Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume I Part 1

Autobiography of Andrew d.i.c.kson White.

Volume I.

by Andrew d.i.c.kson White.

PART I ENVIRONMENT AND EDUCATION

CHAPTER I

BOYHOOD IN CENTRAL NEW YORK--1832-1850

At the close of the Revolution which separated the colonies from the mother country, the legislature of New York set apart nearly two million acres of land, in the heart of the State, as bounty to be divided among her soldiers who had taken part in the war; and this ''Military Tract,'' having been duly divided into townships, an ill- inspired official, in lack of names for so many divisions, sprinkled over the whole region the contents of his cla.s.sical dictionary. Thus it was that there fell to a beautiful valley upon the headwaters of the Susquehanna the name of ''Homer.'' Fortunately the surveyor-general left to the mountains, lakes, and rivers the names the Indians had given them, and so there was still some poetical element remaining in the midst of that unfortunate nomenclature. The counties, too, as a rule, took Indian names, so that the town of Homer, with its neighbors, Tully, Pompey, Fabius, Lysander, and the rest, were embedded in the county of Onondaga, in the neighborhood of lakes Otisco and Skaneateles, and of the rivers Tioughnioga and Susquehanna.

Hither came, toward the close of the eighteenth century, a body of st.u.r.dy New Englanders, and, among them, my grandfathers and grandmothers. Those on my father's side: Asa White and Clara Keep, from Munson, Ma.s.sa- chusetts; those on my mother's side, Andrew d.i.c.kson, from Middlefield, Ma.s.sachusetts, and Ruth Hall from Guilford, Connecticut. They were all of ''good stock.''

When I was ten years old I saw my great-grandfather at Middlefield, eighty-two years of age, st.u.r.dy and vigorous; he had mowed a broad field the day before, and he walked four miles to church the day after. He had done his duty manfully during the war, had been a member of the ''Great and General Court'' of Ma.s.sachusetts, and had held various other offices, which showed that he enjoyed the confidence of his fellow-citizens. As to the other side of the house, there was a tradition that we came from Peregrine White of the Mayflower; but I have never had time to find whether my doubts on the subject were well founded or not. Enough for me to know that my yeomen ancestors did their duty in war and peace, were honest, straightforward, G.o.d-fearing men and women, who owned their own lands, and never knew what it was to cringe before any human being.

These New Englanders literally made the New York wilderness to blossom as the rose; and Homer, at my birth in 1832, about forty years after the first settlers came, was, in its way, one of the prettiest villages imaginable. In the heart of it was the ''Green,'' and along the middle of this a line of church edifices, and the academy.

In front of the green, parallel to the river, ran, north and south, the broad main street, beautifully shaded with maples, and on either side of this, in the middle of the village, were stores, shops, and the main taverns; while north and south of these were large and pleasant dwellings, each in its own garden or grove or orchard, and separated from the street by light palings,--all, without exception, neat, trim, and tidy.

My first recollections are of a big, comfortable house of brick, in what is now called ''colonial style,'' with a ''stoop,'' long and broad, on its southern side, which in summer was shaded with honeysuckles. Spreading out southward from this was a s.p.a.cious garden filled with old-fashioned flowers, and in this I learned to walk. To this hour the perfume of a pink brings the whole scene before me, and proves the justice of Oliver Wendell Holmes's saying that we remember past scenes more vividly by the sense of smell than by the sense of sight.

I can claim no merit for clambering out of poverty.

My childhood was happy; my surroundings wholesome; I was brought up neither in poverty nor riches; my parents were what were called ''well-to-do-people''; everything about me was good and substantial; but our mode of life was frugal; waste or extravagance or pretense was not permitted for a moment. My paternal grandfather had been, in the early years of the century, the richest man in the township; but some time before my birth he had become one of the poorest; for a fire had consumed his mills, there was no insurance, and his health gave way.

On my father, Horace White, had fallen, therefore, the main care of his father's family. It was to the young man, apparently, a great calamity:--that which grieved him most being that it took him--a boy not far in his teens--out of school. But he met the emergency manfully, was soon known far and wide for his energy, ability, and integrity, and long before he had reached middle age was considered one of the leading men of business in the county.

