USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > The Congress of Women : held in the Woman's building, World's Columbian exposition, Chicago, U.S.A., 1893 : with portraits, biographies and addresses > Part 40
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 | Part 93 | Part 94 | Part 95 | Part 96 | Part 97 | Part 98 | Part 99 | Part 100 | Part 101 | Part 102 | Part 103 | Part 104 | Part 105 | Part 106 | Part 107 | Part 108 | Part 109 | Part 110 | Part 111 | Part 112 | Part 113 | Part 114 | Part 115
Her postoffice address is 1902 Val-
296
297
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
The kindergarten concerns itself more with the development of faculty than with the mere imparting of knowledge. It recognizes the fact that all true education is learning transformed to faculty. It does not ask so much, "What does the child know?" as, " Has the child learned how to learn? " It looks less to mere acquirements than to the capacity to acquire. It is teaching the little child to teach himself. It is controlling the little child that he may learn the art of self-control. The senses are sharpened, the hands are trained, and the body is made lithe and active. The gifts and occupations represent every kind of technical activity. The children must work for what they get. They learn through doing. They thus develop patience, persever- ance. skill and will power. They are encouraged by every fresh achievement. What they know they must know thoroughly and accurately. Every element of knowledge is transformed into an element of creation. The mind assimilates what it receives, just as a healthy organism assimilates its food, and is nourished thereby. In his occu- pations in the kindergarten the child is required to handle, reconstruct, combine and create. "Let the very playthings of your children have a bearing upon the life and work of the coming man," said Aristotle. It is early training that makes the master. This universal instinct of play in the child means something. It should be turned to good account. It should be made constructive in its income instead of destructive. This restless activity of the child is the foundation of the indefatigable enterprise of the man. This habit of work must be formed early in life, if we would have it a pleasure. Activity is the law of healthful childhood. Turn it to good account! The perceptive faculties in a well-endowed child are far in excess of the reflective faculties. He sees everything. He wants to know about everything. He will find out if he can. Sensi- ble mothers understand this fact, and keep their household goods well out of the way of the young "heir apparent." Just as old Dolly Winthrop said, in "Silas Marner": " If you can't bring your mind to frighten the child off touching things, you must do what you can to keep 'em out of the way. That's what I do wi' the pups as the lads are allays a-rearing. They will worry and gnaw-worry and gnaw they will, if it was one's Sunday cap as hung anywhere so as they could drag it. They know no differ- ence, God help 'em; it's the pushing o' the teeth as sets 'em on, that's what it is." That's exactly what it is with the restless child. It's the pushing of the teeth-the intellectual molars and bicuspids, so to speak. They are getting ready to masticate their mental food.
Bodily vigor, mental activity and moral integrity are indispensable to a perfected life. The kindergarten is the best agency for setting in motion the physical, mental and moral machinery of a little child, that it may do its own work in its own way. It is the rain and dew and sun to wake the sleeping germ and bring it into self-activity and growth. The heart as well as the head comes in for its share of training. The kindergarten regards right action to be quite as important as rare scholarship. It works for both, knowing that ignorance and lack of character in the masses will never breed wisdom, so long as ignorance and lack of character in the individual breed folly. What we need to do is to bring more happiness into childhood, and then we shall bring more of virtue, for " virtue kindles at the touch of joy." The kindergarten is the " Paradise of Childhood." Froebel insisted that education and happiness should be wedded, that there should be as much pleasure in satisfying intellectual hunger as physical hunger. And should not this be so? Is it not more or less the fault of methods that it is not so?
