falling into disuse, falls also into a dying process, and is extirpated and withdrawn. Any capacity kept under, allowed no range or play, suppressed, is soon stupefied and blunted. A man was endowed with a fine faculty, and has not turned it to account, "Take, therefore, the talent from him."
Developing a Real and Fixed Deformity
We once had to remember our errands but parents now hand to children a written list. Facts, stories, incidents are not stored in the intellect, but in a cabinet. Mental equipment, then, is all gone in the event of a fire. Instead of being thankful that the cabinet maker was preserved it would have been better to have saved the cabinet. There is more in that than in him.
In the intemperate man the better parts of his nature do not have fair play. His body is disordered, his brain confused, by a succession of trespasses. All diseases and abuses are self limited. Improvement would come, by a delivery from his baneful habit, and by strengthening his principles. Memory when respected, when it uses its wings and makes nothing of time or distance is an angel power. It is full of rural incidents and has a great deal of nature and of soul in it. The past is not altogether dead. It must be used to enable us to understand the real living history around us. Now look. Do you observe that every child has a health instinct? Intuitively it seeks the open air. A child is not fussy about the weather. Those have the best health that go out under all skies. Take notice that a child's birthright is freedom. When walking with his mother he seeks to unclasp his hand from hers and make a little detour in the grass along the way. His nature revolts at following, forever, when out for pleasure, a beaten path. Seeing real life reflected, you do not fail to notice, that in coasting, which in childhood could be called, The Great Joy, the girls take a prominent part, and there is no effort by the elders to play the spy nor block the sport. Here are boys and girls together, oblivious of sex, like a family, in beautiful, healthful, animating sport. It is remarkable that coasting keeps first place, seeing that it involves climbing up as well as sliding down. The return walk, involving a change of position, an interchange of mind, a fine spirit of comradeship, a greatly increased intake of ozone became for a fact a cordial of incredible virtue. God sets all little children playing for this. He lays the necessity of play upon them, and the restless little fellows hunger and thirst for physical activities. On a holiday the city is emptied into the country to enjoy for a few hours the true conditions of a healthy physical condition.
An Increased Reverence for the Human Organization
The bashful athlete, as if by mere chance, takes hold of the rope just opposite to the pretty girl of the party, I mean to one of the pretty girls of the party, whose ear he wishes to command. As the boys owned the sleds, the spirit of gallantry greatly promoted proprietorship, in a double runner, which was vital to the social spirit of the sport. One that could fly was the ideal aimed at. It seemed animate. It was well shod. A heavy load gave momentum. It was guided with rare judgment, watched, compared with others, improved, made to look better, until its associated owners prided themselves in it, as a thing of life and beauty and speed, as mariners do in a ship. Some people have to go abroad to find folks who seem eager for an excuse to get out, to even take their meals in the open air. The European seems chafed in his own house. He takes his supper with his family in the face of all the world, and enjoys the publicity. He walks about to see how other families are faring, and they do not resent it. It would not disturb him to take his dinner on the side-walk on Broadway. So in Southern California, nobody shuts a door. The weather, being about like our April, the barber shops and restaurants have no heat and often a strong current of air, that the natives would enjoy, came streaming in through wide-open doors and windows.
The Open-door Policy
Book stores were not warmed at all. One morning at breakfast I rose and put on my overcoat, and a visitor at the next table, at the conclusion of the meal said, What part of the country do you come from, that you have to put on your overcoat? The reason those people put their doctors out of business is not alone in the climate but in their becoming accustomed to living in God's great and good out-of-doors. We could live much colder than we do, and live more largely out of doors, and reap at least some of the benefits that people gain by going abroad.
In looking over the familiar places, when revisiting the earth, that were once the haunts of the idlers of the town, I was struck by the entire absence of whittling in which they formerly engaged. Who could reckon their indebtedness to the pine, which supplied the favorite material? Each man kept in pretty good order, if he owned nothing else, a fine piece of cutlery, with a history which he had made familiar to the minds of his easy-going associates. To whittle with an edgeless knife is dull sport, hence at intervals, each loafer would lay his right foot upon his left knee, and upon the leather of his heavy boot characteristic of that day, would strop the blunt blade until he had put it again on edge.
