Emerson's Essays were not as familiar to me then as later, and the one on "Self-Reliance" had not yet become for me a help and inspiration; but I think I may crib from it a few phrases and say that I was not one of the "parlor soldiers" and did not shun the "rugged battle of fate, where strength is born." This claim, the story of these years, or such portions of it as seem appropriate for these memoirs will, I trust, justify. As the same philosopher declared would happen, "with the exercise of self-trust" new powers did appear. Since a statement of the succession of high school principals may have an interest for somebody, I will say that Mr. Maryatt mentioned in Chapter IX, was succeeded for the year 1878-79 by James R. Goffe,4 son of an early settler of Kenosha Country. Mr. Goffe held the position acceptably for one year, and then resigned to continue the study of medicine. He is, according to the latest advices, living now in New York City, where he became prominent in the practice of his profession. Two years ago, I received an inquiry from him about the needs of the library of the Kenosha high school, for which he suggested making an endowment. After Mr. Goffe came Thomas W. Hubbard of Toledo, Ohio, another one-year man. Then in 1880, Cephas H. Leach became principal and staid eight years. He was a native of Kenosha Country and a recent graduate of the Oshkosh Normal School. Under his administration the school prospered. The salary paid Kenosha principals had not been raised since the time of Mr. Albee, thirteen years before. Mr. Leach started in on a three-years contract, at $1,200, and after that time received $1,500. When in June, 1884, he was re�lected as principal for his fifth year, I was voted the position of second assistant, the post I had left in 1878. My first act of a really professional sort was to attend the meeting of the National Educational Association, held that summer at Madison. It was a new experience and one that left a deep impression. The four-year-old son was separated from me for the first time, and instructions were left for letting me hear every day how he was faring at home. When the first letter came from my mother saving that he was perfectly happy and was not seeming to miss me at all, it was received with rather mixed feelings; which all goes to show that I was just as unreasonable and just as foolish as other mothers. But the reminiscences of the great meeting are of most interest here. The speakers best remembered are Booker T. Washington, and Frances E. Willard. The former left the general impression of a devoted worker for his race, able and tactful in argument, reasonable in his pleas for their right to education, and convincing in his account of progress already made. From Miss Willard I gained an ideal of a woman orator, and recall how she held spellbound by her presence and her utterances the large audience. Although I did not realize it at the time, that Madison meeting was a notable one: for the first time in the history of the organization, women received signal recognition. The program included a woman's evening, a "symposium" of women speakers on the general topic: "Woman's Work in Education." The other two speakers, not clearly recalled, were Mrs. May Wright Sewall,1 an educator and noted lecturer on woman suffrage, and Mrs. Eva D. Kellogg. Miss1 May Wright was born at Milwaukee in 1844. Willard was then in the most active period of her wonderful career as lecturer on temperance reform, and was fast winning recognition for all time as one of the foremost women of our country. Her personality always comes to mind as best exemplifying a familiar quotation from an old Greek philosopher: "It is not the counsel but the speaker's worth that gives persuasion to his eloquence." It was Mrs. Sewall who wittily called attention to the fact that though fans and ribbons were much in evidence and women composed the major portion of the audience, they had not been discovered, since speakers always addressed the audience as "gentlemen." The president that year was Thomas W. Bicknell, LL.D. One has but to note the program which this man from New England planned for the National Educational Association meeting at Madison in 18842 to feel that he was possessed of an exceptionally broad outlook, an inference corroborated by his biographer who states that this noted educator, lecturer, editor, and author was liberal in religious belief and a strong advocate of temperance, woman suffrage, and other reforms. Looked at from the present point of view, this experience at Madison seems to have been a rather propitious step, educationally, although I did not then realize it. In the six years that had elapsed since my first attempts at high school teaching, Kenosha had not grown much in population,3 and the school attendance was about the same. The reseating of the high school room about this time had required but sixty-six new desks and seats, so the record states. The working conditions had not changed, the principal and two assistants carrying out the teaching schedule. The principal's duties included some of an administrative supervisory character, but for the assistants every hour of the school day was filled with teaching "and then some." Classes were small, but the subjects various as before. There was for me, however a most significant and gratifying improvement in another way,--discipline no longer troubled me. Something seemed to have happened that had wrought a great change in the attitude of boys and girls towards