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The Forum (American magazine)
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Accessed: 2/27/20

The Forum
First issue March 1886; 133 years ago
Final issue 1950
Company Forum Publishing Company
Country United States
Based in New York City
Language English

The Forum was an American magazine founded in 1885 by Isaac Rice. It existed under various names and formats until it ceased publication in 1950. Published in New York, its most notable incarnation (1885 until 1902) was symposium based. Articles from prominent guest authors debated all sides of a contemporary political or social issue, often across several issues and in some cases, several decades. At other times, it published fiction and poetry, and published articles produced by staff columnists in a "news roundup" format.

At its zenith, The Forum became one of the most respected journals in America, alongside Atlantic Monthly and Harper's Magazine. It was exceptional of these in several respects, as it carried a more Southern emphasis, and was also the only journal widely accessible to Black Americans. Its articles were of such reliably high standard that they were often used as resources for colleges and universities, with the articles studied in seminar discussions. Writing in 1957, Frank Luther Mott wrote:

It would be difficult to find a better exposition of the more serious interests of the American mind in the decade of 1886 to 1896 than is afforded by the first twenty volumes of The Forum...The Progress of science and industry, education in its many phases, religious controversy, and movements in literature and the fine arts gave variety to Forum content.

The Forum's first editor was Lorettus Sutton Metcalf, whose skills established the magazine's reputation for academic content. The magazine became more famous when Walter Hines Page, the noted publisher, took over as editor in 1891. Later editors included Isaac Rice's brother Joseph Mayer Rice (a notable reform figure in the Progressive Era), Frederick Taber Cooper, and Henry Goddard Leach, who resumed the symposium format in 1923.

Editors

Editors of The Forum were as follows:

• Lorettus Sutton Metcalf (1886–91)
• Walter Hines Page (1891–95)
• Alfred Ernest Keet (1895–97)
• Joseph Mayer Rice (1897–1907)
• Frederic Taber Cooper (1907–09)
• Benjamin Russell Herts (1909–10)
• Mitchell Kennerley (1910–16)
• H. Thompson Rich (1917–18)
• Edward Wildman (1918–20)
• George Henry Payne (1920–23)
• Henry Goddard Leach and Frank C. Davidson (1923–26)
• Henry Goddard Leach (1926–40)
• Daniel George Redmond (1945–50)

Early years: Walter Hines Page 1886–95

Rice founded The Forum as a wedding gift to his wife Julia Hyneman Barnett. A German immigrant musician, Rice had enrolled at Columbia University School of Law in 1878, and after graduating in 1880, became the librarian of Columbia’s new School of Political Science. From 1884, he taught classes in the law school, but after he began to practice law, he resigned from teaching. As a lawyer specializing in monopolies and patents, he began to invest in the railroad industry, and then the Electric Storage Battery Company, of which he became president in 1897.

Rice was also a writer. In 1875, he released "What is Music?",[1] a slim volume that analysed various theories of music from across the globe, and attempted to create a cosmical theory of music based upon current knowledge. "By listening to a great composition," he wrote, "our mind undergoes the same process - first the mood, then the sentiment, then the definite thought. This order is characteristic of the perception of the beautiful in nature."

An infrequent contributor to the journal, Isaac Rice chose topics that were nonetheless eclectic. They include:

1. July 1892: The Consumer[2]
2. October 1893: Public Business and the Right to Steal[3]
3. August 1894: Legalized Plunder of Railroad Properties: The Remedy[4]
4. March 1912: Every Man is His Own Banker[5]

In its first year, the magazine had survived on a subscription circulation of around 2,000. Walter Hines Page joined the journal the following year as the new business manager, and quickly transformed its scope and ambition. Throwing himself and his personality into the work, he became critical of board members who thought that it was beneath the dignity of the journal to directly solicit manuscripts from major writers focused on contemporary issues. Page recruited a slew of celebrity experts and well known authorities – including Congressmen – in order to attract more readers. Their work, focused on national and international events, added a large degree of timeliness to its content.

Above all, Page was concerned with the state of the nation in the post Civil War period – the political landscape was dominated by the "boss system" of party political patronage, with underqualified and corrupt candidates elected to serve the local financial and industrial interests. He held hope that Grover Cleveland would signal a reformation of that system into a higher state of honesty, frugality, and sound financial policy, yet he was disappointed by Cleveland himself, who he saw as "plodding," "unimaginative," and "unaware of the forces changing the nation."

Page relinquished the editorship in 1895, over a squabble regarding control, and was hired by Houghton, Mifflin and Company, the publishers of Atlantic Monthly. A few months later he left, believing he was inadequately paid, and after a brief period working at the Harper Publishing House, he formed Doubleday, Page and Company, publishers of a new periodical, The World's Work.

Joseph Mayer Rice and educational reform

At various points in its history, The Forum concerned itself with issues surrounding the education system in America, specifically the curriculum. From January through October 1888, The Forum ran a symposium series entitled “What Shall the Public Schools Teach”, which included contributions from William T. Harris and Lester Frank Ward. Along with Rice, Ward became a major figure in the Progressive Education movement.

The Forum made its definitive statement of the education system in 1891–93 when it published a series of incisive muckraking articles by Joseph Mayer Rice. From 1888 to 1890 Rice had studied psychology and pedagogy in the German Universities of Jena and Leipzig, and had studied under Wilhelm Rein, an influential educational theorist. Rein proposed a philosophy of education that placed greater emphasis on the building of moral character over the consumption of facts.

Rice came to write for The Forum due to Page's interest in Rice's ideas about pedagogy, and the journal sponsored him as he conducted a six-month tour of thirty-six cities in the United States. He visited six to eight urban public elementary schools in each city, and spent the school hours of every day observing classroom events. He talked with approximately twelve hundred teachers, met with school officials and school board members, interviewed parents, and visited twenty teacher-training institutions.

Rice devoted the summer of 1892 to the analysis of data from his survey of schools. From October 1892 through June 1893, The Forum published a series of nine articles by Rice, where he reported tedious, pedantic teaching in traditionally structured schools, unassisted superintendents responsible for the supervision of hundreds of teachers, and board of education reports portraying deplorable conditions of schools. As anticipated by Page, Rice's study generated outraged reactions among a public that heretofore had assumed a fully functioning and effective educational system. Rice's articles earned him a reputation (not a pleasant one among many professional educators) for bringing the topic of schooling into the public's eye, and, in effect, introducing muckraking to the field of education.

The nine articles that Rice wrote for The Forum chart an exhaustive tour of public schools from the East Coast to the Midwest taken from December 1891 through first half of 1892. His criticisms mobilised parents against corrupt politicians, particularly after the articles were published in a collection called The Public School System of the United States,[6] which incorporated the original tour with a second survey undertaken in the spring of 1894, mainly of schools that had reformed their curriculum. "It is indeed incomprehensible," he wrote, "that so many loving mothers...are willing without hesitation to resign the fate of their little ones to the tender mercies of ward politicians, who in many instances have no scruples in placing the children in class-rooms the atmosphere of which is not fit for human beings to breathe, and in charge of teachers who treat them with a degree of severity that borders on barbarism."

The articles published by Rice in this time include:

1. December 1891: Need School be a Blight to Child Life?[7]
2. October 1892: Our Public School System: Evils in Baltimore[8]
3. November 1892: Our Public School System: Schools of Buffalo and Cincinnati[9]
4. December 1892: The Public Schools of St. Louis and Indianapolis[10]
5. January 1893: The Public School System of New York City[11]
6. February 1893: The Public Schools of Boston[12]
7. June 1893: Our Public School System: A Summary[13]
8. December 1893: A Plan to Free the Schools From Politics[14]

Rice returned to the University of Jena in the summer of 1893, returning the following year. Upon his return, he was determined to further document his conviction that a Progressive education was beneficial for students. He embarked on another Forum-sponsored tour in 1895, armed with a survey which he administered to nearly 33,000 young students. In particular, Rice found no link between the time spent on spelling drills and students' performance on spelling tests. His study was far ahead of its time,[according to whom?] both in the subject of pedagogy and overall methodology.

Articles referring to this later study include:

1. June 1895: A Rational Correlation of School Studies[15]
2. August 1895: Substitution of Teacher for Text-Book[16]
3. December 1896: How Shall the Child be Taught? Obstacles to Rational Educational Reform[17]
4. January 1896: How Shall the Child be Taught? The Essentials in Elementary Education[18]
5. August 1897: The Futility of the Spelling Grind I[19]
6. June 1897: The Futility of the Spelling Grind II[20]

American imperialism

From 1898 to 1900, The Forum analysed the implications of the United States' flirtation with imperialism in Guam, the Philippines, China and Puerto Rico. Several of the articles paid reference to the "Open Door Policies" of U.S. Secretary of State John Hay. Composed in 1899, the policy allowed multiple imperial powers to access China without committing to direct control, as was the case with Great Britain in India. Though treaties made after 1900 refer to the open door, competition for access to China continued. The term is now more commonly associated with the historian William Appleman Williams, who used it to refer to U.S. economic imperialism in the developing world.

Articles on these issues include:


1. January 1898: China, and the Chinese Railway Concessions[21] by Clarence Cary
2. March 1898: The Duty of Annexing Hawaii[22] by Senator John T. Morgan
3. June 1898: The War for Cuba[23] by Joseph Edgar Chamberlain
4. July 1898: The Philippine Islands[24] by Frank F. Hilder
5. November 1898: Shall we Keep the Philippines?[25] by Charles Demby
6. February 1899: Coaling Stations for the Navy[26] by R.B.Bradford
7. April 1899: American Opportunities in China[27] by Gilbert Reid
8. November 1899: How Shall Puerto Rico be Governed?[28] by H. K. Carrol

Lynching

Lynching of Black Americans was an issue that was discussed several times, though The Forum never took a definitive line for or against the practice.

In November 1893, Walter Hines Page wrote in "The Last Hold of the Southern Bully"[29] that lynching was a social crime unheard of during the era of slavery, and was something that society should be spared from, due to its inflammable nature. Using the example of a sexual offense committed by a black man on a white woman, Page asked why black offenders were dealt with so severely when similar crimes committed by white men against black women were regarded as venial offenses. The answer was to build a social and political alliance between state conventions, ecclesiastical organisations and the media to defeat the evil practice. "It is the vast majority of good men, law-loving men who make up these organisations, and it is they who must defend themselves from the dangerous savagery of the smaller number who regard it as a manly thing to take the law into their own hands."

Other writers took differing stances on the issue. Atticus G. Heygood, a noted Methodist scholar, supporter of emancipation and author of Our Brother in Black: His Freedom and His Future (1881), contributed "The Black Shadow on the South",[30] in which he stated that the most alarming fact about lynching was that the practice had ceased to alarm the public. "In a civilised society...lynching is a crime against God and man...lynching is anarchy." On the other side of the issue, Chas Smith asked in October 1893: "Have American Negroes too Much Liberty?"[31]

Other articles to discuss lynching and violence against Blacks include:

1. November 1893: Negro Outrage No Excuse For Lynching[32] by L. E. Bleckley
2. September 1894: The Lessons of Recent Civil Disorders[33] by Thomas M. Cooley
3. January 1899: The Race War in North Carolina[34]
4. December 1926: Symposium: Is Lynching Ever Defensible? I. The Motives of Judge Lynch][35] by George W. Chamlee

II. The Mind of the Lynching Mob[36] by John P. Fort

Decline: Alfred Ernest Keet and Joseph Mayer Rice 1895–1907

Following the departure of Page, Alfred Ernest Keet spent a short period as editor from 1895-1897 before he was replaced by Joseph Mayer Rice, who served until 1907. Around 1900, circulation began to decline and the choice was made in July 1902 to make the magazine a quarterly. The essays were gone, replaced by a sectional format with regular contributors. Notable contributors were Henry Litchfield West, on “American Politics” Ossian H. Lang on “Educational Outlook” and Alexander D. Noyes, who later served as financial reporter for the New York Times, on “Finance.”

Black American contributors

By the turn of the century, The Forum had garnered a reputation for soliciting more articles from Black American contributors than any other magazine. Contributors included Booker T Washington, William Scarborough of Wilberforce University and author of The Future of the Negro[37] (1889) Edward T Blyden, a Liberian politician, Professor Kelly Miller of Howard University, President J C Price of Livingstone College, and William Hooper Councill.

Articles included:

1. December 1898: The Educated Negro and Menial Pursuits][38] by William Scarborough
2. July 1898: The Future of the Negro[39] by William Hooper Councill
3. May 1901: The Negro and Our New Possessions[40] by William Scarborough
4. February 1901: The Negro and Education][41] by Kelly Miller
5. February 1902: The Expansion of the Negro Population][42] by Kelly Miller

Walter Hines Page was a huge supporter of Booker T Washington. Like many of the writers at The Forum, Washington stated that industrial education was required to further the progress of Black Americans. A few days before he died in 1916, Washington wrote to The Forum suggesting an article dealing with "the definitive, indisputable facts relating to the Negro's progress as a race.' His death meant the article was never completed, but Washington did send notes, which were published in the March 1916 issue under the title Fifty Years of Negro Progress.[43] In various areas, from literacy, to business, to health and standards of living, Washington saw a race that had made significant strides. He concluded: "Often I feel proud that I belong to a race in America which can never hope to be superior to the races about it in physical power; but whose growth must be in matters of the spirit and the ever-increasing success which attends such growth... are making the Negro into that fine type of citizen who may yet become the conservator of the finest and best of real civilization."

Contributions from Theodore Roosevelt

In the history of the magazine, four future presidents wrote articles for The Forum. Of note are Woodrow Wilson’s articles, given his friendship and future association with Page. But it is Theodore Roosevelt, who contributed half a dozen articles between 1893 and 1895, who provides the most interesting and idiosyncratic articles, particularly in two articles that celebrate the virtues of masculinity.

In August 1893's “Big Game Disappearing in the West”,[44] Roosevelt boasts of his prowess as a hunter, and describes a series of potential American hunting experiences in vivid detail. “It has been my good luck to kill every kind of game properly belonging to the United States [but] I have never seen a grisly roped by the riders of the plains, nor a black bear killed with the knife and hounds in the southern canebrakes.” However, he also warned that though hunting is a noble and masculine pursuit, it should not be abused. Identifying the overhunting of cattle near his ranch in Little Missouri, he stated: “It is always lawful to kill dangerous or noxious animals, like the bear, cougar and wolf; but other game should only be shot when there is a need of the meat.”

Echoing his subsequent success as President in allocating land for forest conservation and preservation, Roosevelt concluded his article with a demand: “We need, in the interest of the community at large, a rigid system of game laws,” and to “establish, under the control of the State, great national forest reserves, which shall also be a breeding-grounds and nurseries for wild game; though I should much regret to see grow up in this country a system of large private game-preserves kept for the enjoyment of the very rich.”

In July 1894's “The Manly Virtues and American Politics”,[45] Roosevelt described the corrupt politician as a greater foe of the nation than the private trusts and monopolies. The correct attitude of citizen who wished to commit to public life was disinterestedness, honesty, and above all, efficiency. He must be willing to meet men of far lower ideals than his own, and to act with them rather than criticise. “It is not the man who sits by his fireside reading his evening paper and saying how bad our politics and politicians are who will ever do anything to save us; it is the man who goes out into the rough hurly-burly of the caucus...and faces his fellows on equal terms.”

Just as important was to encourage the citizen to work for good government as a means to itself, rather than material gain. To do this, citizens should be pressed to political involvement as a matter of plain duty. A righteous man “must do his share, unless he is willing to prove himself unfit for free institutions, fit only to live under a government where he will be plundered and bullied...on account of his selfish timidity.”

In April 1894, "What 'Americanism' Means"[46] emphasised how strong the emotion of patriotism could be, and that it was the responsibility of the truest Americans were those who protected patriotism from those who used it as a cloak for evil - “the class of hypocrites and demagogues, the class that is always prompt to steal the watchwords of righteousness and use them in the interests of evil doing.”

True patriotism was neither foolish optimism, nor ignoble pessimism, but a sober acceptance of the many advantages America held. It was a question of spirit of convictions and purpose, not a creed or birthplace. A vigilant defense against the forces of separatism was required - be they found in small minded provincial patriotism, a complete absence of patriotism, or the subversion of patriotism by those immigrants who choose not to integrate themselves in the American community. “A Scandinavian, a German, or an Irishman who has really become an American has the right to stand on exactly the same footing as any native born citizen...we must stand shoulder to shoulder, not asking as to the ancestry or creed of our comrades, but only demanding that they be in very truth Americans, ad that we all work together, heart, hand and head, for the honour and greatness of our common country.”

Other articles written by Roosevelt:

1. February 1895: True American Ideals[47]
2. September 1895: The Enforcement of Law[48]
3. December 1895: Thomas Brackett Reed and the Fifty-First Congress[49]

Resurgence: Frederick Taber Cooper and Mitchell Kennerley 1907–16

In 1908, The Forum returned to monthly publication and expanded its format to include fiction, poetry and reviews. Early work by Sherwood Anderson, H.L. Mencken and Edna St. Vincent Millay appeared. Readership gradually increased. In 1909, Rice resigned. His successor, Frederick Taber Cooper opened the magazine to outside reviews and further expanded its literary offerings.

The first novella to appear was The Point of Honor: A Military Tale[50] by Joseph Conrad, author of Heart of Darkness, The Outcast of the Islands and The Secret Agent. From that point, The Forum attracted contributions from some of the most distinguished authors and playwrights of the day, including Thomas Hardy, Jules Verne, and H.G. Wells.

Notable contributions include:

1. January 1912: A Honeymoon Christmas[51] by Marian Cox
2. May 1913: The Holy Man[52] by Frank Harris
3. December 1915: The Free Vacation House[53] by Anzia Yezierska
4. May 1916: The Magical City (A Play)[54] by Zoe Akins
5. June 1916: Blackfoot's Masterpiece[55] by Sherwood Anderson
6. October 1924 - April 1924: Soundings (Seven Parts)[56] by Arthur Hamilton Gibbs
7. December 1925: The Pearl of Love[57] by H. G. Wells

Journalists

In this era, The Forum also accepted contributions from prominent journalists and critics, including a number of articles from G.K Chesterton and Upton Sinclair, and early career articles from Walter Lippmann and Henry Mencken. Lippmann's first contributions were three articles of political analysis published in early 1913: The Taboo in Politics,[58] The Changing Focus in Politics[59] and For Theorists.[60] Mencken's contribution were slight by comparison, consisting of a review of Willard Huntington Wrights A Man of Promise in April 1916 entitled America Produces a Novelist.[61]

Coolidge, Harding and Hoover

In January 1920, Calvin Coolidge stated that politics was a means to an end, a process rather than a product. Like all other values, it had its chimeras, but it was an ultimately noble profession. As a consequence, public confidence in government was a matter of great concern, and the differentiation between partisan assertions and reality had to be made clear. “No system of government can stand that lacks public confidence, and no progress can be made on the assumption of false premise".

Shortly before he was elected President, Harding mused upon the responsibilities of the office. “My Americanism” read like a contract to the American people. Along with the usual pleas to embrace representative government over dictatorship and special interests, he stated that to make false appeals would rob the nation of its dignity, and would drag the attention of the American people into the mire. “As I see it, if I were to stoop to insincerity, to mere clamour, to political expediency, to appeals to special classes, I would be failing in that purpose which I trust shall always be mine: not my own interest, not even the interest of my party first, but America First.”

While serving as the head of the American Relief Administration, Herbert Hoover contributed “The Food Future” which highlighted contemporary issues in the American food supply chain, particularly food shortages and price inflation. He also outlined American responsibilities to a recovering Europe. “There are millions of people now liberated from the German yoke,” he wrote, “for whose interests we have fought and bled for the last eighteen months. We dare not neglect any measure which enables them to return to health, to self-support and to their national life.” The following year, he reiterated that American aid should continue until European nations were able to perform the whole task of feeding their people themselves.

