Indeed youngsters must hunt in packs, as Whitcomb Riley tells in his Hunting Song of the American Bander-Log, and the gang idea contains the ultimate solution of what would otherwise be an impossible problem, namely, to find an effective substitute for the lure of the wild for the energizing of the intensely active kind of play, the kind of play that trains for application, the kind that approaches hunting and fishing or tribal warfare or the settling of a blood-feud in its persistent, single-minded and strenuous activity.
Many grown-ups seem to think that mere permission is now a sufficient basis for play, as it was in pioneer and rural days. Indeed this is largely true for very small children who can sit in the sunshine and make mud pies or dig holes in a bed of sand; but with older boys it is different. They may indeed fight or steal, or engage in the worst varieties of gang activity, or sit by a fire in a back alley talking sex like grown-up sordidly imaginative Hottentots in Darkest Africa; but strenuous play requires suggestive example and organization, as with our Boy Scouts; and it depends to a very great extent upon competitive athletics. A dozen large ball fields and two or three good-sized swimming pools are, next to his food, the most important thing for our boy Bill; and they would do more to make him into an energetic and industrious man than all the rest of his school work put together.
Grau theurer Freund ist alle Theorie
Und grün des Lebens goldener Baum.
Goethe
Everyone realizes the constraint that is placed upon the lives of men by the physical necessities of the world in which we live, and although in one way this constraint is more and more relieved with the progress of the applied sciences, in another way it becomes more and more exacting. It is indeed easier to cross the Atlantic Ocean now than it was in Leif Ericsson's time, but consider the discipline of the shop, and above all consider the rules of machine design! Could even the hardy Norsemen have known anything as uncompromisingly exacting as these? To do things becomes easier and easier, but to learn how to do things becomes more and more difficult.
Every person I have ever talked with, old or young, theorist or practician, student-in-general or specialist in whatever line, has exhibited more or less distinctly a certain attitude of impatience towards the exactions of this or that phase of the precise modes of thought of the physical sciences.
"Da wird der Geist Euch wohl dressiert
In spanische Stiefeln eingeschnuert."
In a recent article[4]on the distinction between the liberal and technical in education, my friend and colleague, Professor Percy Hughes, says that in speaking of an education as liberal we thereby associate it with liberalism in politics, in philosophy and theology, and in men's personal relations with each other. In each case liberalism seems fundamentally, to denote freedom, and liberalism in education is the freedom of development in each individual of that character and personality which is his true nature. All this I accept in the spirit of an optimist, assuming men's true natures to be good, but I do not, and I am sure that Professor Hughes does not, consider that technical education, unless it be inexcusably harsh and narrow, is illiberal; nor that liberal education, unless it be inexcusably soft and vague, is wholly non-technical. The liberal and the technical are not two kinds of education, each complete in itself. Indeed, Professor Hughes speaks of liberal education, not as a category, but as a condition which makes for freedom of development of personality and character.
It seems to me, however, that there are phases of education which have but little to do withpersonality, and I call to your attention this definition of liberalism in education, in order that I may turn sharply away from it as a partial definition which, to a great extent, excludes the physical sciences. Indeed, I wish to speak of a condition in education which is the antithesis of freedom. I wish to explain the teaching of elementary physical science as a mode of constraint, as an impressed constructive discipline without which no freedom is possible in our dealings with physical things. I wish to characterize the study of elementary physical science as a reorganization of the workaday mind of a young man as complete as the pupation of an insect; and I wish to emphasize the necessity of exacting constraint as the essential condition of this reorganization.
There is a kind of salamander, the axolotl, which lives a tadpole-like youth and never changes to the adult form unless a stress of dry weather annihilates his watery world; but he lives always and reproduces his kind as a tadpole, and a very funny-looking tadpole he is, with his lungs hanging like feathery tassels from the sides of his head. When the aquatic home of the axolotl dries up, he quickly develops a pair of internal lungs, lops off his tassels andembarks on a new mode of life on land. So it is with our young men who are to develop beyond the tadpole stage, they must meet with quick and responsive inward growth that new and increasing "stress of dryness," as many are wont to call our modern age of science and organized industry.
