Tuesday, November 17, 1003.
9
white schools has never before been approximated
in North Carolina, len thousand and one hun
dred more white children are attending- the pub
lie schools daily in 1903 than ever before. This
is the most practical and substantial evidence
af an awakened and abiding interest in education
that has yet been presented in any Teport of
the public schools of the State. Let us thank
God and take courage."
The Association very wisely refused to be drag
'ped into the Bassett controversy. Personally,
there was complete unanimity as to the unwis
dom. of the South Atlantic Quarterly article, but
the teachers have learned what the farmers in
their clubs are also beginning to learn, that
there is enough for them to do in matters directly
affecting their own occupation without going
out of their way to heave stones at passing ob
jects, m
The State Literary and Historical Association.
This organization, now entering on its fourth
year, held its annual meeting in Raleigh last week.
It has already accomplished a valuable work for
the State. The rural library plan was fath
ered by it, alid would have failed to pass but
for the Society's activity. The Historical Muse
um in Raleigh, the finest conducted by any
Southern State, is also the child of the Associa
tion. "North Carolina Day" in the public schools
was set apart as a result of the efforts of its
members. Last winter the Association secured
the passage of a bill appointing a Historical
Commission and appropriating $500 for reprint
ing rare documents .bearing on State history. It
is now endeavoring to obtain funds for a statue
of Sir Walter Raleigh; and one of its com
mittees is at work on a reply to Judge Christian,
of Virginia, whose recent attack on the record
made by North Carolina soldiers in the Civil War
has attracted widespread -attention.
At the Raleigh meeting Thursday night Presi
dent W. L. Poteat delivered an unusually thought
ful add ress on "The Enrichment of ' Country
Life;'' Mr. R. F. "Beasley presented a striking
paper on the absence of literary spirit in the
State; Mr. W. J. Peele gave an outline of the
life of Sir Valter Raleigh, and Rev. Hight C.
iloore read a bright paper on "North Carolina
Poetry'
Dr. C. Alphonso Smith, the gifted professor
of English literature af coir State University,
was chosen president for the ensuing year.
In our article from St. Nicholas reprinted on
our Young People's Page, it will be observed that
instead of "opossum" or "'possum," we have
plain ''possum." We follow the new style of
spelling because St. Nicholas is published by a
very discriminating company, a company com
posed of some of our foremost men of letters,
and In -cause the change commends itself to our
judgment. Opossum is "an awkward, priggish
sort of word, and we shall be glad to see the
ot. Nicholas spelling become poplar. But when
jfr. Sharp says that "thecolored people, as a
rule, are the only people wise enough to eat pos
sum;' he betrays his ignorance of Southern con
dition However it may be in New Jersey, the
white people here in North Carolina have no
idea of letting the negroes have a monopoly of
bfe's luxuries.
A THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK.
Perhaps nothing will do so much to hasten the
time when body and mind will both be adequately
caed for, as a diffusion of the belief that the
Preservation of health is a duty. Few seem conscious-
that there is such a thing as physical mor
?ht. Men's habitual words and acts imply the
1(fea that they are at liberty to treat their bodies
as tin v please. Though the evil consequences in
frcted on their dependents and on future gener
ations, by violations of Nature's laws, are often
th,PriU 3S tnose caused by crime, yet they do not
tinu themselves in any degree criminal.' ....
-h: act is, that all breaches of the laws, of
-cu,n are physic;
r 's "Education."
en-
The Enrichment of Country Lifa.
"Country life is enriching as never before. I
am not now saying that farmers are growing
richer. I hope they are, though appearances
sometimes point the other way. Be that as it
may; we are now concerned with the enrichment
of the farmer's life and not thefillling of the
farmer's purse. -
'l. Comfort. It is to be noted, in the first
place, that country life is at last beginning; to
share in the beneficent revolution which science
has lately wrought inthe means and modes of
life. The standard of comfortable living is
spreading into the country and, what is import
ant, it is found to be practically applicable there.
We have iobservedi' for example, that a given lot
of materials for a house can be put together in
a comfortable and convenient dwelling at no
additional cost for the comfort and convenience.
We have a series of practical, books on Home
Building and -Furnishing, How to Plan Home
Grounds, How to Make a Flower Garden, etc.
We are making another discovery making it in
spots, but the spots will multiply and meet the
discovery, namely, that we are too poor to endure
the expense of ungraded roads with mud bot
toms, 'or no bottoms. And for the brightening of
country life the good road will -
'Lie like a shaft of light across the land,
Through all the circle of the golden year,'
and the work . of the farm is alreaHy greatly
lightened- by the introduction of machinery into
well-nigh all its departments, as well as by the
control of the fertility of the soil by scientific
treatment. In the past fifty years the number of
farm-workers has not only doubled, but the value
of their work has been increased twenty fold. Are
we warranted in expecting the time when the
experience of Thoreau will be realized by the
average country dweller? He says, you may
recall, that for more than five years he maintained
himself "solely by the -labor of his hands, and
found that he could -meet the expenses of living
by working about six weeks a year, which left
him the whole of his winters and most of his
summers free and clear for study.