their teacher, or was the change in me? Had there somehow develop in me a new attitude toward childhood that pupils intuitively recognized and reacted to? a sort of new moral sense, a better understanding and a keener appreciation of the rights of childhood, that resulted in more sympathetic treatment? Anyway, order was easy,--I just did not have to worry about it at all. That reduced the strain, and teaching hours were usually, absorbing, happy hours. My salary at the start was $500, and I mention it, not because salary was a first consideration with me, but for purposes of comparison with present conditions. However, my parental responsibilities made income a matter of greater concern to me, as is, or should be, the case always. In his pre-school years my son was cared for during my absence, in the home of my parents, "Willie" being a special source of pleasure and entertainment to his crippled grandfather, whose irksome, enforced inactivity found some respite in reading or telling stories to the boy, or whittling for him playthings of various sorts out of pine wood. I recall the scene of returning from school to find the sitting room floor covered with shavings; but such conditions disturbed no one, since the eager, interested watcher and the busy whittler were both happy. When the boy attained the age of six years, we walked together to the Central School, about a mile away, and he entered the old building adjacent to the high school. There he began his schooling and had his first encounter with real life. The four years of association with Mr. Leach went by rapidly. I managed to have time and energy to indulge the urge for self-improvement by taking a course of lessons at Chicago in public speaking--not then called that, but known by a much more high-sounding name, "elocution," that has since for some reason fallen into disrepute. I learned something which seems to me to be fundamental for a teacher to acquire, both in the interests of health and efficiency, namely, how to breath, and how to use breath in speaking. These were not entirely contented years, however. In 1886 the experience of some of my friends who had gone to Chicago, and who reported much easier work and much better pay, influenced me to look in that direction. I passed the examination there, and was ready to accept a call, when my brother, a practicing physician at Chicago, strongly advised against it. "You doubtless are overworked," he said, "but at Kenosha you are independent and have a chance for initiative. Here you would be only a cog in the wheel of a great machine." I remained at Kenosha. Public appreciation came that year in my promotion to the position of first assistant with a small increase in salary. In 1887 Bessie E. Wells became second assistant and held that position until I left, and after that worked on as first assistant. So much were we in accord that excellent team work between us resulted. From the first she cheerfully did her share in the heavy program of work in a school that had started to grow. There were hundreds to whom she endeared herself, and many men and women today respect her memory. Her influence on pupils was always right. I valued her friendship. My lack of advanced legal qualifications bothered me. It was probably a sense of the inadequate education with which this work was begun that forced me into such laborious, painstaking, conscientious efforts. I was holding my position on a first grade certificate; but the need of something better than that now pressed upon me, and I began preparation for the state examination with the purpose of getting an unlimited life certificate such as is granted to those who have completed a college course that includes the necessary credits in education. Before my goal was reached it was very evident to me that young men and women who go through college, having the help and inspiration that come from class discussion and companionship, and from highly qualified teachers, do not realize their good fortune, and the comparative ease with which they have attained their goal. For me and others similarly situated,--and I had companions in going through this "College of Hard Knocks," some of whom have become educationally prominent,--it meant night study after full days of teaching, Saturday courses, and summer school. There must have been some appreciation of my effort, for I received the high salary of $600 from 1887-90, and then came an unprecedented boost to $1,000. I recall the sensation created in some quarters by the news of this action of the school board. "A thousand dollars to a high school assistant and to a woman! Did you ever hear of such a thing?" No, never at Kenosha before that time! But this work for higher qualifications brought compensation away beyond that of a material sort and developed an objective other than that of passing an examination--important and necessary as that purpose was. This struggle to make up for the lack of a college training in my younger days took me summer after summer to Madison. There I came to know some great teachers, Freeman, Coulter, Snow, Birge, Stearns, and one summer, an authority on physical geography from Harvard, whose name I think was Davis. The classroom presence of each of these is more or less distinctly recalled. Besides increasing my knowledge, I absorbed ideas of teaching technique, a word not then in my vocabulary, however. In literature under Professor J. C. Freeman, I spent an inspiring and rather intense hour listening to his natural, easy interpretive