PHILLIPS BROOKS
One of the greatest preachers in America was a Boston boy. His name was Phillips Brooks, and there is a fine statue of him near Trinity Church, where he was rector for twenty-two years.
When Phillips was a little boy, he and his five brothers made quite a long row, or circle, when they sat at the big library table learning their lessons for the next day's school, while their happy-faced mother sat near with her sewing, and their father read.
The Brooks boys had all the newest story-books, games, music, and parties, so they were a very jolly lot, but it is Phillips I want to tell you the most about.
Phillips liked books better than play and was such a bright pupil that his teachers were always praising him. In fact, he was a favorite everywhere. It did not make much difference whether he was spending his vacation in Andover with his Grandma Phillips, walking across Boston Common with his mother, or hurrying in the morning sunshine to the Boston Latin School, people who looked at his handsome face and his big brown eyes said to themselves: "There goes a boy to be proud of!"
It was just the same when he went to Harvard College. He was such a likeable chap that he was asked to join all the clubs and invited to the merry-makings of the students. But he was rather shy. Perhaps he had grown too fast, for he was only fifteen years old and six feet, three inches tall—think of it! He stayed in his own room a good deal, writing and trying for prizes. He won several. He did not like arithmetic or figures of any kind, but anything about the different countries or the lives of men and women would keep him bending over a book half the night.
Things had gone pretty easily for Phillips up to the time he graduated from Harvard. He had always found faces and voices pleasant. So you can see how hurt he must have been when the very first time he tried to teach school the pupils were ugly and rude to him. It almost broke his heart that they did not want to mind him. The smaller boys loved him and took pride in learning their lessons, but the older ones hardly opened their books. Instead of that they spent their time making the young teacher's life miserable. He was only nineteen! Poor fellow, he must have wished many a day that he was at the North Pole or the South Seas instead of in Boston. These rowdies threw heads of matches on the floor and grinned when they exploded; they piled wood in the stoves until every one gasped for breath; they fired wads of paper at each other; and once they threw shot in Phillips's face.
The principal of the school beat his boys when they did not behave, and he had no patience with Phillips for not doing the same. But Phillips could not do that. He finally said he would resign. Some principals would have said to the young teacher: "Now, don't mind it if you have not done very well at teaching; there are, no doubt, other things that you will find you can do better than this. Good luck to you—my lad. Remember you have always a friend in me!" But Phillips's principal glared at him and declared: "Well, if you have failed to make a good teacher, you will fail in everything else."
Just then Phillips did not think of much else but his own disappointment. His father and his five brothers were very successful at their work and it shamed him to think he was not.
Phillips's brown eyes were very serious in those days. The same ones who had once sighed: "There's a boy to be proud of," now showed no pity in their looks, and often hurried down a side street to avoid bowing to him. Dear me—and it was the very same boy they had praised when he was taking prizes!