“The work should be especially prosecuted among the foreign population.
“Let a course of say twenty-five weekly lectures be arranged to be illustrated by the stereopticon, and treating in a simple way of the growth of our nation from its beginning until the present time. I would not have very much attention paid to the campaigns of the wars. It matters little to the Bohemian who cannot read English or to the Irishman who cannot write his name whether Braddock or King Philip fought in the war of 1812 or not.
“But it does matter that he should understand something of the early life of the colonists, something of the dangers from which they fled, the causes of the Revolution, the growth of slavery, the meaning of our republican institutions, our great industrial development, and the significance of such names as Franklin, Washington, Lincoln, Grant.
“A cornet leading a chorus of school-children, who should sing national airs, would add zest to such a lecture, the price of which should be merely nominal. I think you will generally find it better to have a price.
“In such matters people usually undervalue and are a little suspicious of what is given them freely. If a ticket costs ten cents, or if it is given as a reward of merit to the children at school, it will be vastly more appreciated.
“These lectures would be given in English wherever possible, but in the foreign districts of the city the same set could be given in translations, the speaker being an intelligent man of the nationality of the audience.
“I think you will find it better among foreigners to give these lectures in a hall rather than in a church, so as not to awaken religious prejudices. With different speakers the same lectures and pictures can be used in different parts of the city every evening in the week, thus having six or seven
SIMULTANEOUS COURSES
of the same lectures.
“After the completion of the first course much experience will have been gained in the details of management, and other courses can be formed illustrating the material resources, physical geography of our country, and the biography and literature of our great men.