emphatically an When Academic

Teacups. He was "As," not an "If." Hall burned, he said it was the best thing that could have happened.

When certain persons reviled the Scriptures, in which he believed, he said, "So much the worse for them, but it will do the Scriptures good." In short, he was at all times a buoyant optimist. Then there was about him the unfailing genial play of humor, by which he subdued the tone of both sacrifices and cares. When reproached by a ministerial friend for the old slouch hat he wore, his reply was, "We are different; you need a hat to walk round the walls of Zion with."

One day, after he had been paralyzed, he reverently bowed his head at dinner to ask the usual blessing, but instantly afterwards burst into a hearty laugh, and said, "I could n't shut but one eye." The ludicrous side even of the sharpest distress struck him at once, and when he felt the worst he laughed.

It was a great sight to see him, in the prime of his manhood, sitting clad in his school uniform, with his short jacket just like the boys, in his little dry-goods box of an office, an embodiment of business and dispatch; a great sight to see him in Virginia Hall on a Sunday evening, his sturdy form erect, his head thrown back, leading the school, at the top of his voice, in some old plantation song, or, with one hand in his pocket, talking to them about hard facts, with something of the kindliness of a father, the directness of an army officer, and the hard-headed sagacity of an old slaveholding Virginia planter.

It was a greater sight to see him teach Dr. Hopkins's Outline Study of Man to his own senior class of colored boys and girls. The task would have daunted most college professors, but Armstrong, like his beloved teacher, had a profound belief in the capacity of the humblest soul to receive the greatest truth, provided that truth were properly

put. At it, therefore, he went, with all the enthusiasm of his nature; and he invariably declared that it was the thing which of all things he most enjoyed. He had two rare points as a teacher: with all his powerful originality, he could shut himself up to the patient teaching of another man's book; and he understood the fact that because of some personal hitch a large percentage of every class fails to catch the educational movement. He never raved at dull students; it no more angered him when one did not take hold than it irritates a good fisherman when a particular trout will not rise to the conventional brown hackle. It is that particular trout whose personal equation the good angler enjoys studying. Armstrong always prepared the way for the coming lesson; reading it over to the class sentence by sentence, stopping at every difficult word, drawing out the mind of the class as to its meaning, conversing shrewdly with them about it, bringing out their peculiarities, and so finding the personal hitch of each member.

Like many of the most original and successful thinkers, Armstrong reached his important conclusions from the study of a concrete fact. That fact was, in his case, the missionary history of the Sandwich Islands. It was to him an absorbingly interesting problem in social science. It was also the problem of his father's life, and of the New Testament as related to modern times. published a little pamphlet on the subject.

He

It was a hurriedly constructed thing, thrown out in the midst of pressing cares, its ideas half formulated; yet it is educationally of the highest value. It shows how important it is for us that the ages do not all go tandem. Happily, some of the savage ages are abreast of us.

Armstrong fully realized the value of this little segment of history, and his pamphlet shows what a perfectly fair and sympathetic yet acutely critical intellect could do with it. He could not

bear to call Hawaiian Christianity a failure; still his judgment compelled him to do so. What was the trouble? Clearly it did not lie in the religion itself; this was obvious to his mind from what he saw in cases which he cites. Where the religion had a chance, it showed itself the same transcendently glorious thing that it was in the apostolic days. It performed moral miracles. Where then lay the trouble? Evidently with the conditions of the social and industrial structure. To this Armstrong was himself an eye-witness. It precluded morality, he declared. The Christian native struggled vainly with it. The best that could be expected from him was faith's struggle, not faith's victory. The only thing that could possibly help him was to teach him so to build the social and industrial edifice that it should harmonize with Christianity. A hut with only one room and a race with no fixed habit of industry are not unitable with Christianity. What was the meaning of this, then? That Christianity could not stand alone? Precisely. It never was meant to stand alone. It was meant to take its place in a world of reciprocal organisms among which it is the supreme organism. Education, religion, industry, are different departments of one great process, which he called the building of manhood. It is impossible that one should advance well in any one of these departments without its correlatives. "We have learned," he says, "how to make money, but not how to build men." From this solution of the problem comes his idea of education. It is easy to talk about Armstrong having devised a good scheme of education for the negro and Indian. It is a grave question whether he has not solved the whole problem of education. Strip Strip his system of its external form, and the principle is this: Take what force the man has and put it to practical use at once. First make him a useful organ of humanity, then give him humanity's knowledge. It is the completion of Dr.

cess

Hopkins's idea. If it could be carried out, it is possible that the educative pronow going on in a good many young gentlemen might be almost as much improved as was the education of the negro and Indian when Armstrong took hold of it.