My mother had a more serene career. In another part of these Reminiscences, saying something of my religious and political development, I shall speak again of her and of her parents. Suffice it here that her father prospered as a man of business, was known as ''Colonel,'' and also as ''Squire'' d.i.c.kson, and represented his county in the State legislature. He died when I was about three years old, and I vaguely remember being brought to him as he lay upon his death-bed. On one account, above all others, I have long looked back to him with pride. For the first public care of the early settlers had been a church, and the second a school. This school had been speedily developed into Cortland Academy, which soon became fa- mous throughout all that region, and, as a boy of five or six years of age, I was very proud to read on the corner- stone of the Academy building my grandfather's name among those of the original founders.

Not unlikely there thus came into my blood the strain which has led me ever since to feel that the building up of goodly inst.i.tutions is more honorable than any other work,--an idea which was at the bottom of my efforts in developing the University of Michigan, and in founding Cornell University.

To Cortland Academy students came from far and near; and it soon began sending young men into the foremost places of State and Church. At an early day, too, it began receiving young women and sending them forth to become the best of matrons. As my family left the place when I was seven years old I was never within its walls as a student, but it acted powerfully on my education in two ways,--it gave my mother the best of her education, and it gave to me a respect for scholarship.

The library and collections, though small, suggested pursuits better than the scramble for place or pelf; the public exercises, two or three times a year, led my thoughts, no matter how vaguely, into higher regions, and I shall never forget the awe which came over me when as a child, I saw Princ.i.p.al Woolworth, with his best students around him on the green, making astronomical observations through a small telescope.

Thus began my education into that great truth, so imperfectly understood, as yet, in our country, that stores, shops, hotels, facilities for travel and traffic are not the highest things in civilization.

This idea was strengthened in the family. Devoted as my father was to business, he always showed the greatest respect for men of thought. I have known him, even when most absorbed in his pursuits, to watch occasions for walking homeward with a clergyman or teacher, whose conversation he especially prized. There was scant respect in the family for the petty politicians of the region; but there was great respect for the instructors of the academy, and for any college professor who happened to be traveling through the town. I am now in my sixty-eighth year, and I write these lines from the American Emba.s.sy in Berlin. It is my duty here, as it has been at other European capitals, to meet various high officials; but that old feeling, engendered in my childhood, continues, and I bow to the representatives of the universities,--to the leaders in science, literature, and art, with a feeling of awe and respect far greater than to their so-called superiors,--princelings and high military or civil officials.

Influences of a more direct sort came from a primary school. To this I was taken, when about three years old, for a reason which may strike the present generation as curious. The colored servant who had charge of me wished to learn to read--so she slipped into the school and took me with her. As a result, though my memory runs back distinctly to events near the beginning of my fourth year, it holds not the faintest recollection of a time when I could not read easily. The only studies which I recall with distinctness, as carried on before my seventh year, are arithmetic and geography. As to the former, the multiplication-table was chanted in chorus by the whole body of children, a rhythmical and varied movement of the arms being carried on at the same time. These exercises gave us pleasure and fastened the tables in our minds. As to geography, that gave pleasure in another way. The books contained pictures which stimulated my imagination and prompted me to read the adjacent text.

There was no over-pressure. Mental recreation and information were obtained in a loose way from ''Rollo Books,'' ''Peter Parley Books,'' ''Sanford and Merton,''

the ''Children's Magazine,'' and the like. I now think it a pity that I was not allowed to read, instead of these, the novels of Scott and Cooper, which I discovered later. I devoutly thank Heaven that no such thing as a sensation newspaper was ever brought into the house,-- even if there were one at that time,--which I doubt. As to physical recreation, there was plenty during the summer in the fields and woods, and during the winter in coasting, building huts in the deep snow, and in storming or defending the snow forts on the village green. One of these childish sports had a historical connection with a period which now seems very far away. If any old settler happened to pa.s.s during our snow-balling or our shooting with bows and arrows, he was sure to look on with interest, and, at some good shot, to cry out,-- ''SHOOT BURGOYNE!''--thus recalling his remembrances of the sharpshooters who brought about the great surrender at Saratoga.

