Chautauqua Institution

“ If Hebrew can be so taught, why not any ancient language? If French can be so taught, why not any modern language? True, we lack the presence of the living teacher, but the chief value of the teacher’s presence is to test the accomplished work of the student, and to prompt by word and hint to better work in lines of which the student had not thought. Both of these can be accomplished by our method. The one condition is work—earnest, persistent work.
Teaching by correspondence is like conversation by telephone. We may never see each other, yet speak as face to face. ”

“ If any of us have attained to this sweet feeling of self-annihilation, we shall look up to Christ as if he were the sun, and we shall say within ourselves, “O Lord, I see thy beams; I feel myself to be—not a beam from thee—but darkness, swallowed up in thy light. The most I ask is, that thou wouldst live in me—that the life I live in the flesh may not be my life, but thy life in me; that I may say with emphasis, as Paul did, ‘For me to live is Christ.’” A man who has attained this high position has indeed “entered into rest.” ”

“ The discussions of a legislature are feebleness itself in the presence of the ringing and decisive editorials of influential newspapers. The press hems in the assemblymen within narrow limits of choice; and a speech can not be great when it can not command the field, but only a corner of it. All this does not mean that oratory is dying or to die; it has simply taken a lower place as an agent in argument and persuasion. Nor do we mean that great orators are no longer possible. A great orator, by natural endowment, may make and hold a commanding place—by the aid of the press. ”

“ He breathed life into the thought and language of the people, making them living souls, the Adam and Eve of English life. It is too much to ask that the primal poet who has to create language, create thought also. He did for the language of England what no other man was ever privileged to do for any nation. He took the chaotic speech and gave it beauty and rhythmic symmetry. ”

“ Universal light! it is through thee alone that we see anything. Sun of the soul, who dost shine more brightly than the material sun! seeing nothing except through thee we see not thee thyself. It is thou who givest all things, to the stars their light, to the fountains their waters and their courses, to the earth its plants, to the fruits their flavor, to all nature its riches and its beauty, to man health, reason, virtue, thou givest all, thou doest all, thou rulest over all ”

“ We are miles apart, maybe, yet answer voice to voice. We are far without the range of possible personal contact, yet more in immediate obedience to each other’s will. So with teacher and pupil, they are mutually unseen; yet teacher’s letter on pupil’s table, and pupil’s letter on teacher’s table are a visible presentation of each to the other. They are widely separate; yet by correspondence question and answer are interchanged in rapid succession. Their paths of life never converge; yet teacher and pupil move mutually in daily lines which want and its supply make necessary. ”

“ A girl enters a house to do certain duties, not to be a part of the family. She does her work, to be sure, within the dwelling, but because she works there is no more a reason why she should become a companion than there is reason for the clerk, bookkeeper, tailor or dress-maker of the family becoming a companion. Not that she is not so good—she is often better; not that she is less a lady—she is often more—but simply because her relations with the housekeeper are business relations, and in the family circle it is very undesirable that these duties should be obtruded. ”

“ The kitchen is the household laboratory. It is imperatively necessary that it be sunny and cheery, but how many times it is dark and dingy, poorly furnished, and uncomfortably arranged. The girl who finds her home in the house of another deserves further, a pleasant room, which shall be hers and hers alone. It ought to be neatly furnished, comfortably lighted and heated, and is it purely sentimental to say that she should have a rocking chair, a sewing table, a book rack and pictures? No, no. It is simple humanity to make her surroundings beautiful. ”

“ Attempt to make all smooth and pleasant without, and you thereby create the most corroding of anxieties, and stimulate the most insatiable of appetites within. But let there be harmony within, let no clamors of self drown the voice which is entitled to authority there, let us set forth on the mission of duty, resolved to live for it alone, to close with every resistance that obstructs it, and march through every field that awaits it, and in the consciousness of immortal power, the sense of ill will vanish; and the peace of God well nigh extinguish the sufferings of the man. ”

“ We shorten no business hours; we shut no office doors; we turn no key upon the wants of a busy world. But when days are rainy and trade is dull, when the harvest is ended and the fences are mended, the winter’s fuel gathered and the farm implements are all repaired, when the shut-down of dull times comes in the factory, when household work is over, when evening comes, then are we ever at hand to whisper, give us your hours, and turn your backs upon the amusements, the frivolities, the wastefulnesses of the world. ”

“ Ignorance does not lead our dumb fellow-creatures to vicious habits, and prejudice is therefore, perhaps, the more correct name for the sad infatuation which tempts so many millions of our young men to defy the protests of instinct and make themselves the slaves of a life-destroying poison. Ignorance is nescience. Prejudice is mal-science, mis-creance, trust in erroneous teachings. Millions of children are brought up in the belief that health can be secured only by abnormal means. A pampered child complains of headache, want of appetite. ”

“ But though it is honorable, healthy, and pays, yet strangely enough the girl feels that she can not be anybody if she undertake it, and the world believes she has forfeited her position when she does. Strange anomaly, that what is respectable in the mistress of the house should unfit her maid for social standing. Yet there are reasons for it, and one weighty reason is the popular opinion of housework—the feeling that it is belittling drudgery, that it requires simply muscles and no brains, that it unfits a woman for intellectual pursuits and for the finer accomplishments. ”

“ When the famous translator of the Bible into English promised to make the boy who followed the plow in England know more of God’s Word than certain famous prelates of his time, he showed that he knew where all great uplifts of humanity must begin, not with the well-to-do and content, but with those who had crying needs and high aspirations. So in this lifting up of nature into seen harmonies and revelation, till ‘We study the Word and the works of God’ with equal sense of their divine origin. ”