Just here I wish to say that the moral and religious influences of the kindergarten can scarcely be overestimated. The kindergarten does not attribute every mistake of a child to total depravity. To be perpetually telling a little child, even a very naughty child, that there is no good thing in him, that he is vile and corrupt, is one of the very best ways of making a rascal out of him if he has any spirit in him, and of making a little hypocrite of him, if he is mean-spirited and weak. And this holds equally true of all children, whether they come from the palatial homes of the rich or the wretched homes of the poor. There is more ignorance than depravity when a little
298
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
child goes wrong. He must stumble and fall many times before he learns to walk uprightly, either physically or spiritually. Ile must learn to climb the stairs of moral difficulty as he learned to climb the household stairs. As we patiently wait for the body to unfold and do its best, wisely guiding it all the while, so should we patiently wait for the soul's unfolding. All education is a growth, not a creation. And to all growth belongs the element of time. We are none of us born with the " trade of con- duct" learned. The primal ideal of all government should be to teach a child to govern himself at the earliest possible period. And to learn how to govern himself a child must be indulged in self-government. The true teacher will be aiming all the time at the child's enfranchisement-not in making him an unwilling slave.
Above all, the true kindergarten aims at the cultivation of the heart and soul in the right direction, and leads them to the Creator of all life and to personal union with Him. The law of duty is recognized by the little ones as the law of love. It is the aim of the kindergarten to lead the little ones to their Heavenly Friend. They are taught to love Him. They are taught to love one another, to help one another, to be kind to one another, to care for one another. No one can love God who does not love his fellows. The child in the kindergarten is not only told to be good, but he is actually helped to be good.
The very foundations on which true character rests are laid in the kindergarten. Habits of virtue, truth, purity and usefulness are here inculcated; and what is charac- ter but crystallized habit?
As to the moral effect of the kindergarten, a little three-year-old can best tell the story. A bright little blonde lassie of three years, belonging to one of our kinder- gartens, was holding tightly the hand of her lady guardian, as they wandered among the marvels of the Mechanics' Institute Fair. It was high carnival with the little kin- dergarteners. This nervous little midget was wild with delight at the wonderful things to be seen on every hand. Just then she was delving into the mysteries of the chicken incubator. Suddenly one of the regularly deputized policemen, who do duty during the fair, passed by. He did not escape the vigilance of " little blue eyes."
"See, there's a perlice !" she ejaculated, with resonant, ringing tone, pointing her little finger deprecatingly as she spoke. "There he goes," she added, with increased fervor. "Why, he needn't be a watchin' of us, 'cos we don't nip nothin' now, sence we went to the kindergarten!"
The poor little dear-she had no idea that a " perlice " could have any other pos- sible vocation than to be watching her and the other little Barbary Coasters, who had been wont aforetime to " nip" fruit and vegetables on the sly, as a sort of filial duty imposed by thriftless, shiftless parentage.
And now, dear friends, although I have overstepped the limits allotted me, I can- not close without a brief reference to this beneficent kindergarten work in San Francisco.
Fifteen years ago there was not a single free kindergarten west of the Rocky Mountains. There are now over sixty in San Francisco alone, including those in orphanages and day homes. Branching out from San Francisco as a center, they have extended in every direction, from the extreme northern part of Washington Territory to Lower California and New Mexico, and they have planted themselves in Oregon, Nevada, Colorado, and in almost every large city in California. The work in San Francisco has been phenomenal. No city in the Union has made more rapid strides in this work among the little children than San Francisco. This is owing very largely to the fact that persons of large wealth have been induced to study the work for them- selves, and have become convinced of its permanent and essential value to the state. Foremost among those who have given largely to the support of these kindergartens is Mrs. Leland Stanford, who has, from first to last, given $174,000 to the support of these beneficent schools for the neglected children of San Francisco. Over eight hundred children have been under training in the Stanford kindergartens the past year. Mrs. Senator Hearst, and others of generous mind, also support these schools.
299
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Over $450,000 have been given me to carry on the kindergartens of the Golden Gate Association.
The kindergarten gets hold of the little child just as early in life as possible-the earlier the better. It believes, with Lord Broughham, that a child can and does learn more before the age of six years than it does or can learn after that age during his whole life, however long it may be. For this is the root-life of the human plant, and the root-life must forever determine what the stem and blossoms shall be. In short, the world is beginning to recognize the fact that a general education, that has not in it some provision for a special education and training in some particular industry, is practically a failure. Technical and industrial education for the people is no theory. It is a question of civilization. It is a national question, and touches the very exist- ence of the state. The kindergarten lies at the foundation of this sort of education. All honor, then, to those who foster these blessed schools for the little children!
