Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 by Various

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Then she spoke of her bruised face, and said that the sun hurt her eyes
so dreadfully, begging me to give her some old thing to cover them with
and keep off the light. 'It would be such a mercy,' she said, and
'Heaven will bless you for helping us when we are so distressed.'

I betook myself again to the garret; there were plenty of old bonnets,
to be sure; but, alas! all of them were of such a style that they might
serve, indeed, to adorn the back of the head, but were none of them of
any manner of use to shelter a pair of distressed eyes. While rummaging
about, I came at length upon something which struck me as just the thing
required; it was an ancient relic, more venerable even than 'my son's
boots,' but in excellent preservation. It was a head-dress that had been
manufactured for my mother, some twenty years ago, before the invention
of sun-bonnets, or broad hats. It was called a calash, and was
constructed of green silk outside and white silk within, reeved upon
cane, similar in fashion to the 'uglies,' which, at the present day,
English ladies are wont to prefix to the front of their bonnets when
traveling or rusticating by the seaside; but instead of being something
to attach to the bonnet, it was a complete bonnet in itself, gigantic
and bow-shaped, which would fold together flat as a pancake, or opening
like an accordeon, it could be drawn forward over the face to any
required extent, by means of a ribbon attached to the front. It was
effective, light, and cool, and the green tint afforded a very pleasant
shade to the eyes. I seized upon it and carried it to the poor woman,
who received it with transport, clapped it immediately upon her head and
drew it well down over her face. She took up the bread and meat, telling
me with many thanks, that as soon as she and her husband had eaten, they
should continue on their way, not waiting for the night, as they were
very anxious to find themselves further from the Kentucky border. I
wished her God speed, and watched her as she crossed the open turf, her
bundle in her hand, and the great green calash nodding forward upon her
head, until she disappeared within the wood.

She had scarce been ten minutes out of my sight when a very unpleasant
misgiving came over me. That great green calash that she had been so
glad to receive--what an odd and unusual head-dress it was! Surely, it
would attract attention; it would render her a marked object. If her
pursuers should once get upon her traces, it would enable them to track
her from point to point. I wished, with all my heart, it had been less
conspicuous, and I began to think that my researches in the garret were
not destined to be particularly fortunate. I wished exceedingly that my
friend the minister's daughter, had been at home, that I might have
taken counsel with her and have had the benefit of her experience in
such matters.

As I was still standing in the doorway, ruminating upon the subject with
a troubled soul, I saw in the distance the figure of a student of
theology, whom I knew to be a friend of our old minister and his
daughter, and thoroughly anti-slavery in principle. I hastened after
him, told him the circumstances of the case, and imparted to him my
misgivings. He promised me to put the matter into safe hands, and to
have a look-out kept for the wanderers. After a few hours he returned to
me with the welcome intelligence that the fugitives had been overtaken
on the turnpike road a mile or two beyond, by one of the emissaries of
the underground railway in a covered cart, in which they had been
comfortably stowed, and safely forwarded on their way, and that from
that time forth they would be speedily and quietly passed from point to
point and from friend to friend, until they reached their destination.

A weight was lifted from my heart, I could have danced for joy; and I
learned with astonishment, that the agent, who had come like an angel to
the relief of the poor fugitives, was no other than a little ugly negro
man, who had often worked in our garden, and who was usually employed to
do the roughest and dirtiest work in the neighborhood. His crooked
figure, his bandy legs, and little ape-like head, had always led me to
regard him as the most unpromising specimen of his race that I had ever
beheld; but from that time forth I regarded him with respect. The poor
crooked form, distorted by hard toil, contained a heart, and the little
ape-like head a brain, to help his outcast brethren in the hour of need.

As time passed on, the borders of the wood of which I have already
spoken, began to be invaded by the woodman. Rough, ragged bits were
cleared, and cheap, slight, frame houses sprang up, some of them erected
and owned by the workmen in the neighborhood, some of them put up by
speculators, and rented to a poor class of tenants. Playing about
outside one of these shanties, a pretty child might soon be seen, a
fair-haired, blue-eyed boy of five years old or thereabouts. So regular
were his features, so white his skin, it would hardly have been
suspected that he had any but European blood in his veins, had it not
been known that the house was occupied by colored people, to whom he
seemed to belong. An old man was said to be lying ill in the house,
which was rented by two colored women, who were anxious to get work in
the neighborhood, or washing and sewing to do at home. At that time I
was preparing for rather a long journey; and on inquiring for some one
to sew for me, Sallie Smith was sent to me. When she came, I learned
that she was an inmate of one of the new cottages, and the grandmother
of the pretty child of whom we have spoken.