Our Knives Confiscated by Teachers
Every loss is thought to have its compensation. If whittling is out of vogue, the benches before the boys at school are, for that reason, better preserved. A common present to a boy in that day was a pretty good knife. Boys are very imitative. They sought to whittle and would notch the school desks until their edges were serried into a semblance of a cross-cut saw. As the term of school wore on the teacher had made himself the custodian of most of the fancy hardware owned by the ingenious scholars. Not remote from the school-house door we turn aside and stand over the identical spot where we sat, with our heels wide apart, facing a chum, and played mumble-the-peg, or mumblety-peg, as the boys pronounced it.
I have forgot the name just now,—you've played the same with me,
On that same spot; 'twas played with knives, by throwing so and so;
The loser had a task to do,—there, twenty years ago."
As the knives were thrown from a series of positions, the winner would show himself something of the savage still, for when the loser failed to make the knife blade stick in the ground, he would, with the heavy handle of the knife, drive a peg into the ground, by a certain number of blows, which the loser was compelled to draw out with his teeth. The severity of the penalty was not in using a long peg, like a wooden tooth-pick, but a short one that could still be struck a blow or two after it was below the surface of the soil. Thus the unskillful player had to root for it, while the boys, being called together, encircled him and jeered.
Happy Hours by Living Streams
The appearance and needs of this dirty-faced boy caused the whole bunch to hie away to the swimming-hole. The Romans seem always to have been looking out for places to bathe and always finding them. So with boys. Where is the boy that did not strive to get to the water? Who is there that did not, in his youth, love some stream? Here is the landscape toward which the mind, during the interval of a generation, has fondly turned. Last summer I followed the same old path to exactly the same square foot of ground on the willow-lined shore from which I had a hundred times stepped into the stream. I could locate exactly the spot where a bigger boy, who wanted to race, raised an oar and told me to jump over to lighten the boat, which I had to do, and there in deep water, as it was sink or swim, survive or perish, I paddled the best I could and learned to swim in one short, self-taught lesson.
Healing in the Pool
This illustrates again the health instincts of boys which they seek to obey without knowing the why and wherefore of the feeling that impels them to bathe often. Swedenborg had to have a revelation from heaven to enable him to catch a glimpse of his malady which he ought to have known by intuition. His nature was all the time complaining, and what an expression that is when men speak of their "complaints," when by pains, which are warnings, nature is reporting her grievances at head-quarters. But the heavens were opened and Swedenborg went into ecstasy over the kindness of the angel whose message to him was a warning not to eat so much. The body shows divine workmanship as well as the soul. When young we follow nature and the result is a red-blooded, vigorous youngster, and if, as we went on in life, we had souls enough to appreciate the free air and sunlight with their health-giving properties, which are so lavishly bestowed upon us, we should better reverence the temple in which the spirit dwells. A recent association formed in Boston for the erection of a monument to Franklin, used in the picture, on their certificate of membership, the figure of Franklin with a kite leaning against him and a view of the telegraph. The kite employed by the philosopher in his experiment is a plaything of the young, while the experiment it served to make so successful, is the last word in science when applied to light, heat and transportation. The picture shows the connection between our sport and the great realities of life.
And That Reminds Me
Play underlies the future responsibilities and events of life. Recreation has a direct relation to efficiency. I wish that some boys that I know would play a little more. To watch boys is to study their character. The story of a boy's life deserves to be written as well as the life of a man. A boy has been pointed out who on returning from school is seized and imprisoned in a back parlor with nothing to look at but his weary lessons. He is pining. His eye needs brightening. His blood wants reddening. An Oriental traveler, watching a game of cricket, was astonished to hear that some of those playing were rich. He asked why they did not pay some poor people to do it for them. The play will show itself in still greater riches when radical important work is undertaken and when an entire revolution in the world's methods is to be accomplished. Exercise, like mathematics, cannot be seized by might nor purchased by money. It is not true that every hour taken from a child's play is an hour saved. In some cases, where a boy is given a little time to play, it is done grudgingly. Thinking now of efficiency they hire, here, leaders to teach children to play. Vivacious representatives of the Young Women's Christian Association sent word through the little villages along the Volga that there would be games for the Russian children on the village squares. These refugee children had seen so many sorrows that they had forgotten that they were young. Whole towns turned out. They looked on in wonder. "Have you brought us bread?" they asked, as the games were about to be started. The spirit of joy had forsaken them and needed to be recalled. Little games of competition and emulation, that were mirth-producing and health-giving, gave the impression that "Some angels must have been at play." As Thoreau says of animals, so we may say of human beings, that their most important part is their anima, their vital spirit.
