WORD PAINTING AND COLLEGE EDUCATION.
Question. What is the history of the speech delivered here in 1876? Was it extemporaneous?
Answer. It was not born entirely of the occasion. It took me several years to put the thoughts in form—to paint the pictures with words. No man can do his best on the instant. Iron to be beaten into perfect form has to be heated several times and turned upon the anvil many more, and hammered long and often.
You might as well try to paint a picture with one sweep of the brush, or chisel a statue with one stroke, as to paint many pictures with words, without great thought and care. Now and then, while a man is talking, heated with his subject, a great thought, sudden as a flash of lightning, illumines the intellectual sky, and a great sentence clothed in words of purple, falls, or rather rushes, from his lips—but a continuous flight is born, not only of enthusiasm, but of long and careful thought. A perfect picture requires more details, more lights and shadows, than the mind can grasp at once, or on the instant. Thoughts are not born of chance. They grow and bud and blossom, and bear the fruit of perfect form.
Genius is the soil and climate, but the soil must be cultivated, and the harvest is not instantly after the planting. It takes time and labor to raise and harvest a crop from that field called the brain.
Question. Do you think young men need a college education to get along?
Answer. Probably many useless things are taught in colleges. I think, as a rule, too much time is wasted learning the names of the cards without learning to play a game. I think a young man should be taught something that he can use—something he can sell. After coming from college he should be better equipped to battle with the world—to do something of use. A man may have his brain stuffed with Greek and Latin without being able to fill his stomach with anything of importance. Still, I am in favor of the highest education. I would like to see splendid schools in every State, and then a university, and all scholars passing a certain examination sent to the State university free, and then a United States university, the best in the world, and all graduates of the State universities passing a certain examination sent to the United States university free. We ought to have in this country the best library, the best university, the best school of design in the world; and so I say, more money for the mind.
Question. Was the peculiar conduct of the Rev. Dr. Parkhurst, of New York, justifiable, and do you think that it had a tendency to help morality?
Answer. If Christ had written a decoy letter to the woman to whom he said: "Go and sin no more," and if he had disguised himself and visited her house and had then lodged a complaint against her before the police and testified against her, taking one of his disciples with him, I do not think he would have added to his reputation.
—The News, Indianapolis, Indiana, February 18, 1892.