The times dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1903-1914, 1913-07-06

Carter" Carriers residence was at
Nomini Hall, and there Fithian re-
NAMED during his entire residence in
Virginia. He learned to know the
famous families of the day and found
himself received on terms of equality
in the best homes of the Northern
Neck, and daily he wrote his common
tary on the people he met and on the
children he taught. Evidently a very
sober-sided man, Fithian viewed the
easy.going life of the aristocratic
family with whom he lived from
most critical angle, and might, in fact,
be accused Of being puritanical, but his
story of honest hard work shows that
gradually he was brought over to the
Southern point of view and came to
love the generous-hearted people who
30 cordially received him.
The Value of This System.
The system of teaching which
Fithian represented has been held up
by certain writer's as little calculated
to give the pupils any sound knowledge
or true culture, but it was, when viewed
in relation to the education of the day,
the best that could be offered. 1t gave
to the young people of community
new viewpoint, and gave to them, in
addition, close and daily contact with
a man Of education and culture. There
was about this system, too, none of that
ephemeral character that marks many
courses Of study: the children were
placed under the home teacher as soon
as they could read, and they remained
with him until they had mastered the
classics and were ready for life. In this
way they were given that daily stimulus
to study and that daily encouragement
to effort which lie at the basis Of true
education The children could master
all their teacher knew; the teacher
could learn every popularity of his
charges. No one can read Fithian's
heartfelt soliliquies about his pupils
and fail to see that he studied his
Children before he tried to teach them.
The Outgrowth of This System.
But this system Of private tutors
and "home teaching" is still more inter-
esting in its bearing on the broader
system of higher education, for from
it sprang those splendid academies
which were the foundation stones of
Southern culture, and which remain a
most important factor in the training
of youth.
The evolution was gradual and
natural If one man, teaching the
children of few neighbors, could do
so much for their culture and training,
why could not number Of such men,
working together. do even more? 1t
was, of course, impossible to care for
faculty in a private home, and it
therefore became necessary to quarter
them in buildings of their own. Once
these were established, it was an easy
matter to bring to them not only the
children of near neighbors, but the
boys from other counties.
The Era of the Academy.
By 1880 this system spread through
out the South. In practically every
section of Virginia and in the adjacent
Southern States were the schools which
their surviving graduates love to
describe as the "old-fashioned"
academies. In some cases the academy
was in charge Of one man, who
received the boys into his own home
and stood almost in loco PARENTS
toward them. More frequently the
academy boasted it's little faculty, three,
four, a half-dozen teachers, who
divided the work among them and
uaua their ct1ldantS a course of study