"No, I am sorry to say, I do not. I did want to teach grammar, but the people all said that they had not been taught grammar, and had got along very well without it, and did not see why the time of the children should be taken up by it."
"If you do not teach grammar from the book, you could at least teach it by practice in composition. Do you not exercise them in writing compositions?"
"I did try that once, and let me tell you how it turned out. They got up a story that I was teaching the children to write love letters, and made such a clamor about it that I had to stop."
He then kindly offered to show us what he did teach. The school was called together and words to spell were given out from a dictionary. They had got as far as "patrimony," and went on from that word to a dozen or so that followed it. The words were spelled by the children in turn, but nothing was said about the definition or meaning of the word. He did not explain whether, in the opinion of the parents, it was feared that disastrous events might follow if the children knew what a "patrimony" was, but it seems that no objections were raised to their knowing how to spell it.
We thanked him and took our leave, feeling that we were well repaid for our visit, however it might have been with the teacher and his school.
I have never been able to confine my attention to astronomy with that exclusiveness which is commonly considered necessary to the highest success in any profession. The lawyer finds almost every branch of human knowledge to be not only of interest, but of actual professional value, but one can hardly imagine why an astronomer should concern himself with things mundane, and especially with sociological subjects. But there is very high precedent for such a practice. Quite recently the fact has been brought to light that the great founder of modern astronomy once prepared for the government of his native land a very remarkable paper on the habit of debasing the currency, which was so prevalent during the Middle Ages. [1] The paper of Copernicus is, I believe, one of the strongest expositions of the evil of a debased currency that had ever appeared. Its tenor may be judged by the opening sentence, of which the following is a free translation:—
Innumerable though the evils are with which kingdoms, principalities, and republics are troubled, there are four which in my opinion outweigh all others,—war, death, famine, and debasement of money. The three first are so evident that no one denies them, but it is not thus with the fourth.
A certain interest in political economy dates with me from the age of nineteen, when I read Say's work on the subject, which was at that time in very wide circulation. The question of protection and free trade was then, as always, an attractive one. I inclined towards the free trade view, but still felt that there might be another side to the question which I found myself unable fully to grasp. I remember thinking it quite possible that Smith's "Wealth of Nations" might be supplemented by a similar work on the strength of nations, in which not merely wealth, but everything that conduces to national power should be considered, and that the result of the inquiry might lead to practical conclusions different from those of Smith. Very able writers, among them Henry C. Carey, had espoused the side of protection, but for some years I had not time to read their works, and therefore reserved my judgment until more light should appear.
Thus the matter stood until an accident impelled me to look into the subject. About 1862 or 1863 President Thomas Hill, of Harvard University, paid a visit to Washington. I held him in very high esteem. He was a mathematician, and had been the favorite student of Professor Benjamin Peirce; but I did not know that he had interested himself in political economy until, on the occasion in question, I passed an evening with him at the house where he was a guest. Here he told me that in a public lecture at Philadelphia, a few evenings before, he had informed his hearers that they had amongst them one of the greatest philosophers of the time, Henry C. Carey. He spoke of his works in such enthusiastic terms, describing especially his law of the tendency of mankind to be attracted towards the great capitals or other centres of population, that I lost no time in carefully reading Carey's "Principles of Social Science."
The result was much like a slap in the face. With every possible predisposition to look favorably on its teachings, I was unable to find anything in them but the prejudiced judgments of a one-sided thinker, fond of brilliant general propositions which really had nothing serious to rest upon either in fact or reason. The following parody on his method occurred to me:—