Page:Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (Volume One).djvu/295

Rh he was ignorant he never hesitated to say: “I don’t know.” He was very chary of conjectures in science. Indeed, I cannot recall an instance of that sort. He chose to investigate and to wait. In all his ways he was artless. He was a well built man with a massive head and an intelligent face. His presence inspired confidence.

Associated with him by nativity and ties of friendship, was Professor Guyot. Professor Guyot taught physical geography, and previous to 1855 he had wrought a change in public opinion in regard to the method of introducing the science to children. All the then recent text-books omitted physical geography, or reserved it for a brief chapter at the close of the work. Guyot changed the course of study. His motto was this: “We must first consider this earth as one grand individual.” On this foundation he built his system. Morse, the father of the inventor of the system of telegraphic communication, was the author of a geography published in the eighteenth century, and he commenced with physical geography. His successors, Cummings, Worcester, and others abandoned that scientific arrangement and introduced the learners to political and descriptive geography. Moreover, their teaching of physical geography was devoted to definitions to be learned by rote. Many of the text-books in use in the schools were framed upon similar erroneous ideas. The first sentence in Murray’s Grammar was a definition of the science, and was in fact, the conclusion deduced from a full knowledge of the subject.

George B. Emerson, who was one of our teachers, gave a great impetus to the art of teaching grammar. He discarded books, and beginning with an object, as a bell or an orange, he would give a child at the age of twelve years a very good knowledge of the science in six lessons of an hour each. Dr. Lowell Mason was a teacher in the institutes during my entire period of service, although he offered to retire on ac-