To Cortland Academy students came from far and near; and it soon began sending young men into the foremost places of State and Church. At an early day, too, it began receiving young women and sending them forth to become the best of matrons. As my family left the place when I was seven years old I was never within its walls as a student, but it acted powerfully on my education in two ways,--it gave my mother the best of her education, and it gave to me a respect for scholarship.
The library and collections, though small, suggested pursuits better than the scramble for place or pelf; the public exercises, two or three times a year, led my thoughts, no matter how vaguely, into higher regions, and I shall never forget the awe which came over me when as a child, I saw Principal Woolworth, with his best students around him on the green, making astronomical observations through a small telescope.
Thus began my education into that great truth, so imperfectly understood, as yet, in our country, that stores, shops, hotels, facilities for travel and traffic are not the highest things in civilization.
This idea was strengthened in the family. Devoted as my father was to business, he always showed the greatest respect for men of thought. I have known him, even when most absorbed in his pursuits, to watch occasions for walking homeward with a clergyman or teacher, whose conversation he especially prized. There was scant respect in the family for the petty politicians of the region; but there was great respect for the instructors of the academy, and for any college professor who happened to be traveling through the town. I am now in my sixty-eighth year, and I write these lines from the American Embassy in Berlin. It is my duty here, as it has been at other European capitals, to meet various high officials; but that old feeling, engendered in my childhood, continues, and I bow to the representatives of the universities,--to the leaders in science, literature, and art, with a feeling of awe and respect far greater than to their so-called superiors,--princelings and high military or civil officials.
Influences of a more direct sort came from a primary school. To this I was taken, when about three years old, for a reason which may strike the present generation as curious. The colored servant who had charge of me wished to learn to read--so she slipped into the school and took me with her. As a result, though my memory runs back distinctly to events near the beginning of my fourth year, it holds not the faintest recollection of a time when I could not read easily. The only studies which I recall with distinctness, as carried on before my seventh year, are arithmetic and geography. As to the former, the multiplication-table was chanted in chorus by the whole body of children, a rhythmical and varied movement of the arms being carried on at the same time. These exercises gave us pleasure and fastened the tables in our minds. As to geography, that gave pleasure in another way. The books contained pictures which stimulated my imagination and prompted me to read the adjacent text.
There was no over-pressure. Mental recreation and information were obtained in a loose way from ``Rollo Books,'' ``Peter Parley Books,'' ``Sanford and Merton,''
the ``Children's Magazine,'' and the like. I now think it a pity that I was not allowed to read, instead of these, the novels of Scott and Cooper, which I discovered later. I devoutly thank Heaven that no such thing as a sensation newspaper was ever brought into the house,--even if there were one at that time,--which I doubt. As to physical recreation, there was plenty during the summer in the fields and woods, and during the winter in coasting, building huts in the deep snow, and in storming or defending the snow forts on the village green. One of these childish sports had a historical connection with a period which now seems very far away. If any old settler happened to pass during our snow-balling or our shooting with bows and arrows, he was sure to look on with interest, and, at some good shot, to cry out,--``SHOOT BURGOYNE!''--thus recalling his remembrances of the sharpshooters who brought about the great surrender at Saratoga.
In my seventh year my father was called to take charge of the new bank established at Syracuse, thirty miles distant, and there the family soon joined him. I remember that coming through the Indian Reservation, on the road between the two villages, I was greatly impressed by the bowers and other decorations which had been used shortly before at the installation of a new Indian chief.
It was the headquarters of the Onondagas,--formerly the great central tribe of the Iroquois,--the warlike confederacy of the Six Nations; and as, in a general way, the story was told me on that beautiful day in September a new world of romance was opened to me, so that Indian stories, and especially Cooper's novels, when I was allowed to read them, took on a new reality.
Syracuse, which is now a city of one hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants, was then a straggling village of about five thousand. After much time lost in sundry poor ``select schools'' I was sent to one of the public schools which was very good, and thence, when about twelve years old, to the preparatory department of the Syracuse Academy.
There, by good luck, was Joseph A. Allen, the best teacher of English branches I have ever known. He had no rules and no system; or, rather, his rule was to have no rules, and his system was to have no system. To genius. He seemed to divine the character and enter into the purpose of every boy. Work under him was a pleasure.
His methods were very simple. Great attention was given to reading aloud from a book made up of selections from the best authors, and to recitals from these.