Commercial peak: Henry Goddard Leach 1926–45

By the 1920s, pro and con articles on contemporary issues returned. Subjects included communism, religious fundamentalism, and military preparedness. Circulation reached 90,000 by the end of the decade. In 1930, The Forum merged with Century Magazine, to add an upper class element to attract advertisers. Forum and Century provided articles on cures to the economic situation during the Great Depression, including a notable article by John Maynard Keynes Causes of World Depression,[62] published in 1931, years before his ideas came into vogue. Charles Beard, the father of the Progressive School of History, contributed an article entitled "A Five-Year Plan for America",[63] an article advocating national economic planning. At the same time, the Swope Plan, and other economic policies, were debated at length.

The end 1945–50

By mid 1940, circulation had dropped to about 35,000, prompting a sale to Current History Magazine. Another transfer a few years later, another name change and a re-appearance under its original title, The Forum closed in 1950.

Notes

1. "What Is Music? by Isaac Leopold Rice". UNZ.org.
2. "The Consumer by Isaac L. Rice, The Forum, July 1892". UNZ.org.
3. "Public Business and the Right to Steal by Isaac L. Rice, The Forum, October 1893". UNZ.org.
4. "Legalized Plunder of Railroad Properties: the Remedy by Isaac L. Rice, The Forum, August 1894". UNZ.org.
5. "Every Man His Own Banker by Isaac L. Rice, The Forum, Friday, March 1st, 1912". UNZ.org.
6. Rice, Joseph Mayer (19 April 1969). "The public-school system of the United States". New York : Arno Press and the New York Times – via Internet Archive.
7. "Need School be a Blight to Child Life? by J.M. Rice, The Forum, December 1891". UNZ.org.
8. "Our Public-School System: Evils in Baltimore by J.M. Rice, The Forum, October 1892". UNZ.org.
9. "Our Public-School System by J.M. Rice, The Forum, November 1892". UNZ.org.
10. "The Public Schools of St. Louis and Indianapolis by J.M. Rice, The Forum, December 1892". UNZ.org.
11. "The Public-School System of New York City by J.M. Rice, The Forum, January 1893". UNZ.org.
12. "The Public Schools of Boston by Dr. J.M. Rice, The Forum, February 1893". UNZ.org.
13. "Our Public School System: A Summary by J.M. Rice, The Forum, June 1893". UNZ.org.
14. "A Plan to Free the Schools from Politics by J.M. Rice, The Forum, December 1893". UNZ.org.
15. "A Rational Correlation of School Studies by J.M. Rice, The Forum, June 1895". UNZ.org.
16. "Substitution of Teacher for Text-Book by J.M. Rice, The Forum, August 1895". UNZ.org.
17. "How Shall the Child be Taught? by J.M. Rice, The Forum, December 1896". UNZ.org.
18. "How Shall the Child be Taught? by J.M. Rice, The Forum, January 1897". UNZ.org.
19. "The Futility of the Spelling Grind---I by J.M. Rice, The Forum, April 1897". UNZ.org.
20. "The Futility of the Spelling Grind---II by J.M. Rice, The Forum, June 1897". UNZ.org.
21. "China, and Chinese Railway Concessions by Clarence Cary, The Forum, January 1898". UNZ.org.
22. "The Duty of Annexing Hawaii by Senator John T. Morgan, The Forum, March 1898". UNZ.org.
23. "The War for Cuba by Joseph Edgar Chamberlin, The Forum, June 1898". UNZ.org.
24. "The Philippine Islands by Frank F. Hilder, The Forum, July 1898". UNZ.org.
25. "Shall We Keep the Philippines? by Charles Denby, The Forum, November 1898". UNZ.org.
26. "Coaling-Stations for the Navy by R.B. Bradford, The Forum, February 1899". UNZ.org.
27. "American Opportunities in China by Gilbert Reid, The Forum, April 1899". UNZ.org.
28. "How Shall Puerto Rico be Governed? by H.K. Carroll, The Forum, November 1899". UNZ.org.
29. "The Last Hold of the Southern Bully by Walter H. Page, The Forum, November 1893". UNZ.org.
30. "The Black Shadow in the South by Atticus G. Haygood, The Forum, October 1893". UNZ.org.
31. "Have American Negroes too Much Liberty? by Chas. H. Smith, The Forum, October 1893". UNZ.org.
32. "Negro Outrage no Excuse for Lynching by L.E. Bleckley, The Forum, November 1893". UNZ.org.
33. "The Lessons of Recent Civil Disorders by Thomas M. Cooley, The Forum, September 1894". UNZ.org.
34. "The Race War in North Carolina by Henry Litchfield West, The Forum, January 1899". UNZ.org.
35. "Is Lynching Ever Defensible? by George W. Chamlee, The Forum, December 1926". UNZ.org.
36. "Is Lynching Ever Defensible? by John P. Fort, The Forum, December 1926". UNZ.org.
37. "The Future of the Negro by William Sanders Scarborough". UNZ.org.
38. "The Educated Negro and Menial Pursuits by W.S. Scarborough, The Forum, December 1898". UNZ.org.
39. "The Future of the Negro by W.H. Councill, The Forum, July 1899". UNZ.org.
40. "The Negro and Our New Possessions by Prof. W.S. Scarborough, The Forum, May 1901". UNZ.org.
41. "The Negro and Education by Kelly Miller, The Forum, February 1901". UNZ.org.
42. "The Expansion of the Negro Population by Prof. Kelly Miller, The Forum, February 1902". UNZ.org.
43. "Fifty Years of Negro Progress by Booker T. Washington, The Forum, March 1916". UNZ.org.
44. "Big Game Disappearing in the West by Theodore Roosevelt, The Forum, August 1893". UNZ.org.
45. "The Manly Virtues and Practical Politics by Theodore Roosevelt, The Forum, July 1894". UNZ.org.
46. "What "Americanism" Means by Theodore Roosevelt, The Forum, April 1894". UNZ.org.
47. "True American Ideals by Theodore Roosevelt, The Forum, February 1895". UNZ.org.
48. "The Enforcement of Law by Theodore Roosevelt, The Forum, September 1895". UNZ.org.
49. "Thomas Brackett Reed and the Fifty-First Congress by Theodore Roosevelt, The Forum, December 1895". UNZ.org.
50. "Conrad First: The Point of Honor; A Military Tale in The Forum (New York, NY, USA)". conradfirst.net.
51. "A Honeymoon Christmas by Marian Cox, The Forum, Monday, January 1st, 1912". UNZ.org.
52. "The Holy Man by Frank Harris, The Forum, May 1913". UNZ.org.
53. "The Free Vacation House by Anzia Yezierska, The Forum, December 1915". UNZ.org.
54. "The Magical City by Zoe Akins, The Forum, May 1916". UNZ.org.
55. "Blackfoot's Masterpiece by Sherwood Anderson, The Forum, June 1916 - UNZ.org". UNZ.org.
56. "Soundings---I by Arthur Hamilton Gibbs, The Forum, October 1924". UNZ.org.
57. "The Pearl of Love by H.G. Wells, The Forum, December 1925". UNZ.org.
58. "The Taboo in Politics by Walter Lippmann, The Forum, February 1913". UNZ.org.
59. "The Changing Focus in Politics by Walter Lippmann, The Forum, March 1913". UNZ.org.
60. "For Theorists by Walter Lippmann, The Forum, April 1913". UNZ.org.
61. "America Produces a Novelist by H.L. Mencken, The Forum, April 1916". UNZ.org.
62. "Causes of World Depression by John Maynard Keynes, The Forum, January 1931". UNZ.org.
63. "A "Five-Year Plan" for America by Charles A. Beard, The Forum, July 1931". UNZ.org.
External links[edit]
• ISSN: 2160-8598 [OCLC]
• The Forum at the HathiTrust
Media related to The Forum (magazine) at Wikimedia Commons

[admin]

A Brief Overview of Progressive Education
by uvm.edu
Accessed: 2/27/20

-- A new education for a new era: the contribution of the conferences of the New Education[al] Fellowship to the disciplinary field of education 1921–1938, by Kevin J. Brehony

-- What Is and What Might Be: A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular, by Edmond Holmes

-- The Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980s, by Marilyn Ferguson

-- Changing Images of Man: Prepared by the Center for the Study of Social Policy/SRI International, edited by O. W. Markley, Project Director and Willis W. Harman, Project Supervisor

During most of the twentieth century, the term "progressive education" has been used to describe ideas and practices that aim to make schools more effective agencies of a democratic society. Although there are numerous differences of style and emphasis among progressive educators, they share the conviction that democracy means active participation by all citizens in social, political and economic decisions that will affect their lives. The education of engaged citizens, according to this perspective, involves two essential elements: (1). Respect for diversity, meaning that each individual should be recognized for his or her own abilities, interests, ideas, needs, and cultural identity, and (2). the development of critical, socially engaged intelligence, which enables individuals to understand and participate effectively in the affairs of their community in a collaborative effort to achieve a common good. These elements of progressive education have been termed "child-centered" and "social reconstructionist" approaches, and while in extreme forms they have sometimes been separated, in the thought of John Dewey and other major theorists they are seen as being necessarily related to each other.

These progressive principles have never been the predominant philosophy in American education. From their inception in the 1830s, state systems of common or public schooling have primarily attempted to achieve cultural uniformity, not diversity, and to educate dutiful, not critical citizens. Furthermore, schooling has been under constant pressure to support the ever-expanding industrial economy by establishing a competitive meritocracy and preparing workers for their vocational roles. The term "progressive" arose from a period (roughly 1890-1920) during which many Americans took a more careful look at the political and social effects of vast concentrations of corporate power and private wealth. Dewey, in particular, saw that with the decline of local community life and small scale enterprise, young people were losing valuable opportunities to learn the arts of democratic participation, and he concluded that education would need to make up for this loss. In his Laboratory School at the University of Chicago, where he worked between 1896 and 1904, Dewey tested ideas he shared with leading school reformers such as Francis W. Parker and Ella Flagg Young. Between 1899 and 1916 he circulated his ideas in works such as The School and Society, The Child and the Curriculum, Schools of Tomorrow, and Democracy and Education, and through numerous lectures and articles. During these years other experimental schools were established around the country, and in 1919 the Progressive Education Association was founded, aiming at "reforming the entire school system of America."

Led by Dewey, progressive educators opposed a growing national movement that sought to separate academic education for the few and narrow vocational training for the masses. During the 1920s, when education turned increasingly to "scientific" techniques such as intelligence testing and cost-benefit management, progressive educators insisted on the importance of the emotional, artistic, and creative aspects of human development--"the most living and essential parts of our natures," as Margaret Naumburg put it in The Child and the World. After the Depression began, a group of politically oriented progressive educators, led by George Counts, dared schools to "build a new social order" and published a provocative journal called The Social Frontier to advance their "reconstructionist" critique of laissez faire capitalism. At Teachers College, Columbia University, William H. Kilpatrick and other students of Dewey taught the principles of progressive education to thousands of teachers and school leaders, and in the middle part of the century, books such as Dewey's Experience and Education (1938) Boyd Bode's Progressive Education at the Crossroads (1938), Caroline Pratt's Learn from Children (1948), and Carlton Washburne's What is Progressive Education? (1952) among others, continued to provide a progressive critique of conventional assumptions about teaching, learning and schooling. A major research endeavor, the "eight-year study," demonstrated that students from progressive high schools were capable, adaptable learners and excelled even in the finest universities.

Nevertheless, in the 1950s, during a time of cold war anxiety and cultural conservatism, progressive education was widely repudiated, and it disintegrated as an identifiable movement. However, in the years since, various groups of educators have rediscovered the ideas of Dewey and his associates, and revised them to address the changing needs of schools, children, and society in the late twentieth century. Open classrooms, schools without walls, cooperative learning, multiage approaches, whole language, the social curriculum, experiential education, and numerous forms of alternative schools all have important philosophical roots in progressive education. John Goodlad's notion of "nongraded" schools (introduced in the late 1950s), Theodore Sizer's network of "essential" schools, Elliott Wigginton's Foxfire project, and Deborah Meier's student-centered Central Park East schools are some well known examples of progressive reforms in public education; in the 1960s, critics like Paul Goodman and George Dennison took Dewey's ideas in a more radical direction, helping give rise to the free school movement. In recent years, activist educators in inner cities have advocated greater equity, justice, diversity and other democratic values through the publication Rethinking Schools and the National Coalition of Education Activists.

Today, scholars, educators and activists are rediscovering Dewey's work and exploring its relevance to a "postmodern" age, an age of global capitalism and breathtaking cultural change, and an age in which the ecological health of the planet itself is seriously threatened. We are finding that although Dewey wrote a century ago, his insights into democratic culture and meaningful education suggest hopeful alternatives to the regime of standardization and mechanization that more than ever dominate our schools.

For further reading:

The Stone Trumpet: A Story of Practical School Reform by Richard A. Gibboney (SUNY Press, 1994).

Democracy, Education, and the Schools edited by Roger Soder (Jossey-Bass, 1996).

Progressive Education: From Arcady to Academe by Patricia Albjerg Graham (Teachers College Press, 1967)

Progressive Education for the 1990s: Transforming Practice edited by Kathe Jervis and Carol Montag (Teachers College Press, 1991).

Schools that Work: America's Most Innovative Public Education Programs by George Wood (Dutton, 1992).

The Struggle to Continue: Progressive Reading Instruction in the United States by Patrick Shannon (Heinemann, 1990).

The Story of the Eight-Year Study by Wilford M. Aikin (Harper, 1942).

John Dewey and American Democracy by Robert B. Westbrook (Cornell Univ. Press, 1991).

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Progressive Education Association
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 2/27/20

The Progressive Education Association was a group dedicated to the spread of progressive education in American public schools from 1919 to 1955. The group focused on pedagogy in elementary schools through the twenties. The group turned towards public schools and sociopolitical issues in the early 1930s, and launched three commissions into progressive school topics. The Eight-Year Study tested how American progressive secondary schools would prepare their students for college when released from the curricular restrictions of college admissions requirements. The other two commissions addressed curriculum towards the needs of democracy and students, and teaching materials to serve children's psychological needs. After a peak of activity in the late 1930s, the group struggled to regain its position of thought leadership and reconcile the competing interests within the group. It collapsed in the mid-1950s amidst rising anti-progressive education sentiment in cultural trends including political conservatism and anti-intellectualism, school standardization, and emphasis on vocational education.

Origins

The Association for the Advancement of Progressive Education was founded[1] in early 1919 by a group of wealthy Washington women and staff from private and public schools to bring progressive education to public schools across the United States. Led by Stanwood Cobb,[2] attendees of the first meeting included Marietta Johnson (Fairhope School) and affiliates of the Lincoln School of Teachers College, the Park School of Baltimore, and the Washington Montessori School.[1] The next year, the group adopted seven guiding tenets to drive growth and focus their organization, known as the Seven Principles of Progressive Education:[1]

1. Freedom for children to develop naturally
2. Interest as the motive of all work
3. Teacher as guide, not taskmaster
4. Change school recordkeeping to promote the scientific study of student development
5. More attention to all that affects student physical development
6. School and home cooperation to meet the child's natural interests and activities
7. Progressive school as thought leader in educational movements[3]

Elementary education was the group's initial focus, with common interest in the project method and child-centered education. Their conferences and discussions were based on themes of freedom and creative opportunity. Headmasters of small, private, high social class schools guided the organization through the twenties. Former Harvard president Charles W. Eliot served as its first honorary president, a title the philosopher John Dewey would later hold. Towards the decade's end, public school administrators and education academics associated with Teachers College replaced the headmasters as the organization turned to public schools. Likewise, the group traded its focus on pedagogy for focus on social and political issues, as embodied in George Counts's 1932 address, "Dare Progressive Education Be Progressive?" This grew the Association and membership quadrupled between 1924 and 1930 to 7,600 members.[1] The organization's activity peaked in the late 1930s,[2] as membership reached 10,000.[1] In 1931, the group became known as the Progressive Education Association.[1]

The Association initiated three commissions with lasting impact on American education scholarship.[1] The Commission on the Relation of School and College (1930–1942) issued a five-volume assessment of its Eight-Year Study, which reported that students who attended thirty progressive, secondary schools with experimental curriculum had fared as well in college as their peers from traditional preparatory secondary schools. The Commission on the Secondary School Curriculum (1933–1940) addressed how curriculum could meet democratic ideals and student needs. The Commission on Human Relations (1935–1942) reported on teaching materials to serve children's psychological needs in six volumes. The effects of these commissions were dulled by cultural factors.[1]

The Progressive Education Association additionally supported two publications: the quarterly journal Progressive Education (1924–1957) and The Social Frontier (1934–1943, renamed Frontiers of Democracy in 1939).[1]

After World War II, leaders of the progressive education movement were less involved in the Association. The group renamed as the American Education Fellowship in 1947, which was meant to reflect their expanded purpose and international reach. They could not, however, reconcile the opposed factions of their membership: those who either sought radical social change or practical school reform. Six years later, in 1953, they returned to the Progressive Education Association name for the organization's last two years. The John Dewey Society supported the Association during this time.[1]

The Association's cause for decline remains disputed.[1] In 1955, the organization shuttered amidst a surge of criticism towards progressive education,[2] in cultural trends including rising conservatism and anti-intellectualism in the political sphere and emphasis on vocational education and standardization in the schools as Progressive Education Association membership shriveled below 1,000. The Association has no archives.[1]

References

1. Kridel, Craig (1999). "Progressive Education Association (PEA)". In Altenbaugh, Richard J. (ed.). Historical Dictionary of American Education. pp. 303–ī304. ISBN 978-0-313-28590-5.
2. Cohen, Sol (1968). "Review of Progressive Education: From Arcady to Academe. A History of the Progressive Education Association, 1919-1955". The Journal of American History. 55 (1): 173–174. doi:10.2307/1894318. ISSN 0021-8723. JSTOR 1894318.
3. Friedman, Ian C. (2011). Education Reform. Library in a Book (Revised ed.). Facts on File. pp. 20–21. ISBN 978-0-8160-8238-4.

Further reading

• Cremin, Lawrence A. (1961). The Transformation of the School. New York: Knopf.
• Filler, Louis (1968). "Review of Progressive Education: From Arcady to Academe. A History of the Progressive Education Association, 1919-1955". The American Historical Review. 73 (5): 1671–1672. doi:10.2307/1851592. ISSN 0002-8762. JSTOR 1851592.
• Graham, Patricia Albjerg (1967). Progressive Education: From Arcady to Academe: A History of the Progressive Education Association 1919-1955. New York: Teachers College Press. OCLC 963444466.
• Horowitz, Helen L. (1971). "The Progressive Education Movement after World War I". History of Education Quarterly. 11 (1): 79–84. doi:10.2307/367061. ISSN 0018-2680. JSTOR 367061.
• Hymes, James L. (October 1975). "The Progressive Education Association". Childhood Education. 52 (1): 25–28.
• Nelson, Jack L. (1968). "Review of Progressive Education: From Arcady to Academe (A History of the Progressive Education Association 1919-1955)". AAUP Bulletin. 54 (1): 101–102. doi:10.2307/40223636. ISSN 0001-026X. JSTOR 40223636.

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Stanwood Cobb
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 2/27/20


Stanwood Cobb
Born: November 6, 1881, Newton, Massachusetts
Died: December 29, 1982 (aged 101), Chevy Chase, Maryland
Occupation: Educator
Nationality: American
Period: 1914–1979
Genre: non-fiction, poetry and religious
Subject: Education and Baháʼí Faith
Spouse: Ida Nayan Whitlam

Stanwood Cobb (November 6, 1881 – December 29, 1982) was an American educator, author and prominent Baháʼí of the 20th century.

He was born in Newton, Massachusetts, the son of Darius Cobb and his wife, née Laura Mae Lillie. Darius and his twin brother Cyrus Cobb were Civil War soldiers and artists, and descendants of Elder Henry Cobb of the second voyage of the Mayflower. Their mother was Eunice Hale Waite Cobb, founding president of the Ladies Physiological Institute of Boston. Darius Cobb and his wife had four daughters and three sons.[1] Stanwood Cobb studied at Dartmouth College, where he was valedictorian of his 1903 or 1905 graduating class, and then at Harvard Divinity School, earning an A.M. in philosophy and comparative religion 1910.[2][3][4] His thesis work, Communistic Experimental Settlements in the USA, observed that every such settlement had failed within a generation because of an inability of communism to get people to subordinate their own desires for the good of the group.[5] In 1919 he married Ida Nayan Whitlam.[2] Cobb was a member of several literary associations[2] and of the Cosmos Club of Washington, D.C.[4]

Cobb lived internationally for some years before settling in Chevy Chase, Maryland, where he died.