Sallie Smith came and went, carrying home pieces of work, which she
dispatched quickly and well. She was a fine-looking mulatto-woman, in
the prime of life, with wavy black hair and sparkling eyes, though her
features preserved the negro cast. Her manners had a warmth and
geniality belonging to good specimens of her race, with a freedom that
was odd and amusing, but never offensive. When she brought home her
work, with some comical expression of fatigue, she would sink upon the
ground, as if utterly exhausted by the walk and the heat, and sitting at
my feet, would play with the hem of my dress, as she talked over what
she had done, and what still remained to be done; or related to me, in
answer to my inquiries, scraps of her past history, her thoughts about
her race in general, her religious experiences, and the affairs of her
church in Cincinnati, of which she was an enthusiastic member.

On inquiring about the health of her old, bed-ridden husband, I learned,
to my surprise, that he was a white man.

'You see,' she said, 'he wasn't a gentleman at all; he was one of those
_mean whites_ down South.' As she said this, the scornful emphasis on
_mean whites_ was something quite indescribable. Truly, the condition of
poor whites at the South must be pitiable indeed, to be regarded with
such utter contempt by the very slaves themselves.

'We lived,' she continued, 'in a miserable little hut, in a pine wood,
and I was his only slave. I kept house, and worked for him. He was one
of the shiftless kind, and there was nothing _he_ could do. Oh! he was a
poor, miserable creature, I tell you, always in debt! Well, we had two
children, a girl and a boy.'

'Did he ever have any other wife?' I inquired.

She fired up, indignantly. 'No, indeed; I guess I'd never have stood
that! Well, he was always promising to come to a Free State; but he was
always in debt, and couldn't get the money to come, and Jane, she was
growing up a very pretty girl, and when she was about seventeen, the
creditors came and seized her, and sold her for a slave, to pay his
debts.'

'What! sold his own daughter!' I exclaimed.

'Why, yes. She was _my_ daughter, too, you know; so she was his
property, and so he couldn't hinder them from taking her.'

'How he must have felt!' I exclaimed.

She caught me up quickly. '_Felt!_ why, you know how a father _must_
feel in such a case. It broke him down worse than ever. Yes, we felt bad
enough when they carried Jane away. Well, she was bought by the
principal creditor; he was a rich man, with a large plantation, and a
wife and children, and lots of slaves, and he kept Jane at the house, to
sew for him, and by-and-by she had a child that was almost as white as
his other children. You see,' she added apologetically, 'Jane didn't
know it was wrong; she was only a poor sinner, who didn't know nothing.
She had never been to church or learned any thing, and I didn't know
much either _then_. It was only when I came North and joined the church,
that I began to know about such things. But I grieved day and night for
Jane, that I couldn't get her back. Well, for a time we were out of
debt, you see, and I persuaded my husband to come right up North, for
fear he should get into debt again, and they should seize the boy too;
so we came to Cincinnati, and we got the boy a place there, and he's
doing very well.

'There I joined the Church; but I couldn't help thinking of Jane, and
grieving after her all the time, and I prayed to the Lord for her, and I
prayed and prayed, and by-and-by, I don't know how it happened, but her
master let her bring the child and come and pay me a visit. It seemed as
if the Lord had blinded him, so that he did not know that if she came
North, she might be free. He was that stupid, he had not the least
suspicion that she'd stay; he thought she'd come right back to him. And
when she did not come, he wrote to her, and wrote again; and when still
she didn't come, he came himself to fetch her. But I took care to have
Jane out of the way, and saw him myself. And he coaxed and persuaded,
and he stormed and he threatened; oh! he was awful mad. But I jist shook
my fist in his face, and said, 'You ole slaveholder, you, you jist go
back to ole Virginny; you niver git my daughter agin!''