Stress of dryness! Indeed no flow of humor is to be found in the detached impersonalities of the sciences, and if we are to understand the characteristics of physical science we must turn our attention to things which lead inevitably to an exacting and rigid mathematical philosophy. It certainly is presumptive to tell a reader that he must turn his attention to such a thing, but there is no other way; the best we can do is to choose the simplest path. Let us therefore consider the familiar phenomena of motion.
The most prominent aspect of all phenomena is motion. In that realm of nature which is not of man's devising[5]motion is universal. In theother realm of nature, the realm of things devised, motion is no less prominent. Every purpose of our practical life is accomplished by movements of the body and by directed movements of tools and mechanisms, such as the swing of scythe and flail, and the studied movements of planer and lathe from which are evolved the strong-armed steam shovel and the deft-fingered loom.
The laws of motion. Every one has a sense of the absurdity of the idea of reducing the more complicated phenomena of nature to an orderly system of mechanical law. To speak of motion is to call to mind first of all the phenomena that are associated with the excessively complicated, incessantly changing, turbulent and tumbling motion of wind and water. These phenomena have always had the most insistent appeal to us, they have confronted us everywhere and always, and life is an unending contest with their fortuitous diversity, which rises only too often to irresistible sweeps of destruction in fire and flood, and in irresistible crash of collision and collapse where all things mingle in one dread fluid confusion! The laws of motion! Consider the awful complexity of a disastrous tornado or the dreadful confusion of a railwaywreck, and understand that what we call the laws of motion, although they have a great deal to do with the ways in which we think, have very little to do with the phenomena of nature. The laws of motion! There is indeed a touch of arrogance in such a phrase with its unwarranted suggestion of completeness and universality, and yet the ideas which constitute the laws of motion have an almost unlimited extent of legitimate range,and these ideas must be possessed with a perfect precision if one is to acquire any solid knowledge whatever of the phenomena of motion. The necessity of precise ideas. Herein lies the impossibility of compromise and the necessity of coercion and constraint; one must think so and so, there is no other way. And yet there is always a conflict in the mind of even the most willing student because of the constraint which precise ideas place upon our vivid and primitively adequate sense of physical things; and this conflict is perennial but it is by no means a one-sided conflict between mere crudity and refinement, for refinement ignores many things. Indeed, precise ideas not only help to form[6]our sense of the world in which we live but they inhibit sense as well, and their rigid andunchallenged rule would be indeed a stress of dryness.
The laws of motion. We return again and yet again to the subject, for one is not to be deterred therefrom by any concession of inadequacy, no, nor by any degree of respect for the vivid youthful sense of those things which to suit our narrow purpose must be stripped completely bare. It is unfortunate, however, that the most familiar type of motion, the flowing of water or the blowing of the wind, is bewilderingly useless as a basis for the establishment of the simple and precise ideas which are called the "laws of motion," and which are the most important of the fundamental principles of physics. These ideas have in fact grown out of the study of the simple phenomena which are associated with the motion of bodies in bulk without perceptible change of form, the motion of rigid bodies, so called.
Before narrowing down the scope of the discussion, however, let us illustrate a very general application of the simplest idea of motion, the idea of velocity. Every one has, no doubt, an idea of what is meant by the velocity of the wind; and a sailor, having what he calls a ten-knot wind, knows that he can manage his boat with acertain spread of canvas and that he can accomplish a certain portion of his voyage in a given time; but an experienced sailor, although he speaks glibly of a ten-knot wind, belies his speech by taking wise precaution against every conceivable emergency. He knows that a ten-knot wind is by no means a sure or a simple thing with its incessant blasts and whirls; and a sensitive anemometer, having more regard for minutiae than any sailor, usually registers in every wind a number of almost complete but excessively irregular stops and starts every minute and variations of direction that sweep around half the horizon!
Wer will was Lebendig's erkennen und beschreiben
Sucht erst den Geist heraus zu treiben.