Career as educator

In 1907–1910, Cobb taught history and Latin at Robert College in Constantinople (now Istanbul), followed by several years teaching in the US and Europe.[2] He later headed the English department at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland (1914–15), taught at Asheville School in Asheville, North Carolina (1915–16), and was instructor in history and English at the United States Naval Academy (1916–19).[2] Frustrated by the teaching experience at the Academy, Cobb heard a lecture by Marietta Johnson who helped marshal and crystallize his thoughts on education practice and curriculum theory.[6] As a result, in 1919, Cobb founded the Chevy Chase Country Day School, of which he was the principal until his retirement,[2] and, active in the progressive education movement in the United States, became a founder and motivating force,[6] first secretary, and eventually president (1927–1930)[2] of The Association for the Advancement of Progressive Education, in 1931 renamed Progressive Education Association (PEA) and then American Education Fellowship.[7][8][9][10] The first president was Arthur E. Morgan.[11] Later the influential John Dewey served as president.[12] Cobb resigned the presidency in 1930 following the influx of supporters of George Counts who moved the focus of the Association from a student-centered learning approach to one of a social policy oriented approach to education theory.[11] However, between the enormous impact of World War II on all thought and the involvement of many members of the PEA in communism and the general atmosphere of Anti-communism in the United States the achievements of the PEA both before Cobb's resignation and after were largely lost.[6]

Life as a Baháʼí

After looking at Theosophy and Reform Judaism and other themes in religion'[13] Cobb investigated the Baháʼí Faith after a series of articles in the Boston Transcript on the religion attracted his attention. He pursued the interest to Green Acre conference center in Eliot, Maine in 1906 during his studies at Harvard Divinity School preparing for the Unitarian ministry. Sarah Farmer much affected Cobb,[13] and Thornton Chase was giving a series of talks.[14] It was on that occasion that Cobb became a Baháʼí.[4]

Between 1909 and 1913 he met with ʻAbdu'l-Bahá five times (twice in Akka and several times during the latter's travel to Europe and the US).[4][15] In 1911 Cobb and a number of others gave talks in honor of the personal invitation by ʻAbdu'l-Bahá to pilgrimage of Louis Gregory.[16]

Cobb was a founding member of the Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of Washington D. C. in 1933, and served on various committees (for example Cobb was Chairman of the Teaching Committee in 1935[17]) and edited two Baha'i journals: Star of the West in 1924, and World Order from 1935–39.[4]

Books and articles authored

Cobb was a prolific writer. Among his books were:

• The Real Turk, ISBN B000NUP6SI, 1914, The Pilgrim Press Publisher, (Summarized in The Bookman: A Review of Books and Life")'[1] p. 429.)
• Ayesha of the Bosphorus, 1915, Boston Murray and Emery Co. Publisher (Available online)
• The Essential Mysticism. 1918 Four Seasons Publisher, (republished 2006 by Kessinger Publishing, LLC as ISBN 978-1-4286-0910-5)
• Simia, A Tale in Verse. 1919 Cornhill Publisher
• The New Leaven: Progressive Education and Its Effect upon the Child and Society. 1928 (Guy Thomas Buswell review published in The Elementary School Journal, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Nov., 1928), pp. 232–233).
• The Wisdom of Wu Ming Fu 1931, Henry Holt and Company
• Discovering the Genius Within You 1932, John Day Publisher, and again, World Publishing Co., Cleveland, 1941.
• New Horizons for the Child. 1934 The Avalon Press Publisher
• Security in a Failing World. 1934 The Avalon Press Published
• The Way of Life of Wu Ming Fu. 1935 (reprinted 1942) The Avalon Press Publisher
• Character - A Sequence in Spiritual Psychology. 1938 The Avalon Press Publisher
• Symbols of America. 1946, The Avalon Press Publisher
• Tomorrow and Tomorrow. 1951 The Avalon Press Publisher
• The Donkey Or the Elephant. 1951 The Avalon Press Publisher
• What is Man?. 1952
• Sage of the Sacred Mountain; a Gospel of Tranquility. 1953, The Avalon Press
• Magnificent Partnership. 1954, Vantage Press Publisher (Warren S. Tryon review published in The New England Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Sep., 1955), p. 429)
• What is God?. 1955
• What is Love?. 1957, The Avalon Press, Publisher
• Islamic Contributions to Civilization. 1963 (Available online)
• Memories of ʻAbdu'l-Baha. 1962, The Avalon Press Publisher [2]
• The Importance of Creativity. 1967, Published Scarecrow Press
• Life With Nayan. 1969, The Avalon Press Publisher
• Radiant Living. 1970, The Avalon Press Publisher
• The Meaning of Life. 1972, The Avalon Press Publisher
• Thoughts on education and life. 1975, The Avalon Press Publisher
• A Call to Action: Develop Your Spiritual Power : Man's Fulfillment on the .... 1977, The Avalon Press Publisher
• A Saga of Two Centuries 1979 (Autobiography)

Similar to his books, the focus of Cobb's articles has been education and Baha'i oriented - he has contributed to or was anthologized by:

• The Atlantic Monthly (Feb 1921)
• The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research by the American Society for Psychical Research,
• The School Arts Magazine by Davis Press,
• Childhood Education by the Association for Childhood Education International
• Child Study by Child Study Association of America
• The New England Magazine by the Making of America Project
• The Path of Learning: Essays on Education by Henry Wyman Holmes, Burton P. Fowler, Published 1926 by Little, Brown and Company
• Progressive Education by Progressive Education Association
as well as
• The Baha'i World (see Baha'i Periodicals for information)
• World Order

See also

• Baháʼí views on Communism
• Education reform
• G. Stanley Hall
• International journal of progressive education

References

1. The Register of the Malden Historical Society Vol 6, 1919-20 by Mass Malden Historical Society, Frank S. Whitten Printer, p.70-3
2. John F. Ohles, ed. (1978). Biographical Dictionary of American Educators. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 275–6. ISBN 978-0-313-04012-2.
3. McLean, J.A., Pilgrim's Notes (blog), "What Stanwood Cobb Told Me About ʻAbdu'l-Bahá," Sunday, August 12, 2007
4. The Baháʼí World, Vol 18, Part 5, "In Memoriam: Stanwood Cobb, 1881–1982"
5. Cobb, Stanwood (1979). A Saga of Two Centuries. Washington DC: Avalon Press. p. 33.
6. Alternative Schools: Diverted but not Defeated Paper submitted to Qualification Committee, At UC Davis, California, July 2000, By Kathy Emery
7. Historical Dictionary of American Education ed. by Richard J. Altenbaugh, 1999 Greenwood Press Publisher, Progressive Education Association by Craig Kridel, p.303-4, ISBN 0-313-28590-X
8. University of Minnesota College of Education and Human Development, "Timeline: 1910s" Archived 2008-05-06 at Archive.today
9. Time Magazine, "Progressives' Progress," Monday, Oct. 31, 1938
10. Beck, Robert H. 1959. "Progressive Education and American Progressivism: Margaret Naumburg" (book review).Teachers College Record 60(4): 198-208
11. The Struggle for the American Curriculum by H. Kliebard, p. 168, published by Rutledge, 1955
12. Encyclopedia of Chicago - Progressive Education
13. Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality by Leigh Schmidt Cobb, published by HarperCollins, 2005, p. 218
14. Minutes of the House of Spirituality, 1 Sept. 1906
15. McLean, J.A., Pilgrim's Notes (blog), "Corrections to Blog on Stanwood Cobb...," Sunday, August 12, 2007
16. Biography of Hand of the Cause of God Mr. Louis George Gregory
17. Alain Locke: Faith and Philosophy by Christopher Buck, Studies in Babí and Baháʼí Religions - Volume 18, p.168

External links

• Works by or about Stanwood Cobb at Internet Archive
• Association for Childhood Education International

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Marietta Johnson
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 2/27/20

FROM THE EDUCATIONAL DEPARTMENT

It should be most encouraging to Theosophists, especially to those who are interested in the education of children, to find the leaders in the educational world in America, those who are making new experiments in education, promulgating the ideals which are thoroughly Theosophic in character even if not so labeled. Take for example, Mrs. Marietta Johnson, whose school at Fairhope, Ala., has acquired national fame. She has about 170 students, from kindergarten to high school and teachers' training class, who are in the charge of sixteen teachers. There is no danger of any child not receiving individual attention in such a school. She calls her school the "School of Organic Education" because it is designed to help the growing organism of the child to develop, not to crystalize, as is too sadly the case in public and many private schools. Mrs. Johnson says, quoting a psychologist, that over specialization means crystalization and that any specialization is over-specialization for the growing child. Hence in her school children do not learn to read, write or spell, nor to knit their brows over an adult arithmetic problem until nine or ten years of age, and then such subjects are learned only incidentally in the child's search for knowledge. It is a splendid Theosophic ideal -- this emphasis upon the right of the child to live his child life, learning to express himself bodily through singing, dramatization, creative handwork, and getting acquainted with his surroundings through nature study in the form of walks, observation, gardening, field geography, etc.

It should be a matter of pride that we, as Theosophists, can point to a similar school, managed and supported by Theosophists, the School of the Open Gate, at Krotona. Mrs. Mary Gray at the head of it and Miss Rena Conklin, the principal of the school, are to be congratulated for their courage to undertake such a responsibility. They deserve our hearty and generous support.

Mrs. Johnson, by the way, is broad enough to speak on education from a Theosophic platform. Recently the Chicago chapter of the Theosophical Fraternity in Education had the pleasure of having her lecture to them. They sent an announcement to each of nearly three hundred schools in the city and so were able to get a crowded house for her, several principles and a number of teachers attending. As Theosophists we should do all we can to help such practical idealists to raise the people's conception of true education to the level of their ideals.

Julia K. Sommer, President of The Theosophical Fraternity in Education in America.

-- The Messenger, Volumes III, No. 8 January, 1916 (The Official organ of the American section of the Theosophical Society, published monthly, edited by May S. Rogers, Krotona, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California

Marietta Johnson

Marietta Johnson

Marietta Pierce Johnson (1864–1938) was an educational reformer and Georgist.

Georgism, also called geoism and single tax (archaic), is an economic ideology holding that while people should own the value they produce themselves, economic value derived from land (often including natural resources and natural opportunities) should belong equally to all members of society. Developed from the writings of the economist and social reformer Henry George, the Georgist paradigm seeks solutions to social and ecological problems, based on principles of land rights and public finance which attempt to integrate economic efficiency with social justice.

Georgism is concerned with the distribution of economic rent caused by natural monopolies, pollution and the control of commons, including title of ownership for natural resources and other contrived privileges (e.g. intellectual property). Any natural resource which is inherently limited in supply can generate economic rent, but the classical and most significant example of land monopoly involves the extraction of common ground rent from valuable urban locations. Georgists argue that taxing economic rent is efficient, fair and equitable. The main Georgist policy recommendation is a tax assessed on land value. Georgists argue that revenues from a land value tax (LVT) can be used to reduce or eliminate existing taxes (for example, on income, trade, or purchases) that are unfair and inefficient. Some Georgists also advocate for the return of surplus public revenue to the people by means of a basic income or citizen's dividend.

Economists since Adam Smith and David Ricardo have observed that a public levy on land value does not cause economic inefficiency, unlike other taxes. A land value tax also has progressive tax effects. Advocates of land value taxes argue that they would reduce economic inequality, increase economic efficiency, remove incentives to underutilize urban land and reduce property speculation. The philosophical basis of Georgism dates back to several early thinkers such as John Locke, Baruch Spinoza[14] and Thomas Paine, but the concept of gaining public revenues mainly from land and natural resource privileges was widely popularized by Henry George and his first book Progress and Poverty (1879).

Georgist ideas were popular and influential during the late 19th and early 20th century.[16] Political parties, institutions and communities were founded based on Georgist principles during that time. Early devotees of Henry George's economic philosophy were often termed Single Taxers for their political goal of raising public revenue mainly from a land value tax, although Georgists endorsed multiple forms of rent capture (e.g. seigniorage) as legitimate. The term Georgism was invented later and some prefer the term geoism to distinguish their beliefs from those of Henry George.

-- Georgism, by Wikipedia

Johnson was born in St. Paul, Minnesota and moved with her family to Fairhope, Alabama in 1902. In 1907, she founded a progressive school called the School of Organic Education (now the Marietta Johnson School of Organic Education).

Johnson had been a teacher in the regular school system in Minnesota and had radical ideas on education reform. She felt that children should live natural lives, study the outdoors and not be forced to read at too young an age.

In her "organic school", tests were not administered, homework was withheld until high school, and grades were unknown. She required hand crafts and folk dancing along with the traditional academic curriculum. Her school was a magnet to young teachers and to artists, and was instrumental in building the reputation of Fairhope as an artists' colony. Encouraged and funded by friends in the small experimental community of Fairhope, Alabama, Johnson began her revolutionary school on a ten-acre campus – teaching, writing, training teachers in her method. Her little school attracted national attention, and she was one of the founders of the Progressive Education Association.

Johnson was in great demand as a lecturer and, after John Dewey's favorable review of her school in 1915, she achieved a worldwide recognition as a leader in the Progressive Education movement. She was responsible for the founding of many schools based upon her philosophy; however, her heart was in Fairhope, and her school there was the center of her activities. A speaker of great power, she was able to persuade audiences and educators of the validity of her philosophy, and her school attracted a number of intellectuals to Fairhope to enroll their children in The School of Organic Education. Johnson believed in classes without final examinations, homework, or failure.

The school reached its zenith in the 1920s, in part because of John Dewey's book and its reference to Johnson and her school. Through the great depression, two world wars and Johnson's death in 1938, the Organic School has never closed its doors and is still operating in Fairhope.

Three buildings of the school were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988 as School of Organic Education.[1]

References

1. "National Register of Historic Places Inventory/Nomination: School of Organic Education". National Park Service. Retrieved January 10, 2018. With six photos from 1987.

External links

• Official website
• "Marietta Johnson Museum". Marietta Johnson Museum. Retrieved October 2, 2013.
• "Memorial: Marietta Louise Pierce Johnson". findagrave.com. Retrieved October 2, 2013.

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School of the Open Gate
by Theosophy Wiki
Accessed: 2/27/20


Announcement in August, 1937 issue of The American Theosophist


Julia K. Sommer and schoolchildren on Mt. Wilson in 1922

The School of the Open Gate was a Theosophical school near Krotona in Hollywood, California, founded in 1918 by Mary Gray of Boston.[1] In the General Report of the T. S. of that year it was introduced:

The School of the Open Gate is a new T. S. venture within a charming little hill-side glen almost adjoining Krotona. Here the Theosophical principles of education will be employed by a corps of teachers trained in the best modern methods. The faces of the children who have come from far and wide show a quality which makes any effort worth while on their behalf. The organization known as the Theosophical Fraternity in Education is growing throughout the Section and is engaged in spreading the ideals of Theosophical education where they will do the most good in American public educational systems.[2]

The Handbook of Private Schools described it as "a modern open air school of the Theosophical cult for children from kindergarten to high school."[3]

In 1919 the responsibility for the school was transferred to the Theosophical Fraternity in Education, based in Chicago. Bonds were offered for $25 at 7% interest to finance school land and buildings, and donations were requested for a scholarship fund.[4]

Julia K. Sommer served as principal of the school from 1920-1925. She wrote:

Eight o'clock in the morning and a merry crowd of children dressed as for a hike were waiting expectantly in front of the main building of the School of the Open Gate one sunny day. Why so early? Soon the school bus drove up and all piled in and were driven off toward the boulevard. "We're going to Mt. Wilson" they shouted to a passerby who looked questioningly at the past disappearing bus. Their answer explains the early start. And a tired but happy lot of children and teachers came back just before bedtime that night. Some of them had that day seen snow for the first time in this life. A few of the more hardy ones had climbed to the very top of the mountain and had seen the observatory. They had gained first hand information of much that hitherto had been mere book knowledge to them.

This is the educational theory according to which the work of the School of the Open Gate is carried on - to get the children into intimate touch with that which they are studying, to make the world and life a real and living experience to them. Later the students of Shakespeare in the more advanced grades formed a theatre party with several members of the faculty and attended Robert Mantell's presentation of "As You Like It."

The geography of nearby fields, canyons and hills; the arithmetic required to keep score in games, to carry on a store, to sell the vegetables raised by them in the school gardens; and that necessary in the school shops all help to make lessons vivid and lasting in their effect upon young minds.[5]

Among the children who attended the school were Grayson and Stanley Rogers, the sons of L. W. Rogers, and the sons of Col. Bustillo of the Cuban army.[6] On April 7, 1922, students demonstrated their Theosophical attitudes with a generous project:

On Friday, April 7th, some of the pupils of the School of the Open Gate, gave an original entertainment for the benefit of the Panchama Free Schools of India. None of the faculty had been asked for either suggestions or help, and it was a great surprise to all who attended, both for the beauty of the entertainment and the fine spirit of helpfulness that prompted it...

The following children took part: Robert White, Genevieve Doolittle, Hari Cruz, Bernard Sacks, Etheleon Stanton, Dorothy White, Margaret Ann Veeck, and Dana Cruz. Miss irene Doolittle helped the children by giving a very beautiful dance.[7]

Notes

1. "Coeducational Schools," The Handbook of Private Schools Volume 7 (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1922), 272. Available at Google Books.
2. A. P. Warrington, "Report of the T.S. in America: Education," General Report of the T. S., 1918 (Adyar, Madras, India: Theosophical Publishing House, 1919), 40.
3. "Coeducational Schools," The Handbook of Private Schools Volume 7 (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1922), 272. Available at Google Books.
4. Julia K. Sommer, "The School of the Open Gate" The Messenger 9.4 (September 1921), 83.
5. "The School of the Open Gate," The Messenger 8.10 (March 1921), 632.
6. Anonymous, "The Cuban Section and the Next Congress" The Messenger 9.10 (March 1922), 224.
7. Anonymous, "For the Panchama Fund" The Messenger 9.12 (May, 1922), 266.
12 (May, 1922), 266.

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William Wilberforce Juvenal Colville 1859(?)-1917
by Encyclopedia.com
Updated Feb 20, 2020

In a letter from Greenacre dated July 31, 1894, Vivekananda mentioned, "One Mr. Colville from Boston is here; he speaks every day, it is said, under spirit control."80 In her "Reminscences" Alice Hansbrough added:

While he was under contract with that lecture bureau (Slayton-Lyceum Bureau of Chicago] during his first visit to the West, he travelled with a very well-known spiritualist named Colville, who apparently was also under contract to the same bureau. Swamiji used to say, "If you think X is hard to live with, you should have travelled with Colville." The man seems to have had a nurse to look after him all time.81

Sarah Farmer wrote that she received the inspiration for the Greenacre Religious Conference while listening to a lecture by W.J. Colville in Boston in 1892.82 English born Wilberforce J. Colville (1859-1917), an inspirational speaker and author of little formal education, from the age of fourteen would enter into a trance and an entity would appear to speak through him. While apparently unconscious, he answered questions on a variety of subjects suggested by the audience, demonstrating knowledge he did not normally possess. Under the pressure of some foreign influence, his lips moved mechanically. At the audience's request, he frequently composed impromptu poems. Colville toured England and the United States where he settled down permanently, and authored many books on the occult.83

-- Western Admirers of Ramakrishna and His Disciples, by Gopal Stavig

-- The Lost Continent, Atlantis; and the Civilization of the Pre-Historic World. An Inspirational Lecture by W.J. Colville

PERSONAL:

Born September 5, c. 1859 (some sources cite from 1856 to 1862); died January 15, 1917.

CAREER: Spiritual leader. Toured the United States, beginning c. 1876; also toured in England and Australia.

WRITINGS:

Inspirational Lectures and Impromptu Poems, J. Burns (London, England), 1884.

Inspirational Discourses, 1886.