As she uttered these words, Sallie compressed her mouth with a look of
dogged resolution; her black eyes glowed with smothered anger, and she
shook her fist energetically in the air, as if the phantom of the
Virginian slaveholder were still before her. After a pause, she
recovered herself and continued:

'How he did go on! He cursed and he swore; but it was of no manner of
use; I'd nothin' else to say to him, and by-and-by he had to go away;
you see, he couldn't do nothin', because Jane had come North _with his
consent_. So Jane and I, we came up here, and we get what work we can,
and take care of the child, and nurse the old man. He's miserable! he
don't often leave his bed, and he's not likely to get much better, for
he's old and completely broke.'

So Sallie had told me her history; but she had not done. Her active mind
had found an outlet in the little negro church at Cincinnati, of which
she was a member. Her intense religious enthusiasm mingled with her deep
perception of the wrongs and cruelties inflicted upon her race. Her soul
lay like a glowing volcano beneath that easy, careless Southern manner,
which might have led one at first to regard her as merely a jolly,
ignorant, negro-woman.

At a word which one day touched upon this chord, her work fell from her
hands, her eyes flashed, and she poured forth, in old Scripture
phraseology, her indignation, her aspirations, and her glowing faith.
She wholly identified her race with the Jews in their wanderings and
their captivity, and the old descriptive and prophetic words fell from
her lips, as if wrung from her heart, startling one by the wondrous
fitness of the application. There was such magnetic power in her intense
earnestness, her strong emotions, and her certain and exultant trust in
God and his providence, that it held me spell-bound. I listened, as if
one of the old prophets had risen before me. I never heard eloquence
like it; for I never witnessed such an intense sense of the reality and
force of the cause which had called it forth. I can not recall her
words; but I remember, after describing the cruelty and apparent
hopelessness of her people's captivity, their groans, their prayers to
the Lord, day after day and year after year, their darkness and despair,
their still-continued crying unto God for help, she concluded by
describing how the Lord at length would appear for their relief. 'He
will come,' she said; 'he will shake and shake the nations, and will
say: 'Let my people go free.' And though there should seem to be no way,
he shall open the way before them, and they shall go forth free. They
shall sing and give thanks, for in the Lord have they trusted, and they
shall never be confounded.' She paused. Her words made a deep impression
upon me. At that time, how dark and hopeless seemed the way! nothing
then pointed to a coming deliverance. Blind faith in God alone was left
us; but how cold seemed the faith and trust of the warmest advocate of
Emancipation among us, to the glowing certainty of God's help, which
possessed the soul of this poor, ignorant negro-woman. Sallie took up
her shawl and bonnet, and was about to go. I roused myself, and looking
at her with a half-smile, 'You speak in church?' I said.

An instant change passed over her face. Her eyes twinkled a moment, with
a shrewd appreciation of my guess. She drew herself up, with a gleam of
pride and pleasure; she nodded an assent, and wrapping her shawl around
her, she turned away.

I have never seen her since; but her truly prophetic words often recur
to me now, when the Lord is shaking the nations; when, if we fail to
listen to his words, and to let his poor, oppressed people go, he must
surely shake and shake again. Every day, our concern in the negro race
becomes a clearer and more self-evident fact. Every bulletin impresses
it anew upon our thoughts. Every soldier laid to rest upon the
battle-field engraves it still deeper upon the nation's heart.

* * * * *

THE EDUCATION TO BE.

1. _Principles and Practice of Early and Infant School Education_. By
James Currie, A.M. Third edition. Edinburgh: 1861.

2. _Papers for the Teacher_. No. 1: American Contributions to Pedagogy.
Edited by Henry Barnard, LL.D. New York: 1860.

3. _Education; Intellectual, Moral, and Physical_. By Herbert Spencer.
New York: 1861.

4. _A Series of School and Family Readers_. Compiled by Marcius Willson.
New York: 1860-1.

5. _Primary Object Lessons, for a Graduated Course of Development_. By
N.A. Calkins. New York: 1861.

6. _Annual Reports of Superintendents of Schools_: City of New York,
1861; Oswego, 1860; Chicago, 1861.

7. _The New York Teacher_. Monthly. Albany, Vols. 7-10: 1858-61.