One of Life's Schools
When revisiting the earth I met on intimate terms a classmate. I was in and out of his place of business many times. He had plenty to do. Indeed he had too much to do. The distinct impression he made upon me was, that he was being hurried, all the time, a little faster than he could well travel. Hurry, if continuous, becomes simply worry under another name. Let a person catechize his own experiences on this subject: it will have a salutary effect. He drew me into a confidential conversation, in which he said, that he was not earning a good living and asked me what I thought of his situation. I advised him at once to take a vacation and refresh his mind. He was working like a quarry slave. A person needs to stand away from a house to see it. He needed to readjust himself. His mind had lost its spring. A little recreation would do him more good, than the same time in the treadmill. Sometimes you see that a man made up what mind he has, when he was too tired; it was no proper expression of him.
Loafing and Laboring
What was once play has become work and what was once work in the garden, wood-yard, and barn may now become play. A person can stop work and yet not have any recreation. When a person after excessive physical exertion is resting he is not recreating. You do not say of persons at rest that "they shout for joy, they also sing." After sunset, the lonely twilight hours, with Jacob, represented the accepted, needed rest and after that came the pensive reverie, the dream and with it the ladder and the angel ministration. In his own person, every one must have noticed, that after a period of rest, often as late as Sabbath afternoon, come the holy influences of the hour, the music that is audible to the fine ear of thought, the stillness, the purity, the balm. A man, who is busy all the time or tired all the time, breaks the curfew law of God. The evening concentrates the retrospect, also the prospect of our lives. If you are communing with a confidential friend you do not like to have any body else talking in the room at the same time. You want to become attuned, like musicians, about to begin to play.
Foibles of the Famous
These persons are often quarrelsome, in spite of the fact, that their constant employment is the production of harmony. It is the effect of play, to bring into harmony. This is one of its most benign results. A man, found to be out of harmony with the spirit of the place, or of the time, only awaits displacing. M. Protopopoff, the last minister of the interior under the old regime in Russia, told nearly the whole truth when he said to an Associated Press representative, who visited him in prison, that his crime consisted of "not understanding the spirit of my age." Mistaking the time, he became a worker for a separate peace with Germany. That man of the past is not as black as he first appeared, for he has at least this redeeming trait, finding himself out of harmony with the temper of his time, he confesses it, and incriminates himself, and does not bitterly criticise those participating in the advent of a new era, which is the common practice, under such conditions.
CHAPTER VII
THE SCENE OF THE SCHOOL FIGHTS
The proof that a robust, daring, well-fed boy starts by being a sort of half domesticated little animal as well as a Sunday school immortal is set out in his school fights. These best illustrate how hard it is to eradicate the savage, hereditary traits of our early barbaric ancestry. It is suggested that all fully domesticated animals dislike children. They have an instinctive fear of their tricks and their thoughtlessness.
The rude jostle, pretty nearly instinctive with boys coming from school, breaks the peace. There is the quick impulse to resist aggression with violence, particularly on the part of an impulsive unrelenting temper, not adverse to battle. Wrestling and boxing were very much in vogue, a generation ago, which made the average boy very ready with his fists and anxious if there was to be a clinch, to get "the underholt." This preparedness increased the likeliness of a clash. If a boy took occasion to state the events that led up to Armageddon, we used to hear, He called me names. His budding sense of honor, an exaggerated feeling of obligation to take care of his better self, his name, was the most frequent incentive to try conclusions.