The Spiritual Science of Health and Healing, Garden City Publishing (Chicago, IL), 1887.

Universal Theosophy: The Science of Health and Healing, Garden City Publishing (Chicago, IL), 1887.

Spiritual Therapeutics; or, Divine Science, Educator Publishing (Chicago, IL), 1888, 3rd edition, 1890.

Short Lessons in Theosophy, 1889.

Studies in Theosophy, Colby & Rich (Boston, MA), 1890.

Stepping Stones to Health: Three Inspirational Lectures on Spiritual Therapeutics, Press of the Plimpton Manufacturing Co. (Hartford, CT), 1890.

World's Fair Text Book of Mental Therapeutics:Comprising Twelve Lessons Delivered at the Health College, 7th edition, Educator Publishing (Chicago, IL), c. 1893.

Dashed against the Rock: A Romance of the Coming Age, Colby & Rich (Boston, MA), 1894.

Glints of Wisdom; or, Helpful Sayings for Busy Moments, Being Abstract from Lectures with Reflections, Statements, Meditations, and Mottoes, by W. J. Colville; An Encyclopedia of Psychological Laws Contained in an Endless Variety of Subjects, compiled by Alice E. Livingston, Colby & Rich (Boston, MA), 1895.

Our Places in the Universal Zodiac, 1895.

A History of Theosophy, Freedom Publishing (Boston, MA), 1896.

Old and New Psychology, Banner of Light Publishing (Boston, MA), 1897.

Law of Correspondences Applied to Healing: A Course of Seven Practical Lessons, F. M. Harley Publishing (Chicago, IL), 1898.

Life and Power from Within, 1900.

The People's Handbook of Spiritual Science: W. J.Colville's Private Course of Lessons for the Use of Students, Banner of Light Publishing (Boston, MA), 1902.

Spiritual Science: An Advanced Course of Lessons, Alliance Publishing (New York, NY), 1903.

The Throne of Eden: A Psychical Romance, Banner of Light Publishing (Boston, MA), 1903.

The Human Aura and the Significance of Color, 1904.

Mediumship Defined and Defended: A Refutation of the Great Psychological Crime, Banner of Light Publishing (Boston, MA), 1904.

The Living Decalogue: From Sinai to Zion, Austin Publishing (Rochester, NY), 1905.

Universal Spiritualism: Spirit Communion in All Ages among All Nations, R. F. Fenno and Co. (New York, NY), 1906.

Health from Knowledge, Macoy Publishing and Masonic Supply (New York, NY), 1909.

Ancient Mysteries and Modern Revelations, 1910.

Significance of Birthdays, Macoy Publishing and Masonic Supply (New York, NY), 1911.

Light and Colors: Nature's Fine Forces Considered as Promoters of Health in All Conditions, Macoy Publishing and Masonic Supply (New York, NY), 1914.

Students' Questions Answered, 1914.

Kabbalah, the Harmony of Opposites: A Treatise Elucidating Bible Allegories and the Significance of Numbers, Macoy Publishing and Masonic Supply (New York, NY), 1916.

Other writings include "The True Gift of Healing: How We May All Exercise It," 1881; "Metaphysical Queries," Cochrane and Co. (Boston, MA), 1886, 6th edition, (Cambridgeport, MA), 1898; "Practical Instructions for Health and Healing," Patterson & Sheldon (Hartford, CT), 1888; "Regeneration versus Degeneration," Metaphysical Publishing (New York, NY), 1896; "Humanity's True Judges," Banner of Light Publishing (Boston, MA), 1896; "Concentration," Metaphysical Publishing (New York, NY), 1896; "The Newest of New Women: A Boston Incident," Banner of Light Publishing (Boston, MA), 1897; "John Worrell Keely," Banner of Light Publishing (Boston, MA), 1899; "Fate Mastered, Destiny Fulfilled," T. W. Crowell and Co. (New York, NY), 1900; "Saved by a Panther: New Zealand Episode," (New York, NY), 1902; "Spiritualism: Its Relation to the World's Great Religions and Philosophies," Two Worlds Publishing (Manchester, England), 1902; "Twenty-five Years of Physical Experiences," Banner of Light Publishing (Boston, MA), c. 1902; "Training of Children in Harmony with Spiritual Science," Banner of Light Publishing (Boston, MA), 1903; "Miss Catte's Impressions of Australia," (Boston, MA), 1903; "Our Respective Places in the Human Zodiac," City Hall Printing (San Francisco, CA), 1907; "Predestination and Individual Liberty," A. Moring (London, England), 1907; and "Philosophy of Paracelsus: A Study in Alchemy and Esoteric Astrology," Macoy Publishing and Masonic Supply (New York, NY), 1915. Some works appeared under name Wilbur Juvenal Colville.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

books

Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, 5th edition, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2001.

Peebles, J. M., Reincarnation; or, The Doctrine of the"Soul's" Successive Embodiments, Examined andDiscussed Pro and Con by Dr. J. M. Peebles versus Dr. Helen Densmore and W. J. Colville, Peebles Medical Institute (Battle Creek, MI), 1904.

Religious Leaders of America, 2nd edition, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1999.*

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The Lost Continent, Atlantis; and the Civilization of the Pre-Historic World
by William Wilberforce Juvenal Colville
1884

HERODOTUS, who is popularly styled the Father of History, may indeed be the first great historian who has attempted a systematic and consecutive history of the post-diluvian world; but the history of antediluvian times is still shrouded in such deep gloom, and invested with such transcendent mystery, that very few, until quite recently, have attempted to tell the story of the world before the great and well-nigh universal deluge, reference to which will be found in the histories and mythologies of all peoples.

You are probably all of you aware that the Bible is by no means the most ancient record in existence, and it does not profess to deal in any way particularly with all the differing races or varying sections of mankind. The first chapter of Genesis is a prologue, and the prophet Malachi, an epilogue to the Old Testament, while the Law and the Prophets, and the history of Israel's wars and kings, all deal exclusively with one nation (the Jewish), only telling of other peoples as their history collides with that of Israel. Every nation has its own record, and while records may dispute the palm for antiquity with one another, it is almost universally conceded by students, that the Hebrew bible is not anything like so ancient as the Vedas and other records of the far Orient.

The first chapter of Genesis may or may not be interpreted in accordance with modern facts in astronomy or geology, according as the interpreter construes the narrative. It is in its letter so vague, and deals so entirely in generalities, that nothing can be said to be plainly taught therein, beyond the general declarations that all things were created by God, and that the lower forms of life preceded the higher in their order of appearance on the earth, while man came last of all.

Surely no one can have read this introduction to the Pentateuch, Without remarking upon the saying, God made man in his own image, male and female. The simultaneity of the creation of man and woman must strike every reader very forcibly who pays any heed to what he reads, while the following chapter localizes an Asiatic paradise, as the birthplace of one peculiar and distinct race of human beings, the original progenitors of the House of Israel. With Adam the Adamic race had birth, and this race, distinct from all others, was forbidden to mingle with any other peoples. When Cain slew Abel, and wandered far from home, he found the earth peopled in those parts to which he journeyed, and these, other inhabitants than the descendants of Adam, were undoubtedly the offspring of those men and women, (numbers and place of abode not supplied by Genesis,) whom God created on the sixth day, mentioned in chapter one.

We merely call attention to these biblical statements, because there are not a few among our hearers who are much interested in the case of Genesis v. Geology, and a lecture we recently delivered in this hall, on "Evolution and Involution," called forth many comments, not only from those who heard it, but from persons across the water, who had only seen mention made of it in a few paragraphs in a London newspaper. The editor of the "Banner of Light" (Boston, U.8.A.) commented in his columns upon those paragraphs, and went so far as to say, probably they were erroneously reported, because the statement was made that Genesis and Geology were not irreconcilable. He pointed to the fact of their being two distinct accounts of creation in the first two chapters of Genesis, and styled one the Elohietic and the other the Jehovistic account. Bishop Colenso thought these accounts gave evidence of a double authorship, and that opinion is shared by many students to-day.

It is not our intention to enter into any controversy in this discourse on the authenticity of the first book of Moses, neither shall we at any time tell people to read Genesis if they wish to become acquainted with the facts of geology, or any of the natural sciences, for the Bible is no scientific textbook. Still, there is a moderate and common-sense view of the Bible, which, unfortunately, ill not taken by the. majority of Bible interpreters of the present day, and that is, that though the Bible came into existence in a purely natural manner, as did all other books, it was impossible in the days when it was written for any book to be produced except by the learned, or those who were singularly inspired. The Bible is the result of ancient scholarship and inspiration. It is emphatically a Jewish history written from a Jewish standpoint, chronicling those events which influenced the national life of Israel, and leaving the history of other nations alone, when that history did not run in parallel lines with that of Israel. \Ye think we may fairly assert that the wise men of old, the most learned among the rabbins, for instance, never denied the existence of those scientific facts, known to the Egyptians and embodied in their architecture, but they did not attempt to reveal them to the people under their charge, who, for the most part, were quite unready to receive them. For a curious and interesting dissertation on the Adamic race and its origin, we refer you to the pages of a work, entitled "Genesis," by Allan Kardec, recently translated into English, and obtainable of any dealer in spiritualistic literature in England or abroad. But we must not dwell any longer upon this introduction to our subject, or we shall never be able, if we allow these considerations to divert us, to say anything we wish to say on this occasion, upon that wonderful centre of ancient glory, which fell a prey to the destructive force of the waters nearly 12,000 years from the present time.

A few years since. Ignatius Donnelly, of Minnesota, U.S.A., published a work of thrilling interest, entitled "Atlantis," in which he undertakes to prove that that mysterious island, mentioned by Plato as having lain in the midst of the Atlantic waters, beyond the pillars of Hercules, at the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea, was not a mere fancy of mythology, but a veritable solid reality, as much so as is the Australia of to-day.

What we have already remarked concerning a plurality of races, and all human beings not having sprung from a common forefather, Adam having been the forefather of one race only, is amply borne out by the facts of physiology, which go very far to prove this position beyond question, among students of the natural history of man. The Negro, for instance, with his thick features and woolly hair, has not only these peculiarities to distinguish him. He has a cuticle under the skin, which makes him a negro. Children born from other races, who have not intermingled with negroes, will never have this cuticle, no matter how long they may sojourn in the tropics, or how dark their offspring may become through exposure to the climate. The Malay and the Caucasian are evidently distinct races of mankind, and though they may blend in the future, and all races may at length become one, a common race, to inhabit all the earth, is rather a prediction for the future than a history of the past. But a study of races is fast leading the student to conclude, that there was a closer bond between the eastern and western hemispheres, in very ancient days, than has ever bt>en imagined until very recently, except by a few such remarkable men as Solon, Plato and others, whose knowledge of ancient history and of the occult sciences led them to conclusions based upon actual facts with reference to the pa11t of man on earth, which were impossible to the multitude, whose knowledge and means of obtaining information were necessarily far more limited.

Before the destruction of the Alexandrian library, under the Turks, there existed in Egypt, at Alexandria, a collection of MSS., probably the finest the world has ever known, and in these books, accessible only to the learned, intelligible only to the very few, was contained the history of the earth from the earliest times; and the history of Egypt not only 6,000 or 7,000 years ago, which is now being unearthed by modern students, but the history of Egypt contemporaneous with that of Atlantis, pre-historic America, pre-historic Australia, and pre-historic South Africa and parts of Asia.

We must now refer you to a fact in the history of the earth, viz., a change in its polar axis, gradually brought about through long periods of time, and reaching a culmination at the close of every grand cycle of over 25,000 years. These vast periods of time, during which mighty changes and upheavals are outwrought, were computed by the Ancients with the same accuracy as that which attends your determining the length of the solar year, which you know to be between 365 and 366 days. The grand year of the Pleiades occupies nearly 26,000 years of earthly time, during which the sun accomplishes its journey through the twelve zodiacal signs. During this vast period, the sun's rays strike the earth vertically at different degrees of latitude, and while there is always an equator, and while there are always poles, and these poles are each 90 degrees from the equator, and while the equatorial line is always the centre of the earth, and that spot upon the earth's surface where day and night are of equal length all the year round, the equator changes place, though so slowly as to be imperceptible to all save special observers.

During half the cycle, the south pole advances and the north pole retreats; during -the other half, the south pole retreats and the north advances. At the present--time the north pole is slowly, but surely, creeping toward you, while the south pole is retreating. '!'he equator is travelling southward, and, therefore, in northern latitudes the climate is steadily becoming more and more inhospitable. Certain sciolists deny this. They had better save their own reputations for scientific knowledge, by accounting for facts now transpiring which prove the truthfulness of this theory, before they deny the only natural and rational explanation of phenomena transpiring under the eyes of every one, by refusing to admit the truthfulness of any theory not sufficiently small to be included in their theories, which stand them in the stead of fact.

No one looking at a map of the world, can fail to be struck with the immense preponderance of land north of the equator, and of water south of it; and no one can see the name "Greenland" applied to a desolate patch of country in the northern part of North America, without wishing to know the origin of the misnomer. Greenland was once a fertile country; while all the northern part of Asia, now called Siberia, was once a fruitful and hospitable region. The Persian records, the Zendavesta, inform you that once there was an earthly paradise, where now there are but fields of ice, and that the tradition of a forfeited earthly paradise in Asia, owes its historical value to this circumstance. Certain it is that in the northern hemisphere the climate of many lands once salubrious, is now becoming more and more inhospitable, while the heat is becoming more tempered in southern latitudes, and this because of the changing aspect of the earth to the sun.

As it would require a discourse of considerable length to fully explain this problem in science, and we have no time to deal with it now, we must refer you to the studies of specialists in this direction for further information; contenting ourselves for the present, with giving you a vague outline of the world as it was prior to the culmination of that last grand cycle of time, which must have culminated fully 11,000 years ago, the present era now closing being the fifth dispensation in the present grand cycle of time, the new era now commencing being the sixth epoch, and that during which one-half the world will attain to a civilization matchless in its importance and results.

The new era now commencing marks that period which will give to the northern half of the globe, a power and supremacy unknown save to the most privileged among the Ancients, who were however not the recipients of the boons of culture and inspiration on so large a scale as the Anglo-Saxon and allied nations will be during the coming age, which will witness in the eastern and western hemispheres conjointly, an attainment far transcending aught that you anticipate, unless you give credence to Homeric tales, and stories of Arabian enchanters, who have filled the brain of age and youth alike with glowing pictures of a distant past, in which gods and goddesses mingled freely among mortals, and the occult sciences were something more than idle dreams or fanciful imaginings.

The modern world still believes in a golden age departed, while it also looks for one to come. Milton was not a Calvinist when he wrote his matchless verse, and sang of earthly paradises long since destroyed. Tinctured with the Puritanism which filled the very air he breathed, he doubtless was, but he echoed Hesiod anti Homer, he pictured the constant strivings of deities and devils, and personified the forces of regeneration and decay in his inspired songs. To him "Paradise Lost" was a sad truth, but "Paradise Regained" was the yet truer dream. Like all great poets he was a thorough optimist, and was sorrowful and astonished at the pessimism of the world, which criticised his verse but could not understand his prophecies. The critics admired his story of a lost Eden, and greatly preferred it to his glowing prophecy of a future golden age. He lived more in the past than in the future when he wrote the "Paradise Lost," he lived in the future when he wrote his "Paradise Regained"; and he loved it best, as all true poets must, for he is not a poet but a misanthrope who sees only death. The true poet sees beyond death to the New Jerusalem, and across the Jordan, which whelms all earthly treasures, traces, capped with living light, the glorious summits of the mountains of the Celestial City.

There is something inexpressibly sad in gazing upon a ruin, if you must feel that all the life and beauty which once woke it into birth, have gone out into the rayless night of an eternal oblivion. A buried city rising up from among piles of rubbish, the accumulations of centuries, is sad beyond comparison, if you cannot realize the truth of immortality. But when the very air around you is peopled with the impalpable forms of the departed,-when you can wander through the desolated halls and ruined temples, where once art, science, and religion adorned themselves in their most beautiful array, and summoned multitudes from far and near to witness their imperial triumphs; and wandering, musing upon these dead and gone glories, talk with the emancipated spirits of those who once woke those solitudes into every conceivable form of loveliness and grace,-you are no more despondent, for you realize in the ethereal hosts around you the victor spirits who. having done with earth embodiment!!, are now rejoicing in diviner worlds, reaping the fruits of their former labours, and gazing fondly on the ruined school-houses where once they gained their education; but knowing all the while that they shall each one be rebuilt, and employed by future generations for the advancement of spirits then requiring education like unto that which these ascended ones have long since gained. They can admire the dignity and utility of that law which, while it ordains the destruction of naught, makes provision that all things serve some useful end, so that when they are no longer needed in some particular form they have once assumed, they are thrust back again into that void or chaos, whence they sprang in former ages to serve the needs of Spirit, there to lie seemingly dormant and useless, but all the while undergoing marvellous transformations, until they shall be called back again to witness new scenes of labour on the part of mind, and be in some yet undreamed-of age the very tools wherewith immortal spirits, awhile embodied in material clay, shall develop those latent energies, which only conflict with lower phases of existence can ever adequately express.

The old Jewish Sabbatic law, as it bore on the question of land, is a striking illustration in minor degree of that great law of nature which renders certain lands peculiarly fruitful for a period, and then compels them to lie waste for needed purposes of recuperation through rest. The sabbath was intended not to flatter God, but to benefit his children. The land was to be cultivated six years, and then lie fallow during the seventh, that it might again be fertilized and bear all that was needed to support life, and keep the nation in a perpetual condition of active prosperity.

Over-production is always the precursor of want and distress. Poor wages, little work, and general dissatisfaction always follow in the train of an overstepment of the law of prudence in matters pertaining to labour. Work yourselves incessantly without rest, year in and year out, and you disease your bodies till they are unfit for further exertion, or you paralyze your brains and end your days in a madhouse. or as a drivelling idiot, harmless, indeed, but utterly incapable of enjoying any of the blessings which would have accrued to you had you taken a less feverish and more common-sense view of life, and the number of hours that should rightfully be devoted either to physical or mental labour.

Not only does man need periodic rest, but all sentient creatures need it, and they suffer accutely when deprived of it; and not only do all living creatures need it, but the earth itself needs it, for whenever a land has been peculiarly prolific, and has been the scene of unparalleled achievements, the time surely comes when it becomes unfit any longer to bear the strain of such high pressure, and enters upon a state of senility, and ultimately apparent death. Having passed its meridian, it begins slowly yet surely to decline the hill which it once ascended.

But what is one's loss is another's gain. 'When the sun shines brightest in England, through the long summer days, the winter reigns at the Antipodes. ·when it is high noon in one hemisphere it is midnight in another. There is never a withdrawal of light and heat from one portion of the globe, without a conference of the same upon other sections of the world. It is always summer somewhere, and it is a beautiful thought, entertained by many optimistic philosophers, and in no sense disputed by the facts revealed by strictest physical research, that every summer is in some sense more· beautiful than its predecessor, that with every succeeding year the world ·becomes more widely adapted to human life in its highest forms, and that the ultimation of the world will most probably be something far different from the catastrophe predicted by theology. For instead of a final conflagration, while yet it is inhabited, the hope of the true philosopher, founded upon reason, observation, intuition, and spiritual revelation alike, is that the time will come when every form of life will be perfected on earth, every noxious and ravenous form of life outgrown, and where now the deadly upas tree sheds its fatal shade, the healthful fruit will hang ripe and rich on the bending boughs of the trees, which will then be in its place. Where now nations are embroiled in perpetual conflict peace will reign supreme, and where now life is felt a burden almost too heavy to be borne, want, wretchedness and despair will have taken their final flight, and the earth will have reached its meridian splendour, and bask in 'the noonday-glory of its long-promised golden day.

The world ill still young. It is only a growing child; it is still in its adolescent period; and has not yet settled itself to enjoy a maturity of peace and prosperity, of which there is ever promise and indication in the nature of the earth itself, despite the wailings of the pessimism which to-day is possible because optimism is true, rather than from any other reason. The general cry of to-day is : the world is getting hopelessly bad; things are going from bad to worse; immoralities and crimes are on the increase; and we shall soon be hurried into perdition. The storm-clouds of God's righteous anger are gathering thick about our heads, and unless we instantly repent we shall all miserably perish. Such lamentation as this shows nothing more than a quickened conscience, a yearning for something higher than is yet attained; while the voice of conscience ever spurs us on to nobler achievements, by making us discontented with our present, leading us out of evil by impressing upon our minds the hideousness and danger of all evil courses.