'The most certain means,' Beccaria wrote in the preceding century, 'of
rendering a people free and happy, is, to establish a perfect method of
education.' If, in this conclusion, Beccaria only reiterates an opinion
at least tacitly held long before his time by some of the Grecian sages,
still, the later assertion of the principle should, it seems, derive
some additional weight from the circumstance of the time allowed in the
interim for repeated reconsiderations of the question. The theologian
may interpose, that, toward rendering a people free and happy, the
influences of religion must constitute the most efficacious, the
dominant agency. But when we admit that man is _one_,--that heart and
hand are not only alike, but together subjects for culture,--then it
will be seen that religion falls into its place in the one comprehensive
scheme of human education; and we discover that Beccaria's position,
instead of being assailed from this point of view, becomes, according as
our conception of the case is truthful and clear, correspondingly
strengthened.

The ease, however, with which we utter those little qualifiers, 'free'
and 'happy,' observed to stand here in the positive or absolute degree,
and not in any degree of comparison, is noticeable. For 'degrees of
comparison' are always concessions of steps _down_, even when they most
stoutly present themselves as steps _up_. Were all men simply wise and
just, all predicating of certain men that they were _more_, or _most,
wise_ or _just_, would be at once absurd and without utility. It is our
intensified adjective that confesses fatally the prior fact of a coming
short, and by an amount indefinitely great, of the simple, absolute
standard. So, to come once for all to ridding ourselves of comparative
forms of speech, and to be warranted to look for the rendering of a
people, in the simple, positive sense, free and happy, would be, in the
expressive language of one 'aunt Chloe' respecting the 'glory' to which
she aspired, 'a mighty thing!' On the other hand, so far have our race,
up to this moment, and without a single decided instance in exception,
fallen short of aught that could be styled a perfect method of
education, and so closely must educational training affect every nascent
man or woman in those vitalest particulars,--character and
capability,--that, could the perfect method sought once be brought into
effective operation on the plastic child-manhood of a nation, or of all
nations, we are not prepared to deny the possibility of any results
therefrom to humanity, even the grandest utterable or conceivable.
Admitting such method found, and in process, Beccaria could have
dispensed with his tell-tale 'most,' and written, The certain means of
rendering a people free and happy, is, to establish a perfect method of
education.

To secure, therefore, so great an end: First, find--the perfect
educational method! The recipe is brief; the labor it imposes is more
than Herculean. To measure it, we should have to find the ratio in
which mind transcends matter, or that in which the broad generalizations
of genius in the materials of science surpass the poor conceptions that
the wild Australian must almost utter audibly in his own ear to realize
that he at all possesses them.

In the 5,865 years which the most unquestioned belief accords to the
history of man on our planet, could we suppose the average duration of
life throughout equal to that of a generation now, there would have been
time for 177 generations of working, planning, inventive men--of men
desiring at each period the best they could conceive of, and framing the
best schemes they were capable of to attain it. Here has been space for
the slow rise and fall of nation after nation,--vast solitary tides
heaving at long intervals the face of a wide, living, sullen sea: and
history reports that the nations have actually risen, flourished, and
fallen. Here has been space for exquisite triumphs of art; for the late
birth, and nevertheless large progress, of the sciences concerned about
phenomena of physical nature; the art triumphs have been achieved, and
the germs of sciences are in our possession. Here has been space for the
multiplication, upon all imaginable themes, of books, to a number and
volume utterly beyond the powers of the most prolonged and assiduous
life even to peruse; and the books crowd our alcoves, and meet us
wherever men are wont to make their abode or transit. Here has been
space for the organization, though so long impracticable and late
conceived, of a system of daily diffusion of intelligence, and to such a
pitch as almost to bring the world freshly photographed to our eyes with
each returning sun; and, lo! the photographs are here; they await us at
the breakfast or the counting table. Here has been space for the
springing up among the people, at distances of years or centuries, of
profound educating intellects, marked by clear insight, large human
love, and patient self-sacrifice, and contributing to the growth of
humanity by worthy examples, and by propounding successively more and
more rational modes for the informing and developing of youthful minds;
and, see! Confucius, Socrates and Plato, Petrarch, Bacon, Comenius,
Pestalozzi, Pere Girard, Arnold of Rugby, and Horace Mann--to make no
mention of many co-laborers among the dead, and earnest successors among
the living--stepping from their niches in the vanishing corridors of
history, lay at our feet the treasures accumulated through their patient
and clear thought and their faithful experience.