“ Its normal condition is that of complete dedication, and it esteems every deviation from such a state as a plague-mark and a breaking forth of disease. Here, in the lowest valley of self-renunciation, the believer walks upon a very pinnacle of exaltation; bowing himself, he knows that he is rising immeasurably high when he is sinking into nothing, and, falling flat upon his face, he feels that he is thus mounting to the highest elevation of moral grandeur.
It is the ambition of most men to absorb others into their own life, that they may shine more brightly by the stolen rays of other lights ”

“ These fairs are milestones of progress; for all new arts and appliances of all lands are exhibited; and they are social gatherings for civilized humanity. If they had no other value than to reflect the unity of mankind under modern liberty and Christianity, they would be worth more than they cost. The spectacle of civilized mankind [112] and the products of their brain and hand collected together in one place is in itself a lesson and an inspiration. The world moves—toward concord, fraternity, unity. ”

“ But the name that became sacred also meant the physical heaven, the sky with its clouds and vapor, and all embracing atmosphere; and as the earth by a beautiful metaphor was spoken of as the bride of the sky, which was said to overshadow the earth with his love, in every land causing the birth of all things that live and grow, so this idea of production—its primary application forgotten by a people gross and sensual—transferred to a deity of human form and passions, grew up into strange stories of license, or unlawful love. ”

“ The first impulse of “the natural man” is, to seek peace by mending his external condition; to quiet desire by increase of ease; to banish anxiety by increase of wealth; to guard against hostility by making himself too strong for it; to build up his life into a future of security and a palace of comfort, where he may softly lie, though tempests beat and rain descends. ”

“ Neither going to a cooking school nor teaching in a cooking school unfits woman for society; yet she does the same kind of work there as she would in a kitchen. The difference is just here: The cooking school pupil mixes her bread with brains and salts her potatoes with wits, and the brains and wits make a profession of what we have been pleased heretofore to call drudgery. It is the lack of this seasoning that has outlawed kitchen work. [99] It is not the bread and potatoes. Why should we not have girls who are superior housekeepers, who are known as rising young cooks? ”

“ It is not unfair to say that an economical and industrious girl earning $3.00 per week at housework can more easily lay up $50 in a year and dress better on the street and for church than the school teacher on $400 per year. It is not a question of money. There is, if anything, a cash balance in favor of the housework.
Is it then the work which makes such places so undesirable? Housework is undeniably hard. There is much of what we call drudgery about it. There is scrubbing, and washing and ironing, but the drudgery of housework does not last the week through. ”

“ The free reading-rooms and gymnasium of the New York Y. M. C. A. have done more to promote the cause of temperance than the man hunts of Sir Hudibras and all his disciples. We must change our tactics. While our anchorite allies have contrived to make virtue repulsive, our opponents have proved themselves consummate masters of the art of masking the ugliness of vice; they have strewn their path with roses and left us the thorns. Yet I hope to show that we can beat them upon their own ground, for it is not difficult to make health more attractive than disease. ”

“ When personal interest is inspired, almost invariably a home-like air will spring up in the kitchen. The girl who presides loses that belittling, humiliating feeling that she is only a drudge, and grows to know her real importance, to respect herself and her business, while the woman at the helm grows light hearted as she recognizes what a stanch, reliable support she has in this department of her home. Working together is the only successful plan for employer and employé. ”

“ As the two nations intermingled their habits and social customs, as the languages blended the strength of the one with the grace of the other for three centuries, the people were prepared in mind and heart, in thought and sentiment, to appreciate a national poet, and after nine centuries without a poet or a language out of which poetry could be woven, they found themselves suddenly possessed with a poet of highest order and a language melodious in its every accent. ”

“ If we will stop and remember for a moment how often the painter and poet dwell upon variety in landscapes, we shall appreciate more fully the artistic work of water. We have already seen that by dissolving the rocks, the way was prepared for all verdure, and not less truly did it round the hills and carve the gorges, as well as smooth the outlines, which add so much to nature’s charms. ”

“ It is the highest stage of manhood to have no wish, no thought, no desire, but Christ—to feel that to die were bliss if it were for Christ—that to live in penury, and woe, and scorn, contempt, and misery, were sweet for Christ. To feel that it matters nothing what becomes of one’s self, so that our Master is but exalted—to feel that though like a sear leaf, we are blown in the blast, we are quite careless whither we are going, so long as we feel that the Master’s hand is guiding us according to his will ”

“ It is not enough to say that the present reading habits of our people give to the newspaper the first position as a teacher of the people; one should go on to reflect that this education is not by any means the best. It is too fragmentary and disconnected. The tendency which we regret is not the fault of the press, but it none the less requires the corrective of some kind of restraint upon its habit of monopolizing so large a portion of our time. One may easily learn to read the paper swiftly, get its proper value in a few moments and pass on. ”

“ In the words of Pindar: “All things depend on God alone; all which befalls mortals, whether it be good or evil fortune, is due to Zeus; he can draw light from darkness, and can vail the sweet light of day in obscurity. No human action escapes him; happiness is found only in the way which leads to him; virtue and wisdom flow from him alone.” ”

“ It is difficult for us to put ourselves in the place of the ancients as regards slaves. They were looked upon strictly as part of the chattels of the house, on a level rather with horses and oxen than with human beings. No Greek philosopher, however humane, had the least idea of objecting to slavery in itself, which was, Aristotle thought, quite necessary and natural in all society; but there were Greeks who objected to other Greeks being enslaved and thought that only barbarians should be degraded to this condition. ”