Iowa County democrat. [volume] (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1877-1938, 1913-01-16

The lad attended the best schools
/ Augusta offered. Public schools were
either nonexistent or so poor as to be
worthless, 50 the boy was put at an in
stitution kept by Professor Joseph T.
Derry. with a habitaton over the post
office. Later. Professor Derry moved
his school to a building on the river
1 bank next to some cotton warehouses,
Here the boys made the warehouses
their Fairgrounds. exploring and play
ing hide and seek among the cotton
bales.
/ Joseph Rucker Lamar. now an as
sociate justice of the supreme court OF
/ the United States, was a pupil OF Fro
fessor Derry at about the same time.
Joe Lamar was the son of another
minister in the city. the Rev. James
Lamar, pastor of the Christian church.
who lived In a house on Mcintosh
street. next to the Wilson's.
Professor John Il. Derry, much 10
loved of all his pupils, had returned
home from four years in the Confeder-
ate army to teach He is the author
of several books and is now in the
agricultural department OF the state
of Georgia. Mr.. Derry says that Tom
Wilson was a quiet, studious boy, and
he speaks with the greatest delight OF
the Augusta days.
But young Wilson's real instructor
during the Augusta days was his ia
Their. Long before the age ut which
boys are imbihing knowledge from
books he was already receiving from
the lips of his father an education
more varied. more practical and sound
than any that could otherwise have
come to him.
Father and son were constant com
panions. but it was Sunday afternoons
that the elder devoted particularly to
his sons training Then. sitting on
the floor. or. rather, reclining there
against an inverted chair. the gifted
parson poured out into the ears of the
spellbound lad all the stores of his ex-
perience. learning and thought He
was man of wide information on the
affairs Of the world. a judge of good
literature, Il master of the queen of
the sciences, theology, and withal
man of much imaginative power
Above all the elder Wilson had a
clean working mind He had a way
of recognizing facts. and the processes
of his thought dealt with them in the
light of reason. If the boy had learn
ed nothing else he would have been
happy indeed to have been guided
from the beginning into the ways of
clear. cold thinking.
And Dr. Wilson was master of the
English language. He believed that
nobody had a thought until he could
put it quickly and definitely into
words. This he did himself, and this
he taught his son to do.
On Mondays the father would almost
without exception take his son out
with him on some excursion in the city
or neighboring country. On Monday
the two would visit the machine shops,
Tom would be shown furnaces. boilers,
machinery, taught to follow the release
of power from the coal to the compile
ton Of it's work in a finished product
of steel or of cotton. He remembers to
this day the impression made upon him
then by the gigantic engines, the roar
of furnaces or the dartiRG up Of sheets
of fame. He remembers great FORCES
presided over by sooty faced imps. In
this fashion by continual round of
visits of inspection in which the sight
of visible things and visible processes
was the text of running lectures on the
principles of nature. chemistry. physics
and of the organization of human soci-
ETY. the boy learned what he would
have had great difficulty in learning
from books alone.
Continued in next weeks issue.)