It would be no fair assessment of his work if I closed without saying a word about his religion. He was not naturally religious; there was about him too much. of earthly interest, science, combativeness, and general absorption in the world; besides, he was keenly critical and alive to the ridiculous, singularly destitute of fear, and not at all inclined to be anxious about his sins or anything else. Yet he saw the worth of religion; and though mystified by its apparent conflict with science, and also by its spiritual processes, he, with his sturdy practical sense and a conviction that it was meant for him as he was, laid hold of the side that was handiest to him and held on. It proved to be, "Teneo et teneor." In his earlier days he said to me, "Work is the best prayer." In his later days he reversed that saying. In fact, he became a kind of saint. Spiritual things were those on which he had strongest hold. When under terrible pressure, he was in the habit of devoting a tenth of his time to devotional reading, at one time using Thomas à Kempis, his robust spiritual digestion receiving no harm from its asceticism, while he took great delight in its spiritual revelations. I judge he had by no means reached the maximum of his powers; he still seemed full of undeveloped potentiality. With his wondrous physique, at the time of his death he should have been in the prime of life. As a matter of fact he died from exhaustion, worn out, not by his legitimate function of education, but by his unexampled labors in securing money for his institution.

If Lincoln stood for the emancipation of the negro's body, no less did Armstrong stand for the emancipation of his

mind. The former represented the conduct of the war; the latter, its tremendous issues. The life of a free people is centred not so much in its political as in its educational organs. The death of a great popular educator in the midst of his work is an exceedingly critical event. It would seem, therefore, that in their failure to support such a God-given leader the American people may have inflicted upon themselves a grievous blow; nor can a nation more than an individual expect that Providence or good luck will mend such mistakes. As for Armstrong himself, it is not wonderful that, seeing the fortunes amassed by many of his countrymen, and the relative pittance doled out to meet the moral and educational necessities of the nation, he was carried away by a scorn of what he called hoarding, and that when he received a personal gift he flung it into the treasury of the institution. His death was, to the minds of some, a martyrdom; others criticised the struggle that led to it as a rash expenditure of power. If there be truth in the latter view, it becomes us to be gentle in our judgment. Probably he could not help it. Every man has his necessities, some noble, some ignoble. A certain excess was perhaps a necessity of his profoundly impassioned nature. When he took the cup of sacrifice, he could but drink deep of it, and he was satisfied.

A friend who was his guest during the naval review, April 22, 1893, writes, in a private letter, of his last days: —

"Sunday morning, the 23d, he seemed very weary and feeble, but in the evening walked laboriously up all those stairs to Virginia Hall, and spoke to the students for half an hour. It was a singularly dramatic sight, all those dark faces looking toward him, as he stood leaning on his cane, with his drawn white face and almost white hair and those wonderful deep-set eyes, talking to them as only he could talk; impressing upon them, whatever they did, no matter how 7 NO. 435.

VOL. LXXIII.

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trivial, to do it well and with their whole heart.

"They sang "They look like men of war,' one of his favorite hymns, and marched out to 'Jerusalem the golden,' and I thought I could almost wish he might die then, among them.

"It was his last Sunday in Virginia Hall. After that, he went in a boat through the fleet, with the choir, to serenade the flagships, and did n't get back till twelve o'clock. Monday, he went with us to see the fleet sail. We climbed on to the outer ramparts, leaving him in the carriage; but he could n't see there, so he climbed the lighthouse stairs and watched the ships. He seemed fairly well when we left, that night; but the heart-failure attack came Tuesday, and though he pulled through it, he never really rallied, and suffered terribly; every breath was anguish, night and day, in spite of everything love and science could suggest or do. At the last the end came very suddenly he had a suffocating turn, no worse than others, and then was.

gone.

...

"The whole front of the platform of that beautiful great church, flooded with. sunshine, was lined with potted lilies and plants; the pulpit had a fringe of bridal wreath, and above were massed roses of all colors, in the centre the splendid Jacques that grow on his own house, and just in front of it he lay in his coffin, with the heavy folds of a splendid flag covering it. Two negroes stood at the head, and two Indians at the foot, with their furled flags draped in black. The plate on the coffin said fifty-four years; but it was hard to believe he was only fifty-four, when one looked from it to that worn, tired face, the face in whose drawn lines and sunken, tired eyes was seen the weight of the burden that had killed him. A few hours after his death, the commanding officer at Fortress Monroe sent, asking the honor of giving the general a funeral of full military honors (an absolutely unheard-of thing for an

HAMPTON, VA., December 31, 1890,
New Year's Eve.

MEMORANDA. - Now when all is bright, the family together, and there is nothing to alarm and very much to be thankful for, it is well to look ahead, and perhaps to say the things that I would wish to have known, should I suddenly die.

I wish to be buried in the school graveyard, among the students, where one of them would have been put had he died. ...

Next, I wish no monument or fuss to be made over my grave, and only a simple headstone; no text or sentiment inscribed, only my name and date. I wish the simplest funeral service, without sermon or attempt at oratory, -a soldier's funeral. . . .