England is not now what Atlantis was in the palmiest days of her most brilliant and glorious career. She is not in specific directions even what Greece and Rome, Egypt and India, were in their brightest and now far-distant days. But we seriously doubt if there ever was a time in the history of the earth, no matter how old the computations of geologists may cause it to appear, when there was a prospect of so rich a harvest of literature, science, religion and the arts as there is in the modern Europe and the modern America, with which you are all more or less familiar.

No student of ancient history can fail to see in the significant signs of these present times, a nearing recapitulation of events which transpired in the dim distance of pre-historic ages. North of the Equator is now the scene of the greatest mental and physical achievements of the race, while there are colonies of English-speaking people at Cape Colony, in Australia and Australasia. Still, the population increases slowly there in proportion to the increase here, and progress towards the cultivation of the entire ground, nominally possessed by the descendants of European races, is still very slow.

Formerly Australia was joined on to the southern parts of Africa, and the island of Atlantis was the bridge between the two hemispheres, so that by means of Atlantis a constant system of communication was kept up between Asia, Africa and the southern part of Europe on the one hand, and the American continent on the other. The northern part of the modern world was, in the days of Atlantis, buried beneath the waves as the waters now cover Atlantis and many a land and fruitful island connected with her, prior to the. time of their being swallowed by the ocean. When Atlantis sank, then northern climes arose from their long sleep beneath the waves, for whenever one part of the world becomes a prey to the waters, other lands are released, for the sea never encroaches in one place without receding in another, or recedes somewhere without encroaching somewhere else. But the days will come when the earth has reached the zenith of its perfection, when literally as well as figuratively there will be no more sea, i.e., there will no longer be vast continents of water accompanied by vast deserts of sand elsewhere. Land and water will be equally divided. Land will all be watered and therefore all fruitful, while the waters will be broken up into many rivers and inland seas, lakes, brooks, and running streams; and the ocean, which is only a barrier between land and land, will disappear.

It is computed that now the waters cover about two-thirds of the surface of the globe. Tradition says once they. covered all the land, and dry land appeared so soon as the waters subsided. They will continue to subside more and more, until they occupy only one-half the territory of the earth; and in that day, when land and water are ,equally divided on the globe, both hemispheres will be civilized and prosperous together, and from pole to pole the earth will not contain one barren or unfruitful spot, neither will it sustain a single poisonous plant, noxious reptile, savage beast, nor brutal man.

Whenever a section of the earth attains to its temporary zenith, that section of the world is the scene of a perfect state of society, so far as perfection can obtain on earth, and it is undoubtedly from this perfection of old-world centres of prosperity, that the poets and philosophers, the fanciful historians and compilers of mythologies, have gathered the data from which they have been enabled to erect that stupendous pile of mythologic lore, which is to-day the wonder and the pride of every student of the classics, the poets, and the great thinkers of every ancient clime and period.

As you have no doubt all heard of Plato's faith in Atlantis, though comparatively few have probably read his story of that mysterious land, it may not be uninteresting to this audience if we briefly summarize the information we have gathered from various sources, Platonic and other, concerning the physical, social, political and religious condition of that far-famed and highly-blest land.

Atlantis, as we have already told you, lay between the shores of the eastern and western world, from which it was divided by narrow and easily-navigable waters; the art of navigation being very ancient, and the Atlantians being well versed not only in this but indeed in all the arts and sciences, ignorantly supposed to be modern, when they are so ancient no scholar can determine when they originated; while so great a man as the Astronomer Royal of Scotland (Professor Piazzi Smyth) supposes them to have originated in very early times, by direct revelation from heaven to Melchisedek, or whoever may have been the mystic architect and designer of the Great Egyptian Pyramid. But if the Great Pyramid was not erected till 2,170 B.C., it is comparatively speaking a new building, and all that can with any show of reason be assumed concerning the date of its erection is, that it could not possibly have been later than that time. The astronomical reasons for assigning that date as the time of its completion, can also be brought forward in support of its erection at a much earlier time, and many who do not take the real antediluvian world into consideration at all, refer that celebrated pile, justly called a miracle in stone, to 3,500 or 3,700 B.C.

Recent excavations in Central America have led to disclosures concerning the monumental remains there, which caused the publication in a London paper some years ago, of the fact of there having been discovered at Pueblo, in New Mexico, a pyramid of much larger dimensions than that of Gizeh, in Egypt; the Mexican pyramid covering over forty acres of ground, while the Egyptian structure covers not more than about thirteen-and-a-half. The Mexican pyramid, scholars decided, must have been in existence fully 7,000 years, and how much longer no one seems prepared to decide. The realm of discovery in the Western world is even richer for future generations than in the East, as it marks a period in history completely ignored by Herodotus, and all historians since his time, and opens up a marvellous field of exploration to all who care to enquire systematically into the origin and blending of races, religions and languages.

Some very strong reasons for belief in the reality of Atlantis, we will now adduce, before giving you, as the climax of our recital, a brief sketch of the internal condition of Atlantis, and the state of her people spiritually as well as materially.

We have already noted the mythologic argument; and allow us here a word concerning myths. They are invariably fanciful histories, as well as speculations, concerning the contending forces of good and ill. Astronomical myths are very frequently alluded to at present, and many if not all which can be legitimately included in the astronomical category, had for their object. the preservation and transmission of astronomical facts, which were kept secrets among the learned. Socrates drew down upon him the ire of the Athenian monopolists, when he endeavoured to unveil the Mythos, as Galileo, Bruno, Copernicus, Columbus and many others drew down upon them the anathemas of Christian bigots, because they dispelled the Ptolemaic illusion which kept the masses in ignorance, though there never was a time when secret Orders, possessing knowledge on these subjects, did not exist.

Historical myths are of another class, but not of a widely differing one, for in order to veil yet more carefully the esoteric meaning from the "vulgar," and preserve it for the initiated only, astronomical facts were fancifully represented, and thrown round the heroes and heroines of antiquity, when they were made to pose as gods and goddesses in the temples and traditions of the classic lands. All the nations whose territory borders upon the Hellenic seas, are peculiarly rich in mythologic lore, and a modern examination of this goes very far to prove the fact of there being personal histories behind these wild, fantastic tales. The gods and goddesses of old were not always spirits who communed with seers and sybils in the mystic shades and mountain fastnesses of the classic world. They were quite as often the great and mighty potentates and priests, the prophets, seers, and judges of a by-gone age, around whose memories countless legends had gathered, as Strauss, and Kant, and other German authors of the life of Christ, say that through the centuries since his time. there has been a gradual development of mythology around Jesus as a centre.

The celebrated myth, Prometheus, is now considered by many savans to be a fanciful biography of Pythagoras, the celebrated sage of Samoa, and so mystic has become the record of the life of this great man, that it is quite as difficult to clearly prove his personal existence to-day, as it is to prove that of Jesus of Nazareth, simply by reference to contemporaneous history. If the mythical personages around whose names such weird, awful, and beautiful legends have gathered, were really the personal dwellers on some long-lost island, the princes in some great monarchies, long since defunct, the presidents of some glorious republics, after which the modern world can only, as yet, feebly copy,-how easy it is to read between the lines the history of the career of religious ideas, and see how intimately associated with Theism, and how subordinate to it, has been that universal tendency to a belief in divine incarnations, and all the countless divinities of Polytheistic systems; while above all, in solitary grandeur, as one superb mountain towering over every neighbouring hillock, and making them appear but ant-hills by its side, has been the sublime and unquenchable faith in one only Supreme Being. whom all nations have adored even though afar off, and have in some manner worshipped, even though, ofttimes, very ignorantly.

Paul at Ephesus, seeing an altar to the Unknown God, and saying to the citizens- "Whom ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you," reminded these so-called Pagans that their own poets had always taught them of one Deity, infinitely beyond all lesser lords, whose offspring we all are. Judaism, rigidly monotheistic though it is and ever has been, has never denied that there are many gods, but only one, Jehovah, to whom all gods must bow. These gods of the nations David did not ignore. He mentions them constantly in his Psalms, but he styles that idolatry, which gives to the creature the homage due to the Eternal only, and denounces the setting up of idols in the temple dedicated to the only Infinite and Holy One, whose name is Jahveh, he who ever was, now is, and ever will be.

A perusal of Ignatius Donnelly's work, which we mentioned with approval at the outset of our lecture, will furnish the reading public with many important facts concerning Atlantis~ which are extremely interesting and especially pertinent to our subject. A reviewer, mentioning the fact of Egyptian navigators being sent out in the reign of Pharaoh N echo, to explore the seas surrounding Africa, tells of their having, after sailing for some considerable distance, found the sun north of them. They were doubted in their day, as all discoverers ever were and always will be by the ignorant, for ignorance engenders doubt, and nothing but knowledge can supplant it, unless it be unreasoning belief, blind gullibility, than which doubt is far preferable. To-day these men, who found the sun north of them when journeying southward from Egypt, can only be looked upon as discoverers who antedated Vasco de Gama, the reputed finder of the Cape of Good Hope. This man was a discoverer relatively. The knowledge of the Cape of Good Hope was lost to the people with whom he mingled, but we firmly believe that both he, Vespucci, and Columbus were in possession of some secret history of the olden world, not accessible to the multitude, when they set forth on their long and perilous voyages in ill-manned ships, to find those mystic lands which lay beyond those dreaded seas, where superstition, ignorance and priestcraft had invented devils to act as scare-crows to drive off inquiring minds from the fields of corn and fruit, which the ecclesiastics preferred to claim as theirs and theirs only.

The fact of the existence of Atlantis as a centre of civilization, and a great seat of commerce between the eastern and western hemispheres, can alone satisfactorily account for the wonderful resemblance between the extant traces of antique civilizations on both sides of the world. It will, moreover, unveil the mystery of the Mound Builders, those mysterious people to whom science has paid of late no inconsiderable amount of attention. It will explain the origin of the hieroglyphics in the far-famed cave of Elephanta, and will throw an immense amount of light upon the origin of the North American Indians, as well as upon that of the Aborigines of Australia.

The American Indians are by no means the debased people many think them to be. Those who know them truly can never call them rude barbarians. Of late they have decreased in numbers and increased in barbarity, and why? but because the American Government, that of the United States, has treated them meanly and dishonourably. They are called by every harsh name, because they fight with spears and tomahawks against the cruel aggressors, who, calling themselves civilized and Christian, think it no shame to destroy mercilessly the Indian's wigwam, and thrust him forth without food or shelter to die by the wayside, while the march of civilization tramples him under its iron heel, and calls such brutality and injustice the way of God and the march of progress. The Canadian Government, which has been far kinder and juster to the Indians than has been that of the United States, has avowedly had much less trouble with them. The true, manly, independent Yankee, a lover of freedom and a respecter of the rights of others, would never oppress the Indian. The kinsmen of Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Longfellow, Emerson, Parker, and a host of worthies time forbids us to mention now, are always protesting against atrocities committed by stronger peoples to subject weaker races to themselves, and then exterminate them. The enlightened, liberal, loyal American Press has never sanctioned outrages or any depredation committed upon the Indian reservations; but the mere money-grubber, the mere fortune-hunter has ever boasted of his superiority to the race on whose every right he has mercilessly trampled, and pointed to those whom he has cruelly oppressed, as being unfit to live. But are tribes necessarily barbarians because they will not lie down and be crushed out of existence without making a desperate effort to defend themselves and those they hold most dear?

Many Indian tribes are characterized by their intelligence, refinement, and spirituality; notably on the Pacific slope are there tribes of Indians who boast an illustrious pedigree, and are the direct descendants of once powerful races, whose territory embraced Mexico, Peru, and indeed all the region constituting the Central American territory. These races were in constant communion with the Eastern world, by means of Atlantis, and the very striking resemblance, existing palpably to all archaeologists, between the remains of Oriental and Occidental civilizations of days gone by, prove beyond a peradventure, that there must have been a bond of union between the " old and new" worlds, such as Atlantis could alone have afforded.

The traditions of the Indians are in many instances evidences that they were once in communion with Egypt and other Oriental climes. You may say that their faith in a Great Spirit, and in the conscious existence of the human spirit after the death of the body, and in rewards and punishments in the hereafter, they simply share with all tribes who can boast any civilization at all. But the religious resemblance by no means ends with these fundamental generalities. Many striking resemblances can be traced, in instances so eminently particular, that identity of origin is very powerfully established. For instance, Volney says, "In the Greeks of Homer I find the customs, discourses and manners of the Iroquois, Delawares and Miamis" (Indian tribes). He further says, the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides paint almost literally the sentiments of the red men (Indians) respecting "necessity, fatality, the miseries of human life, and the rigours of blind destiny."

The Oneidas (another tribe of Indians) claim descent from a stone, and did not the Greeks trace their origin to the stones of Deucalion? The snake locks of Medusa are represented in the snake locks of an ancient hero of the Iroquois. The translation of men to heaven bodily is a feature of the American Indian as well as of the Hindoo mythology. Longfellow tells us of "Hiawatha" rising to heaven and vanishing from sight, amidst sweet music. These admissions prove no doubt more than orthodox Jews or Christians wish to see proved, for while they point to a far-off origin of Indian and Atlantian, Greek and Hindoo Myths, they treat the Old and New Testaments as only two out of an immense collection of records, all couched in similar language, and all expressive of the oneness of symbolism common to the pre-historic as well as to the classic world.

If time permitted we would gladly pursue our theme much further, as we hope to do in subsequent discourses at no distant date, but though we have said but little on this fascinating branch of our subject, we venture to believe we have said enough to let you see that the story of Atlantis is founded on something far more solid than the phantasmagoria which many persons consider stands as a wild and fanciful legend, in the stead of any actual historic fact.

Another class of evidences are purely physical, and to these we can now allude but for a moment; but we should not be doing anything like justice to our theme did we fail to appeal to the ocean itself, to confirm the assertions of Solon, Plato. and the ancient seers at large, who wrote so eloquently and instructively of this strange, buried land.

Deep-sea soundings, recently made by ships of various nations, conspicuous among which were the British ship, "Challenger," and the U.S. vessel, "Dolphin," have gone very far to sustain our conclusions, by discovering in the bed of the ocean, immense deposits of lava and volcanic debris, extending over thousands of miles of what evidently once was land. The peaks of the Azores are exactly in the spot where Plato located Atlantis, and Solon, who had travelled in Egypt, and possessed himself of much information while there, soon grew into perfect accord with the learned there, who contended that popular histories only touched upon very recent events compared with those which were amply chronicled in Egypt in Solon's day.

Solon's opinion was, that 9,000 years had elapsed then since the sinking of Atlantis, and Solon lived about 2,300 years ago. Add these numbers, and you have something over 11,000 years. We have already referred you to the duration of the Grand Cycle, as a period extending between 25,000 and 26,000 years, and have told you that this period is divided into 12 almost equal portions, called eras, epochs, or dispensations, each one occupying about 2,150 years or thereabouts. We are now just at the dawn of the sixth division of the present Cycle, thus, multiplying 2,150 by 5, we get 10,750 years, and allowing for the fact that numbers in these cases have only an approximate accuracy, we find the testimony of the Grecian sages agreeing perfectly with the events of today, spiritually interpreted.

How account for the story of a universal deluge, without giving heed to the story of Atlantis? Noah's flood, of 4,000 years ago, was a very local matter, while every record called sacred on the earth, from those of Hermes and the Vedas to those of Scandinavia, all contain a narrative of a universal flood. This tradition of the deluge is scientifically explained by that revelation which the bed of the sea is now making to the world, concerning the once populous and fruitful lands it now covers, while, east and west, stones are literally crying out in the revelations given to all who study them, by those marvellous monumental remains which contain histories, far more glowing and imperishably written, of nations long since gone out of earthly existence, than are to be found in any parchment scrolls or printed records.

In closing we can only add, that Lord Lytton's "Coming Race" can well be read as a reminiscence of the past, as well as a dream and prophecy of the future. Time was when the powerful Atlantian race was as glorious as Lytton's Vril-ya. Aerial navigation, the use of wings as mechanical appendages. were among their triumphs relating to the comforts and amenities of civilized life, while during the later and most glorious portion of their career, they had outgrown warfare, and had triumphed over those innumerable stumbling-blocks in the way of a nation's progress, which are yet perplexing the statesmen of every land beneath the sun.

Their religion was a simple confidence in the All-Good. Their rites and ceremonies were those from which the magnificent conceptions and glowing imagery of the early Egyptians sprang. They were the originators of those Schools of the Prophets, of which the Ancients speak so much, while having attained to an almost inconceivable spiritual altitude, their spiritual faculties became so alive to the realities of the realm of spirit, that their land was verily the abode of gods. Theirs was the original of Arcadia, Olympia, Hesperides, and every charming resort of divinities pictured to you in Homeric verse and Platonic philosophy. Spirit communion, purified from sensuous dross and devoted to pure and benevolent ends, revealed to them the certainties of life immortal; while education was the substitute for punishment, moral suasion and intellectual might were in the stead of carnal weapons of defence, while their land, charmingly situated, perfectly watered, thoroughly under cultivation, yielding every fruit of the earth man could desire, in rich profusion; surrounded by easily-navigable seas, across which access to other lands was constant, conspired to render the Atlantians the favoured race, because the most moral, intellectual and healthful. Disease, poverty, crime and painful death became almost outgrown, ere the hour drew nigh for the land to become the ocean's prey, and having flowered out into such luxuriant beauty, to decline suddenly when its inhabitants were prepared to quit the earth, and their spirits to be transported to another planet. A few were saved from the fate which overtook their land. These mingled with the life of both hemispheres, some escaping to America, and some to Asia. From their descendants have modern races sprung.

When, in 2,000 years from now, the belt of civilization again puts a girdle round the earth, in more than name or pretence, a greater race, a larger one, covering wider territory than the Atlantian, will have been formed, and the new millennium will be more glorious than the Golden Age, so deeply mourned, so soon to be recovered and transcended, when the paradise to be gained will far transcend in glory the paradise the old world lost.

IMPROMPTU POEM.

THE REAL AND THE IDEAL.

SURELY, things Ideal after all are Real!
And things the most Ideal are most truly Real,
Because the Soul discovers the Ideal,
And purblind sense deals with the earthly Real.
The poor, worn body, In th' embrace of death,--
This, mortals ever seem to think the Real;
The happy Spirit, fled from scenes or dust,
To them Is only fancy, the Ideal!

The Artist paints a glorious sunrise,
A lovely sunset, showing all the scone
Where earth and heaven meet in sweet accord,
As though estrangement they had never seen.
The colours, true to life, which greet his eye,
He puts upon the canvas In his joy;
The splendours all around him he reveals,
And men declare 'tis but Ideal employ!

The Poet sings a song of fadeless love,
Th' undying fealty of a loving heart,
And tells a tale of constancy divine,
In which no shade of doubt can bear a part.
Prosaic writers say, It Is not true;
The prosy reader says, Can never be
Such deep devotion; for such loyal love,
Say men, the world of mortals ne'er can see.

The Christ of Gospels, and of painter's art,
Who loses life and all the world counts dear,
To save his brethren from sin's bitter fruit,
Is but a myth, for surely none so clear,
So free from stain, so noble and so great,
Could ever dwell upon the shores of time:
Men cannot see, that what Is great and best,
Is true forever, e'en on earthly clime.

The sputtering candle, and the broken mug,
The ragged urchin gamb'ling In the street;
The haggard face, the listless Indolence,
Which every passer-by must often meet;
The fish, the worm, the fire, the grate, the cat,--
These things are true to nature, they are Real;
But, verily, the commonplace of life
Is not so real as the great Ideal.

These little things, these phantoms of an hour,
Will be unreal to-morrow, fled and gone;
While all the visions of the starry night,
The Artist saw, will still be shimmering on;
The Poet's love, the true historic Christ,
Will be alive when baubles are no more,
And every high ambition of the soul,
Will live and triumph when all earth Is o'er.