reading of a play, to which rendition was added his running commentary on meaning, form, or purposed effect. This was varied by an occasional call on Mr. This or Miss That to go on with reading--a plan of operation that accounts for the intenseness mentioned. But it was all interesting, and resulted in those pleasant associations which the teaching of literature must result in to be really successful. Botany was studied under John M. Coulter. His method, observed since in other good teachers of science, was to have upon the blackboard an outline in tabulated form of the lecture to be delivered, thus enabling students to get a visual impression of the organization of the topic. With Professor "Bennie" Snow in physics, I did not have so enjoyable a time. It was the laboratory work that completely baffled me. My high school study of physics had consisted in memorized recitations from a textbook, and so even the A B C's of laboratory practice were unknown to me. But the lectures were interesting, and I was able to get considerable in the way of preparation for the State Board examination which I was soon to face. Clearly I recall climbing to my elevated seat, notebook in hand, and there awaiting the precipitate entrance from a side door of the lecturer, this always with dramatic effect upon the student audience. I observed and noted the carefulness of his planning to the minutest detail for any demonstration carried out before the class. With Dr. E. A. Birge there were courses in physiology and, later, biology, the latter with laboratory work which I could do, the microscope being the only instrument used; my eyes were good and my pencil fairly skilled. But I learned from this teacher far more than the mere facts of the sciences studied. He was master of the art of questioning, that most important of all teaching arts. I was interested in watching how he dealt with different sorts of students. First, those who thought they knew but did not, the mentally dishonest or conceited ones; how quickly the teacher by a pointed question, exposed the quibble or punctured the inflation! Then there were the bluffers, whom he seemed to detect instantly and knew just the question that would settle each case; and, lastly there were those, by far the greater number, who did not know but wanted to--what a demonstration the observer had of skillful, patient, sympathetic questioning, to help the groping student to find the truth! While those teacher I have mentioned were classed with the "Academics" and I got from them considerably more than the subjects taught--namely, that of a pedagogic sort, as I have already described--I found in Dr. Stearns a real "Pedagogic." His courses in psychology and the theory and art of teaching gave me the scientific foundation, and the principles of good teaching, which were an immediate help in my work. Besides this, they were necessary in preparation for the examination. I recall the following incident about Professor Davis of Harvard. Although the author of a textbook on physical geography, he had never seen the unglaciated region located in contiguous corners of Wisconsin, Illinois, and Minnesota. Dr. Chamberlin, then the president at Wisconsin, an authority on that subject, met the visitor at the depot and so impatient was the latter to see the interesting region named that the two men dropped thought of everything, including that of eating, and drove westward from Madison, as if on a life-or-death errand. This incident started my interest in the unglaciated region. Later on, in the fall and winter of 1892-93, I took a Saturday course at Chicago University in geology under Professor Rollin D. Salisbury. This was at a time when the discoveries made about glacial action by Dr. T. C. Chamberlin, then connected with Chicago University, and with whom Professor Salisbury collaborated, had not yet been put in textbook form for student use. The lectures were the chief source of information and such reference reading of source material as was available. I had to qualify on that subject for examination, but beyond that end what an illuminating experience and how far-reaching its effect has been upon the understanding, to a limited degree at least, of commonly seen physiographic features, and of how they came to be! Just to add weight to a previous assertion about difficulties encountered on the road to my goal, and not to suggest appeal to sympathy, I will say that the taking of his last-named course meant a fifty mile ride in the early morning by rail to Chicago; a long confused journey of about two hours through the city to my destination, the University; a two-hour lecture period; the return to Kenosha; and then, before the regular duties of the week absorbed my energies, the work on my notebook, with the drawing features of which I took great pains. My certificate for this course bears the date of January 22, 1893. The cost of this experience in energy, time, and money was, however, a sure investment that brought the larger returns already mentioned. The needed qualifications in economies were helped greatly by a course in economic problems of the present day, a university extension course given by Dr. Scott. The certificate for this furnished me with the autograph of "C. K. Adams, Pres." Two simple facts will close this account, which I fear has already tried the patience of my readers. My limited state certificate signed by J. B. Thayer, state superintendent, bears the date of January 2, 1891, and my life certificate signed by Oliver E. Wells, is