Goethe
We must evidently direct our attention to something simpler than the wind. Let us, therefore, consider the drawing of a wagon or the propulsion of a boat. It is a familiar experience that effort is required to start a body moving and that continued effort is required to maintain the motion. Certain very simple facts as to the nature and effects of this effort were discoveredby Sir Isaac Newton, and on the basis of these facts Newton formulated the laws of motion.
The effort required to start a body or to keep it moving is called force. Thus, if one starts a box sliding along a table one is said to exert a force on the box. The same effect might be accomplished by interposing a stick between the hand and the box, in which case one would exert a force on the stick and the stick in its turn would exert a force on the box. We thus arrive at the notion of force action between inanimate bodies, between the stick and the box in this case, and Newton pointed out that the force action between the two bodiesAandBalways consists of two equal and opposite forces, that is to say, if bodyAexerts a force onB, thenBexerts an equal and opposite force onA, or, to use Newton's words, action is equal to reaction and in a contrary direction.
In leading up to this statement one might consider the force with which a person pushes on the box and the equal and opposite force with which the box pushes back on the person, but if one does not wish to introduce the stick as an intermediary, it is better to speak of the force with which the hand pushes on the box, and the equal and opposite force with which the box pushes back on the hand, because in discussing physical phenomena it is of the utmost importance to pay attention only to impersonal[42] things. Indeed our modern industrial life, in bringing men face to face with an entirely unprecedented array of intricate mechanical and physical problems, demands of every one a great and increasing amount of impersonal thinking, and the precise and rigorous modes of thought of the physical sciences are being forced upon widening circles of men with a relentless insistence—all of which it was intended to imply by referring to the "stress of dryness" which overtakes the little axolotl in his contented existence as a tadpole.
When we examine into the conditions under which a body starts to move and the conditions under which a body once started is kept in motion, we come across a very remarkable fact, if we are careful to consider every force which acts upon the body, and this remarkable fact is that the forces which act upona body at restare related to each other in precisely the same way as the forces which act upona body moving steadily along a straight path. Therefore it is convenient to consider,firstthe relation between the forces which act upon a body at rest, or upon a body in uniform motion, andsecondthe relation between the forces which act upon a body which is starting or stopping or changing the direction of its motion.
Suppose a personAwere to hold a box in mid-air. To do so it would of course be necessary for him to push upwards on the box so as to balance the downward pull of the earth, the weight of the box as it is called. If another personBwere to take hold of the box and pull upon it in any direction,Awould have to exert an equal pull on the box in the opposite direction to keep it stationary.The forces which act upon a stationary body are always balanced.
Every one, perhaps, realizes that what is here said about the balanced relation of the forces which act upon a stationary box, is equally true of the forces which act on a box similarly held in a steadily moving railway car or boat. Therefore,the forces which act upon a body which moves steadily along a straight path are balanced.
This is evidently true when the moving body is surrounded on all sides by things which are moving along with it, as in a car or a boat; but how about a body which moves steadily along a straight path but which is surrounded by bodies which do not move along with it? Everyone knows that some active agent such as a horse or a steam engine must pull steadily upon such a body to keep it in motion. If left to itself such a moving body quickly comes to rest. Many have, no doubt, reached this further inference from experience, namely, that the tendency of moving bodies to come to rest is due to the dragging forces, or friction, with which surrounding bodies act upon a body in motion. Thus a moving boat is brought to rest by the drag of the water when the propelling force ceases to act; a train of cars is brought to rest because of the drag due to friction when the pull of the locomotive ceases; a box which is moving across a table comes to rest when left to itself, because of the drag due to friction between the box and the table.
We must, therefore, always consider two distinct forces when we are concerned with a body which is kept in motion, namely, thepropelling forcedue to some active agent such as a horse or an engine, and thedragging forcedue to surrounding bodies. Newton pointed out that when a body is moving steadily along a straight path, the propelling force is always equal and opposite to the dragging force. Therefore,The forces which act upon a body which is stationary, or which is moving uniformly along a straight path, are balanced forces.