That Is the Real which shall longest live,
The Ideal world Is the most real far;
The sun, the moon, the mountains towering high,
The peaceful valleys, and each blazing star,
High hopes, pure loves, deep sentiments most wise,
Ardent ambitions, and the Eternal State,
Man's immortality,-- these will remain;
Though all things petty soon shall meet their fate,
And be dissolved In elemental strife,
All that Is great, and beautiful, and true,
Must live and reign, Co-eval with Its God,
And every day appear In some sweet fashion new,
Though seemingly It dies; for what Is death
But that transition which doth free the soul,
And lets the ideal nature freely fly,
Until the Spirit doth all earth control.

O Poet! Artist! Singer! Sculptor! Scribe!
Though men deride you for your loftiest dreams;
Go, tell us more of Heaven's immortal dower;
Go, tell the world how great to you It seems,
This mystic universe of stars and suns.
And while the world, in market-place and stall,
Will barter chattels for a mite of bread,
Go ye, and summon angels, men, to all
Proclaim the fact, while ages roll along,
The Ideal world doth the most Real be,
Because it Is the region of that Cause,
But whose effects on earth the noblest see.
Go, tell the world that every ardent hope,
And every dream or truth and love remains
A living entity, when earth Is dead;
And that we live for aye In God's domains!

BENEDICTION.

May the sublimities, the Eternal Realities, of the Immortal World, so vividly impress the likeness of themselves upon your every mind, that, in the pursuit of what is truly Real, ye realize the blessedness of the Ideal, even the fulness of Life and Joy Immortal! AMEN.

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Part 1 of 2

Who's Who In the Lyceum [Excerpt]
Edited by A. Augustus Wright
Including a Brief History of the Lyceum by Anna L. Curtis and How to Organize and Manage a Lyceum Court by Laurence Tom K. Kersey
© 1906 by Pearson Bros.

"A man cannot with propriety speak of himself, except he relates simple facts; as, 'I was at Richmond'; or, what depends on mensuration; as, "I am six feet high': but he cannot be sure he is wise, or that he has any other excellence."

-- Dr. Johnson

Foreword.

Tools and the Man

"Who's Who in the Lyceum" is a set of tools, made and truly tempered, for work never yet wrought adequately. Whatever may be said or thought of "The Man With a Hoe," it is certain he is in better case than "The Man Without a Hoe." The crop that is yet to be harvested from the broad acres of the Lyceum field, will depend very largely upon the way these tools — here handed to the man — are handled by the man.

* * *

The Word Lyceum

The word Lyceum notably exemplifies and illustrates the fact that language grows. To-day the word includes what yesterday was absent; to-morrow it will include what to-day knows not.

As to inclusions and exclusions for to-day, clearly the word Lyceum excludes the theater and includes the drama; it excludes whatever is specifically and only theatric, and it includes whatever is specifically and wholly dramatic. It excludes whatever appeals solely to the eye or to the other senses — as senses; for example, all the gorgeous paraphernalia of usual perception ordinarily assumed at the Play to represent Life as it is, but whose very gorgeousness blinds the eye to see beneath the object to the subject, the word Lyceum excludes all such things of the senses; it includes whatever action, word or appearance reaches the soul through valid psychical appeals to the creative imagination. Life is dramatic, not theatric; of the essence and not of the form of things, life is drama. Hence the drama finds its first, noblest and most complete expression, not at the Theater, but upon the Lyceum Platform. Here are won already, and here are yet to be doubly won, the greatest triumphs of the unfettered imagination.

"Who's Who in the Lyceum" lays emphasis upon the declaration that whatever belongs indisputably to spiritual aesthetics — the realm of Life's most intimate and most significant drama — belongs to the Lyceum; whatever does not, belongs elsewhere.

Clearly, too, and for the same reason, the word Lyceum excludes the vaudeville, the circus, the amusement in which the performer is but a performer, whatever or whoever is "the whole show"; and, in truth, it excludes every sort of entertainment whose roots and branches and fruit are evidently of the earth earthy.

A Letter

"I am merely a society entertainer, having no particular connection with the so-called Lyceum movement; therefore your volume will be complete without my biographical data."

Excellent. This gentleman is commendable for his perspicacity and for the frankness of his avowal as well as for the exactness of his identification of the Lyceum, and of — himself.

In the present work the word Lyceum includes particularly all University Extension Lectureships, with all scientific, aesthetic, literary, educational and similar Lectureships, with interpretative Lecture-Recitals, together with Symphonic or even Solo Concerts, Readings, Dramatic Monologues, Dramatic Recitals of entire Dramas, and similar entertainments aiming at ends strictly aesthetic, artistic and moral.

***

Standards of Eligibility.

As to eligibility to a place in "Who's Who in the Lyceum," in instances where there is any doubt — as to this man or as to that woman — eligibility is determined, though not exclusively, by satisfactory answers to three principal questions:

(a) Is the candidate pursuing Lyceum work as an artistic vocation, or merely as a negligible avocation?

(b) On the average, how many engagements does he fill annually?

(c) What is the nature, and, to some indicative extent, what is the ideal of his work?

At times this last standard brings us perilously near to the necessities of exercising judicial functions, notwithstanding "Who's Who" is a "record, not an estimate," a census of individuals rather than an appreciation of persons. Still, no injustice is done to any, since all are brought alike to the same standards.

Significance of These Standards.

The task of determining these standards, both as to their number and as to their significance, has been exceedingly difficult, while the rigid application of them has been occasionally well-nigh impracticable.

Probably some persons are included in the published list whom some would not admit. But where liberality has seemed a virtue of necessity, the interpretation of these standards has been liberal, particularly in instances where, evidently, genius is at once young, vigorous and crescent.  

Let the brilliant luminaries of the Lyceum heavens never forget that all the light of the nightly firmament radiates not from the fixed stars alone.

Restricted Scope of This Work

"Who's Who in the Lyceum" is neither a Dun nor a Bradstreet. It is not a clearing house for decayed or decaying talent or bureaus. It is not a "Fads and Fancies," nor yet a "Dictionary of Biography." Manifestly there is herein no place for the exploitation of expert verdicts, or of popular verdicts, good, bad or indifferent. No lecturer is alike good, bad or indifferent in all places and at all times. Some of the times and many of the places are themselves also g. b. and i.; sometimes I.

Some workers have their work in their hearts, and some have their hearts in their work, and some show the marks of both estates co-ordinate. But, as to who these are, this work was made to make no sign. This work doesn't know. It might be desirable — certainly it must be desirable — for a committee to know, in advance of the Bureau's paternal suggestions, whether So-and-So, "elocutionist," is first of all a genuine woman, with a real, a warm, a living soul within her, and next is also capable — capable of working the miracles of interpretation, yea, of artistic and of Aesthetic creation, or whether, in the last analysis she is to be gibbeted as only a frivolous mixture of millinery and Delsarte. And whether So-and-So, lecturer, is artist or only artisan; whether with him lecturing is an aesthetic art, or merely a piece of stark commercial handcraft; whether, for intellectual stimulus, for artistic inspiration, for ethical suggestiveness, and for general healthful impressiveness, said So-and-So is clearly ratable at the n power, or only at the n.g. power. But on these points, and on all similar points, this work knows naught.

* * *

Caveat

Any adverse criticisms of this work's incompleteness, of its colorlessness, of its character as mere chronicle, of the brevity and condensed quality of its sketches, are vanquished easily by a fair presentation of its aim, its scope and its utilities. Indeed, all such criticisms are routed with a single sentence: "This work is a Who's Who, not a What's Who!"

Wherein this Work is Authoritative.

Since authority ever rests on truth, and truth never rests on authority, this work has been made first of all and last of all, true. If, in the nature of the case, it must be inadequate, and incomplete, still it is true, accurate, and therefore trustworthy. Time, money and sleepless care, without stint, have been expended to secure accuracy in every statement. In all instances where a published record for any reason challenged attention, by verifying the facts we have avoided perpetuating a clerical error, or repeating some one's original blunder.

As a matter of fact, no sketch is published against consent, or without consent, and with but few exceptions each sketch has received the O.K. of the subject himself.

* * *

Utilities of this Work

To Talent this work is an introduction to "men of like passions." Each artist will now be able to cultivate still further his own acquired, if not achieved modesty by a contemplation of others'. Each artist's claims will take on a fresh significance as he notes what others like himself are doing. It is a real comfort to any one to know that on the shores of any great enterprise he is not — alone.

To Bureau Managers it furnishes reliable data — data of an intimate quality; data such as would cost the individual Bureaus time, toil and money beyond their thought. Now, and for the first time, they may learn what other Bureaus are doing, or are trying to do.

To Committees it is indeed a boon. It widens their scope of observation; it shows planets, suns, fixed stars, and even nebula, in the heavens Above, or on the horizon, that the * * * * Bureau's telescope never showed.  

It is true that the information published — regarding some stars — is a trifle nebulous, but that fact is itself revelatory to the eye of the astute Committee.

It is also true this information is never intimate; in the scope of this work it could not be intimate; yet is it sufficient to indicate to any Committee the direction in which such information may be sought wisely.

To Editors, Librarians, Educators, Statesmen, Officials of the Public Service, and to others, this work affords utilities of immediate value. Moreover, it will even create utilities not yet discerned, precisely as demand creates supply and supply creates demand.

* * *

The Business Side

The business side of "Who's Who in the Lyceum" — as a venture in publication — merits a brief paragraph. Without other solicitation than that couched in the bare terms of announcement, the de luxe edition has been over-subscribed, and the general edition about fully subscribed, in advance of publication.

This result is gratifying to publishers and to the Editor, not more on business grounds than on the consideration that a discerning Lyceum Public Opinion has thus already passed favorable judgment upon the enterprise.

* * *

Curios

In the compilation of this work the inevitable tedium of routine correspondence has been relieved at times by letters bearing suggestive comments, or containing caustic criticisms, or else revealing the essential humor of situations the writers never saw.

One gentleman, a distinguished prelate of a great church — his sketch is found herein — declares his opinion on a certain matter thus: "The Lecture platform ought to stand for a message and not for a sing-song repetition of the only effort of which a man has been capable."

Talent will do themselves justice, if not more, by writing this gentleman, quoting "let the galled jade wince," and adding (?) — the rest of the sentence.

Another writer says, with charming naivete: "My work has made me, and not any Bureau."

Through the mists of ambiguity that cloud this sentence one can dimly discern the intention of the writer. Doubtless such as he are famous, not because they are on the platform, nor yet because the platform is on them, but the platform is famous because they are on it, or, in spite of it.

But the Kohinoor in this cabinet of Curios remains to outshine these other gems. To what a distance the malefic influence of "Fads and Fancies" has already traveled may be read between two lines of another letter. True, this letter was written by one, it must be confessed, the absence of whose name does not utterly ruin the work. And yet, such is the spirit of the man that this letter is one whose very paper — between said two lines — crimps and crumples itself rattlingly, phenomenally, and as if instinctively, with the writer's righteous indignation at once judicial and suspicious: "I will never allow my name to be used for purposes of advertisement."

Doubtless he scents a bribe! But the spotlessness of this man's virtuous purpose, not to say the unspotability of this man's virtuous purpose, affords a white background against which the sunlight of any publicity shows black. Let all Talent beware.  

Queries

An inspection of the data furnished herein, whether it be casual or not, will suggest certain important queries. Why are so many people booking their own dates without the aid of any Bureau? Is it because Bureaus and Talent do not understand, or is it because they do understand each other?

Again, What is the average duration of popularity in lectures as compared with entertainments? What is the Bureau's answer? And what the Committee's answer?

Again, Why are there so few good preachers who are also equally good lecturers? Is it because preachers do not know the essential difference between the functions of a sermon and those of a lecture? Is it because they think a lecture is necessarily less important and less valuable than a sermon? Is it because traditional homiletics has atrophied their sense of humor?

Again, What are the generic characteristics of the lecture themes treated upon the lecture platform of to-day? And what principles may we safely use in identifying the sweep of Lyceum lecture currents to-day?

Again, Why do so many United States Congressmen, so many Statesmen, Historians, Travelers, Scientists, Political Economists, Philosophers, Clergymen, all of the very first class, ascend the Lyceum platform? And why are there not many more of these same classes ascending the Lyceum platform?

The Future of the Lyceum is in the Hands of the Great Personalities.

The great personalities who are to dominate the Lyceum of the immediate future are not talkers simply, nor persons of culture only, nor merely people of taste, though it be at once delicate, delicious, exquisite. They are more, and they must be more. They are moral as well as intellectual giants. Manifestly, even in the midst of the commercial, the industrial, the political, the materialistic chaos of the times, these men are present as brooding spirits, gifted out of infinity and hence out of eternity; gifted with architectonic capabilities and skill.

These men are gifted with the reformative potencies of philanthropy, noble, altruistic, self-effacing, self-sacrificial. But far beyond this these men are gifted with that vaster dynamic — the preformative genius of creativeness; they do things, and they do new things; they are workers, and they work all sorts of righteousness; they are genuine poets, weaving and working life's words into psalms and paeans, fitting every tongue; they are creators — creators of a new cosmos, ideal, yet coming down out of the heavens of truth, first into the vision, next into the ambition, and then into the enthralled affection of mankind.

These men are creators, listening to whom all auditors feel supremely that the fires of artistic passion, the nice discernments of aesthetic wisdom, and the mighty sanctions of ethics exist in these creators plenarily, formatively and co-ordinately. These men are creators; they actually create new intellectual, aesthetic and even ethical situations in the imagination of their auditors; they take little words, and big, and into these they breathe the breath of all kinds of life, and thus are able to restate life in newly-created forms and in newly-ordered scopes; and then these same creators, these who thus have re-stated life, are able, with equal ease, to interpret this their own divine exegesis of life, in forms of truth, in lives of beauty, and in the saving terms of righteousness. To these creators, these great personalities, the Lyceum calls to-day. To all others the Lyceum is dumb, yea, and makes no sign.  

A Brief History of the Lyceum
by Anna L. Curtis

The Lyceum field has no mean acreage. Its plateaus and its vales stretch far beyond the vision. Yet, in any general survey thereof, and from any point of view, certain mountain peaks arrest the eye and dominate the horizon.

Trustworthy data, recently gathered, show that the number of established Lyceum lecture courses in the United States— courses in which one ticket is sold for the entire season, courses which now are regularly held from year to year — cannot be far from six thousand. This statement relates to courses of Lyceum lectureships alone, and takes no cognizance of the numberless single lectures, concerts, artistic and aesthetic entertainments, provided by local enterprise or by Lyceum bureaus.

LOWELL INSTITUTE, BOSTON

In scrutinizing the details of this general survey, the free public lectureships, provided on permanent foundations, — like the Lowell Institute Courses in Boston, or the Peabody Institute Courses in Baltimore, — must be particularly noted. These lectureships are rapidly increasing in number in every part of the land, and are constantly increasing in their efficient ministry to our national intellectual vigor. Moreover, by their strictly formal character and by their profound philosophic and inspirational quality, they attract as their clientele the very elite of local culture.

THE BOARDS OF EDUCATION.

Lectureships maintained under legislative authority, and at public expense, by Boards of Education — as in New York City and State — for the propagation of useful information in the practical arts of domestic life, for the instruction of the public in the proper arts of sanitation, and of medical and surgical assistance in emergencies, and for the publication, exploitation and illustration of current scientific discoveries and inventions — these must be noted also.

UNIVERSITY SUMMER SESSIONS AND EXTENSION COURSES.

The summer sessions held each year under the auspices of our foremost Universities, and as a constituent section of their curriculum. Universities whose principal professors are retained as lecturers, and in which sessions all sorts of technical, sociologic, pedagogic, scientific and philosophic themes are presented luminously to thousands of secular school teachers, scholars, investigators and literati, must be noted also.

The University Extension Lecture Courses, covering almost every conceivable subject of human interest, whether to scholars or to students, and constantly increasing in number, in efficiency and in prophetic significance, — these must be noted also.

And next, there is the rapidly-multiplying host of Y.M.C.A. public lectureships, and of institutional church lectureships, covering technical instruction and inspiration in the trades, in the arts and in the industrial crafts. These, appealing principally to men, and in the out-of-business hours, and though admittedly but a by-aim of the ethical and religious propaganda of institutional Christianity, nevertheless afford first-class lectureships in the creative arts and in the commercial and the industrial utilities.

LECTURESHIPS PROVIDED BY CIVIC ENTERPRISE.

Next we note the multitudinous evening lectureships which, though appealing forcibly only to special classes of students, are yet also open to the general public, lectureships provided through civic enterprise and forecast, by manual training schools, institutes of technology and city high schools, such as the Mechanic Arts High School of Boston.  

We note, also, the lectureships— restrictedly secular in the character of their instruction, and largely technical both in form and in spirit — conducted by the trade and guild schools and by schools of technique principally for their own clients, yet open to the public without charge. Such lectureships bring the enthusiasms as well as the incitements of education to thousands of citizens already mentally virile and alert.

THE SUMMER ASSEMBLIES.

The summer Assemblies — increasing at a most remarkable rate — with their free public platform, the freest in America, the most untrammeled, free for the announcement of the latest discoveries of fact in science, or in literature, or in art, free for the heralding of the grandest ideals in human thought, these Assemblies, with their schools and guilds and solidarities and incessant lectureships, these must be noted also.

The winter Assemblies, held for a single week in our largest churches, offering lectures of the highest order, three times each day, drawing talent from our greatest universities, seminaries and pulpits — these must be noted also.

WOMEN'S CLUBS

Literature and art lectureships conducted by women's clubs, by artists' clubs, and by schools of aesthetic culture, and furnishing both to their own intelligent and ambitious clientele and to the general public as well, the rudiments and the inspirations of artistic education, if not artistic life itself, — these also stand out clearly and nobly before the eye.

Between one and two thousand persons gain a livelihood upon the platform, while the number of those who devote only a part of their time to the platform cannot be fewer than three or four thousand. It seems hardly possible that this great business of to-day is but the outgrowth of a dream of yesterday. But so it is. Along in the first quarter of the century just closed, education, always a fad of the Americans, suddenly became a hobby. All sorts of societies were organized over night, societies for the diffusion of useful knowledge, mercantile associations, teachers' seminaries, literary institutes, book clubs, societies of education — every sort of society whose name sounded learned and educational. Some of them lasted only until the members could invent for them a baptismal name, and then quietly died. Few of them outlived the first ten years. Among this multitude was one insignificant little institution, established in November, 1826, as is recorded in the "American Journal of Education," by some forty or fifty farmers and mechanics of the little town of Millbury, Mass. There was nothing surprising in their forming an association. Organization was in the very air. Any town that wanted to be at all up to date had to organize something educational — two or three of them, if the town were large enough. So these Millbury farmers and mechanics formed themselves into "The Millbury Branch, No. 1, of the American Lyceum." "The American Lyceum," now an established fact and a household word in many a town, then only a dream — the dream of Josiah Holbrook, of Derby, Conn.

This historic character merits at least a paragraph. Josiah Holbrook was what an irreverent generation might call "a stone agent." A firm believer in the efficacy of natural science studies as a panacea for the cure of all sorts of educational ills, already, in 1826, he had spent several years traveling about Massachusetts and Connecticut, lecturing on geology and mineralogy, and urging every town to form its own little cabinets of specimens, and to study far more, not only these, but all the natural sciences. Wandering minstrels and traveling preachers there had been before, but never, we think, a peripatetic lecturer on the natural sciences. He was the first of this race; if not the first, at least the most genetic. Moreover, to him more than to anyone else do we owe the introduction of the natural sciences into our public school curriculums, as subjects for regular study. But his greatest title to remembrance is that he dreamed of an "American Lyceum," worked with all his strength to make that dream reality, and in truth laid the foundation for the great Lyceum system of to-day.

JOSIAH HOLBBOOK'S PLAN.