dated December 31, 1894, the latter a little too late to be of any practical value to me as a mere credential, but involving causes, as will be revealed later, that produced very unexpected results. I now return to events of a public character that happened at Kenosha during these years, events that concerned the high school and consequently affected me. In 1889 when Mr. Pollock was principal, a movement for a new high school building began. The old "brick structure" which has served Kenosha for forty years, which I had attended as a pupil, and where I was now teaching, was not only outgrown but was declared unsafe. It shook when pupils had marching exercises, so marching had to stop, pupils simply "went" to and from the room. Some parents became alarmed by the reports and withdrew their children. There was a public demand for a new building. Kenosha had begun to grow, the census for 1890 showing an increase of nearly 30 per cent over that of 1880, whereas previous decades since 1850 had shown no higher than 17 per cent. This was a time when vision on the part of the school board was of vital importance; when, as always, only the clear purpose to serve the public need both immediate and prospective should actuate these representatives of the people. There were doubtless some among them who had that vision and that purpose; there were others who manifested a spirit, which if not of greed, was closely allied to it. These latter were men of influence and dominated the course of events. The doings of school boards were not then made public as they are today, but the records are there showing the votes on all questions (and I happen to like records, as may have been discovered). While we in the old building were anxiously awaiting progress, the following sequence of steps, not always ahead, occupied the fall and winter months: there was, as was customary then, an invitation to architects to compete; the presentation of their plans by four of these to the board; the rejection of all of them as unsatisfactory; the action to choose an architect, and J. G. Chandler of Racine selected. Hope came here, for the report had reached us on the outside that Mr. Chandler's were the best plans, that they incorporated up-to-date features and really provided for future growth. But opposing influences evidently became active, and out went Mr. Chandler and his plans. A cheaper architect, one of the original competitors, was selected, and his plans adopted. Then came bids from competing contractors, but all were rejected as being too high. Immediately all withdrew from competition except a local contractor, who got the job. Lest blame may be attached to the wrong person, I will say that the dominating and prevalent influence against the best interests of the public was a professional and business man who departed this life long since. He knew little and cared less about education, his handsome wife having won for him high social position without it; as a citizen he had never patronized the public school. Besides the practice of his profession, his chief interest in life was the collection of water rates, he being the president of the Park City Water Company when Kenosha depended on artesian wells. Mr. Pollock and I finally decided on a very bold step, more so for me than for him. We attended a session of the school board at the time when the Chandler plans were imperiled. A modest plea from the young principal met with derision from the previously mentioned leader of the opposition. Squelched, but very angry, we left the school fathers to their deliberations. We had done a bold thing. Teachers were not expected to mix in such public affairs as the building of schoolhouses, and as to any thought on the part of the board that they might have suggestions to offer about the rooms in which they daily worked, their connection, their adaptation, their arrangement--preposterous! The resulting building had on the first floor four rooms for the lower grades, each with a seating capacity of fifty pupils, herding children then being the ideal of proper economy; on the second floor west side, was the grammar room providing for ninety pupils, with a recitation room seating forty pupils; and, on the east side, the high school room capable of seating one hundred and forty pupils, with two recitation rooms having a capacity of forty pupils each. There was no laboratory. On the third floor was an auditorium, five flights of stairs up from the ground entrance. The only other new features which made it different from its antique predecessor of 1849 were a principal's office and room for a library. But, of course, the architecture was more ornate than that of old and there was a fine bell tower. In the high school assembly room some ornamental colored glass windows above the others, under the sun's glare, caused a beautiful play of light to fall into the room, and incidentally into the eyes of the students facing them! Other senseless features might be enumerated. But enough has been said to show what the public got in 1891 as a new high school, at a cost of $45,000, when with the addition of a few thousand dollars and the adoption of the better plans available, their interests would have been far better conserved. The public, I have found, is always ready to pay for advanced school facilities when the need is apparent. In two years, extensive repairs were needed for reasons which I will not discuss. It was not long before something worse than cracks and rain-soaked walls was found to be