網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版
[graphic][ocr errors][ocr errors]

BENJAMIN T. BLEWETT.

BENJAMIN TURNER BLEWETT was born in Warren county, Kentucky, Sept. 17th, 1820. His father being a farmer in moderate circumstances, his studies, which were pursued at the best schools which the neighborhood afforded, were interrupted by farm work in summer till his fourteenth year and afterwards by teaching in winter. Several summers were spent in study as a private pupil of Josiah Pillsberry, Esq., to whose fidelity and influence upon his character Mr. Blewitt attributes more than to any other agency his subsequent success. At the age of twenty he united himself with the Baptist church, and abandoning his purpose of reading law, entered Georgetown College in 1841. Dependent entirely upon his own resources, he spent two years during his college course in teaching the College Academy, and graduated in 1847. After graduation he continued principal of the Academy for six years, taking an active interest in Sunday-schools and the cause of temperance.

In 1852 Mr. Blewitt took the charge of a High School at Russellville, at the time unfinished, unendowed, encumbered with a heavy debt, and moreover the object of a strong and active local hostility. A whole year of severe labor was spent in completing the building and in seeking funds to meet the expenses. The school was opened, but the proceeds of the first session barely paid the salaries of his assistants. His faith was staggered, but sustained by the sound judgment and zealous coöperative sympathy of an excellent wife, herself an able and highly successful teacher from New England, he entered upon another year's trial. A larger number of students was enrolled, public sentiment changed, opposition gave way, and the way seemed to be opening to success. The debt was paid and the school took a high stand among similar but much older institutions. It was now urged by many that the school be made a college. The trustees yielded, a charter was obtained, and Mr. Blewitt was elected President of a college without endowment, library, apparatus, or any other appliances, except a good building, a good number of students, and a good working faculty. The college classes were immediately formed, but new and complicated difficulties arose. It was seen that the institution could not succeed without an endowment. At this juncture a bequest of $30,000 was made by H. Q. Ewing, Esq., conditional upon the raising of as much in addition, and Pres. Blewitt was appointed agent to effect the purpose. He labored faithfully in the work but at length abandoned the field in despair and returned to his duties as instructor. But woman's energy came again to the rescue, and, relieved from all care at home, he returned to the task with a determination to succeed though the limited period had nearly expired. For the final effort a meeting of the friends of education was called during Commencement, which was attended with success, and he had the gratification of announcing on Commencement Day that Bethel College had secured a cash endowment of $40,000 and real estate to the value of nearly as much more. The valuable Ewing li brary, of near 2,000 volumes, had also been donated, and a good mathematical, philosophical, and chemical apparatus had been obtained. The success of the institution was now deemed secure, but in May, 1861, the students disbanded, many entering the Confederate army, Bethel College was suspended; and Mr. Blewitt removed to Augusta, Ky., and took charge of the College in that place with which he is still connected. Bethel College under other Trustees is now (1865) enjoying a large measure of prosperity.

WILLIAM D. HENKLE.

WILLIAM DOWNS HENKLE was born near Springfield, in Clark County, Ohio, October 8th, 1828, His father, Rev. Lemuel Henkle, died a few years after at Louisville, Kentucky, while stationed there as a minister, and his mother then returned to Urbana, Ohio, and afterwards to Springfield, where she supported herself and family by the use of the needle. Young Henkle was sent to such schools as offered until eleven years of age, when becoming tired of the restraint and dissatisfied with his progress under the defective methods then employed, he was suffered for two or three years to remain at home and run the streets and country. In the meantime he acquired a love for reading and by shoveling sand or driving teams earned money for the purchase of books, spending also much time in the village bookstore. He was now anxious to attend school again, and under such tutors as opportunity and his want of means afforded he applied himself to hard study and mastered Pike's and Talbott's Arithmetics and Kirkham's Grammar, and entered upon Burtt's Algebra. The Public High School was established about this time and here he began the study of Bailey's Algebra and Goodrich's Greek and Latin Lessons. When sixteen years old he taught his first district-school and for three years alternated between teaching and study, spending the latter portion of the time at Wittemburg College at Springfield, where he read Horace and Homer and continued the study of higher algebra and geometry. In 1847 the family returned to Urbana and here he taught a subscription school of seventy scholars, began a course of reading in medicine, but in 1848 became principal in Urbana Academy. In the Fall of this year a Teachers' Institute was held for two weeks in Urbana under the charge of Josiah Hurty, at which Mr. Henkle gave the instruction in grammar, to which subject he had for several years given especial attention. After the passage of the Union School Law in February, 1849, he secured its adoption by the town of Urbana, and upon the establishment of the High School he was elected its principal. In the Spring of 1850 he succeeded Prof. McFarland as mathematical instructor in the Male and Female Seminary at Greenfield, but after six months removed with his mother's family to Mechanicsburg, where he associated with Mr. Robert Wilson, a graduate of Belfast College, Ireland, in the management of the Seminary at that place. This association with a scholar of European education and long experience as a teacher, had a powerful influ ence in inciting Mr. Henkle to render his own education more mature, thorough, and practical. In 1853 he effected the establishment of a Union School at Mechanicsburg, as before at Urbana, and was its principal for a year, when he took charge of the classical department in Greenmount Boarding School near Rich. mond, Indiana, which he resigned in 1857 for the superintendency of the Richmond Public Schools at a salary of $1,000. The next year he removed to Indianapolis to act as principal of the High School and edit the "Indiana School Journal." He had two years previously published a "University Algebra," and in the Spring of 1859 prepared an "Elementary Algebra." In the Fall of the same year he became professor of mathematics in the South Western Normal School at Lebanon, Ohio. In 1862 he was nominee of the Union party of the state for the office of School Commissioner but, with the rest of the ticket, failed to be elected. He then took charge of the Lebanon Union School, and in 1864 of the Union School at Salem, Ohio.

