The Portland daily press., 1895-07-27
THE SUMNER SCHOOL.
1t Is an Evolution from the Old Camp
Meeting.

In the summer of 1881 two significant
events occ urred, the far-reaching results
of which no one predicted at the time ex-
cept DR.. McCosh, president of Princeton,
and Edward Everett Hale. The fact that
5000 people registered, and thereby
pledged themselves to complete the four
years course of study outlined by the
Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle,
was chronicled in the telegraphic news
of the day, and was forgotten; and the
press was uncertain whether to admire or
be amused by the first summer school of
philosophy held by the transcendentalists
at Concord says writer in the Chicago
Times Herald
The one had grown out of speculative
conversations among friends in the
library of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the
other out of the camp meetings annually
held at Lake Chautauqua; one, from the
high intellectual converse of winter even
ings, emerged into the light of summer
days "wanderings in the wayless, and
the other, from the summer search for
spiritual solace, had extended to secular
study throughout the year. Both togeth-
or they predicted university extension and
the summer schools that were to satisfy
the intellectual cravings of those who
wanted postgraduate course in all the
accumulated wisdom of the old world and
the new.
Fourteen years ago perhaps 6,000 people
were working under competent direction
outside the colleges and with but two
senters Of energy. To-day more than 200
summer schools, with quarter OF mil
lion pupils, are in session in various parts
of the United States, with lecturers and
instructors from colleges and universities.
All the large institutions are open for
postgraduate summer courses, and there
is scarcely professor, especially in the
natural sciences, but carries his apparatus
and band of enthusiastic pupils with
him into the woods, the mines, by the
sea, to some mountain observatory, or to
some old field rich in ethnologic remains.
Two new universities-the Leland Stan
ford, Jr., and the University of Chicago
have been built within that period, and
both have left the dry -as-dust methods OF
the older colleges and have modelled their
work after the spirit of the times. They
are the hearts and centers and initial en-
ergies of the intellectual activities of wide
territories, not cloistered stillnesses and
caskets for locking away the precious
Jewels of learning from all but the fay-
ored few. The work of no professor ends
with the classroom or laboratory. A
new old principle animates him. He feels
impelled to go into the world and preach
the gospel of exact knowledge and specu
lative philosophy to all who come
And those who come are from the pro-
fessions, from teaching in public school
rooms from the shop and factory. A
dozen years ago most of these would not
have known what to do with their leisure.
They would have been fritterlng away
their time in misdirected effort, in aim
less pleasure or desultory reading Now
quarter of a million people are resting
their bodies, and, at the same time, add
ing steadily to the sum total of human
knowledge When they return to the oc-
cupation of making living in the fall
it will be with broader culture, more
exact knowledge of some specific thing,
and what is of far more importance, an
increased usefulness and higher ideal of
life and of the work in hand. This is
the little leaven that is to leaven the
whole lump of society.
It all began with distinguished in
ventor and man of practical religion,
Lewis Miller, of Akron, Ohio, who saw
the possibility of using the admirable
machinery of the old camp meetings to
make an open air theological seminary for
Sunday school teachers; and with Wis
ionary and dreamer who would have been
at home with Plato and Aristotle, and
who hoped in this world, with the help
of the Almighty and good spade, to get
him living. Bronson Alcott and Lewis
Miller With such diverse tools does the
Creator shape events.
AS matter of fact, the seed planted by
Mr.. Miller germinated and spread more
rapidly because it was meant for popular
use, while the exotic tended by Alcott
was of slow growth and might be culti-
waited only by the few who are specially
endowed intellectually, and by those
having special opportunities in earlier
life.
1t was in the year 1845 that circle of
persons Of various ages, and differing
very much in everything but sympathy,
and native genius which almost all pos
sessed to degree that afterwards won for
them distinction, met in Concord. A
list could be made of them from among
those of the past generation famous in
letters, and who gave to Boston the SOU
briquet of modern Athens. There
were Emerson, Lowell, Dr.. W. H. and
Ellery Charming, Henry D. Thoreau,
George William Curtis and his brother
Burrill, James Freeman Clarke, Wendell
Phillips Theodore Parker, Hawthorne,
Margaret Fuller, Longfellow and George
Ripley, the Brook Farmer, with Mr.. and
Mrs. James f. Field and Oliver Wendell
Holmes, out from Boston, on occasion,
and now and then a distinguished visitor
such as Frederika Bremen and Ole Bull.
And to all these add Bronson Alcott,