Many hesitate to accept as a fact the complete and exact balance of propelling and dragging forces on a body which is moving steadily along a straight path in the open, but direct experiment shows it to be true, and the most elaborate calculations and inferences based upon this idea of the complete balance of propelling and dragging forces on a body in uniform motion are verified by experiment. One may ask, why a canal boat, for example, should continue to move if the pull of the mule does not exceed the drag of the water; but why should it stop if the drag does not exceed the pull? Understand that we are not considering the starting of the boat. The fact is that the conscious effort which one must exert to drive a mule, the cost of the mule, and the expense of his keep, are what most people think of, however hard one tries to direct their attention solely to the state of tension in the rope that hitches the mule to the boat after the boat is in full motion; and most people consider that if the function of the mule is simply to balance the drag of the water so as to keep the boat from stopping, then why should there not be some way to avoid the cost of so insignificant an operation? There is, indeed, an extremely important matter involved here, but it has no bearing on the question as to the balance of propulsion and drag on a body which moves steadily along a straight path.
Let us now consider the relation between the forces which act upon a body which is changing its speed, upon a body which is being started or stopped, for example. Everyone has noticed how a mule strains at his rope when starting a canal boat, especially if the boat is heavily loaded, and how the boat continues to move for a long time after the mule ceases to pull. In the first case, the pull of the mule greatly exceeds the drag of the water, and the speed of the boat increases; in the second case, the drag of the water of course exceeds the pull of the mule, for the mule is not pulling at all, and the speed of the boat decreases. When the speed of a body is changing, the forces which act on the body are unbalanced. We may conclude therefore thatthe effect of an unbalanced force acting on a body is to change the velocity of the body, and it is evident that the longer the unbalanced force continues to act the greater the change of velocity. Thus if the mule ceases to pull on a canal boat for one second the velocity of the boat will be but slightly reduced by the unbalanced drag of the water, whereas if the mule ceases to pull for two seconds the decrease of velocity will be much greater.In fact the change of velocity due to a given unbalanced force is proportional to the time that the force continues to act.This is exemplified by a body falling under the action of the unbalanced pull of the earth; after one second it will have gained a certain amount of velocity (about 32 feet per second), after two seconds it will have made a total gain of twice as much velocity (about 64 feet per second), and so on.
Since the velocity produced by an unbalanced force is proportional to the time that the force continues to act, it is evident that the effect of the force should be specified as so-much-velocity-produced-per-second, exactly as in the case of earning money, the amount one earns is proportional to the length of time that one continues to work, and we always specify one's earning capacity as so-much-money-earned-per-day.
Everyone knows what it means to give an easy pull or a hard pull on a body. That is to say, we all have the ideas of greater and less as applied to forces. Everybody knows also that if a mule pulls hard on a canal boat, the boat will get under way more quickly than if the pull is easy, that is, the boat will gain more velocity per unit of time under the action of a hard pull than under the action of an easy pull. Therefore, any precise statement of the effect of an unbalanced force on a given body must correlate the precise value of the force and the exact amount of velocity produced per unit of time by the force. This seems a very difficult thing, but its apparent difficulty is very largely due to the fact that we have not as yet agreed as to what we are to understand by the statement that one force is precisely three, or four, or any number of times as great as another. Suppose, therefore, thatwe agree to call one force twice as large as another when it will produce in a given body twice as much velocity in a given time(remembering of course that we are now talking about unbalanced forces, or that we are assuming for the sake of simplicity of statement, that no dragging forces exist). As a result of this definition we may state thatthe amount of velocity produced per second in a given body by an unbalanced force is proportional to the force.