2. Variety of interests. The monotony of
country life is relieved now by a greatly in
creased variety of interests. Transportation
opens markets and makes profitable many more
crops than formerly. Experimentation on the
physical and chemical character of- soils, upon
the plants and animals upon the farms, offers an
unending means of amusements But more effec
tive than experiments and varied products for
importing interest and zest to country life is
the new sympathy with the manifold phases of
nature, which is one of the pictureque features
of our period. This feeling and attitude occurs,
indeed, in individual cases from early times in
literary history, as in Horace and Lucretius and
Theocritus, and in some of the early English
poets, but "in our day it is getting to be almost
universal, as is shown by the popularity and vol
ume of . outdoor 'literature with its invitation
'Come forth into the light of things,
Let nature be your teacher.'
This later phase of It may be treated back to the
eighteenth century to such sympathetic abser-
vers as Gilbert White and Debaussure on the
scientific side and on the poetic side to Cowper
and Wordsworth. In the latter half of the
Nineteenth Century it grew rapidly under the
stimulus of the general scientific movement of
the time, and the influence of men like Ernest
Krause in Germany, Jefferies -and Ruskin in
England and on this side Old Silver Toy,' as
John Burroughs has been affectionately called.
and his younger followers as Roberts, Long, and
Thompson-Seton. What an endowment of inter
est and of beauty have we here for country
life. .
"3. Fellowship. Let me speak lastly of the
new -fellowships of country life. In the future
its isolation will be only so deep as individual
taste may, determine. For it has now opened
communication" with all other sections of human
activity. The telephone and the rural free deliv?
ery supply the opportunity of personal iellow
ship well-nigh as close as that of the city, with
the distinct advantage that it may be controlled
according to one's nreference.i Bv the same
means the edge is taken off the fear of sudden
danger in the country's solitude. Moreover, the
rural school is laying the foundation for an in
tellectual fellowship with, all the world and all
the ages. And the free rural library, which this
Association had the honor to inaugurate in
"WM-fli f"1o in o lAtrinlof na -fi-f -f in nrlxr anno-"
ratus of a simple, free, intelligent, strong, happy,
country life.
- All this means a return to nature, to a sim-
Tl ot con or trnor 1 1 -pr T-f moancs Ti a omorrronno
of agriculture into-a new dignity and respecta
bility. It means the renascence - of Southern in
fluence in national affairs. If I do not err, it
means for us, in this agricultural region, the
recovery -of at least some of the charm of the
social life that crowned the prosperity of other
days. It means the birth of a new and richer lit
erature to record faithfully and in tenderness -
our past and celebrate the larger life of the new
day." From President W. L. Poteat's address be-
"frra "NTnrtTi ("!fi Trilin n T.iArn-rv nnrl TTianrinl Ah-
sociation, Raleigh, November 12, 1903.
How a Good School Helps.
The writer has been informed that since the
neoule of Indian Trail began their school build
ing, every available farm in reach of the school
has been sold or rented to outsiders who' will
4 .
move in. One man told the writer that he would
Vq nnmnol T rrl rv 1oiT7a lionona a Vi a form Via Tiofl -
been renting had . been sold to a man from an
other county who was coming to it, and he could
not rent another. Verilv. a erood school nuts life
into the dry bones of a community ! -Monroe
Journal. -
National Aid to Good Roads is Simple Justice to
Farmers.
Under our method of raising Federal revenue
by means of internal revenue and tariff duties, the
burden rests about as much on the people living
in the agricultural districts as upon all other
classes of ' people. - . I have stated to you that in
that portion of our country " lying east of the
Mississippi and north of the Ohio and Potomac
Rivers more than one-half of the people live in
cities. But, taking the country at large, includ
ing the South and West, where concentration ha3
not taken place to such an extent, it is yet true
that more than half of our pebple live in the
country ; and while less than half of the wealth
is to be found there, under our indirect method
of collecting taxes, those living in the agricultu
ral districts certainly bear one-half of the burden.
But, on the other hand, not more than 10 per
cent of the very great amount that is appro
priated annually by Congress is appropriated to
the use of those living in agricultural and rural
districts, while 90 per cent is appropriated for
the use of those living in the cities or adjacent
thereto. Public buildings, as you know great,
costly, and numerous are all built in the large
cities. The officers of the Government reside in
the large cities. The battle ships are built in the
large cities. And so I might go on through the
list of expenditures. Now, I am not crticising
the policy as an erroneous one ; I am not blaming
anyone for the policy that prevails, but I am say
ing that the time has come when justice demands
that a larger proportion of these revenues be
spent for the benefit of those who live in rural
communities. And I know of no better way to
do this than by helping the agricultural classes
to improve their common roads. Hon. Martin
Dodge in address before National Good Roads
Association at St. Louis.