Calvin Wilson Mateer, forty-five years a missionary in Shantung, China

by D. W. Fisher

Concerning the qualities of his heart and of his will it is best to wait and speak later in this volume.

In the making of a man native endowments are only the material out of which and on which to build. Beyond these, what we become depends on our opportunities and the use to which we put them. The atmosphere of the old home had much to do with the unfolding of the subsequent life and character of Mateer. Some of his leading qualities were there grown into his being.

Other powerful influences also had a large share in his development. About three quarters of a mile from the “Hermitage” stood a township schoolhouse, a small brick building, “guiltless alike of paint or comfort,” most primitive in its furnishing, and open for instruction only five or six months each year, and this in the winter. The pressure of work in the house and on the farm never was allowed to interrupt the attendance of the Mateer children at this little center of learning for the neighborhood. Of course, the teachers usually were qualified only to conduct the pupils over the elementary branches, and no provision was made in the curriculum for anything beyond these. But it so happened that for two winters Calvin had as his schoolmaster there James Duffield, who is described by one of his pupils still living as “a genius in his profession, much in advance of his times, and quite superior to those who preceded and to those who came after him. In appearance Duffield was awkward and shy. His large hands and feet were ever in his way, except when before a class; then he was suddenly at ease, absorbed in the work of teaching, alert, full of vitality, with an enthusiasm for mastery, and an intellectual power that made every subject alive with interest, leaving his impress upon each one of his pupils.” Algebra was not recognized as falling within the legitimate instruction, and no suspicion that any boy or girl was studying it entered the minds of the plain farmers who constituted the official visitors. One day a friend of the teacher, a scholarly man, came in at the time when the examinations were proceeding, and the teacher sprang a surprise by asking this friend whether he would like to see one of his pupils solve a problem in algebra. He had discerned the mathematical bent of the lad, Calvin Mateer, and out of school hours and just for the satisfaction of it he had privately been giving the boy lessons in that study. When an affirmative response was made by the stranger, Calvin went to the blackboard and soon covered half of it with a solution of an algebraic problem. Surprised and delighted, the stranger tested the lad with problem after problem, some of them the hardest in the text-book in use, only to find him able to solve them. It would have been difficult to discover which of the three principal parties to the examination, the visitor, the teacher, or the pupil, was most gratified by the outcome. There can be no question that this country school-teacher had much to do with awakening the mathematical capabilities and perhaps others of the intellectual gifts which characterized that lad in manhood and throughout life.

When Calvin was in his seventeenth year, he started in his pursuit of higher education, entering a small academy at Hunterstown, eight miles from the “Hermitage.” In this step he had the stimulating encouragement of his mother, whose quenchless passion for education has already been described. His father probably would at that time have preferred that he should remain at home and help on the farm; and occasionally, for some years, the question whether he ought not to have fallen in with the paternal wish caused him serious thought. As it was, he came home from the academy in the spring, and in the autumn and also at harvest, to assist in the work.

The first term he began Latin, and the second term Greek, and he kept his mathematics well in hand, thus distinctly setting his face toward college. But his pecuniary means were narrow, and in the winter of 1853-54 he had to turn aside to teach a country school some three miles from his home. In a brief biographical sketch which, by request of his college classmates, he furnished for the fortieth anniversary of their graduation he says: “This was a hard experience. I was not yet eighteen and looked much younger. Many of the scholars were young men and women, older than I, and there was a deal of rowdyism in the district. I held my own, however, and finished with credit, and grew in experience more than in any other period of my life.”

When the school closed he returned to the academy, which by that time had passed into the hands of S. B. Mercer, in whom he found a teacher of exceptional ability, both as to scholarship and as to the stimulation of his students to do and to be the best that was possible to them. In the spring of 1855 Mr. Mercer left the Hunterstown Academy, and went to Merrittstown, Fayette County, Pennsylvania, where he took charge of the Dunlaps Creek Academy. Calvin, influenced by his attachment to his teacher, and also by his intention to enter Jefferson College, situated in a neighboring county, went with him. Here he made his home, with other students, in the house occupied by the Mercers. For teaching two classes, one in geometry and one in Greek, he received his tuition. For the ostensible reason that he had come so far to enter the academy he was charged a reduced price for his board. All the way down to the completion of his course in the theological seminary he managed to live upon the means furnished in part from home, and substantially supplemented by his own labors; but he had to practice rigid economy. It was while at Merrittstown that he made a public profession of religion. This was only a few months before he entered college. He found in Dr. Samuel Wilson, the pastor of the Presbyterian church, a preacher and a man who won his admiration and esteem, and who so encouraged and directed him that he took this step.