In my seventh year my father was called to take charge of the new bank established at Syracuse, thirty miles distant, and there the family soon joined him. I remember that coming through the Indian Reservation, on the road between the two villages, I was greatly impressed by the bowers and other decorations which had been used shortly before at the installation of a new Indian chief.

It was the headquarters of the Onondagas,--formerly the great central tribe of the Iroquois,--the warlike confederacy of the Six Nations; and as, in a general way, the story was told me on that beautiful day in September a new world of romance was opened to me, so that Indian stories, and especially Cooper's novels, when I was allowed to read them, took on a new reality.

Syracuse, which is now a city of one hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants, was then a straggling village of about five thousand. After much time lost in sundry poor ''select schools'' I was sent to one of the public schools which was very good, and thence, when about twelve years old, to the preparatory department of the Syracuse Academy.

There, by good luck, was Joseph A. Allen, the best teacher of English branches I have ever known. He had no rules and no system; or, rather, his rule was to have no rules, and his system was to have no system. To genius. He seemed to divine the character and enter into the purpose of every boy. Work under him was a pleasure.

His methods were very simple. Great attention was given to reading aloud from a book made up of selections from the best authors, and to recitals from these.

Thus I stored up not only some of the best things in the older English writers, but inspiring poems of Bryant, Whittier, Longfellow, and other moderns. My only regret is that more of this was not given us. I recall, among treasures thus gained, which have been precious to me ever since, in many a weary or sleepless hour on land and sea, extracts from Shakspere, parts of Milton's ''Samson Agonistes,'' and of his sonnets; Gray's ''Elegy,'' Byron's ''Ode to the Ocean,'' Campbell's ''What's Hallowed Ground?'' Goldsmith's ''Deserted Village,'' Longfellow's ''Psalm of Life,'' Irving's ''Voyage to Europe,'' and parts of Webster's ''Reply to Hayne.''

At this school the wretched bugbear of English spelling was dealt with by a method which, so long as our present monstrous orthography continues, seems to me the best possible. During the last half-hour of every day, each scholar was required to have before him a copy- book, of which each page was divided into two columns.

At the head of the first column was the word ''Spelling''; at the head of the second column was the word ''Corrected.''

The teacher then gave out to the school about twenty of the more important words in the reading- lesson of the day, and, as he thus dictated each word, each scholar wrote it in the column headed ''Spelling.'' When all the words were thus written, the first scholar was asked to spell from his book the first word; if misspelled, it was pa.s.sed to the next, and so on until it was spelled correctly; whereupon all who had made a mistake in writing it made the proper correction on the opposite column.

The result of this was that the greater part of us learned orthography PRACTICALLY. For the practical use of spelling comes in writing.

The only mistake in Mr. Allen's teaching was too much attention to English grammar. The order ought to be, literature first, and grammar afterward. Perhaps there is no more tiresome trifling in the world for boys and girls than rote recitations and parsing from one of the usual grammatical text-books.

As to mathematics, arithmetic was, perhaps, pushed too far into puzzles; but geometry was made fascinating by showing its real applications and the beauty of its reasoning. It is the only mathematical study I ever loved.

In natural science, though most of the apparatus of schools nowadays was wanting, Mr. Allen's instruction was far beyond his time. Never shall I forget my excited interest when, occasionally, the village surgeon came in, and the whole school was a.s.sembled to see him dissect the eye or ear or heart of an ox. Physics, as then understood, was studied in a text-book, but there was ill.u.s.tration by simple apparatus, which fastened firmly in my mind the main facts and principles.

The best impulse by this means came from the princ.i.p.al of the academy, Mr. Oren Root,--one of the pioneers of American science, whose modesty alone stood in the way of his fame. I was too young to take direct instruction from him, but the experiments which I saw him perform led me, with one or two of my mates, to construct an excellent electrical machine and subsidiary apparatus; and with these, a small galvanic battery and an extemporized orrery, I diluted Professor Root's lectures with the teachings of my little books on natural philosophy and astronomy to meet the capacities of the younger boys in our neighborhood.

