Page:Famous Living Americans, with Portraits.djvu/362

 JOHN B. MUBPHY 339 lived with the family. The teachers were students in the Law- rence University at Appleton, Wis., four miles distant, and were working their way through college by teaching five days — returning to the university on Saturdays for recitation. The parents realized the value of education and often made use of this expression : ^ ^ Education, my children, is not for the purpose of making an easier living, but for the purpose of making labor more effectual and productive. If you are edu- cated there are no man's achievements which you cannot equal or excel, if you but have industry and integrity, and are tem- perate. ' * When one considers the type of courage and work which was necessary to make a success of life for these immigrants, we might well say that all coveted attainments in modern life should easily be realized, but as his mother so frequently said, Passing from the country school and the home to the city school gave to the youth a new horizon, broad and inspiring. How frequently he refers to the great influence teachers ex- ercise in shaping the destiny of their pupils I In the Appleton Grammar School, he came under the personal supervision of Prof. B. H. Schmidt, who emigrated from Germany at the age of 17, having had but a meager granunar school education, and entered the Wisconsin State University at Madison, grad- uating with honors from the classic course at the age of 22. This man possessed an overpowering personality. He was totally indifferent to form and heedless of conventionalities. He was a lover of truth, a lover of science, an exemplar of democracy in education. An indefatigable worker, there was no day or night too long for him to labor with his pupils ; he was no respecter of hours for labor: ** Purposes and purposes attained" was his maxim. The establishment of the Friday evening debating or liter- ary society was a field in which his great influence was exerted. He attended the meetings regularly, he encouraged thorough investigation of the themes under discussion, he fostered re- search and guided the student in the best and most forceful means of presenting his subject to his audience. The disci-
 * * They do not come by wishing but by working. ' '