Richmond daily register. (Richmond, Madison County, Ky.) 1917-1978, 1922-08-07
M'DERMOTT TALKS
TO YOUNG TEACHERS
Address Of Former Lieutenant
Governor Greatly Enjoyed
At Eastern Saturday

mer session of Eastern Normal
School was the address by ex-
Gov. L. J. McDermott, of Louis
vile, in the chapel Saturday. Gov.
McDermott has many warm
friends here and many went out
to hear him speak. He said in
part:
The teacher has high calling
with great opportunities and
great duties, and with big infu-
ence on the children, their famil-
les and their neighborhood. You
are paid officers, educated by the
state and county, and watched
by the children, their parents, and
the public. Your opinions, thru
the children, so far, and yet some
Of your pupils watch you with
sharp eyes and weigh you CON
stanly; they may see your foibles
and serious faults. A teacher has
many trials and disappointmcnts,
but also sweet memories and low
iEg friends. To succeed well YOU
must constantly study and i'm
prove yourself. II lawyer or
doctor is unskilled or negligent,
the law makes him liable for dam
ages. You have no such liability,
but you also should be competent
and diligent. To labor in a con
genial task well performed is the
best guaranty of success and hap
piness.
Education can never take the
place of religion and its safe
guards against vice. knowledge
is one thing; but the will and
firmness to do right is quite a dif-
ferent thing. We may know what
is right and do what is wrong.
Men in any country or age, un-
der any form of civilization, new
or old, in spite of inventions, CON
veniences and comforts, the tri-
umphs of the sciences and the
progress of the arts, in spite of
general education, still retain
foibles, weaknesses and vices,
and remain essentially the same
from age to age. Homer and
Aristotle and Plato, more than
twenty-three hundred years ago.
had an intellect as great as any
man has had since that time. Men
profess a great love for learning.
and yet do not consider it much
when choosing public officers, and
some mechanics today get great
er wages than many scholars ,,
professional men. But life is nc
for learning, nor for working
alone, but learning and working
are for life. A mans happiness
depends more ON what he is than
on what he has. Horace, the
Roman poet, speaking of great
riches and great luxuries, said al
most nineteen centuries ago:
Stunt qui non habeant; est qui non
curat habere. There are some
who do not have them; there is
one who does not care to have
them.
Reading good books carefully
S helpful, ephemeral or trashy
books are of no value, and the
reading of them is only dissipa-
ton. When Herbert Spencer,
then considered a distinguished
writer on scientific and political
was in America, he said,
in an interview with, a. New York
reporter of the Press that popu-i
lar education too often fosters
pleasant illusions, rather than a
just understanding Of important
that table-talk general
ly concerned only trivialit.es ori
newspaper sensations. Even inn
portant newspapers of today, toE
crafty readers oive much space
to movie-novelaes, Illogical, ques
tionable plots Of love affairs and
crime and petty movie stars, like
Fairbanks and the Pickford5.
Surely education has done little
for the readers of such stuff.
Biographies and histories, writ
ten by careful, qualified authors
from original sources, are very
valuable, but they are tcb often
written to crafty or foster ma
tional prejudices. James AM
thony Froude wrote an interest,"
ing, but untrustworthy, history
to make a hero out of Henry
VIII and his family, though he
was the Blue Beard of history
and murdered lot of wives.
Hume wrote long history to
help the Stuarts. Macauley wrote
a fascinating work to glorify
William of Orange. New Eng
land writer's, for a century or
more, have witten many volumes
to exalt the Puritans as the cham
Dions of civil and religious liber-