III. THE SCHOOL AND THE TEACHER IN LITERATURE.

Fifth Article.

BOBERT SOUTHEY-1774-1843.

ROBERT SOUTHEY in that quaint and remarkable book "The Doctor, &c." has introduced much rare learning and eloquent composition to enforce instructive lessons on the training of children and the conduct of life-as in the following conversations at the Doctor's fireside, bearing on young Daniel's home education—which we introduce by a few extracts descriptive of the home and chimney-corner of Dr. Daniel Dove, as well as of Daniel, the son, and Daniel, the father, and the DOCTOR, the central figure of the composition.

BIRTH, PARENTAGE AND HOMESTEAD OF DR. DOVE.

DANIEL, the son of Daniel Dove and of Dinah his wife, was born near Ingleton in the West Riding of Yorkshire, on Monday, the twenty-second of April, old style, 1723, nine minutes and three seconds after three in the afternoon; on which day Marriage came in and Mercury was with the Moon; and the aspects were a week earlier, it would have been a most glorious trine of the Sun and Jupiter; circumstances which were all duly noted in the blank leaf of the family Bible.

Daniel, the father, was one of the race of men who unhappily are now almost extinct. He lived upon an estate of six-and-twenty acres which his father had possessed before him, all Doves and Daniels, in uninterrupted succession from time immemorial, farther than registers or title-deeds could ascend. The little church called Chapel le Dale stands about a bow-shot from the family house. There they had all been carried to the font; there they had each led his bride to the altar; and thither they had, each in his turn, been borne upon the shoulders of their friends and neighbors. Earth to earth they had been con signed there for so many generations, that half of the soil of the churchyard consisted of their remains. A hermit who might wish his grave to be as quiet as his cell, could imagine no fitter resting place. On three sides there was an irregular low stone wall, rather to mark the limits of the sacred ground, than to inclose it; on the fourth it was bounded by the brook whose waters proceed by a subterraneous channel from Wethercote cave. Two or three alders and rowan trees hung over the brook, and shed their leaves and seeds into the stream. Some bushy hazels grew at intervals along the lines of the wall; and a few ash trees, as the winds had sown them. To the east and west some fields adjoined it, in that state of half cultivation which gives a human character to

solitude to the south, on the other side, the brook, the common with its limestone rocks peering every where above ground, extended to the foot of Ingleborough. A craggy hill, feathered with birch, sheltered it from the north.

The turf was as fine and soft as that of the adjoining hills; it was seldom broken, so scanty was the population to which it was appropriated; scarcely a thistle or a nettle deformed it, and the few tombstones which had been placed there were now themselves half buried. The sheep came over the wall when they listed, and sometimes took shelter in the porch from the storm. Their voices, and the cry of the kite wheeling above, were the only sounds which were heard there, except when the single bell which hung in its niche over the entrance tinkled for service on the Sabbath day, or with a slower tongue gave notice that one of the children of the soil was returning to the earth from which he sprung.

You entered between two yew There were hollyhocks and sunroses and sweet peas under the The rest of the garden

The house of the Doves was to the east of the church, under the same hill, and with the same brook in front; and the intervening fields belonged to the family. It was a low house, having before it a little garden of that size and character which showed that the inhabitants could afford to bestow a thought upon something more than mere bodily wants. trees clipped to the fashion of two pawns. flowers displaying themselves above the wall; windows, and the everlasting pea climbing the porch. lay behind the house, partly on the slope of the hill. It had a hedge of gooseberry bushes, a few apple trees, pot herbs in abundance, onions, cabbages, turnips and carrots; potatoes had hardly yet found their way into these remote parts: and in a sheltered spot under the crag, open to the south, were six beehives, which made the family perfectly independent of West India produce. Tea was in those days as little known as potatoes, and for all other things honey supplied the place of sugar.

The house consisted of seven rooms, the dairy and cellar included, which were both upon the ground floor. As you entered the kitchen there was on the right one of those open chimneys which afford more comfort in a winter's evening than the finest register stove; in front of the chimney stood a wooden beehive chair, and on each side was a long oak seat with a back to it, the seats serving as chests, in which the oaten bread was kept. They were of the dark. est brown, and well polished by constant use. On the back of each were the same initials as those over the door, with the date 1610. The great oak table, and the chest in the best kitchen which held the house linen, bore the same date. The chimney was well hung with bacon, the rack which covered half the ceiling bore equal marks of plenty; mutton hams were suspended from other parts of the ceiling; and there was an odor of cheese from the adjoining dairy, which the turf fire, though perpetual as that of the magi or of the Vestal virgins, did not overpower. A few pewter dishes were ranged above the trenchers, opposite the door on a conspicuous shelf. The other treasures of the family were in an open triangular cupboard, fixed in one of the corners of the best kitchen, halfway from the floor, and touching the ceiling. They consisted of a silver saucepan, a silver goblet, and four apostle spoons. Here also King Charles's Golden Rules were pasted against the wall, and a large print of Daniel in the Lion's Den. The lions were bedaubed with yellow, and the prophet was bedaubed with blue, with a red patch upon each of his cheeks: if he had been like his

« 上一頁繼續 »