Of course we know no more about the matter in hand than we did before we adopted the definition, but we do have a good illustration of how important a part is played in the study of physical science, by what we may call making-up one's mind, in the sense of putting one's mind in order. This kind of thing is very prominent in the study of elementary physics, and the rather indefinite reference (in the story of the little tasseled tadpole) to an inward growth as needful before one can hope for any measure of success in our modern world of scientific industry was an allusion to this thing, the "making-up" of one's mind. Nothing is so essential in the acquirement of exact and solid knowledge as the possession of precise ideas, not indeed that a perfect precision is necessary as a means for retaining knowledge,but that nothing else so effectually opens the mind for the perception even of the simplest evidences of a subject[7].
We have now settled the question as to the effect of different unbalanced forces on a given body on the basis of very general experience, and by an agreement as to the precise meaning to be attached to the statement that one force is so many times as great as another; but how about the effect of the same force upon different bodies, and how may we identify the force so as to be sure that it is the same? It is required, for example, to exert a given force on bodyAand then exert the same force on another bodyB. This can be done by causing a third bodyC(a coiled spring, for example) to exert the force; then the forces exerted onAandBare the same if the reaction in each case produces the same effect on bodyC(the same degree of stretch, for example). Concerning the effects of the same unbalanced force on different bodies three things have to be settled by experiment as follows:
(a)In the first place let us suppose that a certain forceFis twice as large as a certain other forceG, according to our agreement, because the forceFproduces twice as much velocity every second as forceGwhen the one and then the other of these forces is caused to act upon a given body, a piece of lead for example. Then, does the forceFproduce twice as much velocity every second as the forceGwhatever the nature and size of the given body, whether it be wood, or ice, or sugar? Experiment shows that it does.
(b)In the second place, suppose that we have such amounts of lead, or iron, or wood, etc., that a certain given force produces the same amount of velocity per second when it is made to act, as an unbalanced force, upon one or another of these various bodies. Then what is the relation between the amounts of these various substances? Experiment shows that they all have the same mass in grams, or pounds, as determined by a balance. That is, a given force produces the same amount of velocity per second in a given number of grams of any kind of substance. Thus the earth pulls with a certain definite force (in a given locality) uponMgrams of any substance and, aside from the dragging forces due to air friction, all kinds of bodies gain the same amount of velocity per second when they fall under action of the unbalanced pull of the earth.
(c)In the third place, what is the relation between the velocity per second produced by a given force and the mass in grams (or pounds) of the body upon which it acts. Experiment shows thatthe velocity per second produced by a given force is inversely proportional to the mass of the body upon which the force acts. In speaking of the mass of the body in grams (or pounds) we here refer to the result which is obtained by weighing the body on a balance scale, and the experimental fact which is here referred to constitutes a very important discovery: namely, when one body has twice the mass of another, according to the balance method of measuring mass, it is accelerated half as fast by a given unbalanced force.
The effect of an unbalanced force in producing velocity may therefore be summed up as follows:The velocity per second produced by an unbalanced force is proportional to the force and inversely proportional to the mass of the body upon which the force acts, and the velocity produced by an unbalanced force is always in the direction of the force.
"We advise all men," says Bacon, "to think of the true ends of knowledge, and that they endeavor not after it for curiosity, contention, or the sake of despising others, nor yet for reputation or power or any other such inferior consideration, but solely for the occasions and uses of life." It is difficult to imagine any other basis upon which the study of physics can be justified than for the occasions and uses of life; in a certain broad sense, indeed, there is no other justification. But the great majority of men must needs be practical in the narrow sense, and physics, as the great majority of men study it, relates chiefly to the conditions which have been elaborated through the devices of industry as exemplified in our mills and factories, in our machinery of transportation, in optical and musical instruments, in the means for the supplyof power, heat, light, and water for general and domestic use, and so on.
From this narrow practical point of view it may seem that there can be nothing very exacting in the study of the physical sciences; but what is physics? That is the question. One definition at least is to be repudiated; it is not "The science of masses, molecules and the ether." Bodies have mass and railways have length, and to speak of physics as thescience of massesis as silly as to define railroading as thepractice of lengths, and nothing as reasonable as this can be said in favor of the conception of physics as the science of molecules and the ether; it is the sickliest possible notion of physics, whereas the healthiest notion, even if a student does not wholly grasp it, is that physics is the science of the ways of taking hold of things and pushing them!