wrong. The system of ventilation which the board had contracted for before the plans were made, and which they had somehow been beguiled into installing, proved worse than useless, and had to be pulled out. Those wonderful blueprints with their prescient arrows, believed to be conducting bad air from school rooms, through unmentionable regions in the basement and out through the flues to the higher reaches of the atmosphere, did not fulfill promises. That humble human protective agent, the nose, produced evidence against them, and a change was made which proved to be a very expensive proceeding. In the decade from 1890-1900, the population of Kenosha increased 77 per cent. The new high school was soon inadequate, even after the grades were removed, and a wing had to be added. I will not enumerate other changes which safety as well as greater space requirement made necessary. Some years ago I indulged my proclivity for digging up records and found that then (1915) this piece of architectural patchwork had cost Kenosha nearly $81,000. We are with respect to these matters living today in better times. Self-interest and short-sightedness must still be reckoned with, of course, and the indifference of the public is by no means overcome. But school superintendents are expected to play an important part in the planning of buildings, and teachers are consulted. The state has stepped in to defend the rights of her children. Today, as Wisconsin readers probably know, not only is expert advice about planning available from the State Department of Education, if needed, but plans and specifications must be approved by the State Industrial Commission, and the same made to conform to all the requirements of an up-to-date building code. In 1890 Mr. Pollock was succeeded by Francis L. Cleary, who was principal for four years, the last three of which were spent in the new building. It was in connection with the pulling down of the old building in 1891 that an interesting event occurred. There were many then living who loved that old building, about which clung the happy associations of their youth. It was decided by a few of those living in Kenosha to have a get-together meeting once more within those walls. Frank H. Lyman led the movement and deserves greatest credit for its success. The meeting was held on the afternoon of Friday, June 19, and about 200 were in attendance. They had come from far and near in response to the invitation. A full report of the occasion is printed in the Kenosha Daily Gazette of June 22, 1891, and is before me as I write--treasured pages in an old scrapbook. With Emory Grant in the chair and Mr. Lyman as secretary, Mr. Cleary who had been an interested promoter of the plan, opened the meeting by calling the "school" to order. I will quote a sentence from his address, which seemed to express the historic significance of the occasion. He said, "Upon your return now, the words of welcome which greet you are uttered by a man growing gray in the service of teaching, who was a babe unborn at the time of your departure." In the same vein, I can say of myself, that although I had regarded myself as an "old teacher," I felt comparatively youthful in a company, many of whom were grandparents. Colonel Michael Frank, then in his eighty-seventh year, was helped to the platform. There were many men and women present who had known this aged man in his prime and with them he was inseparably associated with this building; they had witnessed his work for the cause of public education and they revered him for it; they felt now that his presence was a constant though unuttered benediction on the assemblage and its proceedings. Letters were read from old students and principals, among the latter being John G. McMynn, and George S. Albee. The Kenosha high school alumni association was organized with Mr. Grant as president and Mr. Lyman as secretary and treasurer. Since that date, regular biennial meetings of that association have been held, the only deviation from that order happening during the Great War, when one three-year period intervened, causing the dates of the meetings since to fall in the even-numbered years. In 1930 was held the twentieth reunion. Eighteen hundred and ninety-three was the year of the great Columbian Exposition at Chicago--the "World's Fair." This was a wonderful educational opportunity for the boy, William. Its nearness to Kenosha allowed frequent attendance. After some initial visits together and after getting a general view of the whole, it was decided that it was better for him and easier for me to let him follow his own course. So while he hung over the railing and watched the wheels go round in Machinery Hall, I was undisturbed in my enjoyment of art or other exhibits. With a clear understanding as to the time and place of meeting, the plan worked fairly well. We did, however, do the Midway together. During these ten years of high school teaching I was the "stand-by" in the school. As the new teachers coming in to fill the place of second assistant and afterwards that of third assistant, usually had preferences, I taught in that time a great variety of subjects, not so well, of course, as one who had specialized; but each of which in consequence of study required, had a beneficial result for me. I have a distinct remembrance of teaching for a longer or shorter time during that period these subjects: arithmetic, algebra, geometry, physiology, physical geography and botany, grammar, composition and rhetoric, literature (English and