Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1909-02-12
titude, and which the multitude follows
is the great leader

titude, and which the multitude follows
is the great leader
To the students Mr.. Cannon said:
Il am not one Of those who believe
in universal higher education. My way
would be to make more common schools
where practical education is taught and
have less high schools, for I believe a
boy or girl of nineteen or twenty, with
the practical. kind of education I mean
already gained will get the higher kind,
or any other kind they want, and all the
kings horses and all the kings men can
not stop it,
Then he told a typical story, illustrat-
ing the futility of the higher education
teal kind. He forsook the pose of the
orator and fell into the natural talk OF
the story teller:
1T was a story about four youths who
left the state to go to an institution
where they absorbed the frilis of learn
ing. while they should have learned farm
ing and other practical things.
I'm afraid said my friend to me.
that all they will become when they get
out of there will be id educated
idiots"
There was a tremendous burst Of ap-
plause and laughter. and then, when the
noise had died down. Mr.. Cannon, his
right arm still uplifted, tore loose the
floodgates of applause again when he
shouted out:
And they were
Urged to Be Practical.
His message to the students was to be
practical and to learn the things that
would help their race. He told them that
the south was the greatest field for their
activities. and urged all of them to take
things as they find them, as the evolution
of things is slow, and that it would take
many generations to place the race where
1t ought to be.
William r. Vernon. register Of the
Treasury. was to have spoken, but he was
unavoidably absent I. An explanation OF
the painting. THE Underground Rail
way was made by William h. Curtis,
who made the presentation for the artist
lone sunny afternoon in 1850, a group
of children playing about the barn Of the
Rev. Harvey Coe, in the village of Hud-
son. on the western reserve Of Ohio. dis
in the hay. He was barefooted and only
half clad. His face was covered with
wounds, upon which the blood had hard
ened-a startling sight to those children
not one of whom had ever seen a black
face before. They ran into the house and
in excited tones described what they had
seen. Grandfather Coe quietly gathered
them around his chair and told them OF
the fugitive slave that secretly had beer
brought to his house the night before. 1,
was the 1lTSl TINS tuOSc CiillOIeIl Iidu ever
heard Of slavery. and no event in my life
ever left deeper impression upon my
memory.
Years afterward I learned that my
grandfather's barn was a station on the
underground railway between the Ohio
river and the lakes, and that he was ha-
bitually guilty Of unlawfully harboring
fugitives.
Whose only sin
Was the kink in their hair and the hue of theil
skim
A Famous Couple.
This picture. which / have been asked
to present to this institution. in behalf
Of the artist, Mr. c. T. Weber of Gin
|cinnati, represents another and a more ia
NOUS station on the underground railway
and contains the portraits OF Levi and
Catherine Coffin. who assisted more than
8. 900 slaves back to freedom. and protect
ed more than thousand fugitives under
their own roof. Harriet Beecher Stowe
described them in Uncle Tom Cabin
as Simeon and Rachael Halliday, the
Quaker couple, who rescued Eliza Harris
when she with her child in her arms. es-
capped across the drifting ice In the Ohio
river.
Their hospita able home at Fountain
City, Wayne county. Ind, where Eliza
Harris found refuge from the slave hunt
served by a patriotic society. and in
Spring Grove cemetery, Cincinnati, the
colored people have erected d noble mon
ument to their memory.
Mr.. Collins family recognize in this