Precipitating a Fracas
The tendency to give a nickname, to remind a boy in a word of the color of his hair, or the cut of his clothes, or of some unfortunate incident in his life or that of his family was painfully wide-spread, and it hurt like a blow and started resentment. A boy, that by his disposition and taste, was too proud to fight could not always keep out of it as the active belligerent might be overbearing or might be, at the time, imposing on some helpless party. This is an unprovoked declaration of war when peace can only be had by conquering it. It is interesting to study a man's life in terms of those early scuffles. In Pilgrim's Progress the fight of Christian and Apollyon was the kernel of the story. Henry Higginson, "Bully Hig," a business man of remarkable success in Boston, was the leader of the Latin school forces and engagements which were as fiercely fought as some in which the same boys later took part on the battle fields of the South. A boy's anger and a boy's pain pass away like clouds on a summer morning and leave the sky purer and fairer than before. Boy's fights often began with snow-balling. They were implied by the use of the word snow-forts, on the old site of which we took occasion to stand. For days the boys would roll up immense snow-balls to form the redoubt. They worked, like the ants, those sociologists of the insect-world who combine their efforts to move an object toward the ant hill, approach the thing to be moved, using all their strength wherever they can apply it, causing the object to stagger along, and the small, industrious, courageous creatures by frantic partisan effort landed it where individual work never could have so well located it. Those who built the fort were determined to defend it. They talked over their grievances until they seemed bigger than they were. Trouble would soon begin to boil, like the witches' brew into which all kinds of ingredients entered and the situation soon forced all boys to take sides.
Sectional and Factional Fights
It was common to hear the inquiry, Are you on my side? It started a campaign. There was no neutral zone. There were no pacifists. If a snow fort was to be stormed the snow-balls were dipped in water and were as hard as canister. The contending forces were under boy commanders. The volatile spirit of the organization lasted after the snow was gone. The contending parties were easily provoked. Boys used to take off their coats and lay them aside like those that stoned Stephen. The question to be settled was Who is bigger? The custom was to place a chip upon the shoulder and flatly dare a fancied antagonist to knock it off, which being done, hostilities were let loose with a spring. The other boys would gather about and witness the excitement, their only concern being to see that there was every way a square deal. Until such a time as one or the other would say, Hold, enough, I am through. Things were then deemed settled. An incidental indication that boys before re-birth were little animals, was the use of their nails. The face of him that was worsted would bear a diagram of the battle.
Suffering From Personal Collision
On reaching home his mother's consternation and sympathy and displeasure at the injury he had received, causing her haste to apply a soft sponge and remedial lotions, would displace all effort to ascertain if her boy was in any degree at fault in bringing on the fray. It is no wonder that there is an enormous increase in the number of physicians in these days if boys thus settle who is the best man. The doctors, we are told, got rich upon small pay, yet now they flourish in treble numbers, as they are required, upon all foot-ball grounds, in particular, and upon all athletic fields in general. Life in miniature is exhibited by the petty incidents of a school boy's history. A single bold adventure is decisive sometimes of a campaign. A challenge to fight two boys at once has been known to give a courageous youngster reputation. The opposition did not want to fight but was intent to discover if the new lad in school would keep his ground saying, like the Scotch thistle, Don't touch me.
There has been during a generation such a fine growth of sentiment that many of the former things, like corporal punishment, have passed away. In school Luther was flogged every day. We have no other right to associate ourselves with a great reformer except in the matter we are now considering. The school thrashing was shown to be a method of separating the chaff from the wheat.
Birch, Beech, and Willow Were the Branches Taken
It certainly was not the custom in our day for the teacher to get down on his knees to the pupils and offer them peppermints if they would only consent to behave. In the government exhibit at Omaha, in a World's Fair, was a series of framed pictures, filled with painful suggestions, illustrating what may be termed, the evolution of the disuse of the switch. The world has moved on to some new conception of moral suasion. These pictures, however, were from real life, as many of us can testify. If any one wanted glimpses of the good old time, there they were. First was a small boy being flogged by a pretty lady teacher. I know that picture to be correct. In the next instance the boy was curled up in bitter anticipation of what was going to happen to him. Next a boy was holding out a ruler at arm's length. Then followed very properly the dunce cap and the fool stool. Then we witnessed the process of shaking or churning where the churner grasps the lapels of the churnee's coat and proceeds to violently agitate the latter with many oscillations. The most suggestive picture of an old-fashioned school was where the discipline appeared to be founded on Solomon's warning. The master stands near the stove with his book in one hand and switch in the other with only one eye on the book. New Jersey now prohibits by law corporal punishment in schools. Eight states prescribe a penalty for excess amounting to cruelty. In Arizona alone the law gives authority to whip. In ten states the courts have decided that, as flogging has been the commonest mode of discipline from time immemorial, the teacher requires no permission to use the birch. In Providence a teacher in the primary grade has to get the written consent of the parents to whip a boy and have it filed with the city superintendent. All these formalities have been developed since the period that we are canvassing.
