The good that they have done is not interred with their bones; and their

example will yet find many imitators, as men more generally and more
perfectly realize the importance of faith in childhood and youth, as the
element of a true faith in our race
The good that they have done is not interred with their bones; and their
example will yet find many imitators, as men more generally and more
perfectly realize the importance of faith in childhood and youth, as the
element of a true faith in our race. If this enterprise, in the judgment
of its founder, was not an experiment ten years ago, it cannot be so
regarded now; yet the public will look with anxiety, though with hope,
upon every change of the officers of the institution. The trustees
having appointed a new superintendent, he now assumes the great
responsibility. It may not be second to any in the state; yet a man of
energy, who is influenced by a desire to do good, and who will not
measure his reward by present emoluments or temporary fame, can bear
steadily and firmly the weight put upon him. The superintendent elect
has been a teacher elsewhere, and he is to be a teacher here also. His
work will not, in all particulars, correspond with the work that he has
left; yet the principles of government and education are in substance
the same. The head of a school always occupies a position of influence;
the characters of the children and youth confided to him are in a great
degree subject to his control. Here the teacher is neither aided nor
impeded by the usual home influences. This institution is at once a home
and a school; and its head has the united power and responsibility of
the parent and the teacher. Here are to be combined the social and moral
influences of home, the religious influences of the Sunday-school, with
the intellectual and moral training of the public school. He who to-day
enters upon this work should have both faith and courage. He is to deal
with the unfortunate rather than with the exceptional cases of humanity;
for all these are children whom the Father of the race, in his
providence, has confided to earthly parents to be educated for a
temporal and an immortal existence. That these parents, through crime,
ignorance, indolence, carelessness, or misfortune, have failed in their
work, is no certain evidence that we are to fail in ours. May we not
hope to see in this school the kindness, consideration, affection, and
forethought, of the parent, without the delusion which sometimes causes
the father or mother to treat the vices of the child as virtues, to be
encouraged? And may we not expect from the superintendent, to whom,
practically, the discipline of the school is confided, one
characteristic of good government, not always, it is feared, found in
punitive and reformatory institutions? I speak of the attributes of
equality, uniformity, and certainty, in the administration of the law.
To be sure, a school, a prison, or a state, will suffer when its code is
lax; and it will also suffer when its system is oppressive or
sanguinary; but these peculiarities in themselves do not so often, in
any community, produce dissatisfaction, disorder, and violence, as an
unequal, partial, and uncertain administration of the laws. If at times
the laws are administered strictly according to the letter, and if at
other times they are reluctantly enforced or altogether disregarded; if
it can never be known beforehand whether a violation is to be followed
by the prescribed penalty--especially if this uncertainty becomes
systematic, and a portion are favored, while the remainder are required
to answer strictly for all their delinquencies; and if, above all, these
favored ones are recognized as sentinels, or spies, or informers in the
service of the officers,--then not only will the spirit of
insubordination manifest itself, but that spirit may ripen into
alienations, feuds, and personal enmities, dangerous to the prosperity
of the institution. Here the scales of justice should be evenly
balanced, and the boy should learn, from his own daily experience, to
measure equal and exact justice unto others. I do not speak of systems
of government: they are essential, no doubt; but they are not to be
regarded as of the first importance in institutions for punishment or
reformation. Establish as wise a system as you can; but never trust to
that alone. Administer the system that you have with all the equality,
uniformity, and certainty, that you can command. As a general truth, it
may be said that the law is respected when these qualities are exhibited
in its administration; and, when these qualities are wanting, the spirit
of obedience is driven from the hearts and minds of the people.

Cast your eye round the room in which you sit, and select some three

or four things that have been with man almost since his beginning;
which at least we hear of early in the centuries and often among
the tribes
Cast your eye round the room in which you sit, and select some three
or four things that have been with man almost since his beginning;
which at least we hear of early in the centuries and often among
the tribes. Let me suppose that you see a knife on the table,
a stick in the corner, or a fire on the hearth. About each of these
you will notice one speciality; that not one of them is special.
Each of these ancestral things is a universal thing;
made to supply many different needs; and while tottering pedants
nose about to find the cause and origin of some old custom,
the truth is that it had fifty causes or a hundred origins.
The knife is meant to cut wood, to cut cheese, to cut pencils,
to cut throats; for a myriad ingenious or innocent human objects.
The stick is meant partly to hold a man up, partly to knock a man down;
partly to point with like a finger-post, partly to balance with
like a balancing pole, partly to trifle with like a cigarette,
partly to kill with like a club of a giant; it is a crutch and a cudgel;
an elongated finger and an extra leg. The case is the same, of course,
with the fire; about which the strangest modern views have arisen.
A queer fancy seems to be current that a fire exists to warm people.
It exists to warm people, to light their darkness, to raise
their spirits, to toast their muffins, to air their rooms,
to cook their chestnuts, to tell stories to their children, to make
checkered shadows on their walls, to boil their hurried kettles,
and to be the red heart of a man"s house and that hearth for which,
as the great heathens said, a man should die.