In the autumn of 1855 he entered the junior class of Jefferson College, at Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. In those days it was customary for students to be admitted further advanced as to enrollment than at present. I had myself preceded Mateer one year, entering as a sophomore in the same class into which he first came as a junior. One reason for this state of things was that the requirements were considerably lower than they now are; and they were often laxly enforced. Then, because the range of studies required was very limited in kind, consisting until the junior year almost exclusively of Latin, Greek and mathematics, it was possible for the preparatory schools to carry the work of their students well up into the curriculum of the college. Mateer had the advantage, besides, of such an excellent instructor as Professor Mercer, and of experience in teaching. He says: “I was poorly prepared for this class, but managed to squeeze in. The professor of Latin wanted me to make up some work which I had not done; but I demurred, and I recollect saying to him, ‘If after a term you still think I ought to make it up, I will do it, or fall back to the sophomore class.’ I never heard of it afterwards. I was very green and bashful when I went to college, an unsophisticated farmer’s boy from a little country academy. I knew little or nothing of the ways of the world.”

As his classmate in college, and otherwise closely associated with him as a fellow-student, I knew him well. I remember still with a good deal of distinctness his appearance; he was rather tall, light-haired, with a clear and intelligent countenance, and a general physique that indicated thorough soundness of body, though not excessively developed in any member. When I last saw him at Los Angeles a few years ago, I could perceive no great change in his looks, except such as is inevitable from the flight of years, and from his large and varied experience of life. It seems to me that it ought to be easy for any of his acquaintances of later years to form for themselves a picture of him in his young manhood at the college and at the theological seminary. So far as I can now recall, he came to college unheralded as to what might be expected of him there. He did not thrust himself forward; but it was not long until by his work and his thorough manliness, it became evident that in him the class had received an addition that was sure to count heavily in all that was of importance to a student. I do not think that he joined any of the Greek letter secret societies, though these were at the height of their prosperity there at that time. In the literary societies he discharged well and faithfully his duties, but he did not stand out very conspicuously in the exercises required of the members. In those days there was plenty of “college politics,” sometimes very petty, and sometimes not very creditable, though not wholly without profit as a preparation for the “rough-and-tumble” of life in after years, but in this Mateer did not take much part. Most of us were still immature enough to indulge in pranks that afforded us fun, but which were more an expression of our immaturity than we then imagined; and Mateer participated in one of these in connection with the Frémont-Buchanan campaign in 1856. A great Republican meeting was held at Canonsburg, and some of us students appeared in the procession as a burlesque company of Kansas “border ruffians.” We were a sadly disgraceful-looking set. Of one thing I am sure, that while Mateer gave himself constantly to his duties and refrained from most of the silly things of college life, he was not by any of us looked upon as a “stick.” He commanded our respect.

The faculty was small and the equipment of the college meager. The attendance was nearly three hundred. As to attainments, we were a mixed multitude. To instruct all of these there were—for both regular and required work—only six men, including one for the preparatory department. What could these few do to meet the needs of this miscellaneous crowd? They did their best, and it was possible for any of us, especially for the brighter student, to get a great deal of valuable education even under these conditions. Mateer in later years acknowledges his indebtedness to all of the faculty, but particularly to Dr. A. B. Brown, who was our president up to the latter part of our senior year; to Dr. Alden, who succeeded him; and to Professor Fraser, who held the chair of mathematics. Dr. Brown was much admired by the students for his rhetorical ability in the pulpit and out of it. Dr. Alden was quite in contrast to his predecessor as to many things. He had long been a teacher, and was clear and concise in his intellectual efforts. Mateer said, late in life, that from his drill in moral science he “got more good than from any other one branch in the course.” Professor Fraser was a brilliant, all-round scholar of the best type then prevalent, and had the enthusiastic admiration even of those students who were little able to appreciate his teaching. In the physical sciences the course was necessarily still limited and somewhat elementary. His classmates remember the evident mastery which Mateer had of all that was attempted by instruction or by experimentation in that department. It was not possible to get much of what is called “culture” out of the curriculum, and that through no fault of the faculty; yet for the stimulation of the intellectual powers and the unfolding of character there was an opportunity such as may be seriously lacking in the conditions of college instruction in recent years.

These were the palmy days of Jefferson College. She drew to herself students not only from Pennsylvania and the contiguous states, but also from the more distant regions of the west and the south. We were dumped down there, a heterogeneous lot of young fellows, and outside of the classroom we were left for the most part to care for ourselves. We had no luxuries and we were short of comforts. We got enough to eat, of a very plain sort, and we got it cheap. We were wholly unacquainted with athletics and other intercollegiate goings and comings which now loom up so conspicuously in college life; but we had, with rare exceptions, come from the country and the small towns, intent on obtaining an education which would help us to make the most of ourselves in after years. As to this, Mateer was a thoroughly representative student. He could not then foresee his future career, but he was sure that in it he dared not hope for success unless he made thoroughly good use of his present, passing opportunities. He was evidently a man who was there for a purpose.