The Newtown bee., 1908-08-21

''te'N' Nttsse esNN'sft'f WIS INNft~f -r
 yeals itself more especially in the ere
 ation of a multitude of smaller libra
 ries, one for every considerable village
 in the land, Our ambition has beer
 that all of the people should have thu
 taste and the power to read. and, there
 fore. that all the people should have
 within easy reach a good number ol
 the books best worth their reading,
 But now it may be we'll to turn for
 moment to the reverse side of this pic
 ture, for, like almost everything els,
 in human affairs, the picture has a re
 verse side which is not so attractive,
 Everyone knows how the invention Of
 the book has resulted in the develop
 ment of the pedant, or bookworm, or
 scribe, as men used to call him; a man
 who has been so engrossed in the wisdom
 of the past as to lose power to perceive
 the wisdom of the present. His eye.
 sight is blinded boring over miserable
 books," to use Tennyson's impatient exclamation, so blinded that he can no
 longer see clearly the real world in which he lives and which awaits the present action of his hand. Burdened
 with innumerable precedents, he loses the power of fresh decision. He is like the pedantic priest and Levite in the old story, marching up the Jericho road with useless ceremony toward Jerusalem, leaving it for some Hitter ate Samaritan with warmer sympathy and quicker sense to help the needy fel- low who lies by the roadside. Hence it comes to pass that practical men de- velop sometimes kind of contempt for the opponents of literary culture, and even express doubt as to the ad- vantage of this indefinite multiplica- tion of schools and libraries every where among the people. This is the reverse side of the picture.
 But you and l are persuaded that this is only reverse, a shadow of something which itself is radiant with light. This scribe, or blear-eyed book worm, is an accidental perversion of the educational process; and what we need to avoid that perversion is liv- ing personality, strong enough and confident enough in itself to appropriate and utilize these accumulating treas ures of past knowledge without ever being overwhelmed and buried in them "a living personality that can rejoice in all the beauty that others have cre- ated, and profit by all the wisdom that others have written down. while gstill it.uses its own eyes to see the living world, its own ears to near the. words that are now spoken by living men, and it's own hands to do the work that now needs to be done! That road to Jericho, along which all sorts of people are travelling, needs some one with all the wisdom of the priest and the Levite, but also the warm sympa- thy and active practical efficiency of he Samaritan; then the poor victim by the roadside may have all his needs SUD- piled. ..
 And that leads up to the thought that must be in the minds of all of us in connection with the exercises of this day, that in this highly favored con- lnunity that very need was met to a re- markable degree. The whole educa- tional life of this place was embodied long ago in man who, whatever else hesmight become, never ceased to be man; who learned how to read and how to write, but no one ever thought of calling him a scribe; who had taste for teaching, and great power of influence over his many scholars, but no one ever thought of calling his school a breeding place for bookworms because this teacher was primarily and always a man. He was of such virile quality. There was in him much of the hardihood of the pioneer who must battle for life with axe and gun; there was always the enthusiasm of the good citizen, keenly alive to every present need in the state, or in the community immediately about him; and there was also, even down to the age of three-score years and beyond 1t, a very large supply of the exuberant vitality of boy; and no doubt this blending of qualities was what MT Beecher had in mind when he said of Mir Gum that he was "foreordained from all eternity to be good school master" We shall not soon forget MT Clarence Deming's chapter in "The Master of the Gunnery" on the Gun nery sports, and how at every excuse, such as the return of some old boy, the whole school would be cheerfully for the afternoon, that there might be a ball game on the Green. Was there ever another school since