Now, what was this American Lyceum to be, as seen in Josiah Holbrook's dream? A means of popular education, of self-culture and of community instruction such as should make the wilderness of uncultivated mind blossom as the rose. Mr. Holbrook's plans, as outlined in Barnard's "Journal of Education," early in 1826, required that every town should have its own Lyceum, with library, collections of specimens in natural history, cabinets of mineralogical treasures, courses of lectures given by the members, the members themselves grouped in sections for the study of science, history and art. Delegates from the Town Lyceums were to form the County Lyceums, and from these, in turn, would be made up the State Lyceums, while the National American Lyceum was to be composed of delegates from all the State societies. Here is a scheme sufficiently large and far reaching, it would seem, to fill the ambition of the man who devised it, and whose life was devoted to its historic unfolding. Yet it was not. If Josiah Holbrook had lived to-day, probably he might have been tempted to organize an educational trust, or to corner the market in professors. As it was, he planned a World Lyceum, of which Chancellor Brougham, of England, should be president, and which should have fifty-two vice-presidents, men distinguished in science and in philanthropy, men chosen from every country in the world. And this, almost before the Millbury Lyceum, "Branch No. 1," was fully organized.

Brougham



The term "Brougham" has been used by every single American car manufacturer as well as a few foreign ones to designate a car model or trim package with richly appointed features. It refers to the elegant "Brougham" carriage popular in the 19th century. That carriage was originally built to the specifications of and named for Lord Henry Peter Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux, a British statesman who became Lord Chancellor of Great Britain. Brother Brougham was a member of Canongate Kilwinning Lodge 2 of Edinburgh Scotland.

-- Freemasons: Tales from the Craft, by Steven L. Harrison

However, we must not give Josiah Holbrook credit for an imagination too vivid and strenuous. The word "Lyceum" he borrowed from the spot where Aristotle used to lecture to the youth of Greece, while various details of his system were probably adapted from other sources. For instance, Franklin's Junto may have given him the idea of mutual instruction, and the Paris Lyceum, where Monsieur de la Harpe lectured daily from 1786 to 1794, is a possible source of his plan for instruction by series of lectures. The Paris Conservatory of Arts and Trades, founded in 1796, and the Mechanics' Institutes of England, which increased in number from one in 1823 to seven hundred in 1860, probably added somewhat to the form of Holbrook's grand scheme. But the system was his own. These other efforts at popular adult education were all comparatively small and insignificant; his was perhaps the most comprehensive system ever originated, without exception.

"The Millbury Branch, No. 1, of the American Lyceum'' was the first fruit of Holbrook's toil, lecturing, writing, distributing circulars, and travel. But Millbury happened to be only a little ahead of its neighbors. Twelve or fifteen nearby villages promptly followed its example, and early in 1827 Worcester County, Mass., could boast of having the first County Lyceum.

The Lyceum germ having now found a most fertile soil, it might have been safely left to grow and multiply without further solicitude on the part of Mr. Holbrook. But he never relaxed his efforts. Up and down and criss-cross he went, through Massachusetts and Connecticut, always talking Lyceum, and personally organizing hundreds of societies. In 1828 nearly a hundred branches of the "American Lyceum'' had been formed, and by the end of 1829 there were societies in nearly every State in the Union. Two years later their numbers were approaching a thousand, and in 1834, the high water mark was reached, at which time nearly three thousand town Lyceums were scattered throughout the United States, from Boston to Detroit and from Maine to Florida. The greatest interest was shown in New England and the South, where everyone who could stoop or talk was picking up stones for the Lyceum cabinet or working up lectures for the benefit of his fellow-members.

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Part 2 of 2

THE FIRST STATE LYCEUMS.

County Lyceums were formed almost as quickly, Massachusetts being so dissatisfied with its record of seventy-eight town and three county Lyceums in 1829, that it even appointed a State Board to promote the county organizations and thus to hasten the arrival of a State society. This Board did its work so well that early in 1831 the State organized its longed-for Lyceum. But it was not the first in point of time. Though by only six weeks, yet for once New York had beaten New England in the educational race, while Florida, a State of twelve years' standing, was but little behind. Others followed rapidly, and on May 4th, 1831, New York City received the convention for the formation of an American Lyceum. One thousand town Lyceums were represented by twenty-three delegates, and in a meeting enthusiastic to the last degree, the American Lyceum was triumphantly organized "for ever and ever," declaring its object to be "the advancement of education, especially in the common schools, and the general diffusion of knowledge." A splendid program, indeed; the pity of it is that the association had so short a life in which to carry it out. For eight years meetings were held annually in New York, the number of delegates varying from sixty to a hundred, according to the state of ways, wind and weather, three of the most important items to be considered by any convention in those days. Unfortunately, the meetings were all held in the spring, when mud was the deepest and rain the heaviest, so that, although at least eight States — New York, Maine, Massachusetts, Illinois, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Florida — formed State Lyceums, there was never a meeting at which all the eight were represented. In November, 1839, a National Convention was called. This was attended by more delegates than had gathered at any previous meeting; it was even more enthusiastic; it offered suggestions for almost every branch of education; it adjourned full of plans for the future, — and never met again. Thus died the American Lyceum Union, and no historic lantern throws light on the cause of its sudden exit. But its eight years of life had been worth while in every way. It forwarded education in Cuba, Venezuela and Mexico; it gave our common school system an impetus toward better things which has never been lost, and it left behind many educational, literary and lecture associations founded through its influence, some of which are still in existence, and all of which have left their influence on the educational life of the country.

The town Lyceums, also, were left, and these carried on their work, each in its own manner, some for a year, some for twenty, thirty or fifty. The purpose of all was well enough expressed in the constitution of the society in New Bedford, Mass. "The objects of this Lyceum are the improvement of its members in useful knowledge, and the advancement of popular education." As to the fee for membership, let us turn again for information to the same constitution, which probably differed little from any other, and which states that "one annual fee shall be two dollars, but the sum of thirty dollars paid at any time will entitle a person, his heirs and assigns, to one membership forever." It is not recorded how many persons availed themselves of the privileges so generously offered in this latter clause.

A list of the towns in which these Lyceums were established might be interesting, but such a list is not known to exist. More, however, seem to have been in Massachusetts than in any other State. New Bedford, Millbury, Concord, Salem, Cambridge, Littleton, Beverly, Worcester, Harvard, Topsfield, Charlestown and Boston, of which last Daniel Webster was president for several years, these are a few of the many organized in that State. In the other States, even the names of the towns seem lost. Andover, N. H., had a Lyceum, and so did Detroit, Mich., while Windham County, Conn., was the second (Worcester, Mass., being the first) to form a county Lyceum. We know that the idea was taken up with spirit throughout the South, particularly in Georgia, South Carolina and Florida. But nowhere do the Lyceums seem to have lived so long or to have left so deep an impression as in Massachusetts. Consequently, the history of the Lyceum is its history in Massachusetts, at least from 1825 to 1890.

HOME TALENT.

But, whether their existence was long or short, the central idea of all the three thousand Lyceums of 1834 was that of self-instruction and mutual education. The means by which they set about attaining this end were various, consisting of lectures, debates, essays, conversation, or a mixture of all, though in most cases the meetings varied only between lectures and debates. However, everything educational was grist for their mills, and it is recorded that in the town of Concord, when once a storm kept away the lecturer of the evening, the chairman read Governor Morton's message aloud, from beginning to end. It may well be said that our ancestors were of sterner stuff than we. These meetings were held weekly. How did the committee manage to secure such a continuous performance of lecturers and debaters? By means of home talent. For the first ten years of the system there was almost no interchange of lecturers. Every man spoke in his home town only, and spoke whenever requested, upon whatever subject he knew best. But if the membership fee was only about two dollars, how did the societies manage to pay all these scores of lecturers? Ah, here the modest beauty of the system makes us moderns blush! Until about 1840 home talent received no fee except the applause of fellow-citizens; and as lecturers from outside, if any ever came, received only traveling expenses, the main source of outlay was the lighting of the hall. Thus, in an "Historical Sketch of the Salem Lyceum," we learn that from 1830 to 1846 native Salemites delivered 127 of all the lectures given in that town, while during the next forty years only forty were given by home talent. According to the same good authority, it would seem that the town of Salem was either exceedingly extravagant, or else much more well-to-do than its neighbors. For, after 1836, the townspeople were paid, and, more than that, were paid twenty dollars for an address. It was Salem, too, which about this time gave the first hundred-dollar fee ever received by any lecturer, Daniel Webster being the honored recipient of this unheard-of honorarium. The contrast between Salem and the neighboring towns in this respect is shown by the fact that in 1841 a particularly bright and shining star was offered ten dollars in addition to his expenses as a special inducement to lecture in Concord. We may suppose that he accepted with alacrity, but it was some time before the thrifty folks of Concord could forgive the wasteful extravagance of their committee. Why should they have offered ten dollars, when five would probably have done as well?

THE TWO SURVIVORS.

Up to a certain point the history of all the Lyceums is the same; first, home talent only; then a few speakers from nearby towns, just for variety's sake; then imported lecturers almost entirely — if the Lyceum organization lasted long enough. Comparatively few of them did reach this third stage. They passed out of existence very rapidly during the late thirties and the ten or fifteen years following, and their little libraries and collections of geological, mineralogical or natural history specimens were scattered, or went to build up other institutions. The Lyceum village of Berea, O., which Mr. Holbrook established in 1837, and which he fondly hoped would be the first of a series stretching across the continent, failed within ten years. By 1880 not one in thirty of the old Lyceums remained; now there are but two, historic Concord, and Salem. In these the Lyceum is a living force to-day, no less than in Ottawa, Kan., or in Elkhart, Ind., and the history of either for the past seventy-five years is such as would gladden the heart of Josiah Holbrook himself; it is the story of an undying devotion to all that is best and noblest in popular education.

It may be worthwhile to come a little closer to these two typical and historic Lyceums that we may learn in what respects they differ from their younger brethren, and in what particular qualities we may find the secret of their survival.

The Concord Lyceum was founded by Mr. Holbrook himself on the 7th of January, 1829. If we may believe the address made by C. H. Walcott at the celebration of its fiftieth anniversary, there were fifty-seven charter members, although that number was soon greatly increased. Each member might bring his family and two ladies, while, as a special privilege, widows, with their children, were admitted without charge. Probably it was assumed, if not figured, that widows and children would not carry away enough wisdom to rob any one else who might benefit by it. The first lecturer, oddly enough, in those days of home talent, lived at least six miles away, in the neighboring town of Waltham. His address bore the familiar title of "Popular Superstitions," but, as nothing remains to us except the name, it is impossible to judge of the lecture itself, either as to its scope or as to its literary quality. In the course of the next half century the little town of two thousand inhabitants indulged itself in 784 lectures, 106 debates and 14 concerts, these last being given after 1870. Not all the lectures were given by residents of the town, although, with citizens Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry D. Thoreau as a beginning, it hardly seems that the town would need to call in outside aid very often. As a matter of fact, Emerson gave ninety-eight of these lectures, and Thoreau, who was secretary of the Lyceum in 1840, nineteen, — all without pay, as befitted loyal townsmen. These alone were enough to insure the success of the Lyceum in Concord; but when in addition we see upon its list of lecturers for that first fifty years such men as Henry Ward Beecher, Starr King, Edward Everett Hale, Theodore Parker, Horace Greeley, Louis Agassiz, Oliver W. Holmes, James Russell Lowell, Charles A. Dana, Edwin Whipple, James T. Fields, Wendell Phillips and George W. Curtis, and these not once only, but repeatedly, we can no longer wonder at the continued success of the Concord Lyceum. The town is noted, also, as the first to include music in its Lyceum courses. This was in the winter of 1830-31. Possibly there was no way to avoid it, as said music was furnished by the Concord Band, which occasionally volunteered its services, — whenever it had learned a new piece, probably. In addition to the music, the strenuous Concordites had a course of twelve debates and thirty lectures. No wonder that a committee varying in number from three to six had to be appointed annually "to regulate the behavior of the boys." Lecture committees of to-day might take a hint here from old Concord. For a number of years only members of the Lyceum and the inevitable "widows, with their families," were allowed to attend. Then, as great lecturers came from outside, whom non-members desired to hear, the ticket system began to be adopted, and finally it supplanted the old system.

There are no records to show that the Concord Lyceum ever made any collection worthy of the name. It seems to have devoted itself almost entirely to lectures and debates, and is now similar in almost every particular to any other enterprising modern Lyceum. But the Salem Society, now known as the Essex Institute, from the incorporation into itself of several other bodies, historical or scientific, has retained, unchanged, the spirit with which it was founded early in 1830. There are, and there have been from the first, a library, and a museum of natural history, while the Institute is divided into four departments, historical, natural history, horticultural and fine arts, and two free lecture courses, with exhibitions and publications, aid the members in their study. Josiah Holbrook's idea in its perfected form exists to-day in the Salem Institute, and nowhere else.

One other institution there is, however, which should venerate the name of Holbrook, and that is the Lowell course of free lectures, of Boston, later called the Lowell Institute, which owes its foundation in 1832 by John Lowell, a cousin of the poet, to the influence of Josiah Holbrook. This Institute, according to Dr. Edward Everett Hale, was simply the culmination of the various courses already existing in Boston, and which he declares to have been conducted almost exactly on the plan of the present-day University Extension lectures, — except for two important things: there was less to pay and more to hear. The prices varied from fifty cents to two dollars a course, while the lectures might number anywhere from ten to fifteen. In "A New England Boyhood," Dr. Hale mentions as among these lecturers of the early thirties Dr. Jacob Bigelow, giving courses on botany; Henry Ware, on Palestine, and Edward Everett, on Greek antiquities.

LOWELL AS A LECTURER.

According to "James Russell Lowell and His Friends," also by Dr. Hale, there were in Boston alone, towards the end of the same decade, public courses given by at least five organizations: the Boston Lyceum, the Society for Diffusing Useful Knowledge, the Mercantile Library Association, the Mechanics' Association and the Historical Society. It was by lectures before these bodies, says Dr. Hale, that James Russell Lowell first gained a local reputation and a name, while still a boy scarcely out of college and not yet even of age. He was feeling around for his place in the world, and it was not long before his temperance lectures and afterwards those on anti-slavery had given him a reputation which made him one of the most popular lecturers up to the time of the Civil War. It was probably in the early part of his career that he wrote to the Andover Lyceum, asking if they would give "so much as five dollars" for a lecture. This letter, we are told, is still in existence, but, unfortunately for those who would like to know whether or not he got the job, the answer is not. It is to be hoped, however, that the Andover committee seized upon the chance.

It must have been some years later that Lowell's brilliant contemporary, Starr King, perpetrated that now well-worn Lyceum chestnut, "FAME. — Fifty And My Expenses," when asked for what he lectured. It was Starr King, also, who was first responsible for the saying that to be truly popular, a Lyceum lecture should be made up of five parts of sense and five of nonsense.

THE FIRST PROFESSIONAL LECTURER.

Mr. King was among the earliest professional lecturers, and yet by no means the first. The five years of the greatest development of the old Lyceum, from 1835 to 1840, marked the arrival of the professional lecturer as well as the beginning of the end for the system which made him not only possible, but necessary. And it is to Emerson that we must give the credit of discovering this new profession. True, Horace Mann lectured every weekday night for eleven years, 1837 to 1848; but these wore the years of his secretaryship for the Massachusetts Board of Education, and the lecturing was considered by him only a part of his duty, says Thomas Wentworth Higginson. But Emerson lectured ninety-eight times in Concord and twenty successive years in Salem. Higginson tells us that when he was manager of the Newburyport lecture course, in 1847, he received the strictest directions to include Emerson, no matter who else was on the course, and to pay him twenty dollars, while no one other speaker was to receive more than fifteen. Moreover, Emerson felt so confident of his position that some time in the forties he wrote a letter to the Waltham committee, stating that he would "come for the five dollars offered, but must have in addition four quarts of oats for his horse." (We are glad to say that he received the provender, though only after much discussion.) Yes, Emerson was the first professional lecturer, and it has been said of him, not only that he created that profession, but that he gave the Lyceum of this country its form and character.Almost everything he wrote after "Nature," say the "Old South Leaflets," was originally for the platform. "My pulpit is the Lyceum platform," he once said, and his devotion to it during the five-dollar days was well rewarded when in his later years he received from $150 to $500 for a single lecture.

But Emerson did not long hold the platform alone as a professional lecturer. John B. Gough began lecturing in 1842, and Wendell Phillips three years later. In this same year of 1845, by the way, Dr. A. A. Willits, now well named the Dean of the American Platform, delivered his first lecture, in Philadelphia, on the subject of "The Model Wife." It may be interesting to know that this lecture, though sixty-one years of age, is still in Dr. Willits's repertoire, and is still available.

Rev. Dr. A.A. Willits, "Apostle of Sunshine"

Rev. A.A. Willits, D.D., was elected pastor September 24, 1882, and entered upon the pastorate January 8, 1883.

By an act of the Legislature of Kentucky the name of the [Chestnut Street Presbyterian Church] was changed to "Broadway Tabernacle Presbyterian Church" February 14, 1876, and again to "Warren Memorial Presbyterian Church" January 7, 1882.

Rev. A.A. Willits, D.D., resigned the pastorate February 1, 1890.

-- Warren Memorial Presbyterian Church, The New-York Observer, Volume 91, January 4, 1912

Tuesday Afternoon, July 13, 1909

The meeting was called to order by President Billingsly at the Auditorium.

In the absence of the speakers who were announced to discuss the "Mission of Elementary Schools," that subject was passed and the "Relation of the State Normal Schools to Public Education" was ably discussed by Dr. A.E. Booth, of Nashville, and C.W. Anderson, of Brownsville.

Dr. Frederick W. Moore, of Vanderbilt University, made a strong address on "Advantages of Federation of Colleges." Dr. Brown Ayres, of Knoxville, and Dr. Conger, of Jackson, who were also assigned to this subject were not present.

No further business being presented, the Association adjourned to meet at 8:15 to hear the lecture of Dr. Willits on "The Model Wife and Mother."

The Association attended the lecture at night, but no business was transacted, and adjourned to meet at 9:00 o'clock Wednesday morning.

-- Biennial Report of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction for Tennessee for the Scholastic years ending June 30, 1909-1910, submitted to the Governor, R.L. Jones, State Superintendent

THE MODEL WIFE. -- Rev. Dr. A.A. Willits, in a recent lecture delivered in Brooklyn, described the model wife of ancient times. Among other traits of her character to which he referred was her industry. He said:

"She was the model woman for that period, for this age and for all ages to come. Costume and customs had changed, but all the essential features of womanly character are as fitting now as then." The speaker then read the description of her in the book of Proverbs, and remarked that all that human genius had labored for centuries to embody in marble, on canvas, or in the pages of poetry, for conception of that which was true, and beautiful, and graceful in woman, we might challenge the whole world to bring a picture of woman worthy to be compared with this. The whole picture was lighted up with the glow of a most cheerful, healthful activity. She not only superintended the duties of her household, but worked with her own hands. The daughters of modern society might here find a useful hint. The idea prevailed, nowadays, to a great extent among young ladies, that work was degrading; that it belonged to common people. The modern idea of womanly beauty was an ethereal creature, with fair features and a frail body, supported by whalebone. The hearty, vigorous, blushing rose used to be the emblem of beauty, but it is now the lily, even though lily white be made accessory to such a result. It might be truly said of them, "They toil not, neither do they spin, yet Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these." The idea of domestic industry being vulgar, is one of the conceits of modern days. Neither rich nor poor were exempt from the divine law that industry was healthful and proper. You, ladies, to become model wives, should be industrious.

-- The Guardian, A Monthly Magazine For Young Men and Ladies, Rev. B. Bausman, D.D., Editor, Volume XXVIII, 1877

THE PLATFORM A REFORM AGENT.

Others rapidly followed, — George William Curtis, E. P. Whipple, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Bayard Taylor, and then, as the spirit of reform and agitation swept over the country, the platform became one of the strongest and most effective brooms used in the sweeping. Every well-known lecturer was a reformer, and a reformer to whom his cause was dearer than was life itself. Temperance, woman's suffrage and the anti-slavery movement,— these were the three great causes which gave to these inspired men and women veritable words of flame. Lowell threw himself with enthusiasm, first into the cause of temperance, then of anti-slavery. Gough never swerved from the position he had taken in 1842 as an antagonist of drink, but Lucy Stone, Anna Dickinson, Wendell Phillips, George William Curtis, Henry Ward Beecher, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Edward H. Chapin, Charles Sumner, and many others who had entered the Lyceum in behalf of temperance or woman's rights, these, subordinating the lesser cause to the greater, as 1850 approached, joined William Lloyd Garrison and Fred Douglass in denouncing and arguing against slavery and the slave-holders.