I hope that there will be enough friends to see that the work continues; unless some one makes sacrifices for it, it cannot go on. Α work that requires no sacrifice does not count for much, in fulfilling God's plans; but what is commonly called sacrifice is the best natural use of one's self and one's resources, the best investment of time, strength, and means. He who makes no such sacrifice is most to be pitied; he is a heathen, because he knows nothing of God. In the school, the great thing is, not to quarrel, to pull together, to refrain from hasty, unwise words or actions, to unselfishly and only seek the best good of all, and to get rid of workers whose temperaments are unfortunate, whose heads are not level, no matter how much knowledge or culture they may have. Cantankerousness is worse than heterodoxy.

I wish no effort at a biography of myself made. Good friends might get up a pretty

good story, but it would not be the whole truth. The truth of a life usually lies deep down. We hardly know ourselves. God only does. I trust his mercy.

The shorter one's creed, the better. "Simply to thy cross I cling," is enough for me.

I am most thankful for my parents, my Hawaiian home, my war experiences, my college days at Williams, and for life and work at Hampton. Hampton has blessed me in so many ways. Along with it have come the choicest people in the country for my friends and helpers, and then such a grand chance to do something directly for those set free by the war, and indirectly for those who were conquered. And Indian work has been another great privilege. Few men have had the chances I have had. I never gave up or sacrificed anything in my life; have been seemingly guided in everything.

Prayer is the greatest power in the world; it keeps us near to God. My own prayer has been most weak, wavering, inconstant, but it has been the best thing I have ever done. I think this a universal truth; what comfort is there except in the broadest truths!

I am most curious to get a glimpse of the next world. How will it all seem? Perfectly fair and perfectly natural, no doubt. We ought not to fear death; it is friendly. . . .

Hampton must not go down; see to it, you who are true to the black and red children of the country and to just ideas of education.

The loyalty of my old soldiers and of my students has been an unspeakable comfort to me. It pays to follow one's best light, -to put God and country first, and ourselves afterwards. S. C. ARMSTRONG.

Taps have just sounded. Memoranda of S. C. Armstrong, to be read immediately on my death.

XIV.

LORENZO TAFT's arrival at his home, that afternoon, might have seemed to the casual observer an event of the simplest significance. It is true, a country trader, on his return from a bout of barter at that emporium the cross-roads store, seldom casts about him so vigilant an eye, or sustains so controlled and weighty a manner, or wears a countenance of such discernment, its alert sagacity hardly at variance with certain predatory suggestions, — on the contrary, finding in them its complement of expression. But these points might only have argued ill for the profits of the bargainer with whom he had dealt. As the great lumbering canvas-hooded wagon came to a halt in the space beneath the loft of the log barn, under partial shelter, at least, and he began to unharness and turn out the two mules, the anxious glances he cast toward the house might have betokened impatient expectation of assistance in unloading the ponderous vehicle, and carrying into the store the cumbrous additions to its stock represented in saddles, cutlery, sugar, bolts of calico, stacks of hats, the integrity of all more or less endangered by the weather. But no one emerged from the house, and after feeding the mules he turned hastily, took his way in great strides through the rain across the yard, which was half submerged in puddles and running water, and unlocked the door. As he entered, big, burly, and dripping with rain, prophetically at odds with the falling out of the yet unknown events, he gazed about the dim interior with a dissatisfied, questioning eye. All was much as usual, save dimmer and drearier for the storm without. Here the unseen rain asserted its presence by the fusillade on the roof and the plashing from the eaves. The wind rushed

furiously in recurrent blasts against the windowless walls. Since the denizens within could not mark how it bent the greatest tree, they might thus judge of its force, and quake beneath its tempestuous buffets. Now and again the writhen boughs of the elm just outside beat as in frantic appeal on the clapboards. The chimney piped a tuneless, fifelike note, and occasional drops fell a-sputtering into the dull blaze of the fire. Cornelia Taft herself was dull and spiritless of mien, as she sat on a low stool on the hearth knitting a blue yarn stocking. The room, lurking in a state of semi-obscurity, seemed the dreariest possible expression of a dwelling; only as the fitful blaze flared and fell were distortions of its simple furniture distinguishable, the table with its blue ware, the bed and its gaudy quilt, the spinning-wheel, and the old warpingbars, where now merely skeins of cobwebs were wont to hang from peg to peg, since Cornelia Taft's precocity did not extend to weaving. A black cat sat blinking her yellow eyes before the fire. She had so conversational an aspect that it might seem that Taft had interrupted some conference,― of a dismal nature, doubtless, for there were traces of recent tears on the little girl's face, and a most depressed expression.

"Whar's Copley? Whar's yer uncle Cop?" he demanded, looking hastily about the shadowy place.

She paused to roll up her work methodically, and thrust the knitting needles through the ball of yarn.

"He ain't hyar," she said, lifting reproachful eyes; "an' he ain't been hyar since ye been gone."

He stared down at her in silent surprise.

"Ye jes' went off an' lef' me an' Joe hyar by ourse'fs, an' we been mos'