Salient among my recollections of this period are the cries and wailing of a newly-born babe in the rooms at the academy occupied by the princ.i.p.al, and adjacent to our big school-room. Several decades of years later I had the honor of speaking on the platform of Cooper Inst.i.tute in company with this babe, who, as I write, is, I believe, the very energetic Secretary of War in the Cabinet of President McKinley.

Unfortunately for me, Mr. Root was soon afterward called away to a professorship at Hamilton College, and so, though living in the best of all regions for geological study, I was never properly grounded in that science, and as to botany, I am to this hour utterly ignorant of its simplest facts and principles. I count this as one of the mistakes in my education,--resulting in the loss of much valuable knowledge and high pleasure.

As to physical development, every reasonable encouragement was given to play. Mr. Allen himself came frequently to the play-grounds. He was an excellent musician and a most helpful influence was exerted by singing, which was a daily exercise of the school. I then began taking lessons regularly in music and became proficient enough to play the organ occasionally in church; the best result of this training being that it gave my life one of its deepest, purest, and most lasting pleasures.

On the moral side, Mr. Allen influenced many of us by liberalizing and broadening our horizon. He was a disciple of Channing and an abolitionist, and, though he never made the slightest attempt to proselyte any of his scholars, the very atmosphere of the school made sectarian bigotry impossible.

As to my general education outside the school I browsed about as best I could. My pa.s.sion in those days was for machinery, and, above all, for steam machinery. The stationary and locomotive engines upon the newly- established railways toward Albany on the east and Buffalo on the west especially aroused my attention, and I came to know every locomotive, its history, character, and capabilities, as well as every stationary engine in the whole region.

My holiday excursions, when not employed in boating or skating on the Onondaga Creek, or upon the lake, were usually devoted to visiting workshops, where the engine drivers and stokers seemed glad to talk with a youngster who took an interest in their business. Especially interested was I in a rotary engine on ''Barker's centrifugal principle,'' with which the inventor had prom- ised to propel locomotives at the rate of a hundred miles an hour, but which had been degraded to grinding bark in a tannery. I felt its disgrace keenly, as a piece of gross injustice; but having obtained a small bra.s.s model, fitted to it a tin boiler and placed it on a little stern-wheel boat, I speedily discovered the secret of the indignity which had overtaken the machine, for no boat could carry a boiler large enough to supply steam for it.

So, too, I knew every water-wheel in that part of the county, whether overshot, undershot, breast, or turbine.

Everything in the nature of a motor had an especial fascination for me, and for the men in control of such power I entertained a respect which approached awe.

Among all these, my especial reverence was given to the locomotive engineers; in my youthful mind they took on a heroic character. Often during the night watches I thought of them as braving storm and peril, responsible for priceless freights of human lives. Their firm, keen faces come back to me vividly through the mists of sixty years, and to this day I look up to their successors at the throttle with respectful admiration.

After Professor Root's departure the Syracuse Academy greatly declined, Mr. Allen being the only strong man left among its teachers, and, as I was to go to college, I was removed to a ''cla.s.sical school.'' This school was not at first very successful. Its teacher was a good scholar but careless. Under him I repeated the grammatical forms and rules in Latin and Greek, glibly, term after term, without really understanding their value. His great mistake, which seems to me a not infrequent one, was taking it for granted that repeating rules and forms means understanding them and their application. But a catastrophe came. I had been promoted beyond my deserts from a lower into an upper Latin cla.s.s, and at a public examination the Rev. Samuel Joseph May, who was present, asked me a question, to which I made an answer revealing utter ignorance of one of the simplest principles of Latin grammar. He was discon- certed at the result, I still more so, and our preceptor most of all. That evening my father very solemnly asked me about it. I was mortified beyond expression, did not sleep at all that night, and of my own accord, began reviewing my Andrews and Stoddard thoroughly and vigorously. But this did not save the preceptor. A successor was called, a man who afterward became an eminent Presbyterian divine and professor in a Southern university, James W. Hoyt, one of the best and truest of men, and his manly, moral influence over his scholars was remarkable. Many of them have reached positions of usefulness, and I think they will agree that his influence upon their lives was most happy. The only drawback was that he was still very young, not yet through his senior year in Union College, and his methods in cla.s.sical teaching were imperfect. He loved his cla.s.sics and taught his better students to love them, but he was neither thorough in grammar, nor sure in translation, and this I afterward found to my sorrow. My friend and schoolmate of that time, W. O. S., published a few years since, in the ''St. Nicholas Magazine,'' an account of this school.