America's Unhappy Hour
The incident of flogging a pupil did not seem to disturb the school nor seem to interrupt the studies appreciably except when it was one of the big boys that had incurred the master's displeasure. When it was obvious that there was to be a battle royal it became the custom for the tender-hearted, larger girls to rise, without a word or sign from them or the teacher, and pass quietly out of the room at the instant it became plain that hostilities were to begin. The ruler, introduced into the school as an aid in drawing, was often used as a punitive instrument. When the old attendants upon the school get together as jolly good fellows, their word being now unquestioned on any matter of fact, it is noticeable that in reciting their sufferings, it was never the master's fortune to get hold of the guilty party. According to their testimony, the boy that introduced the disorder was not the one that stood for the infliction of punishment. There is usually one boy in school that can on occasion, look cross-eyed and another boy that can move his ears. This comes to the attention of the apple-cheeked girl, who laughing, showed all her teeth like a row of white piano keys. Her fear of discipline made her press the palm of her hand over her pretty mouth, in a sudden, forced attempt to suppress a giggle. The boy, who came next into the comedy, was likeliest to meet the frown of him who must, at once, rule his little empire into a terrified silence.
Putting on the Character with the Coats of Gentlemen
The gymnasium, organized athletics, the ambition of boys to gain a place on the various teams has brought in a milder reign. Another influence is the reflex effect of wearing better clothes. Dress strangely changes the person and curiously affects the character. One of the best preventives of rude Sabbath breaking is a nicely folded, well-fitting Sunday suit. With a rough, coarse, untearable suit goes rough usage all around, and with fine clothes goes politeness of manner. The clothing worn used to be much thicker and heavier. About the neck was a comforter, tippet, scarf, or even a small sized shawl. Men wore fur standing collars, cow-hide boots, and tucked the lower ends of their trousers' legs into them, in rough weather and when engaged in rough work. A bootjack was the commonest kind of household furniture. Boys wore heavy calf-skin boots with attractive red tops, which they desired to have seen, and this foot-wear was copper-toed so that a boy could lie on his face on his sled and steer it in its swift descent of the hill, by ploughing first one toe and then the other into the icy roadway. Any one's feelings will indicate to him, that he must treat himself, and that he must be treated differently by others, when he is clad in light woolens and in thin foot-wear. He must have more civilized walks, a more even warmth in the house, and a more genteel order of life. It shows the reflex influence of refined dress.
New Facings to Old Opinions
On revisiting the earth it is an amazement to find, that in so short a time, most boys are made millionaires. They sit in a building at school, that cost scores of thousands of dollars. In their own right, they walk into a library, worth tens of thousands, housed in a building that is high priced. The latest books are added to their library. Money has been expended to have a card catalogue made. It used to be tiresome to get about town, and to visit the metropolis, but great stores of money have been used to give them ease and save the wear and tear. Boys have parks to play in and have artificial skating rinks and table luxuries and new forms of furniture and free text-books. Boats drop down the James river loaded with melons. At Norfolk one negro tosses a watermelon to another colored man and he to another until they are loaded in a car which starts express at night, when it is cool, for the northern cities. Boats and trains and service cost money, but it seems very little to a boy in his new circumstances, who has luxuries which we used to do without. Not much was done for us children, compared with present home furnishings, which have Hawthorne's "Wonder Books" and Longfellow's "Evangeline" and pictured illustrations of the world and of life. In our early days most of our picture books were brought from England. If boys then lived in a poor part of the city it was a chosen location for saloons but now boys do not have to live in a location where they have saloons. This improvement of a boy's environment is greatly to his advantage.
