St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1903-01-10
BILL ARP'S LETTER.
Philosopher Discusses One Phase of
the Educational Problem.
Thinks the Schools Should BE Sup
piled with Standard CyclOpedias
to Answer the Questions of In
telNSent Boys and Girls.

Copyrighted by the Atlanta Constitution
and reprinted by special permission.]
I am very much perplexed to know
what to do for the country boys and
girls. Of course they can get lit
tie schooling under the present sys-
tenn, but that will be only in text
books of reading, writing and arith-
metic. What they need is books of
reference that will answer their
many questions. Every mail brings
me letters wanting to know things
that they cannot learn in their coun-
try schools. Their teachers cannot
tell them nor their neighbors. OF
course not more than half of them
care about knowing anything outside
of their school books, but the other
half do, and on that half depends the
Why should these boys and girls have
to ask me and Joel Chandler Harris
and John Temple Graves and others
SO many questions? When they in
close stamp answer all 1 can, but
these young people need books that
they can refer to. If Mr.. Carnegie
would place in every country school
standard encyclopedia, such as APP
pleton's 16 volumes of universal
knowledge, or Dodd, Meade & Co.'s
International of 16 volumes, the
young people would have library
that would answer all their ques-
tions. Add to this Appleton's seven
If HI
country youth can get an education
without anything else. a young
farmer in Alabama asks me what
books he must buy to improve his
mind and store up knowledge by
reading and studying at night. Well,
it will take near 500 to buy the
above books and he had better skip
over all the modern trash that does
nothing but entertain and amuse and
strain his farm and his cattle and
everything to get that hundred dol
lars. think he could get them from
Wannamaker for SIS.
Now, of course, a boy or girl not
yet in their teens would prefer books
to suit their age, and they ought to
have them. I still treasure with de-
light my enjoyment of such books as
Robinson Crusoe," arabian Nights"
and Jules Verne's works, "Swiss Fam
lily Robinson" and some of Scott's
novels, like "Rob Roy" and 'Kenil-
worth" Children must have enter
tainment. As they grow up they
must have knowledge, for as. Lord
Bacon said, knowledge is power, and
Lord Brougham said: II had rather
trust the schoolmaster to perpetuate
this government than all the armies
of England"
to me to know who invented the al
phabet. Well, that is going afar
back, but il is a question that should
be answered, for the alphabet is the
very beginning of knowledge. The
alphabet goes away back thousand
years before Moses was born. The
Phoenicians made the first one that |
we know of. They lived in narrow
region that lies between Palestine
and Syria, a country about 200 miles |
long and 20 miles wide, and yet they
dominated the civilized world for a
thousand years, for they had control
of commerce and manufactures and
the gold of Ophir and the silver Of |
Tarshish and the brass and copper
of other lands were all theirs, and |
it was fact that as Isaiah wrote,
"Silver has heaped up as dust in the
streets and was more plentiful than
IRON" Hiram, the king, was the
friend of Solomon, but thousand
years before their time these Phoe-
uicians had made an alphabet and |
used it in writing and engraving.
But that alphabet has passed away.
In course of time the Grecians con-
quered Phoenicia and the Greek Ian
guage prevailed. Their alphabet is
the origin of ours, the very words be-
ing compounded of the first two let
ters, alpha and beta. Just as the
Phoenician language was lost and
went into disuse, just so has the
Greek and Latin language been aban-
doned and our English will no doubt
be the language of the civilized world
before fhic