American), general history (ancient and modern), and drawing. From comments heard from old students, I seem to be best remembered for geometry and literature. In compiling the memoirs of this period, I have brought from its hiding place a choice object, the treasured memento of some of the boys and girls whom I knew as pupils. It is an album containing cabinet sized photographs of those who graduated from the Kenosha high school during these ten years. There are eight unfilled places, but names are all there--a total of sixty-one, nineteen boys and forty-two girls. (This is one of the situations where the striking of a yearly average is unpleasant to contemplate.) In the margin are written the "watchword" and the class motto of each group, and the names of the teachers who composed the faculty. A class of thirteen girls (1891) had as its watchword "diligence," and the motto, "What God made woman able to do, that the intended she should do." The title "Valedictorian" and "Salutatorian" duly appear in each class. Some items of a biographical character are also written in but are not up-to-date. The photographs of the boys show only head and shoulders, while a majority of those of the girls are full length portraits, for which difference feminine reasons may be readily found. In the style of the boys' dress there is little difference from today, but with the girls, not so! Elaborately made white dresses appear with tight waists boned to smoothness and with long skirts, varying from the length that allowed just a toe to be seen to those touching the floor all round, with a short train, always nicely displayed by the pose assumed for the full length picture. In 1893 to 1894 huge sleeves appear. White kid gloves covering bare arms were generally worn, and another expensive article seemed indispensable--a white fan dangling from wrist or waist. The diploma rolled and tied with ribbon, probably showing the class colors, is the distinguishing mark of the girl graduates. I turn the pages and count sixteen whom I know to have passed on, graduates from life's school. Thirty taught for a longer or shorter time, three of them men, one of the latter continuing today as principal of a grade school at Oshkosh, and two of the women as principals of grade schools at Kenosha. Two women are teaching in the high school at Kenosha. There are two doctors, two lawyers, one high class farmer, and eight or more business men among the men, and twenty or more home makers among the women, one of whom is the mother of six fine children, four of whom are grown up. In all the graduating exercises of those groups, class prophecies, always of such absorbing interest to those immediately concerned, were parts of the graduating exercises. But I am quite sure that that of 1887 failed to foretell that one of its brightest members would one day, as wife of the governor of Wisconsin, manifest throughout all the many activities and duties of her high social position, the same charm of manner that characterized her school life; that of 1891 to predict that on a distant island in the Orient where, after the Spanish American War had brought to our country difficult problems of education, this girl would be for many years a teacher in the employ of the government; and that of 1893 to say that this lad with the meditative look, would rise in the United States Navy through successive ranks to that of Captain, which rank he holds today; and that he would see service in two wars, in the latter of which he would command a great battleship of the Pacific fleet; and, finally, that the prophecy of 1894 gave no hint that this girl dressed in a simple white gown and standing with her diploma partly unrolled, would today, as a member of the Sisterhood of Notre Dame, have risen to the principalship of the St. Michael's parochial high school at Chicago and have sixty nun assistants. I found not one in this whole list of graduates who did not "make good" to a smaller or larger degree, according to native ability; that is, there was no signal failure. And when I think of the great majority who did not reach graduation, but who have played their parts successfully in the great drama if business, professional, domestic, or social life, all of whom I had the privilege of helping up the ladder of learning, then it is that I realize how unequaled the teaching profession is in its opportunity for influence. Twice during this period, death took a member of our family circle. In May, 1890, my sister Caroline, Mrs. Eugene M. Bailey, another victim of tuberculosis, passed away at the age of thirty-seven years, leaving a family of four children, three daughters, and a son. Of these, only the son is living, Alexander Davison Bailey of La Grange, Illinois, now superintendent of distribution of the commonwealth Edison Company of Chicago. Two of the daughters died of the same disease as their mother, which disease she is believed to have contracted in her endeavors to help a neighbor in a time of sickness and death. This sad and disastrous sequence is mentioned as a reminder and in evidence of the progress that forty years have seen in the protection of families and the public in general by the segregation and care in sanitarium of sufferers from this disease. On December 11, 1890, my father wa relieved from his long suffering. The good life to which all who knew him had been attracted, was ended. When thinking in terms of their schooling, human beings are divisible into two classes, the educated and the uneducated. But there