Governor Stanford struck the key-note when he said, that he believed the surest foundation on which any educational structure could rest was the rock of thorough kindergarten training, begun at the earliest possible age. At the age when moral and industrious habits are most easily formed, the taste improved, and the finer feelings which give fiber to the will are cultivated. On the bed-rock of such training the true university may rest-a university such as the Stanford University is outlined to be- a university embracing the science of human life, in its varied industries, arts, science, literature, government, political economy, ethics, moral unfoldment, hygiene-and in short all that goes to make up a perfected human life; a university where the school and the workshop clasp hands, where body and mind are educated together, where the mechanical and classical student will strike hands together, where the artist and the artisan will eat at one common board. Democracy means equitable opportunity. Liberty of growth and equality at the start is the law of all true democratic life.
And the primal aim of all education, from the kindergarten straight through to the university, should be the unfolding of all that is in the human being-the equip- ping of the young for maintaining themselves in honest independence. Some one has said there are three ways of earning a living: by working, by begging, or by stealing; and those who come to years of responsibility, and do not work, are doing one of the other two things, dress it out in whatever pretty guise you please. I believe it was Florence Nightingale who said: "If to three R's-Reading, 'Riting and 'Rithmetic-there be not added something that will give the mind a practical turn, we shall soon have a fourth R, which will stand for rascality." The true mission of education is the developing of vigorous, capable, and cultivated human beings, and launching them on their life career, well armed and equipped with facts and principles as a propelling power on the track of an instructed industry. We have all too many sad travesties of highly educated folks, whom old Dame Poyser describes as being "too high learnt to have much common sense." Hence, we must go back to the method of Providence in educating the race, and begin with labor and experience, which are sure to lead up to science and art.
Throw open the kindergarten and the schools for industrial and art training to every child, and with the heart pure, the head clear, the hand skillful and ready, we shall hear no more of the vexed question: "What shall we do with our boys and girls?" Our fair land shall take its place in the very front ranks of nations distin- guished for their industrial achievements.
There must be more of genuine human sympathy between the top and the bottom of society. The prosperous and the happy must clasp hands and heart with the toil- ers and the strugglers. The living, loving self is wanted. The heart must be the missionary. The life must be the sermon. All mankind must be brothers. The chil- dren must be taught these great principles and aided in putting them in practice. They must be made to feel and to know that it is what they put into life and not what they get out of it that measures their worth to the world. "Then shall our sons be as plants grown up in their youth, our daughters as corner-stones polished after
300
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
the similitude of a palace." They shall be the fathers and mothers of a great race; and long after you and I shall have finished our earthly work, the breath of God still breathing upon the great sentient human soul, shall lift them higher and higher in their purposes and work, as they press forward in their beauty and their strength "clear as the sun, fair as the moon, and terrible as an army with banners."
POETRY OF THE STARS. By MISS MARY A. PROCTOR.
Let us go backward in imagination six thousand years, and stand beside our great ancestor as he gazed for the first time upon the going down of the sun. What strange sensations must have swept through his bewildered mind as he watched the last departing rays of the sinking sun and saw it slowly fading from sight. A mysterious darkness creeps over the face of nature and the beautiful scenes of earth are hidden beneath the shades of night.
MISS MARY A. PROCTOR.
Now came still evening on; and twilight gray Had in her sober livery all things clad; Silence was pleased; now glow'd the firmament With livid sapphires; Hesperus, that led The starry host, rode brightest; till the moon, Rising in clouded majesty, at length, Apparent queen, unveil'd her peerless light, And over the dark her silver mantle threw.
As the solitary gazer watches the silver crescent of light hanging in the western sky the hours glide swiftly by and the moon is gone. One by one the stars are rising, slowly ascending the heights of heaven, and solemnly sweeping downward in the still- ness of the night.
How many bright And splendid lamps shine in heaven's temple high, Day hath its golden sun, her moon the night, Her fixed and wandering stars, the azure sky.
The galaxy, or " milky way," appears against the dark background of the sky like a shining zone of brilliant light.