Then came the days of hostile audiences, of hisses and catcalls, and even bodily assault upon the lecturer. On several occasions Garrison narrowly escaped injury, and it is recorded of Miss Stone that it was only her quick wit which saved her and her companion from an angry mob gathered to attack them after an anti-slavery meeting. Terrified for Miss Stone as he saw the hostile faces confronting them, her friend exclaimed, "What can I do to protect you?'' "Oh," she replied, "this gentleman will take care of me," — at the same time placing her hand on the arm of one of the ringleaders. The man gaped in astonishment, but meekly accepted the trust. He escorted Miss Stone in safety through the staring mob, which was so absorbed in staring, by the way, that even her friend as well came off scot-free.

But Miss Stone was at this time thoroughly accustomed both to ridicule and to passive and active opposition. It was in 1847, as Major Pond tells us in his "Eccentricities of Genius," that a Maiden (Mass.) minister thus announced her anti-slavery address: "I am requested by Mr. Mowey to announce that a hen will endeavor to crow like a cock at the Town Hall this afternoon. Those of you who are interested in such an exhibition will, of course, attend." Unfortunately, we are not told of the size of the audience gathered by this appeal.

In these years the first effort of every speaker was to get an audience; the second, to make it friendly. All sorts of devices were used in order to change hostility or open indifference into eager, warm-hearted sympathy. An excellent case in point is one related of Wendell Phillips by Dr. E. E. Hale. Phillips was billed to lecture in a certain town, but nothing had been said about the address itself up to the time of his arrival. Then it appeared that the committee was "stuck"; half of them wanted "The Lost Arts," and the others an anti-slavery talk, while no one would give in. "Well," said Phillips, "I'll give both; 'The Lost Arts first, and then an anti-slavery speech to all who wish to stay for it." And he did. Of course, no one left the hall after the first lecture, and he had the sympathetic and even enthusiastic audience which he desired for his second.

The war passed on, and left the reputations of these men and women higher than ever. Anna Dickinson had changed Vermont from a Democratic to a Republican State; Mary Livermore had brought about the great Sanitary Commission Fairs for the benefit of the wounded soldiers; Beecher had sold slaves in Plymouth Church, and secured in an hour thousands of dollars for the freedmen. Not one of the great agitators but was overwhelmed with laurels won before and during the war. Here was material ready to hand from which to reconstruct the lecture system, which had been well-nigh destroyed during the five years' struggle. And it was reconstructed. At least there were many lectures given. But for several years there was no system about it. Only too often did a committee inform a lecturer that it would "try to pay" the fee named. He would come, lecture with all his might, and then would receive the proceeds of a collection, which rarely even paid expenses. The definitely-stated fees were quite as surprising in their nature and amount. Beecher was one day paid with twelve bushels of potatoes, and in Andover, N. H., Gough once received a ham as his fee.

It seems, perhaps, unworthy of our great speakers that the "filthy lucre" should have been of the slightest consequence to them. It must have been, however, as they soon began to vigorously "kick against the pricks" of this system, and within a year or two after the Civil War many lecturers absolutely refused to speak at all unless guaranteed a definite compensation. The collection method was evidently unsatisfactory; what system could be devised which would suit?

THE ASSOCIATED WESTERN LITERARY SOCIETIES.

The enterprising West took the first step toward solving the problem. In this supposedly raw and uncultured land there were, it appears, even at this time, numerous oases in the shape of literary societies. A number of these societies, anxious to hear the great literary and military lights of the East, but each unable by itself to bear the necessary expense, decided that in union was strength, and in 1867 organized themselves into the "Associated Western Literary Societies." The combination was successful from the start. In 1867-8, the first secretary, Mr. G. L. Torbert, of Dubuque, Ia., brought thirty-five lecturers West, as we are told by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and managed to give them tolerably consecutive dates among the one hundred and ten allied societies stretching from Pittsburg, Pa., to Leavenworth, Kan. The next year, C. S. Carter, of Michigan University, enticed even more speakers into the "golden West,'' and the societies fairly reveled in the learning and oratory which was showered over them. As a separate institution, however, the association lasted only until 1870, when it was merged into the American Literary Bureau of New York, then in its third vigorous year. Mr. James K. Medbury, the founder of this Bureau, did not long enjoy a monopoly of the big new field just opened for cultivation. In fact, the year 1868 marked not only the establishment of his own Bureau, but also that of its rival, the Boston Lyceum Bureau (now Redpath) by James Redpath. Benjamin Webb Williams followed in 1869 with the Williams Lecture and Musical Bureau, and the day of helter-skelter lecturing had passed forever. The object of all three of these pioneer Bureaus was the same, — to systematize the lecture business, and do away with ham and potatoes as lecture fees. And the lecturers, at least, were willing to be systematized. Business poured in upon the Bureaus, — more business than they could well manage in those days, when stenography and typewriters were unknown. There were still giants in those days, and the list of names on the first Bureau announcement ever issued sounds very much like a hasty review of the greatest men of the century, — Bronson Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Ward Beecher, Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner, Henry Wilson (Senator from Massachusetts), George William Curtis, John B. Gough, General Swift (of Massachusetts), Horace Greeley, Russell H. Conwell and Fred Douglass. Twelve names, hardly one of which is not recalled with love and admiration to-day, although, with one exception, that of Russell Conwell, belonging to a past generation; and there were other lecturers, as good or nearly so. Those were palmy days for the Lyceum, the palmiest it had known, for, if the array of talent was the most remarkable in the history of the institution, the prices paid for it were equally remarkable. Before 1850 there had been but few recorded instances of fees of over fifty dollars, while Daniel Webster's occasional compensation of a hundred must have seemed like a dream to him, — and probably a nightmare to others. But now, in the early seventies, money was dirt cheap, and the prices paid were fabulous. From Major Pond's "Eccentricities of Genius" we learn that Mark Twain, then just beginning to lecture, received $300 a night, which doesn't seem at all bad for a beginner. Beecher received five hundred dollars ordinarily, although in 1872 he received from the Redpath Bureau the first thousand-dollar fee ever paid to any lecturer. No, the Bureau lost nothing; on the contrary, it gained double the amount paid Mr. Beecher. Few lecturers could come up to this standard. P. T. Barnum, as an unreformed circus-man, and Robert Collyer, the blacksmith-preacher, received two hundred each, and Anna Dickinson anywhere from one hundred and fifty dollars to twice that sum.

The fair, held in the vibrant, new city in the heart of the American continent, rather than in the old, European-founded city of New York, was bigger and more spectacular than any previous exposition. The organizers quite specifically set out to surpass the standards set by the very successful Paris Exposition of 1889. "The country of P. T. Barnum was not about to be outdone by France." The fairground was several times the area of the Paris exposition. It cost many times more. In the handbook distributed at the fair by the Department of Publicity, Europe was dwarfed by American statistics. The Manufactures Hall, the largest roofed structure ever erected, was three times larger than St. Peters, four times the size of the Colosseum in Rome, and the entire army of Russia could be mobilized on its floor.39 Early plans to build higher than the Eiffel Tower were abandoned, and instead the first and largest Ferris wheel ever built was installed as the symbol of American ingenuity in engineering and, to an even greater extent than the dome, as the symbol of America's predestination to world supremacy.

-- Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West: Orientalism, Occidentalism, and the Columbian Exposition, by Judith Snodgrass

Gough, whose earliest lectures, given in 1842, brought him less than a dollar each, and whose first settled fee was eight dollars, according to Benjamin Webb Williams, who paid it to him, now received from three hundred to five hundred dollars a night for his wonderful temperance addresses. These were ordinary compensations for the kings of the platform. As for those of coarser clay, it would seem, from an old circular of the American Literary Bureau, that they would accept one hundred dollars if they could get it. Unfortunately for them, however, most of their fees were arranged on the sliding scale, — ''from one hundred dollars to twenty-five dollars'' for instance, was by no means an uncommon quotation, on this circular, at least, — and it is to be wondered how often the recompense did elide to the top. These home-made lecturers would probably not have objected to a high tariff on the foreign product when the Williams Bureau imported Archdeacon Farrar and paid him $2,150 for two lectures. But Major Pond far surpassed this record when he gave Henry M. Stanley, just returned from the depths of Africa and the Pygmy forest, the sum of $100,000 for one hundred lectures. The gross receipts for Stanley's first lecture, it may be mentioned, were $17,800.

MUSIC IN THE LYCEUM.

But this was all too good to last, and about 1875 the Lyceum began to show signs of weakness. The field was constantly growing, and there were not enough lecturers to go around. Several of the veteran lecturers were dead, and in their zeal to book those that were well known, the Bureaus had failed to train up younger men to take their places. The difference between demand and supply was too great for comfort, and the Bureau managers turned to music as the one thing which might prop up their tottering courses. "Were there no readers in those days?" you may ask. Yes, there were a few, notably Mrs. Scott Siddons, Charlotte Cushman and Helen Potter, all of whom drew salaries as high as those of the greatest lecturers of the time. Lecture courses consisted usually of ten numbers of straight talk, including one, possibly two, evenings of readings. But the number of readers was small, indeed, as compared to the large number who fill the ranks to-day, and they could do little to eke out the lecture courses. Music was the last recourse, and the Mendelssohn Quintette Club, the first concert company on any Bureau list, was organized by Mr. Redpath in 1873. This was soon followed by the Camilla Urso Company and the English Lyceum Opera Company. Then [url]Ole Bull[/url] was secured for fifty concerts. It cost $25,000, but the Bureau did not begrudge the money. Other concert companies were formed, and introduced a new element into the Lyceum, — the advance agent, the first of which order was employed by the old Boston Bureau (now the Redpath Lyceum Bureau, Hathaway & Pond, managers). Ten years later, in 1887-8, Mr. Hathaway had five men on the road.

And here begins the modern Bureau system, of which we need say but little. Several Bureaus had sprung up during the seventies, notably the Slayton, of Chicago, and the Antrim Entertainment Bureau, of Philadelphia.

In a letter from Greenacre dated July 31, 1894, Vivekananda mentioned, "One Mr. Colville from Boston is here; he speaks every day, it is said, under spirit control."80 In her "Reminscences" Alice Hansbrough added:

While he was under contract with that lecture bureau (Slayton-Lyceum Bureau of Chicago] during his first visit to the West, he travelled with a very well-known spiritualist named Colville, who apparently was also under contract to the same bureau. Swamiji used to say, "If you think X is hard to live with, you should have travelled with Colville." The man seems to have had a nurse to look after him all time.81

Sarah Farmer wrote that she received the inspiration for the Greenacre Religious Conference while listening to a lecture by W.J. Colville in Boston in 1892.82 English born Wilberforce J. Colville (1859-1917), an inspirational speaker and author of little formal education, from the age of fourteen would enter into a trance and an entity would appear to speak through him. While apparently unconscious, he answered questions on a variety of subjects suggested by the audience, demonstrating knowledge he did not normally possess. Under the pressure of some foreign influence, his lips moved mechanically. At the audience's request, he frequently composed impromptu poems. Colville toured England and the United States where he settled down permanently, and authored many books on the occult.83

-- Western Admirers of Ramakrishna and His Disciples, by Gopal Stavig

Contract With Chicago Bureau for Forty Weeks Beginning Next May



J. Riley Wheelock, conductor and proprietor of Wheelock's Indian band, closed yesterday in Philadelphia, a deal with the Chicago Slayton Lyceum Bureau, wherein the band will tour to the coast next summer and the south next fall under the exclusive management of the bureau. The band will number fifty, and open its season in Chicago, in May. Mr. Wheelock is to be congratulated. We are sure his band will again be a great success.

--The Sentinel, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, 26 Oct. 1906

By 1894, the band and the Carlisle Women's Choir, performed throughout the East. On April 15, 1894, the New York Times did a feature on Wheelock with his portrait and band, reviewing their performance at the city's Lenox Lyceum. The review noted "few metropolitan bands can boast of greater care and accuracy in the execution of their music." "Among other offerings, the band played Mozart and Wagner as well as two selections compose by Wheelock himself: "The Carlisle Indian School March" and a piece entitled "American Medley." "The concert's patrons read as a "Who's Who" of New York's elite families, including Mrs. J. Pierpont Morgan, Mrs. Russell Sage, Mrs. James Harriman and Mrs. Elihu Root.

-- Dennison Wheelock, by Wikipedia

During the next decade they came into existence over night, and now there are over one hundred and fifty bureaus, large and small, as compared to three in 1870. A half dozen of the largest of these book over 3,000 dates apiece each winter. Eighteen thousand lectures, readings and entertainments given throughout the country every winter! And in addition there are all the other one hundred and forty-four Bureaus to be heard from, besides the many engagements which are made without any Bureau assistance. It seems as though the numbers must run up into the hundreds of thousands.

And this is entirely irrespective of nearly four hundred Chautauqua Assemblies which now exist, of the thousands of lectures which are given yearly in University Extension courses, and of the other thousands which are annually provided by the Boards of Education of New York and other cities desirous of educating their citizens beyond the narrow limits of a school-room. It may be, and has been, objected that these last two institutions, at least, are not in any way a part of the Lyceum, and it is true that both speakers and methods of work are apt to be somewhat dissimilar from those employed in the Lyceum "proper," yet in their great, central idea, the education and inspiration of the people, these institutions are one with the Lyceum, and should be given brief space in a sketch of the latter.

The free lecture course of New York City was established, according to "The Nation," in 1888, through the influence of Commissioner Miles O'Brien. That year two hundred lectures were given at six centers; ten years later there were forty-five centers and two thousand lectures, and in 1903 over 1,200,000 people of Greater New York attended the lectures arranged by the Board of Education. Why are these lectures so wonderfully popular? Because they are absolutely democratic, and because they give the people what they want and are asking for in physiology, natural science, travel, history, art, literature, social science and matters of municipal interest. New York's experiment has proved a success and well worthy of imitation. Within the last few years, in fact, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Milwaukee and other cities have followed in her train, and it is to be hoped that still others will join the grand procession.

UNIVERSITY EXTENSION.

As for the University Extension movement, that was imported from England in 1890, by Provost Pepper, of the University of Pennsylvania. Uncertain how the experiment would turn out, the first course of lectures, a series on chemistry, was given in Boxborough, a little suburb of Philadelphia. The Roxboroughans approved, and the American Society for University Extension was at once organized, on December 23d, 1890. The idea was eagerly seized upon, and many colleges, large and small, attempted to increase their influence, presenting series of lectures on various topics, — science, art, history, literature, etc. In nearly every case, however, as at Leland Stanford and the Universities of New York and California, the plan was soon given up entirely, simply for lack of lecturers. The American Society, already mentioned, and the University of Chicago, alone seem to have solved the problem, having collected each a staff of lecturers, whose main business it is to lecture for the University Extension. And right here is a good place to quote Edward Everett Hale's statement that the University Extension of to-day is almost exactly the Lyceum of the past. In truth, it bears a much stronger resemblance to the platform of old than does the present Lyceum. Nothing but lectures on an Extension course, the lectures always educational, humorous only by mistake or by accident, and usually given in series, — these three characteristics of the old Lyceum are reproduced, almost exactly in University Extension. And so the old Lyceum in the guise of University Extension has once more taken firm root in the land. During the eleventh year after the work began, the Chicago and Philadelphia Associations presented to the people very nearly one thousand lectures each, while the number given now is far in advance of this. As W. T. Stead has well said, "University Extension is the University on wheels."

THE WORK OF CHAUTAUQUA ASSEMBLIES.

As to the Chautauqua, — well, to quote the late Sam Jones, "We are not religious enough to run a camp meeting, and county fairs are no longer popular; so we organize a Chautauqua." And yet the great Chautauqua movement started in a training school for Sunday School teachers, which held its first meeting at Lake Chautauqua, N. Y., August, 1874, under the direction of Bishop John H. Vincent and Lewis Miller, as the Chautauqua Sunday School Association. Designed at first only for the study of the Bible and of such things as would directly assist in teaching the Bible, its idea gradually expanded to cover general education for out-of-school people. Now for ten weeks each year at Chautauqua Institution, N. Y., there are, besides the Bible study, classes in nearly every branch of learning, kindergarten, gymnasium, athletic sports, lectures, entertainments, — nearly everything, it would seem. And it is this Chautauqua Summer Assembly as an ideal which is copied in greater or less degree by all the various Chautauquaa of the country, whether their yearly term of existence is one week or one month. All have lectures, preferably instructive or inspiring, entertainments of the better class, Bible study, and as many others of the characteristic features as the differences of time and place will allow. It is a school for people out of school. True, the instruction lasts, at most, but for a month or two but the intellectual stimulus given to reading and thought afterwards may uplift and inspire a whole community.

We are told of a certain Western city which had a rather poor minister. However, the people were well enough satisfied with him until they founded a Chautauqua and developed under its stimulus. But the minister didn't, and it was not long before he became so unsatisfactory that he had to leave the town. And the mental growth in this place is only a sample of that in many others.

The Chautauqua Assembly, like the Lyceum, has come to stay. Last summer nearly four hundred Assemblies were held, and every issue of the Lyceum magazines gives accounts of the incorporation of others. It may seem an odd thing, perhaps, that this movement is most flourishing in the Central West and in the South rather than in supposedly cultured New England. The truth is, however, that Iowa and Illinois are much more like old New England than New England itself is now. "Westward the course of Chautauquas takes its way," and last summer, while Iowa numbered perhaps sixty Chautauquas, Illinois forty, Indiana twenty, and Ohio twenty-five, all New England could not muster ten. In the South, too, the Chautauqua idea has found an eager acceptance, and nowhere in the Union are there more enterprising or better-conducted Assemblies than are scattered all through the territory south of Mason and Dixon's line.

Of the Chautauqua idea President Roosevelt has said: "I know of nothing in the whole country which is so filled with blessing for the nation." "Except the Lyceum courses," he might have added, for the two go hand in hand. Both absolutely popular and democratic in their origin and working out, they represent and reflect the thought of the day as does no other movement. Here the great questions of our time are discussed before audiences open to conviction, yet who will weigh every statement made, and here the man with, a message for people who think may most quickly reach those people. The Chautauqua and Lyceum platforms, "one and inseparable," have become the great forum of America, one of the greatest educational influences of our time, and a sure bulwark of our democracy.

THE LYCEUM TO-MORROW

Before leaving these fertile acres of the Lyceum field historic, and while the spirit of divination seems abroad, stand on any one of these mountain peaks and look. You are not a prophet? Very well, yet may you be a seer. What see you? What of the future of the Lyceum?

To what issue point all these fingers of vision, all the Lyceum signs of the times?

Professor James, of Harvard, standing on Mount Philosophy, in his current lectureship — Lowell Institute, 1906 — discussing "Pragmatic Philosophy," makes implicitly but little more than a fresh appeal in behalf of the scientific method. We may go with him, even though we recognize that he does not go to the end of his quest. We may ignore for the nonce the truth that pragmatic philosophy is itself unpragmatic by as much as it pronounces a priori judgments, and in that it denies, or doubts, or ignores all pragmatic values in idealistic verities; and yet, at the same time we may reasonably and piously salute pragmatic philosophy in its apotheosis of common sense; in our mental attitude towards the material universe, its mysteries and their significance. Common sense gives us trustworthy — if not the only trustworthy — points of observation and of experiment.

CORONATION OF COMMON SENSE.

Unquestionably — from our Mount of Vision we may clearly see it — unquestionably the Lyceum of to-day stands, and the Lyceum of to-morrow will stand, for the coronation of this plain common sense of the people, and for the annunciation and for the defense of fact, of truth, of reality, of actual human experience. Its platform is as broad as human thought, and as free as the air. And upon it there shall yet be won the most signal victories of political cleanness, of civic righteousness, of educational sanity, of ethical and social justice, yea, of religious freedom.