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"One of the

of the present system, and the remedy to be adopted, People" thus concludes this remarkable message: "With the fond hope that the statistics and suggestions contained in this address may be received by you, gentlemen legislators, as the contribution of one who desires to see the entire youth of Indiana enjoy the blessings of free schools, and the community experience the incidental results of such an education, and that all may have occasion to retain a long and lively remembrance of your legislative fidelity, wisdom and patriotism, I am, etc., 'ONE OF THE PEOPLE.""

The legislature to which this message was addressed, after careful discussion by Governor Whitcomb's recommendation, passed an act empowering the people to call a convention for drafting a new constitution.

CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION.

The convention met at Indianapolis, October 7, 1850, and finished its work February 10, 1857. A very important part of that work pertained to the free schools. The leading newspapers of the State contained proof that some of the best men of the State were thoroughly alive to this great interest. Not a few able papers were printed, many of them anonymously, on the subject. In November, 1847, such a paper was published, asking that "the free common school system may throw its broad mantle over the thousands of the children of the poor-a helpless class of innocent sufferers-to shield them from infamy." This was signed by E. R. Ames, R. W. Thompson, S. Meredith, James Blake and others. A committee had prepared a sketch of a common school law to be presented to the legislature, but the report was that the convention for which it was prepared "was not large, and a great portion of those who were there at the opening of the meeting went away before its close." Judge Blackford presided. It was evident that the people needed much more light to bring them up to the required standard of interest. It would be a matter of historical interest to know who wrote in advocacy of free schools the articles which appeared in the Indianapolis and other Indiana papers. From internal evidence I think that Professor Mills wrote some of them over other signatures than those affixed to his annual messages. But other able pens were also at work.

JOHN J. MORRISON AND THE SECTION ON EDUCATION.

It was an omen peculiarly auspicious of good, that the people of Washington county had sent to the Constitutional Convention one of the ablest teachers the State has ever had, John J. Morrison, for many years principal of a school at Salem, and since that time honored with responsible offices. It is only necessary to consult the little book on "The Indiana Schools and the Men Who Have Worked in Them," and the eulogies pronounced on him by Barnabas Hobbs, Daniel Hough, and many of his pupils, to know how fortunate Indiana was in the ability and wisdom of such a teacher as Mr. Morrison at the time when the

public school system was to receive its type and place in the new constitution. He was the Chairman of the Committee on Education in the Constitutional Convention, and as Mr. Hough says, "he reported substantially the article on education, and was the sole author of the section creating the office of State Superintendent of Public Instruction.

In the Indiana School Journal, October, 1878, is an article from the pen of this veteran educator on this very point, nor can we appreciate its statement as to the office of State Superintendent without recalling the fact that Professor Mills in his "annual message" and other eminent friends of the free public school system felt that without some efficient supervision no scheme could succeed. They differed in respect to methods, but were agreed as to the necessity. In the original draft of Mr. Morrison's report, "was the eighth section, which provides for the election of a State Superintendent. By a majority vote in committee, this section was stricken out of the final report." This action was "regarded as a fatal blow against the State's undertaking to educate the children of the State." In this exigency the chairman “determined to submit the rejected article to the tender mercies of the Convention itself. To his great relief, after a somewhat stormy debate, the section rejected in committee was adopted, and ordered to be engrossed, by a vote of 78 to 50,"

FIFTH MESSAGE BY ONE OF THE PEOPLE."

His fifth message on popular education was addressed to the Constitutional Convention in November, 1850, by "One of the People," in a series of four sprightly and intensely earnest letters, first published in the Indiana Statesman and afterwards in other papers. The message was worthy the noble educator who had been pleading so long for the public schools of Indiana, and justifies the high eulogium passed upon its author by the venerable Morrison, who writes in a private letter, that "His messages from 'One of the People,' and his reports as State Superintendent of Public Instruction, if read in the light of subsequent legislation, will furnish ample evidence of the great service Professor Mills rendered to the public schools of the State."

SIXTH AND LAST MESSAGE.

The Constitution was submitted to the people and adopted by a large majority. In January, 1852, it went into operation, and on the 20th of February, 1852, "One of the People" laid his sixth annual message on "Popular Education to the Legislature," on the tables of its members. And so well recognized had he by this time become as the advocate of a scheme of popular education that was both essential and honorable to Indiana that the Senate "ordered 5,000 copies to be printed."

Inasmuch as this last of the six annual messages of "One of the People" is a business argument, it is not necessary to discuss its contents at any considerable length. It is enough to state its object. A

have that right was not less important than to have the Constitution itself right. He not only congratulates the people and the legislature on the "evidences of progress," "the approach of a better day," but he urges the legislature to consider that the new Constitution requires, without any unnecessary delay, the establishment of free schools," the statistical proof that illiteracy in Indiana "has increased more than one per cent., whilst the population has increased less than fifty per cent.," and "that such facts are significant that the schoolmaster is needed to be abroad in the Commonwealth." He then analyzes and classifies the resources to be depended on, states the cost of "a good and efficient system of free schools," and the parts that must be incorporated into the new system, as to supervision, township school committees, district superintendents, State superintendent, teachers' institutes, Normal schools, graded schools, school libraries, Board of Education, etc. The style and substance of the entire document are elevated, and are pervaded with an evident satisfaction in the result reached after so many years of labor. "In closing this sixth and last educational address, it is a matter of no slight satisfaction to perceive that the subject of this message and its humble predecessors has awakened an interest and secured a degree of the public attention that warrants the expectation of more intelligent legislation and efficient action in future. These efforts now brought to a close, feeble and imperfect as they may be--and they have been made under very unpropitious circumstances-I wish to be regarded by you, and my fellow citizens at large, as a free will offering to the cause of common school education, and as some faint expression of my desire for the elevation of the masses, the instruction of the youth of our State, and the highest welfare of the rising generation. As they were commenced with no sinister purpose to subserve, so they are now terminated with no aspirations for office. I shall deem myself richly rewarded if they may afford you any assistance in consummating the object contemplated, or have contributed in any humble degree to produce the change that has come over the public mind on the subject of popular education since the period of their first issue. I close with the greater satisfaction from the conviction that this subject will hereafter receive a due share of executive recommendation and legislative attention, and that it will become the duty of some one more competent to the task, more favorably situated, and duly authorized to present its claims and advocate its progress."