Bacon long ago listed in his quaint way the things which seemed to him most needful for the advancement of learning. Among other things he mentioned "A New Engine or a Help to the mind corresponding to Tools for the hand," and the most remarkable aspect of present-day physical science is that aspect in which it constitutes a realization of this New Engine of Bacon. We continually force upon the extremely meager data obtained directly through our senses, an interpretation which, in its complexity and penetration, would seem to be entirely incommensurate with the data themselves, and we exercise over physical things a kind of rational control which greatly transcends the native cunning of the hand. The possibility of this forced interpretation and of this rational control depends upon the use of two complexes: (a) Alogical structure, that is to say, a body of mathematical and conceptual theory which is brought to bear upon the immediate materials of sense, and (b) amechanical structure, that is to say, either (1) a carefully plannedarrangement of apparatus, such as is always necessary in making physical measurements, or (2) a carefully plannedorder of operations, such as the successive operations of solution, reaction, precipitation, filtration, and weighing in chemistry.
These two complexes do indeed constitute a New Engine which helps the mind as tools help the hand; it is through the enrichment of the materials of sense by the operation of this New Engine that the elaborate interpretations of the physical sciences are made possible, and the study of elementary physics is intended to leadto the realization of this New Engine: (a) By the building up in the mind, of the logical structure of the physical sciences; (b) by training in the making of measurements and in the performance of ordered operations, and (c) by exercises in the application of these things to the actual phenomena of physics and chemistry at every step and all of the time with every possible variation.
That, surely, is a sufficiently exacting program; and the only alternative is to place the student under the instruction of Jules Verne where he need not trouble himself about foundations but may follow his teacher pleasantly on a care-free trip to the moon or with easy improvidence embark on a voyage of twenty-thousand leagues under the sea.
What it means to study physical science may be explained further by mentioning the chief difficulties encountered in the teaching of that subject. One difficulty is that the native sense of most men is woefully inadequate without stimulation and direction for supplying the sense material upon which the logical structure of the science is intended to operate. A second difficulty is that the human mind is so in the habit of considering the practical affairs of lifethat it can hardly be turned to that minute consideration of apparently insignificant details which is so necessary in the scientific analysis even of the most practical things. Everyone knows the capacity of the Indian for long continued and serious effort in his primitive mode of life, and yet it is difficult to persuade an Indian "farmer" to plow. Everyone knows also that the typical college student is not stupid, and yet it is difficult to persuade the young men of practical and business ideals in our colleges and technical schools to study the abstract elements of science. Indeed it is as difficult to get the average young man to hold abstract things in mind as to get a young Indian to plow, and for almost exactly the same reason. The scientific details of any problem are in themselves devoid of human value, and this quality of detachment is the most serious obstacle to young people in their study of the sciences.
A third difficulty which indeed runs through the entire front-of-progress of the human understanding is that the primitive mind-stuff of a young man must be rehabilitated in entirely new relations in fitting the young man for the conditions of modern life. Every science teacher knows how much coercion is required for so littleof this rehabilitation; but the bare possibility of the process is a remarkable fact, and that it is possible to the extent of bringing a Newton or a Pasteur out of a hunting and fishing ancestry is indeed wonderful. Everyone is familiar with the life history of a butterfly, how it lives first as a caterpillar and then undergoes a complete transformation into a winged insect. It is, of course, evident that the bodily organs of a caterpillar are not at all suited to the needs of a butterfly, the very food (of those species which take food) being entirely different. As a matter of fact almost every portion of the bodily structure of the caterpillar is dissolved as it were, into a formless pulp at the beginning of the transformation, and the organization of a flying insect then grows out from a central nucleus very much as a chicken grows in the food-stuff of an egg. So it is in the development of a young man. In early childhood the individual, if he has been favored by fortune, exercises and develops more or less extensively the primitive instincts and modes of the race in a free outdoor life, and the result is so much mind-stuff to be dissolved and transformed with more or less coercion and under more or less constraint into an effective mind of the twentieth-century type.