Fair to Illustrate by the Best Examples
The most frequent question asked the visitor is how things, taking the years together, seem to be going. The improvement in conditions is glaring. This is not, and cannot be, without result. This of itself makes a showing in men. It was the same quality of seed that fell among thorns and by the way-side and upon stony places. In visiting the field, the first observation is not touching the seed, but outside conditions, and their direct relation to the product. Men reveal even more plainly the effect of extraneous influences. It is said that on hearing the younger Silliman lecture, an enthusiastic auditor exclaimed, "Why, he beats the old gent!" The elder Silliman, who had been listening to the lecture, overheard the remark, and gaining the attention of its author, quietly observed, "Of course he does. He stands upon my shoulders." The old stock was good and stood high but the new generation has the advantage of better position and of a finer outlook.
CHAPTER VIII
TOUCHING A LONG SLUMBERING CHORD
If houses have souls, as Hawthorne believed and taught, and can admire and remember, there is one residence, toward which I turn my willing pilgrim feet, on revisiting the earth, which supports his way of thinking. I was hardly within the door of this dwelling, once occupied by my father, himself a clergyman, when it began to reel off to me, the impressions it had received and retained, for a generation. First, came in minute detail, with all the vividness of moving pictures, a recital touching the old-fashioned donation party which, like the husking-bee and the quilting-bee or house-raising, requires a good deal of interpretation to those, living in days, when money flows like water. The mingling of work and pleasure, combining philanthropy and social enjoyment was the custom of the time. All came together in a fine spirit of neighborliness and all the labor and all the supplies for the feast were gratuitously furnished. A Donation Party was featured particularly by spare-ribs, also by cake, bags of flour, and pies, also by all kinds of things both from the cellar and larder of the members of the parish. The soiree with refreshments, was always a surprise, with this exception that the minister's wife was asked, with a knowing look, if the dominie was to be at home. The outstanding fact was the overwhelming abundance of everything. The party over, when we sat down to a meal, we began just where we left off at the last repast.
The Past at Least is Secure
Wood, in sled lengths, used to be dragged to our door. Coal was unknown to our experience. When a man had a pig-sticking, in anticipation of the school-teacher's coming to his house to board, he brought a portion of the result to the manse, as if to obtain and enjoy a blessing on the rest. A minister's salary was by necessity used for pocket money. The occasions were joyous, social, extremely helpful, and welcome. The cake left a precious memory behind. Sometimes the lambs of the flock combined to procure something that the shepherd was known to need. What killed the Donation Party and buried it, beyond the hope of resurrection, was the fun and ridicule and wit that came to be aimed at its ludicrous features. A colored porter, on a Pullman car, said he had a good position until the comic papers took up the prevalent method of collecting tips and made it ridiculous. One must orient himself to place the right estimate upon this party at the minister's house. He was not in those days independent to the point of being defiant. There was no beggary, no humiliation, and the people were generous, considering that they had, in many cases, difficult problems of their own. If a minister went into a community to live, as they did, there was a fine feeling all around.
Where a Critical Struggle was Beginning
As I stood in the floor of my early home all the situations were plainly outlined for me. In the front corner of one of the best rooms, stood the study table of the dominie, on which he wrote the ministerial recommendations. Ministers used to be mediators: that was their office. This kindly disposition, to put the influence of one's name, and the weight of his ministerial character, behind any good thing, that seemed to need promoting, could be developed into a form of second nature. The new form of charity, "Not alms, but a friend," did not reduce the number of letters of recommendation. We were taught that a little kindness is often worth more than a great deal of money. The poor, unemployed man lacked opportunity, acquaintance, and recognition. The minister, in pure disinterestedness, brothers him. The usual form of helpfulness is a letter. The misfortune is that everybody can recommend anybody. Exaggerations can be given to certain qualities and a discreet silence observed with regard to others. Thus Mrs. Stowe accentuates the negro's peculiarly religious character and disposition. Thus Wendell Phillips never tells the truth, and yet he always tells truth.
