The Washington times., 1914-11-08
By KENDRICK SCOFIELD.

Every now and then some avid deliver
into the dead and dreary past un-
earths and triumphantly drags to light
a record OF human frailty In the life OF
a famous man.
So have become known the facts that
Thomas Jefferson was an agnostic and
addicted to French fashions in haber-
dashery; that Abraham Lincoln was
fond Of the double entendre and fire.
quently lapsed into slumber during
church services; that BENJAMIN Frank
lin was wont to count the pickets on
the fences which he passed; that the
lure of milady's eyebrow meant far
more in the life of Alexander Hamil-
ton than all the Declarations of Inde-
pendence ever penned; that Andrew
in the profane, and so on through the
host of anecdote which almost every
body knows, at least by hearsay, to-
day.
When such an exhumation of past
frailty or peccadillo is accomplished,
most of the educated world even now
stands aghast at such sacrilege. and de-
nouncing the biographical ghoul I'M no
uncertain terms for his temertty in sug-
gesting that a hero can be aught but
perfect, straightway falls busily to re-
polishing and refurbishing the tarnish-
ed halo.
.- Likes Heroes Frailties.
But there is one man. we'll known
to educational America. who figurative-
ly skips and claps his hands whenever
such an expose is made. He chuckles
gleefully at each new evidence that
heroes and haloes are not necessarily to
be closely related in the minds Of the
public Each new defect discovered in
supposedly immaculate public lives.
gives to him the keenest pleasure. Yet
his glee contains no malice and his
10 avtr1-
tation might possibly be explained by
that one touch Of nature which Is COM
monty reputed to make the whole world
kin.
That. man is Dr. Alfred Bushnell Hart,
whose time is spent holding down the
University. but whose real nature. con-
tinually outcropping. is that Of a gentle
iconoclast, and polite wrecker Of his
toric pedestals.
DR.. Hart spent several days In Wash
ington last week. In attendance upon the
meetings of the Teachers Institute, and
during his whole visit here he was
continually bubbiing over with sugges-
tions as to what history really should
mean to the American people. And in
every line he spoke 1t was apparent that
one ot his fundamental doctrines was
let the heroes of America appear as hu-
man be ings.
In the first place DR.. Hart declares
That history Is not SO mucn chronicle
of events as 1t is a chronicle Of what
the great people Of contemporaneous
periods were thinking. And from this
viewpoint. he contends, history can be
made to mean more to the citizens of
the United States in a practical way
than ever before.
Teaches Human Nature.
History, he says. teaches human ma
ture. commercial progress, political
development and half a dozen other inn
portant phases of national life. so that
to confine histories to a recital of
military and naval activities, and ex-
purgated accounts Of the lives of hu-
man beings who possessed the stuff Of
which heroes are popularly believed to
be made. is erroneous. Here is how DR..
Hart puts 1t:
1 glory in the discovery of human
frailties in popular heroes. When
! first learned that Washington
purchased lottery tickets. and that
he swore like an angel from
heaven" as one writer has 1t, upon
the occasion Of Lees desertion to
the British, I glowed with positive
qualification. II made Washington