Mr. Booth was one of those patient, careful, devoted workers who do good, honest work.
Joshua V. Gibbons bore a striking likeness to Abraham Lincoln. When an old man, he visited Mr. Blaine in Congress, at the time he was Speaker of the House. Mr. Blaine invited him to a seat beside him, in the Speaker’s desk. It was a worthy honor to a noble teacher, a moment of thrilling interest to the great national assembly, and attracted universal attention.
Mr. Gibbons was a man of heavy, strong mind, and forceful personality, and made himself deeply and strongly felt in the progress of young Blaine’s mental growth. He did solid, accurate, and enduring work.
Homely people, as a general thing, have quite a fund of native goodness, a sort of genial love and sympathy, to atone for physical defects. Such seemed to be the case with the man who so resembled Mr. Lincoln, and it drew all hearts to him. There was no rod or ruler in school so long as he taught, and no need of any. Such things are generally used in the school-room or family to supply deficiencies of wisdom, tact, and genuine ability. He simply won their love and respect, and it was their joy to give it. He taught them, also, things outside of the books, and told them plenty of good, wholesome stories. One day, in speaking about the heathen being away round on the other side of the world, he simply remarked,—“Of course you know the world is round,” but of course they did not.
The great eyes of James dilated, but he said nothing. He could not help thinking and taking a child’s view of it when school was out. It did not hurt much to fall down four or five times as he went home that night, with his eyes upturned toward the Heavens, and the great thought revolving in his brain. The first question his mother heard was,—
“Is this world round, anyhow, and how is it round?”
“Yes, my child,” and the old story of the ship was told, and he was examining the picture in the atlas when his father came in, and he was sounded and agreed with the assured fact of science; and that night when he went up the hill to grandfather’s house to recite Plutarch, first of all he asked,—
“Grandpa, did you know this world was round?”
Grandpa took him up in his great arms, and told him all about it, and showing him through the window the great round haystack, on whose top and sides there was room for twenty boys like him without falling off, and how “the earth keeps turning around and around all the time, and a great power holds people on, just as the roots hold the trees, so no one can fall off,—and the fact is, it is so big, and large, and round, and wide, they cannot fall off,” Jimmy thought he saw it and felt that it must be so.
But the next week when he went to Pittsburgh with Uncle Will, on the steamer, he was looking all the way for proof that the world was round.