A broad and ample road, whose dust is gold, And pavement stars, as stars to thee appear.
The first grand revelation to mortal sight is nearly completed. A faint streak of silver light is seen in the east; it brightens; the stars fade; the planets are extinguished; the eye is fixed in mute astonishment upon the growing splendor of the heavens till the first rays of the returning sun pierce the gray mists of morning, and the sun rises glorious and triumphant from its imprisonment in the dark caves of night.
Are we surprised that this mysterious daily disappearance and reappearance of the orb of day should have inspired feelings of awe, and an eager desire to compre- hend these wonders in the minds of those who first watched and those who have
Miss Mary A. Proctor was born in Dublin, Ireland ; is the daughter of Richard A. Proctor, the astronomer. She was educated in a convent in Norwood, Surrey, England, and has traveled both in Europe and the United States. She is a teacher of astronomy, lecturer and author. Following the lectures in Chicago she arranged for a lecture course for the season of 1893-4 in Eastern states, and she expresses thanks to the Woman's Congress for favorable introduction to the public. In religious faith she is an Episcopalian. Her present address is No. 293 Forty-sixth Street, New York City, N. Y.
301
302
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
watched during the long lapse of six thousand years? To trace the efforts of the human mind through the long and ardent struggle to solve these mighty problems; to reveal the weary years of patient watching; the struggles to overcome insurmountable obstacles; to develop the means by which the rock-built pyramid of science is slowly rearing its stately form from age to age, until its vertex pierces the very heavens- these are tasks of no ordinary difficulty. Music is here, but it is the deep and solemn harmony of the spheres. Poetry is here, but traced in letters of light on the sable gar- ments of night; architecture is here, but it is the colossal structure of sun and system, of cluster and universe. Eloquence is here, but " there is neither speech nor language -its voice is not heard." Yet its resistless power sweeps over us as we ponder on the mighty periods of revolving worlds, the wonders of the infinity of space and the hidden mysteries of the vast expanse of heaven. Let us pause and listen to the deep and solemn music of the spheres, as heard by the first watchers of the sky; let us read the poetry written in the stars; let us contemplate the architecture of the celestial vault, though " its architraves, its archways, seem ghostly from infinitude." Let us listen to the surging eloquence of these glorious suns, now swiftly rushing through infinite space:
How distant some of these nocturnal suns! So distant, says the sage, 'twere not absurd To doubt, if beams set out at nature's birth Are yet arrived at this, so foreign, world, Though nothing half so rapid as their flight!
Let us gaze in awe and wonder ! Who can satiate sight In such a scene-in such an ocean wide Of deep astonishment? Where depth, height, breadth, Are lost in their extremes; and where to count The thick-sown glories in this field of fire, Perhaps a seraph's computation fails.
With resistless energy the tide of time has flowed on, breaking in noiseless waves on the far-distant shores of eternity. Science has partially lifted the dark veil which has enshrouded in mystery the celestial scenes which greeted the vision of genera- tions during the past thousand years, and erected temples devoted to the study of the heavens. Look over their magnificent machinery; examine the far-reaching eye of the telescope as it reveals the hidden mysteries of space, and then go backward in imagination to the plains of Shinar and stand beside the shepherd astronomer as he vainly attempts to grasp the mysteries of the structure of the heavens. The sentinel upon the watch-tower is relieved from duty; but another takes his place and the vigil is unbroken. He commences his investigations on the hilltops of Eden; he studies the stars through the long centuries of antediluvian life. The Deluge sweeps from the earth its inhabitants, their cities and their monuments; but when the storm is hushed and the heavens shine forth in beauty from the summit of Mount Ararat the astronomer resumes his endless vigils. In Babylon he keeps his watch, and among the Egyptian priests he inspires a thirst for the sacred mysteries of the stars. The plains of Shinar, the temples of India, the pyramids of Egypt are equally his watch- ing places. When science fled to Greece, his home was in the school of the philoso- phers, and when darkness covered the earth for a thousand years, he pursued his never-ending tasks amid the burning deserts of Arabia. When science dawned on Europe the astronomer was there toiling with Copernicus, watching with Tycho, suf- fcring with Galileo, triumphing with Kepler.