It was somewhat idealized, but we doubtless agree in thinking that the lack of grammatical drill was more than made up by the love of manliness, and the dislike of meanness, which was in those days our very atmosphere.

Probably the best thing for my mental training was that Mr. Hoyt interested me in my Virgil, Horace, and Xenophon, and required me to write out my translations in the best English at my command.

But to all his pupils he did not prove so helpful. One of them, though he has since become an energetic man of business on the Pacific Coast, was certainly not helped into his present position by his Latin; for of all the translations I have ever heard or read of, one of his was the worst. Being called to construe the first line of the Aeneid, he proceeded as follows:

''Arma,--arms; virumque,--and a man; cano,--and a dog.'' There was a roar, and Mr. Hoyt, though evidently saddened, kept his temper. He did not, like the great and good Arnold of Rugby, under similar provocation, knock the offender down with the text-book.

Still another agency in my development was the debating club, so inevitable in an American village. Its discussions were sometimes pretentious and always crude, but something was gained thereby. I remember that one of the subjects was stated as follows: ''Which has done most harm, intemperance or fanaticism.'' The debate was without any striking feature until my schoolmate, W. O. S., brought up heavy artillery on the side of the anti-fanatics: namely, a statement of the ruin wrought by Mohammedanism in the East, and, above all, the destruction of the great Alexandrian library by Caliph Omar; and with such eloquence that all the argumentation which any of us had learned in the temperance meetings was paralyzed.

On another occasion we debated the question: ''Was the British Government justified in its treatment of Napoleon Bonaparte?'' Much historical lore had been brought to bear on the question, when an impa.s.sioned young orator wound up a bitter diatribe against the great emperor as follows: ''The British Government WAS justified, and if for no other reason, by the Emperor Napoleon's murder of the 'Duck de Engine' '' (Duc d'Enghien).

As to education outside of the school very important to me had been the discovery, when I was about ten years old, of '' 'The Monastery,' by the author of 'Waverley.' ''

Who the ''author of 'Waverley' '' was I neither knew nor cared, but read the book three times, end over end, in a sort of fascination. Unfortunately, novels and romances were kept under lock and key, as unfit reading for children, and it was some years before I reveled in Scott's other novels. That they would have been thoroughly good and wholesome reading for me I know, and about my sixteenth year they opened a new world to me and gave healthful play to my imagination. I also read and re-read Bunyan's ''Pilgrim's Progress,'' and, with plea- sure even more intense, the earlier works of d.i.c.kens, which were then appearing.

My only regret, as regards that time, is that, between the rather trashy ''boys' books'' on one side and the rather severe books in the family library on the other, I read far less of really good literature than I ought to have done. My reading was absolutely without a guide, hence fitful and sc.r.a.ppy; parts of Rollin's ''Ancient History''

and Lander's ''Travels in Africa'' being mixed up with ''Robinson Crusoe'' and ''The Scottish Chiefs.'' Reflection on my experience has convinced me that some kindly guidance in the reading of a fairly scholarly boy is of the utmost importance, and never more so than now, when books are so many and attractive. I should lay much stress, also, on the hearing of good literature well read, and the interspersing of such reading with some remarks by the reader, pointing out the main beauties of the pieces thus presented.

About my tenth year occurred an event, apparently trivial, but really very important in my mental development during many years afterward. My father brought home one day, as a gift to my mother, a handsome quarto called ''The Gallery of British Artists.''

It contained engravings from pictures by Turner, Stanfield, Cattermole, and others, mainly representing scenes from Shakspere, Scott, Burns, picturesque architecture, and beautiful views in various parts of Europe. Of this book I never tired. It aroused in me an intense desire to know more of the subjects represented, and this desire has led me since to visit and to study every cathedral, church, and town hall of any historical or architectural significance in Europe, outside the Spanish peninsula.

But, far more important, it gave an especial zest to nearly all Scott's novels, and especially to the one which I have always thought the most fascinating, ''Quentin Durward.''