I trust this protracted commemoration of the important service rendered by Professor Mills to the cause of free schools in Indiana will be pardoned. The aim of his message was lofty, and the result magnificent. It has been my purpose to bring out distinctly enough of what he did to keep the name of Caleb Mills green in the annals of the public schools of Indiana. To state what he did will not detract in the least from what others did in the same great enterprise, whose services I have not had time to sketch. He and they together laid the founda

"Forty-four Years Ago this Morning."

With these words President Tuttle, on the 3d of Dec., 1877, in commemoration of the founding of Wabash College in 1833, began a brief discourse in the college chapel, from which the following paragraphs are taken:

To us who are connected with this institution it is a fact of interest that we can still point out the spot consecrated by the deliberations of the convention of nine men on the 21st of November, 1832, resulting in the resolution to found this college; also the spot on which, two days afterwards, five of the nine knelt in prayer, whilst "in the midst of nature's unbroken loveliness" they dedicated the institution to God and man in the interests of Christian education.

On the 2d of November, 1833, the Rev. John Thomson, Secretary of the Board, inserted an advertisement in the newspapers at Crawfordsville, Lafayette, Greencastle, and Rockville, announcing that "the first session of the Crawfordsville High School will commence on the first Monday of December, and continue four months. Price of tuition, $4.00 for the English Department and $6.00 for the classical. Board for a considerable number can be had for $4.00 per week." In the same advertisement, headed Crawfordsville High School, “the Board of Trustees inform the citizens of this place and the public generally that they have obtained a teacher from the East to take charge of the school. He (Mr. Caleb Mills of Dunbarton, N. H.) is now on his way and is expected here in a few days. He comes well recommended, and has with him a considerable number of books and other donations for the use of the school."

The journey, which we can now accomplish in less than two days, then required several weeks. After this tedious journey of several weeks he reached Crawfordsville about the middle of November, and soon began housekeeping in the little house still standing at the rear of Center Church. No doubt during the first two weeks he occasionally visited the building in which he was to teach. The town was then in its eleventh year, and was still closely hugged with the forests. He could not go from the town to the college without passing through woods in which the squirrels were hunted, and in which it is said that even then occasionally the deer and wild turkey were to be seen.

The building was not finished, and on Monday morning, just fortyfour years ago this very morning, Prof. Mills went to that unpretending building on an errand, the results of which are not yet, as we trust, all reached. For a man of so much purpose, buoyancy, and conscience, there would be little sense of discouragement in the uninviting array of educational facilities before him. He there met Rev. James Thomson, the real originator and founder of the College.

At 9 o'clock that Monday morning Mr. Thomson offered the prayer and made an address. Then Prof. Mills enrolled twelve names, and Wabash College was in motion.

How much Wabash College owes to such christian women (as Mrs. Mills) cannot be told. Indeed, no true history of this institution can be written which does not name the wives of its early instructors and friends. Their names do not appear on the catalogues of the college, but they were even as the shower and sunlight, which do not appear in the yellow glories of the wheat-field and granary. These silent and modest forces as truly helped to produce shock and grain as the more obtrusive ox and plow and plowman. And so these noble christian women as truly helped to found and build and nurture the college in times of darkness and peril as did their husbands.

BERTHA VON MARENHOLTZ-BÜLOW

AND THE KINDERGARTEN.

MEMOIR.
.*

The Baroness von Marenholtz-Bülow, whose life work is inseparably associated with the dissemination of Froebel's system of childculture in different countries, belongs to the Redum line of a princely family whose name appears in the time of Charles the Great. Her father, Baron Frederick von Bülow-Wendhausen, the owner of the fine estate of Küblingen in the Duchy of Brunswick, was president of the Ducal Chamber and member of the regency charged with the administration of affairs during the long minority of the Duke. Her mother was the imperial Countess von Wartensleben, of the Mark of Brandenburg.

The Baroness Bertha was born in Brunswick, March 15, 1816, the second of eight sisters. Not yet twenty years old, she was married to Baron v. Marenholtz, lord by primo-geniture of GrossSchwulper and a member of the Privy Council in Brunswick, and afterwards Court Marshal in Hanover. By this marriage she had one son, whose education till his death at the age of twenty, with that of several children of her husband by a prior marriage, was superintended in all its details by the Baroness, who, in addition to the training which the best private teachers could impart to herself and her own sisters, had the higher educative advantage of practical work, by which her own thoughtful mind was always accustomed to the consideration of pedagogical problems. Her own reflections on what she read and did, and what she saw done by her teachers in her own and her father's family, were recorded by her in a book, and which she afterwards found were in singular accord with the principles and methods which Friedrich Froebel had worked out in his profounder study of child-nature and nurture.

When free to act for herself, the Baroness broke away from the brilliant but narrow circle of court life to which she was born, and without entering the field of social reform, as the avowed champion of certain ideas, she sought in every way to acquaint herself with

*We are indebted mainly for the facts of this Memoir to a pamphlet of 156 pages by Lous Walter, printed in Dresden in 1881 by Berlag von Alwin Huahe, with the title Bertha v. Marenholtz Bulow in ihrer Bedeutung für das Werk of Fr. Froebel. 10