looked upon it as an extraordinary statement, and in one of our journals the following criticism appeared: "Will President Eliot offer the public some fuller explanation of his meaning? What training to the powers of observation is given by the study of the mother-tongue? What training to the art-faculties? What to the knowledge of abstract truths? What to the faculties which deal with abstract truths? What to the power of reasoning? Does President Eliot mean that an acquaintance with the mother-tongue trains every faculty which is trained by mathematics, science, metaphysics, and æsthetics—or does he mean that the training of these faculties is not essential to a good education—that education may be partial and yet adequate?"
The statement, President Eliot afterward remarked, "can easily be misunderstood," and was misunderstood, and is still used to prove something that he did not design it should be used to prove. There can be no dispute as to the correctness of the remark that "an accurate and refined use of the mother-tongue is an essential part of the education of a lady or gentleman." No one would consider an education complete without this part of it. A violation of the rules of grammar in speaking or writing the mother-tongue would at once show an imperfect education.
The Rev. Lyman Abbott published Mr. Eliot's explanation. In an article in the "Christian Union" Mr. Abbott remarked: "Our readers may remember an editorial paragraph calling attention to a reported utterance of President Eliot, of Harvard College, on the subject of education. We, at the same time, addressed him a private note, to which we have received the following reply":
| "Harvard College, Cambridge, Mass., July 26, 1879. |
"Mr dear Sir: Your obliging note of July 3d arrived just after I had left Cambridge for a yacht-cruise on the Maine coast. Hence the long delay of this reply.
"I do not feel inclined, in these blessed vacation-days, to write even the shortest article—not even to justify a statement of mine which, it seems, can easily be misunderstood. I did not say that a study of the mother-tongue supplied a complete mental training; but only that no one was a gentleman or a lady who had not a refined and accurate use of the mother-tongue. That attainment I find essential to my conception of a gentleman or a lady. A gentleman or a lady will have other mental acquisitions; but these will not be essential, as that is. To illustrate: salt is an indispensable article of diet; one may, further, eat bread, or beef, or oatmeal, but salt one must have, whatever the other articles consumed may be.
Moreover, neither bread, nor beef, nor oatmeal, is indispensable in the same sense.
"But, as you suggest, the remark quoted and questioned in your paper was incidental; and I am quite willing that it should go for what it was momentarily worth.
| "Very truly yours, |
| "Charles W. Eliot. |
| "Rev. Lyman Abbott." |
We can accept President Eliot's explanation that, as salt is necessary in all our food, so the mother-tongue should appear in its refined and accurate use in all our studies—rather than suppose an incidental remark should be used against the study of the classics. It would be singular, indeed, if the president of a great university should be placed in opposition to the study of subjects which are assigned so large a place in its curriculum as the ancient languages; rather would it be supposed that he would say with Dr. Seelye, of Smith College: "The relation, however, of the classics and mathematics to intellectual growth, if correctly apprehended, rests on unalterable facts in the history of man and the constitution of nature. They are to be studied, not because the college demands them, but because they are an essential condition to the broadest mental culture. Unless they are early taught, the chances are they will never be acquired. Those who wish to pursue a higher education will find themselves embarrassed every step forward without them."
It is evident that the remark of President Eliot was thrown off parenthetically in the address before the young ladies of Smith College, and was never intended to be used as it has been by writers and speakers on the subject of classical studies since the day it was uttered.
We think it is due to classical study and its friends that this explanation should be made in your widely-read "Monthly."
| "Yours, truly. |
| Traill Green. |
| Easton, Pennsylvania, June 9, 1880. |
A SHOWER OF DUST.
Messrs. Editors.
From two to five o'clock on the morning of March 28, 1880, we had a storm of wind and rain in this part of Indiana. After daylight a remarkable deposit of brown or slate-colored dust was found to have fallen on porticoes, flat roofs, etc. It was also observed, in places, on the earth's surface. The phenomenon was noticed by our citizens generally, and it was spoken of in some of our papers. Professors Wylie and Newkirk, as well as myself, collected quantities of the dust. Some
