VI
The Boyhood Experience of President Schurman of Cornell University
AT ten years of age, he was a country lad on a backwoods farm on Prince Edward Island.
At thirteen, he had become a clerk in a country store, at a salary of thirty dollars a year.
At eighteen, he was a college student, supporting himself by working in the evenings as a bookkeeper.
At twenty, he had won a scholarship in the University of London, in competition with all other Canadian students.
At twenty-five, he was professor of philosophy, Acadia College, Nova Scotia.
At thirty-eight, he was appointed President of Cornell University.
At forty-four, he was chairman of President McKinley’s special commission to the Philippines.
In this summary is epitomized the career of Jacob Gould Schurman. It is a romance of real life such as is not unfamiliar in America. Mr. Schurman’s career differs from that of some other self-made men, however. Instead of heaping up millions upon millions, he has applied his talents to winning the intellectual prizes of life, and has made his way, unaided, to the front rank of the leaders in thought and learning in this country. His career is a source of inspiration to all poor boys who have their own way to make in the world, for he has won his present honors by his own unaided efforts.
President Schurman says of his early life:—
“It is impossible for the boy of to-day, no matter in what part of the country he is brought up, to appreciate the life of Prince Edward Island as it was forty years ago. At that time, it had neither railroads nor daily newspapers, nor any of the dozen other things that are the merest commonplaces nowadays, even to the boys of the country districts. I did not see a railroad until late in my ’teens. I was never inside of a theatre until after I was twenty. The only newspaper that came to my father’s house was a little provincial weekly. The only books the house contained were a few standard works,—such as the Bible, Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’ Fox’s ‘Book of Martyrs,’ and a few others of that class. Remember, too, that this was not back at the beginning of the century, but little more than a generation ago, for I was born in the year 1854.
“My father had cleared away the land on which our house stood. He was a poor man, but no poorer than his neighbors. No amount of land, and no amount of work could yield much more than the necessaries of life in that time and place. There were eight children in our family, and there was work for all of us.”