New-York tribune., 1877-03-13
CASE or YOUNG SCHWERDTFEGER.

CASE or YOUNG SCHU
Suicides, as rule should be passed over
with as brief mention as possible. They usually
proceed from a mixture of morbid sentiment
and cowariice, which public notice and SYM
pathy warm and foster in the living. The
suicidal mania, which has at different times
become contagious, has always been checked
at once by treating it with ignomlny and con-
tenpt, instead of compassion, aS Ill the we'll
known suicidal epidemic in Lyons III the last
century.
But self-slaughter like this of the poor boy
at Cornell last week, which is the effect of an
error in the social system that we all can help
to rectify, is different matter, and deserves
careful consideration. Schwerdtfeger, as we
learn, was a poor boy of exceptional talent
and ambition but weak physique. kind
patron sent him three years ago to Cornell,
and then the usual story begins struggle,
strugglo-urging driving, prize to-day, IA
"remarkable production for his age Tomorrow:
success in the eyes of his little world ut every
step, or despair; finally, with rapidly failing
"health he entered the intercollegiate contest,
"and gained his last and greatest triumph"
In consequence of which his eyes and
his brain gave way; he could neither
study nor remember what he had al
ready learned and convinced at nineteen that
"the struggle of life was unequal and hope
Cess he blew out his brains and ended 1t.
There is something absolutely ludcrOus in
this. if it were not so terribly tragic. This
poor lad was not perhaps to blame, nor his
friends Ii is the system. A boy in American
schools, as a rule, knows that his chance for
,txy,.
mon sense should teach his instructors that the
main object in that brief time should be to
give him the desire for knowledge, and to
tram his mind to acquire it during the rest OF
his life. Instead of which, their object and
his object, nine times out of ten, are to make
"hs mark" to take high rank in class, to
shine in the college world for one brief day,
or. as eliminating end and glory, to take
prize in an intercollegiate contest, and to read
his name once in print bazoned in the morn
ing newspapers.
In short, the fame of boy, and not the
slow building up of a man In mind and body,
is the aim of our system. Hence, the boys
who take honors in a class often drop into the
background Obscurely in active life, and the
dull fellows take foremost places, simply be-
cause the brains of the one class have been
forced and weakened when immature, and
those of the others have reached IA natural,
heathful development Young Schwerdtfeger
at seventeen in lis native country would not
have been held of the proper age to leave the
gymnasium and enter the university: his holi-
days would have been spent tramping the hills
with a wallet on his back his stomach would
have been strong enough to digest daily diet
of sausages and beer. His story here is per-
haps an extreme one. But we have known
too many dull boys disheartened by the driv-
ing process of our system, and too many clever
ones turned out of colleges with stunned fac
ulties and diseased bodies, not to enter our
earnest protest Make haste slowly is a rule
nowhere SO necessary as in our schools.