Towle High School - Spirit Yearbook (Newport, NH)

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THE PIRIT of T0 LE A Publication by the Students of The Senior Class of Towle High School s Newport, New Hampshire 1

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THE SPIRIT QF TO LE cUolume Eleven Thfwport, H., graduation Number func, 1937 As a Sower Sows His Wheatfield SALUTATORY On May 4, 1796, in Franklin, Massachusetts, a son, Horace Mann, was born to Puritan parents. They instilled in him a great desire for education, but his early youth offered very meager oppor- tunities for learning. Nevertheless, in 1819, he graduated from Brown University. Three years later, he entered law school and after due pre- paration was admitted to the bar. He opened an office in Dedham, was afterwards elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and later became President of the Massachusetts Senate. His big day, however, was June 29, 1837 -just one hundred years ago next Satur- day- when he made a decision unlike the decisions of most men. He had been offered a position by a corporation in which he could earn a thousand dollars in a few weeks. He had also been offered a secretaryship in the then newly- creatcd Board cf Education with a small un- known salary. He gave up the more remunera- tive position. For his services on the board he was voted fifteen hundred dollars. When he heard of this munificent appropriation he said, 'One thing is certaing if I live and have health, I will be revenged on them 5 I will do more than fifteen hundred dollars worth of good.' He did. In 1839, he opened the first American normal school at Lexington. That same year he went to Europe to study the continental school system. Added to his determination was a pleasing per- sonality. Consequently, he was elected to succeed John Quincy Adams in the United States House of Representatives. Sometime later he was appointed President of the then partially com- pleted Antioch College in Ohio, where after six years of exhaustive work, he died August 2, 1859. As I pondered over this inscription-a bare summary of the man's achievements, it came to my mind that it omitted mention of the one in- fluence in his life which I believed was all- important. Then to my delight, I found engraved at 'the base of the statue this quotation from Horace Mann, Had I the power, I would scatter libraries over the whole world as a sower sows his Wheatfieldf' A Libraries, yes. Benjamin Franklin had given one to the town which now bears his name-the 'town in which Horace Mann was born, and it was from this library that he received much of his early education. For this reason, Horace Mann ever afterwards felt that libraries were necessary to supplement the school. Like Benja- min Franklin before him, he owed his education to solitary studyg and, like Franklin, he felt 'that the library offers as great an opportunity for development as does the school. An .ominous rumble forced me to realize that this monument was not before me alt all but that it was a vision, a. memorial this man had made for himself in the hearts of men. Again, the thunder crashed and the lightning made day of night. It fully awakened me from my reverie, but left me filled with admiration. for the spirit of this man, who could take his revenge on his petty fellow men by enlarging the horizon of their offspring, so that the second generation would no longer be petty, but see life in its true values- not from a selfish financial standpoint, but from a consideration of the welfare of mankind in general. We dedicate our exercises to Horace Mann, it is true, but we further dedicate 'them to that spirit of unselfish devotion and service which has in the generation past characterized the lives of our great teachers and leaders, because they knew that the highest form of service we can perform for others, is to help them help them- selves. I speak to you as Horace Mann spoke to his students. If ever there was a cause, if ever there can be a cause, worthy 'to be upheld by all toil or sacrifice that the human heart can endure, it is the cause of education. ' MIRIAM VAUGHAN. .31-m , be ,-