Rising Young Men
The relation of this subject to the book canvasser is extremely suggestive. Some of those who have written their names highest on the rolls of deserved honor have followed this laudable calling. The foremost American, George Washington, sold two hundred copies of Bydell's "American Savage." Our most melodious poet, Longfellow, sold books by subscription. Our pre-eminent orator, Daniel Webster, handled de Tocqueville's "America." Our greatest general, the hero of Appomattox, Ulysses S. Grant, canvassed for Irving's "Columbus." And our magnetic statesman, James G. Blaine, began his career as a canvasser for a life of Henry Clay. In the small, dark, dingy parlors of country hotels, travelers on rainy days often now find copies of books that were sold, or rather traded, to the well-fed, good natured, boniface in exchange for entertainment. I can remember items that I have read in these books. I can now go to the tavern and the table where I read after dinner from Butler's book his explanation of the reason that he lost more cases after he became celebrated as a lawyer than he did before. After his fame was established clients flocked to him, with desperate cases. They did not balk at the amount of his retaining fee. As these hotly contested cases had been put through all of their preliminary stages, in all the lower courts, Benjamin F. Butler has lost each one of these chances to get his client by. The case was substantially decided adversely before the great lawyer appeared in it at all.
Tendency to Exaggerate Rather than to Daguerreotype
The dependence of the agent upon ministers is a testimonial to their sympathy. It stamps them as leaders and establishes the fact that their influence in the community is effective. Great evils are wrought in churches and communities by the fact that indorsements are so easily obtained. A man who wants testimonials can get them. Some of our little home missionary churches in the West, that deserve better things, are grievously tormented. This department of religious helpfulness has been so sadly overworked that it is suggestive to find one Christian association of young men that now omits to give letters of recommendation, feeling that discrimination is always difficult and certainly invidious.
The Practice Has Boomerang Implications
When one is in doubt about recommending a person or thing he ought to take the elder Weller's advice with regard to widows, "Don't." A letter of recommendation ought not to express the judgment of him who seeks it, but of him who gives it. Recommendations too often embody the opinion of the applicant only voiced in the words of a man of influence and position. The pen had over-employment as compared with the feet. We ought to help convicts, released from prison, at the expiration of their sentence, to get employment; but the employer ought to be put in possession of the facts. There is probably no one of us but can say that his letters of recommendation have surpassed in fruitfulness every other form of helpful service. By them currents have been set in motion that have changed the course of many a life. Among those eminent deeds that have caused most of happiness to others, that the angels unmistakably approved, stand out foremost in all one's past those instances in which a letter of introduction and of unhesitating recommendation has brought certain rare spirits into appropriate positions of usefulness and honor. An aged clergyman, loving and beloved, tells a wondering company, how one of Boston's merchant-princes went up to the metropolis of New England, cherishing in his pocket as his chief possession, a letter that meant every word it said and into which a whole country church, through its minister, had put its true estimate of a young, manly, Christian character, also its well wishes and its hopes.
Things with a Difference
There is a saying that Adam once returned to the earth where he recognized no country but Spain. "Ah," said he, "this is exactly as I left it." Since 1880 we have built more than five hundred cities in America, among them some of the smartest in the world. We once lived here, in a plain country town, and now forsooth they have a little doll of a city. In a Boston burial ground there is an enclosed grave-lot. The iron fence is warping and rusting and crumbling. On the iron gate-way to the lot is moulded the caption, "Never to be disturbed." Nature the same, everything else changes is the rule. Even in hoarse, brutal, unprogressive Russia everything is becoming new fangled, dress, features, manners, pursuits, all are becoming new. The alterations, in our former place of abode, have been so unconsciously and so gradually made, as to escape the attention of the resident. The secrecy with which all forms of business was conducted is an example. "No admittance" signs were once so much used that the form could have been manufactured in lots and kept in stock to supply the constant demand. It used to be the custom, in paying a bill, for a man as he drew out his pocket-book, to turn half way around, and with his back to the gentleman he was dealing with, open the wallet and examine his money.
There has been an astonishing increase in the number of employments, as compared with the few different vocations of earlier days. Medical men and lawyers had no specialties as they do now. Many doctors today, who would like an all-round development, would better enjoy a country practice. The sons of the physicians have gone into vocations that were hardly recognized when their fathers began practice. One of the electrical firms asked to be given, for their work alone, the entire graduating class of 1900 from Cornell University.
The Changing World
The slang of a generation ago, some of it is given a permanent place in our language, and while in the dictionaries it is rated as a colloquialism, it is thus recognized. It has increased so greatly in the speech of the people, it comes freely also from student bodies, from the trades and sports and from the war camps, that it will now keep the lexicon makers busy.