The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1875-03-27
A TEACHERS REVERE.

READ AT PORT DEPOSIT INSTITUTE, FEB.
THE 18th, 1915, by JOHN A. CALHOUN.
Scattered all over our common country
there is class of men and women, upon
whose labors, though often but poorly APP
precated, rests a responsibility second to
that of no class of public servants in the
nation-its teachers. Scattered alike upon
the frozen shores of Maine, among the fruits
and flowers of the South, upon the praires
of Illinois, among the mines of Nevada
and Colorado, i'll and the forests of Califor-
mia and Oregon; everywhere their influence
is alike felt. Nothing is a truer test of the
civilization and advancement of any State
or community than the character of its
schools and its teachers. The hope of our
nations future is not SO much in its giant
rivers, its boundless forests, its railroads
and it's immense undeveloped mineral re-
sources, as in our common schools, where
our future citizens are training to take
their places, as farmers, as mechanics, as
merchants, as legislators, as presidents, as
soldiers, and as citizens.
New England planted the common school
almost in sight of Plymouth rock, and
from that day to ours, it has kent close
with the tide of emigration in its westward
march. AS soon as few cabins have arisen
in the wilderness, or on the prairie, the
sch | house has taken it's place among
them and begun its beneficent work. They
are of all classes from the costly city build
ing to the backwoods cabin; there are few
who in passing those country school houses
have failed to have Whittier's lines recalled
to memory:
"Still stands the school house by the road,
A ragged beggar summing,
Around it still the shumacs grow,
And blackberry vines are running"
In how many just such houses from Maine
to Washington are earnest men and women
toiling to implant the first ideas of literary
cultureo
In the great army of teachers there is all
variety of character and mental culture.
All are alike helping on the great cause of
human progress. Unknown to fame, i'll
appreciated they may be, but so those who
have done earth's highest, grandest work
have ever been.
Our century has been a strangely event
full one, but it has not done all the work of
humanity. The people of coming years
will need their Watts and Fultons, their
Franklins and Morses, their Newtons and
Laberriers, their Luthers and Wesleys,
their Washingtons and Garibaldis, as much
as any in the past have done. From whence
are they to come if not from the public
school? The Sunday school has not in.
APPLY been styled the nursery of the church.
not less so is the public school the nursery
of science, art, religion, of modern civil
zation itself. A power that could destroy
the public school would do more than all
others to turn back the tide of modern
thought and restore the moral and mental
darkness of departed centuries.
1t was dark, cold Winter evening when
the teacher dismissed her school, and as
the last shout Of exultation or the merry
laugh of boyhood resounded back, seated
herself to review the brain wearying labors
of the day. She had labored faithfully to
instruct those fifty boys and girls and lit
tie apparent fruit could she see from her
labors. She had tried conscientiously to
do her best, yet was haunted by the knowl-
edge of how short her success fell compared
with her wishes.
From her present surroundings, from the
dust and dog cared books the carefully
carved desks, the we'll trodden play ground,
and all the thousand inseparabe connec-
lions of the country school, her thoughts
were with those who had gone before her,
were busy with other times and other
scenes.
Gradually the troop of fancies that throng-
ed her brain assumed form and consistency
and she was able to distinguish the leading
figures as they passed in stately review be-
fore her mental vision. A group of strange
costumes, an unknown river, a bulrush
basket among the papyrus reeds is one OF
the first to arrest her attention, and in that
group she recognizes the infant Moses,
banned by the king, cast adrift to perish.
She sees in that scene the center from
which many of the impulses of coming his
tory was to be given. She sees the fame
of that kind hearted woman descending to
,, the latest hour of time, not because she
was of regal birth, but because her woman
, heart was true to the instincts of human
e ity; because to her it was given to train
Y the infant Moses for his life mission. She
J.. recognizes the fact that in her saving the
life of that child, not only her future his
e tory, but much of that of the world was
y involved. AS a consequence of that act
E she sees her fame transmitted to the latest
i ages.
Again she sees Moses, no longer the
E banned infant, but the grand old leader OF
Israel about to pass from the long day OF
. toll and trial to the peace and quiet of an
/ eternal Sabbath, calling upon those whose
guide and leader he had been SO long to
train their children in the recollection of
! the history of their fathers, to implant in
/ their minds an early knowledge of the law,
S that they may be worthy of the especial
favors Jehovah had heaped upon them as a
people.
3 There, too, was the figure of the venera-
BILE Eli training the youthful Samuel as
Israel's last and greatest judge. She hears
Solomon surrounded by all the glitter and
show of Israel's profuse, but corrupt court,
exclaiming, not alone for his own, but for
all ages, all climes, all lands: "Tran up
thy son in the way he should go, and when
, he is old, he will not depart from it, 1t
: is not without tear of sorrow that she
sees how much better was the precept of
the philosopher king than its fulfilment in
his own case.
l AS this picture melts away other forms
come thickly thronging into their places.
. There is the aged Jehoiada saving one of
| David's royal line, placing him on his faith
, er's throne and teaching him to reign in
the fear of God. She sees him when the
guiding hand of the old priest is with
, drawn, falling into evil ways and bringing