A fourth difficulty is that the possibility of the rehabilitation of mind-stuff has grown up as a human faculty almost solely on the basis of language, and the essence of this rehabilitation lies in the formation of ideas; whereasa very large part of physical science is a correlation in mechanisms.
The best way of meeting this quadruply difficult situation in the teaching of elementary physics is to relate the teaching as much as possible to the immediately practical and intimate things of life, and to go in for suggestiveness as the only way to avoid a total inhibition of the sense that is born with a young man. Such a method is certainly calculated to limber up our theories and put them all at work, the pragmatic method, our friends the philosophers call it, a method which pretends to a conquering destiny.
The first object of all work—not the principal one, but the first and necessary one—is to get food, clothes, lodging, and fuel.
But it is quite possible to have too much of all these things. I know a great many gentlemen, who eat too large dinners; a great many ladies, who have too many clothes. I know there is lodging to spare in London, for I have several houses there myself, which I can't let. And I know there is fuel to spare everywhere, since we get up steam to pound the roads with, while our men stand idle; or drink till they can't stand, idle, or otherwise.
Ruskin
Two generations ago school was supplemented by endless opportunity for play, and children had to work about the house and farm more and more as they grew to maturity. Play and work were in those days as plentiful as sunshine and air, and it is no wonder that educational ideals were developed taking no account of them. But we cling to these old ideals at the present time when children have no opportunity to play, when there is an almost complete absence of old fashioned chores about the home, when boys never see their fathers at work, and when the only opportunity for boys and girls to work outside the home is to face the certainty of reckless exploitation! What a piece of stupidity! Our entire educational system, primary and secondary, collegiate and technical, is sick with inconsequential bookishness, and school work has become the most inefficient of all the organized efforts of men.
Yes but we have our Manual Training Schools and our college courses in Shop Work and Shop Inspection. Away with such scholastic shams! The beginnings of manual training must indeed be provided for in school; paper cutting, sewingand whittling. But from the absurdity of an Academic Epitome of Industry may the good Lord deliver us! And he will deliver us, never fear, for the law of economy is His law too.
The greatest educational problem of our time is how to make use of commercial and industrial establishments as schools to the extent that they are schools.
The first object of all work is indeed to get food and clothes and lodging and fuel, but the essence of work is a human discipline as kindly and beneficent as the sunshine and the rain, and the greatest need of our time is that the discipline of work come again to its own in our entire system of education.
This book is dedicated to the kind of education that is proving itself at the University of Cincinnati.
To face page 60
and whittling. But from the absurdity of an Academic Epitome of Industry may the good Lord deliver us! And he will deliver us, never fear, for the law of economy is His law too.The greatest educational problem of our time is how to make use of commercial and industrial establishments as schools to the extent that they are schools.The first object of all work is indeed to get food and clothes and lodging and fuel, but the essence of work is a human discipline as kindly and beneficent as the sunshine and the rain, and the greatest need of our time is that the discipline of work come again to its own in our entire system of education.
This book is dedicated to the kind of education that is provingitself at the University of Cincinnati.
Prairie born;
Once his feet touch the slope of Western mountain
The level road they ever more shall spurn.
If once he drink from snow-pure crystal fountain
His thirst shall, ever more consuming, burn
With deepened draughts from common stream.
Once his eye catch glimpse of more substantial glory
Than prairie horizon high piled with clouded foam
His quickened yearning shall inspire old story
Of unbounded, deathless realms beyond the sunset—Home!
There were two of us, a prairie born tenderfoot in the person of a sixteen-year-old college sophomore and the writer. After months of anticipation and planning we hurried away at the close of the college term, leaving the prairies of Iowa to spend a short vacation in the mountains; and we arrived in Denver on a perfect, cloudless morning in June.
Since early daylight we had kept an eager watch to westward across the even plains to catch a first glimpse of the great Front Range of the Rocky Mountains with its covering of summer snow, and after making some purchases of camp supplies we climbed to Capitol Hill in Denver to see the foothills soften to purple and the snow fields melt to liquid gold as the crystal day turned to crimson glory with the setting of the sun.
