arly in life John Fiske aimed high and thought himself capable of great things. He also believed that the world accepted a man at the estimate he placed upon himself.
Fiske was born at Hartford in Eighteen Hundred Forty-two. His mother's maiden name was Fiske and his father's name was Green, and until well-nigh manhood, John Fiske was called Edmund Green.
His father died while Edmund was a baby, and the wee youngster was taken charge of by his grandmother Fiske of Middletown, Connecticut.
When his mother married again, Edmund did not approve of the match. Parents often try to live their children's lives for them, and to hold the balance true, children occasionally attempt to dictate to parents in affairs of the heart. A young man by the name of Hamlet will be recalled who, having no special business of his own, became much distressed and had theories concerning the conduct of his mother. As a general proposition the person who looks after the territory directly under his own hat will find his time fairly well employed.
They say Edmund Green made threats when his mother changed her name, but all he did was to follow her example and change his. Thereafter he was plain John Fiske. "I must have a name easy to take hold of: one that people can remember," he said. And they do say that John Fiske's reverence for John Ruskin had something to do with his choice of name.
Just here some curious one of the curious sex, which by the way holds no monopoly on curiosity, may ask if the second venture of Mrs. Green was fruitful and fortunate. So I will say, yes, eminently so; and in one way it seemed to serve, for John Fiske's stepfather waived John's displeasure with his stepfather's wife, and did something toward sending the young man to Harvard University, and also supplied the funds to send him on a tour around the world.
However, the second brood revealed no genius, at sight of which the defunct Mr. Green from his seat in Elysium must have chortled in glee, assuming, of course, that disembodied spirits are cognizant of the doings of their late partners, as John Fiske seemed to think they were.
If Alexander Humboldt's mother had not married again, we would have had no Alexander Humboldt. Second marriages are like first ones in this: Sometimes they are happy and sometimes not. In any event, I occasionally think that mother-love has often been much exaggerated. Love is a most beautiful thing, and it does not seem to make very much difference who supplies it. Stepmother-love, Lincoln used to say, was the most precious thing that had ever come his way. I know a man who loves his mother-in-law, because she pitied him. Our Oneida friends had "Community Mothers," who took care of everybody's babies, just as if they were their own, and with marked success, for the genus hoodlum never evolved at Oneida. Grandmother-love served all purposes for little Isaac Newton, just as it did for John Fiske.
John Fiske's grandmother was his first teacher, and she started out with the assumption that genius always skips one generation. She believed that she was dealing with a record-breaker, and she was. What she did not know about the classics was known by others whom she delegated to teach her grandchild.