is another, better classification than that, namely, the learners and those who, greatest of all tragedies, have stopped learning. Andrew Jackson Davison belonged with the learners; he read, thought, and felt much, and was possessed of a wonderful memory. As defined in the following quotation by Bernard Iddings Bell in Common Sense in Education, he was an educated man: "An educated man is one who may safely be trusted with the furtherance of his own education ... he is one who has been helped to something of four understandings: of himself, of his world, of the supernatural reality and purpose men call God; and of the relation of three to one another." Opportunities now seemed to be coming my way. In September, 1892, I was made a member of the Board of Visitor for the Milwaukee Normal school for the year ending August 31, 1893. L. D. Harvey was then the president, and whatever else this appointment amounted to, the visits brought "grist to my mill." I did not, however, like all the things I saw, especially the treatment accorded her classes by a very brilliant, high-strung, young woman teacher who was considered one of the bright lights of the school. It seemed to me that a lesser light, one that did not scorch and burn, and leave scars on souls by the rays of ridicule and sarcasm, would have been more desirable in such a place. My work for higher certification operated as a cause to bring me a different sort of teaching. I began to receive opportunities from the State Department of Education for institute work. In several of these, Theron B. Pray, who was then institute conductor on the faculty of the Whitewater Normal school, was the head conductor. He had been one of the state Board of Examiners, had discovered me through my papers, and seemed interested in helping me on. I distinctly recollect some experiences in these institutes, but places are not always remembered. One, however, I am sure about because of a humorous association. There came to me one summer day in 1893 a telegram from Madison, which read, "Go help pray at Elkhorn." This message greatly puzzled my good friend, Billy McDermott, Kenosha's genial telegraph operator, who had never heard of any ability on my part for the public service which this order seemed to imply. The insertion of a capital "P" made the meaning perfectly clear to me. I responded and went to Elkhorn as soon as possible. And now I have come to the last link in the chain of cause and effect that led me away from Kenosha. With an account of that this chapter will close. Wisconsin in 1894 was completing its sixth normal school at Stevens Point, and in May of that year Mr. Pray was elected president of it. He immediately set about the selection of the faculty. One day in June, I received a letter from him which greatly surprised me. It asked for an interview in regard to taking a position in the Stevens Point Normal School. At this interview different positions were mentioned; but my ideal of what a normal school teacher should know and be able to do was such that a position as critic teacher in the Model School, as the practice department was then called, seemed about all I was prepared for, with some assurance of success. The position of grammar school critic was accordingly offered me. This was probably the place which Mr. Pray had designed for me, but hesitated to propose it lest I refuse, because I might consider it a step downward and, then too, the salary was $200 less than I had been receiving for several years. People seemed to want me to stay at Kenosha, and one personal reason for doing so was the fact that I had bought a home near the high school. Mr. Cleary, the principal, had resigned, and I was asked to apply for that place. But the life certificate which I needed for such a position was not yet secured; one or two hard examinations were still facing me, and I knew that that condition would be worrisome. An old friend, a Kenosha lawyer, who had started his practice at Stevens Point, and who had known it as a lumbering town, painted a rather discouraging picture of the place, and wondered why the state had ever put a normal school there. He said that I was crazy to think of going there, representing it as a rather rough place that had not outgrown the habits which characterized its lumbering days. Nevertheless, I stuck to my decision. A normal school position would be a distinct step in professional advancement; moreover, there would come for my son, then fourteen and in his first year of high school, educational advantages through the normal school that Kenosha did not have for him. There was a third reason, which I had not then so clearly formulated, or which I was not so sure about as I am now,--namely, that it is a good policy when holding a public position, to resign while you are still wanted. I felt sure that it was time that I should be leaving the Kenosha high school position and I have never regretted my decision. There seemed to me to have come a "tide" in my "affairs" and that I had better take it "at the flood." While it did not lead on to "fortune" exactly, I was spared the fate of being "bound in shallows and in misery"--the misery of discontent. NOTES 4 Dr. James R. Goffe, noted gynecologist died in New York City, Dec. 24, 1931, aged 84 years. 2 National Educational Association Journal of Proceedings and Addresses, 1884 (Boston, 1885), pp. iii-iv. 3 Population of Kenosha in 1880, 5,089; an increase in a decade of 780, or 17 per cent.

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