This is the land that the sunset washes,Those are the Banks of the Yellow SeaWhere it arose, and whither it rushesThis is the western mystery."
This is the land that the sunset washes,
Those are the Banks of the Yellow Sea
Where it arose, and whither it rushes
This is the western mystery."
Late in the evening we took the train for Loveland from which place we were to start on a walking trip to Laramie, up in Wyoming.
In Loveland we purchased a pony and a pack-saddle. The pony had never been broken to the saddle, and inasmuch as the art of packing has always to be learned anew when one has not practiced it for several years, both of us were, in some respects, as green as the pony, and naturally somewhat nervous when we started from Loveland. The pony served us well however and at the worst only gave us a name for the Bucking Horse Pass when we crossed the range of the Medicine Bow Mountains from the waters of the Grand River to those of the North Platte.
From Loveland we reached Sprague's Ranch in Estes Park, thirty-five miles away, in two days of easy travel over a good stage road, encountering a snow squall in the high foothills which left us cold and wet at sundown of the first day. In Estes Park we stayed three days, fishing, running up to timber line as preliminary exercise, and writing letters. The writer had spent two previous summers in Estes Park near Sprague's Ranch in company with friends from the University of Kansas.
Camp Acclimatization;
June 21st.
My dear little Friend:—
D. and I reached this place day before yesterday. I saw Fred Sprague yesterday. He had already learned of our presence in the Park, having seen our characteristic hob-nail tracks, and, as his mother tells me, he remarked upon seeing them that "God's people had come," meaning the Kansas boys with whom he became acquainted in '86 and '89.
We have passed thousands of flowers since leaving Loveland, white poppies, cactus, blue bells, columbine and others more than I can tell. The blue bells are of the same kind that you and I found near Bloomington several weeks ago. It would be very nice if you and I could make some of our Saturday excursions in this country.
I wish I could tell you more of our trip. Of course it is scarcely begun as yet, but I know pretty well what it will be; hard, for one thing, and lonesome, but strangely fascinating. We are beginning already to have that attitude towards nature which I imagine Indians have, namely, the desire to get something to eat out of everything we see. [M. had written her brother D. at Moraine post office of the pies and cakesthey were making at home.] This is by no means greediness, for a measured appetite is essentially incompatible with the conditions of Indian life. In fact the only wild animals which are not gourmands on occasion are those which eat grass. Of course, we are at best only Agency Indians, but we shall soon be off our reservation.
Few people realize the utter desolation of many parts of the Rocky Mountains; and often on my mountain trips, hungry and foot-sore, my fancy has turned to what my friend 'Gric[8]has told me of the utterly desolate Funeral Mountains that border Death Valley in southern California, and of the infinite sunshine there. What wouldyouthink, my little friend, even now amid the comforts and joys of home, if you could hear a trustworthy account of an actual trip over those dreadful Mountains and into that awful Valley?
I hope that the map with the accompanying description will help you to a knowledge of the geography and geology of this country. I send kind regards to your father and mother.
Your friend,F.
Starting from Estes Park for the Grand River country we stopped over night atCamp Desolationin Windy Gulch, an enormous amphitheater rising above timber line on the north, east, and west, and opening to the south into Big Thompson Canyon. The mouth of the Gulch is dammed by the lateral moraine of an ancient Thompson glacier and behind this dam is a level, marshy stretch with a few green spruce and thickets of aspen, black alder and mountain willow. Near timber line also is a scattered fringe of green with dots of white. All the rest is a desolate stretch of burned timber.
Trailing to the head of Windy Gulch in the morning we gained the summit of Thompson Ridge which we followed in a northwesterly direction for about twelve miles; then we circled around the head of Big Thompson river and went down to Camp at the head of the Cache la Poudre river, precisely on the Continental Divide in Milner Pass about two hundred feet below timber line with Specimen Mountain immediately to the north of us.