Six thousand years have rolled away since the grand investigation commenced. We stand at the termination of the vast period, and looking back through the long vista of departed years, mark with honest pride the successive triumphs of our race.
303
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Midway between the past and future we witness the first rude efforts to explain the celestial phenomena. May we not equally look forward thousands of years? And, although we cannot comprehend what shall be the condition of astronomical science at the end of a period so remote, yet of one thing we are certain, and that is, the past, the present and the future constitute but one unbroken chain of observations, con- densing all time to the astronomer into one mighty now.
Thus far our attention has been directed to the examination of the achievements of the human mind in the earlier stages of astronomy. Since those days the astrono- mer has invented the telescope. With its far-seeing powers he has discovered the laws which regulate the celestial movements, and defined the nature of the universal force which sustains these distant worlds. Sweeping outward from the sun he has reached Neptune, which guards the frontier limits of the solar system; gazing backward from this planet, which is more than three billion miles distant from the sun, he has exam- ined the worlds and systems embraced within the circumference of its mighty orbit. An occasional comet, overleaping this boundary, and flying swiftly past us, plunges into space, to return after its long journey of a thousand years and report to the inhabitants of earth the influences which have swayed its movements in the invisible regions whence it has winged its flight.
Yet the whole of this gigantic scheme is but a small portion of the universe of God, one unit among the unnumbered millions which fill the crowded regions of space. An infinite void peopled with suns like ours, with myriads of stars sprinkled like golden dust over the dark canopy of night. The smallest telescopic aid suffices to increase their number in an almost incredible degree, while with the full power of the grand instruments now in use, the scenes presented to our gaze are truly magnificent.
What wonder if the overwrought soul should reel With its own weight of thought, and the wild eye See fate within yon depths of deepest glory lie?
Worlds and systems, clusters and universe, rising in sublime perspective and fad- ing away into the infinity of space beyond, until even thought itself fails in its efforts to plunge across the gulf, which separates us from this eternity of glory. Where are the limits of that boundless ocean? Whereunto doth it lead? In vain do we strive to peer into these hidden mysteries. Were we to float on through all eternity we could not approach any nearer to those distant shores. Camille Flammarion has conceived the fanciful idea of an imaginary journey through space. Distant shores of worlds like ours revealing themselves; heavens succeeding heavens; spheres afterspheres poised like our own earth in space. Even when carried away with the rapidity of thought the soul would continue its flight beyond the most inaccessible limits the imagina- tion can conceive. Even then the infinity of an unexplored expanse would remain ever open before us. The infinity of space would oppose itself to the infinity of time; endless rivalry to endure through endless ages. The spirit, overcome with fatigue, would be arrested in its flight at the very entrance of the portals of infinite space as though it had not advanced a single step.
Let us take an imaginary journey through space and, gazing through a telescope, travel from star to star till we reach the milky way, then pass on leaving behind us in grand perspective a series of five hundred suns, ranged one behind the other in line, each separated from the other by a distance equal to that which divides our own sun from the nearest fixed star, each star a sun like ours, a fiery orb aglow with energy, possibly the center of a system such as ours and pursuing its sidereal voyage through space. Such is the vast scale on which the universe is built. If, in examining the mighty orbits of the remoter planets, and in tracing the interminable career of some of the far-sweeping comets, we feared there might not be room for them, we are now reassured. There is no interference here; there are no perturbations of the planets of one system for the suns of another. Each is isolated and independent, filling the region of space assigned and moving within its own limits in perfect safety.
304
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
We have now reached the boundaries of ten millions of stars. Look to the right, there is no limit; look to the left, there is no end. Above, below, sun rises upon sun, system upon system, in endless and immeasurable perspective. There is a new uni- verse as magnificent and glorious as our own, a new milky way across whose vast diam- eter light takes a thousand years in crossing. Floating on the surface of this deep ocean, in this far distant region, the telescope has detected a large number of mys- terious looking objeets, resembling the faintest clouds of light.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.