Lewistown gazette. [volume] (Lewistown, Pa.) 1843-1944, 1862-02-26
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 2e, 1862.

rouse the ambition Of their more sIugaish
pupils and thus get more study out of
them. | have known entire schools in.
structed to aim at the highest places in so,
ciety, aud the most exalted Offices Of life.
| have known enthusiastic old fools who
made it their principal business to 90 from
school to school, and talk such stuff to the
pupils as would tend to unfit every one of
humble circumstances and slender possibil-
tiles for the life that lay before them. The
fact is persistently ignored, in many of
these schools, established emphaticaly for
the education of the people, that the ma
Jority of the places in this world arc sub
; ordinate and low places Every boy and
! girl are taught to be something in this
world, which would be very we'll if being
something were being what God intended
they should be; but when being some
thing involves the transformation of what
/ God intended should be respectable shoe
maker into very indifferent and very slow
minister of the gospel, the harmful and
even ridiculous character of the instruction
/ becomes apparent.
There arc two classes of evil results at
tending the inculcation of these favorite
doctrines of the school teachers-frst, the
uniting of men and women for humble
places; and second. the impulsion Of men
of feeble powers into high places, for the
duties of which they have neither natural
nor acquired fitness. K Under
the present mode of education, nobody is
fitted for a low place and everybody is
taught to look for high one.
If we go into a school exhibition, our
ears are deafened by defamation addressed
to ambition. The boys have sought out
from literature every stirring appeal to eff
tort, and every extravagaEt promise of re-
ward. The compositions of the girls are
of the same general tone We hear of
infinite yearning,' from the lips of girls
who do not know enough to make pudding,
and of being polished after the similitude
of palace from those who do not compre
hend the commonest duties of life Every
thing Is on the high pressure principle
The boys, all of them, have the general
idea that every thing that is necessary to
become great men is to try for it; and each
one supposes it possible for him to become
Governor of the State, or President of the
Union. The idea of being educated to
! fill humble Office is hardly thought of,
| and every pumpkin who has memory suf-
| ilclent for the words repeats the stanza:
! Lives of great men all remind us
/ We can make our lives sublime,
! And departing, leave behind
Footprints on the sands of time"
| There is fine ring to this familiar qua
train of Mr.. LOngfellow, but it is nothing
more than Il musical cheat. 1t sounds like
! truth, but it is lie The lives of great
men, all remind US that they have made
their own memory sublime, but they do
not assure us at all that we can leave
footprints like theirs behind US If you
do not believe it, go to the cemetery yOnder
There they lie-ten thousand upturned
| faces,-ten thousand breathess bosoms
| There was time when fire flashed in those
vacant orbits, and warm ambition pulsed
in those bosoms. Dreams Of fame and
power once haunted those hollow sculls-
Those little piles of bones that once were
feet ran swiftly and determinedly through
forty, fifty, sixty, seventy years of life; but
where are the footprints they left? He
llved-he died-he was buried, is all that
the headstone tells us. We move among
the monuments, we see the sculpture, but
no voice comes to US to say that the sleep
ers are remembered for anything they ever
did. Natural affection pays its tribute to
Its departed object, generation passes by,
the stone grows gray, and the man has
ceased to be, aud is to the world as if he
had never lived. Why is it that no more
have left name behind them? Simply
because they were not endowed by their
Maker with the power to do it, and because
the offices of life need mainly humble pow
ers for their ful6lment. The cemeteries of
one hundred years hence will be like those
OF to-day. Of all those now in the schools
OF the country, dreaming of fame, not one
in twenty thousand will be heard of then
not one in twenty thousand will have
left footprint behind them.
Now [ believe school, in order to be a
good one, should be one that will fit men
and women, in the best way, for the hum
BILE positions that the great mass of them
must necessarily occupy in life. 1t is not
necessary that the boys and girls be taught
any less than they are taught now. They
should receive more practical knowledge
than they do now, without doubt, and
less OF that which is simply ornamental,
but they cannot be taught too much. An
intelligent gardener is better than clod-
hopper and al educated nurse is better
than an ignorant one; but if the garden
er and the nurse have been spoiled for
their business and their condition, by the
sentiments which they have imbibed with
their knowledge they are made unccmfor-
table to themselves, and to those whom
they serve. do not care how much knowl-
edge man may have acquired in school,
that school has been a curse to him if its