The Madison daily leader. [volume] (Madison, S.D.) 1890-current, 1893-11-03

private school. Later he took charge of
a public school in Westchester county.
N. Y, and it was the money that he re-
ceived as a pedagogue's wages that en-
abied him to lie idle a few years later
and study law.
1t is highly probable that he received
something else while a schoolteacher
that was far more valuable. though not
SD Immediately, than dollars, and that
was training. To the lawyer and the
legislator there is nothing nor precious
than the possession of the art of think
ing while standing and the giving of in
slant verbal form to the thought thus en-
gendered. This requirement is one that
must be gained in some degree at least
by every schoolteacher, and it is accom-
panied by another of scarcely less value
simple and direct expression. There
is little doubt that the necessity of using
short words and clear phrases in school
has had much to do with the subsequent
success of many a schoolteacher whe
was destined to be a legal or a legislative
luminary.
Bourke Cochran is but one of many
now in congress who in early life re-
ceived the training that comes only to
s~choolteachers. Judge Holman of Indi-
ana, Wilson of West Virginia, chairman
of the ways and means committee, now
struggling with the tariff problem; Reed
of Maine, whose first physical contest
with an unruly pupil was only decided in
the teachers favor because he was the
heavier of the two-these are a few of
the more prominent ex-pedagogues now
in congress-, and if one were to ask them
about it, it's safe to lay long odds that
each would say that he received quite as
much training as he gave when teaching
school.
Not all the ex-schoolteachers now per-
sons of eminence are in congress. They
are to be found everywhere-on the
bench, at the head of financial enter
prises, in the editorial rooms-and as in
the case of the congressman mentioned,
it would be foundif they could be ques-
toned that most of them attribute much
of their success to. the training they re
ceived while training others. Among
the pedagogues who have achieved lit
erary success is, Edward Egglesten,
whose first novel, THE Hoosier School
master" is now almost a classic, and
who, as must be evident to its most
casual reader, learned quite as many les
sons while a teacher rs did any Of his
pupils.
Clara Barton, the wonderful woman
who is at the head of the Red Cross So
ciety in America, now engaged in re-
lieving the sea island sufferers from the
August cyclone, was a schoolteacher at
Bordentown, n. j., just before the war
in fact the excellent system of free
schools there was practically created by
her energies and has remained essential
ly as she left it. Miss Barton's execu-
tive ability is SO great that when she was
doing her work on the battlefield of the
civil war the officers speedily forgot her
sex-the highest compliment that could
have been paid her efficiency. Miss Bar
ton first began to realize her powers of
concentration and accomplishment when
she was a teacher, and her achievements
at Bordentown must have helped to
bring about that perfect and well JUST
fed self reliance that has always been
her mainstay on fields of blood or dis
aster.
The use Of schoolteaching as a step
ping stone by aspiring young men is
somewhat on the decline now, especially
IN the east, but it will never entirely stop
so long as poor young men continue to
work their way through college. 1t may
be true, as has often been claimed, that
the country schools suffer from the fact
that teaching school offers a convenient