Will it then readily be believed--and yet it is unquestionably
true--that, to this hour, neither the schools nor the teachers can be
found that are in possession and practice of a well-defined, positively
guiding, and always trustworthy _method_ of intellectual, and other
means and steps by which to conduct and consummate the education of our
children? Note, we do not here declare the want of the true and
universal method of educating, if there can be such a thing; but we
distinctly assert that no school and no living teacher employs or
conforms to any well-defined, positive, and, in and for its purposes,
completed method of educating the young; nor, since this latter is a
supposition better pleasing certain critically-minded gentlemen, have we
in anything like clear delineation and positive practice the _several_
methods that may be imagined requisite for minds of varying bent and
capacity. If we sum up in one word the most pervading, constant, and
obvious characteristic of our schools, and of the teaching and the
learning in them to this day, that word must be, _immethodical_.
Although admitting that the education of the young should distinctly
embrace the four departments of a training, _physical_, _intellectual_,
_moral_, and _social_, yet, for the sake of clearness in our discussion
and its results, not less than through the necessities of a restricted
space, we shall here confine our remarks wholly to education in its
intellectual aspect.

To move, for each subject, and for each part of it essayed, always along
the right way, and by the true character and order of steps,--that is
the thing to be desired, and which is, as yet, unattained. As a
consequence, the prosecution of studies is by attempts and in ways that
are generally imperfect, at best make-shift or provisional, often
radically erroneous or worthless. Doubtless, the defects in method are
now less glaring and influential at the two extremes of the
sensibly-conducted infant school, and the well-appointed and leisurely
collegiate course. There is no true study that is not what the origin of
the word implies--STUDIUM, a work of _zeal, fondness, eager desire,
voluntary endeavor, interest_. Such study has two essential
characteristics; where these are wanting, study does not exist; the
appearance of it is a sham; and though results disconnected and partial
are attained, real acquisition is meager, and apparent progress
deceptive.

Of these characteristics, the first is what the word directly
expresses--zealous exertion on the part of the student's own
intellectual powers, a zeal literally pre-venting all other incentives,
or, at the least, subordinating them, through pure love of finding out
that which is new and curious, or true. In two words, this first
essential of study, and fraught with all the desirable results of study,
is genuine INTELLECTUAL WORK. It is the _nisus_ of the intelligent
principle to bring itself into ascertained and well-ordered relations
with the facts, agencies, and uses of nature, alike in her physical and
spiritual domains. The bright-minded boy or girl who may not comprehend
the feeling or thought when so uttered, nevertheless _knows_ it, and,
for his or her range of effort, as keenly as does the adult explorer.

But, when a mind thus _works_, the truth that it can never advance
beyond missing or unfound links in the chain of thought does not need to
be taught to it. The impossibility of so doing has become a matter of
experience and of certain conviction. The mathematician knows, that,
beyond that form of his equation containing an actual mis-step, or a
positively irresoluble expression, all subsequent forms or values
involving that step or expression are vitiated, and the results they
seem to show substantially worthless. Now, every actually working mind,
and at every stage, from schoolboy perplexities over algebraic signs, up
to philosophic ventures in quest of one remove further of solid ground,
in respect to the interrelations of physical forces, or the law of
development of organized forms, finds itself in precisely the
predicament of the mathematician: it feels no footing and accomplishes
no advance beyond that link in the chain of fact and thought, which, to
its comprehension, stands as uncertain, erroneous, wanting, or
inexplicable. This is so from the very nature of our knowing faculties
and of knowledge. The true intellectual worker, encountering
interruption through any of these conditions, goes back to view his
difficulty from a better vantage ground, or attempts to approach it from
either side, or, failing these resources, bows to the necessity, and
suffers no harm, other than stoppage and loss of time. Thus, the second
characteristic of true study is in the rigidly natural and unfailing
CONSECUTION of the steps and processes by which the intellectual advance
is made. A mind so advancing never flatters itself of being able to
grasp that which, in the nature of knowledge, must be a consequent
truth, until the antecedent or antecedents german to the question in
hand have first been possessed by it. But in our schools, how vastly
much is _supposed_ to be taught, in which consequents come before
antecedents, or are promiscuously jumbled up with them, or assert
themselves, without so much as the grace to say to antecedents of any
sort, 'By your leave.' Obviously, however, such could not be the
character of so much of our teaching, did not the character of most of
our books for schools exactly correspond with it. And the books do
correspond: they not only give to a faulty teaching its cue, but, now
that the _theory_ of education is being so much discussed, and in good
degree improved, they constitute one of the most influential causes of
the almost hopeless lagging of its practice.

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