Chapter II: The Family Parlor (1)

From the gay world we’ll oft retire
To our own family and fire,
Where love our hours employs;
No noisy neighbor enters here
No intermeddling stranger near,
To spoil our heartfelt joys.

—_N. Cotton._

The room which above all others should be furnished with the most loving thought and lavish expense is the household parlor, or family sitting room. Here the father reads his evening paper, the mother busies herself with her ready needle, the children “with books, or work or healthful play.” This should be to eye and body preëminently a restful room, commodious, cheerful. If the reception room for visitors needs the cheer of firelight, how much more the _living room_ of the household.

Whittier’s description of the homely comfort of an old New England farm house remains unexcelled in the literature of house furnishing:

“Shut in from all the world without
We sat the clean-winged hearth about,
Content to let the north wind roar
In baffled rage at pane and door,
While the red logs before us beat
The frost line back with tropic heat;
And ever, when a louder blast
Shook beam and rafter as it passed,
The merrier up its roaring draught
The great throat of the chimney laughed.
The house-dog on his paws outspread
Laid to the fire his drowsy head,
The cat’s dark silhouette on the wall
A couchant tiger’s seemed to fall,
And, for the winter fireside meet,
Between the andiron’s straddling feet
The mug of cider simmered slow,
The apples sputtered in a row.
And, close at hand, the basket stood
With nuts from brown October’s wood.
What matter how the night behaved?
What matter how the north wind raved?
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow
Could quench our hearth-fire’s ruddy glow.”

For the sake of restfulness to the eye, the walls and carpet should be neutral in tone, making a good background to the family figures; the wall paper being of a good all-overish pattern that will not detract from pictures that may hang on it, and the carpet or rug well mixed, of not too loud a pattern, and without strong contrasts of light and dark. Blue wall papers are hard to deal with, but creams, fawns, soft greenish or olive-grays, and simple leaf patterns with slight variations of color or shade are all good for walls that are to be hung with pictures, as a sitting room should be. Common butchers’ paper, put on in sheets, the better textured cartridge paper, or sheathing paper with a pretty variation introduced by way of frieze or dado are all restful to the eye and good for the sitting room walls. The greens used should not be sharp and crude, but should be modified, making them yellowish, bluish, or grayish. So with reds, which will be better yellowish, slightly bluish (not purplish), or brownish; and yellows which must be modified into creams, old-golds, or fawns. This rule is for large surfaces. A little pure, bright color can be introduced here and there by way of decoration, and must appear somewhere in the room if it is to have a cheerful look, but wait till your pictures are hung before you introduce much brilliant color. It may take the life out of them. Picture-rods are a great convenience, and, after the first expense, save much trouble, and much marring of walls by driving nails. The picture-rod should run below the frieze, and a box of picture-hooks of suitable size for the rods should be kept ready to hand, and picture-wire so that a new painting or engraving when it comes home may find its place at once and not stand on the floor for a month waiting till the master can drive a nail. As for the wall decorations, there should be a looking-glass for family convenience either in this parlor or the entry way (the parlor is the better place), and the best pictures the house affords, always making sure that they are good pictures. Better always a good photograph, or wood-cut, or etching, than a poor chromo, steel engraving, or water-color; and better, a hundred fold, a good water-color than a poor oil painting. If your family portraits are poor, consign them to the garret or the upstairs hall, but, if possible, have at least one good painting in your home-room, even if it does cost money; and remember that a first-hand sketch by a good living artist is better than a second-hand copy of an old master. But one good painting in a house, whether a copy or an original, is a continual art lesson. A woman of taste will not mix all manner of pictures together on one wall. If possible, she will keep oil paintings by themselves, and not put them in juxtaposition with water-colors—nor will she put a picture suited only to a gallery in a family sitting room. Nor will she put Bacchantes in the same group with worshiping cherubs. There is a vast deal of stuff purely ephemeral that women are apt to load their walls with—Christmas, New Year, Easter and birthday cards, and painted panels, which may do very well to exhibit during the holidays or the day or two after the birthday; then, having had their day, they should cease to obtrude if not to be. There should be a box or receptacle for all this clutter; such souvenirs are admirable for their suggestions to the amateur decorator or embroiderer of the family, but they should not be allowed to spot the walls, to hang from the side brackets or to decorate the looking-glass. “God bless our home” is a devout aspiration which is better carried out in a godly life than worked in cross-stitch and hung over the sitting room door. I have seen Scripture texts deftly inwrought into the mural decoration of a sea-side cottage, verses from the sailors’ Psalm being painted in a decorative way between border lines of frieze or dado, where they did not seem out of place, but the summer boarders were well nigh driven from another cottage because of a card-board abomination hung over the mantel piece of their sitting room, with indigo clouds and grass-green waves, with a three-quarters-length Christ in all colors of the rainbow uttering the magic words worked in shaded reds—“Peace, Be Still.” The matter of mottoes has been overdone, and it is always safe to leave them out altogether.

Paintings upon plush must be exceedingly good to make them worth hanging anywhere. Usually such decoration is a waste of expensive material. Any way, plush is too easily spoiled by dust or careless handling to make it welcome in the family room. Painting upon picture and looking-glass frames is another misuse of decoration. A London artist with rare ingenuity paints a stalk of lilies to hide a flaw in his hall mirror, and straightway the “Decorative Art” salesrooms all over our land effloresce with blooming mirror frames whose unpruned vines straggle and trail over every glass. The beauty of a mirror is to have it absolutely clear and free from dust and dirt, finger marks or paint blotches, throughout its entire surface. Flower painting in polychrome upon frames and easels is utterly out of place, as it calls the eye off from the picture which the frame or easel holds, and reminds one of a servant decked out in finery surreptitiously borrowed from her mistress’s wardrobe.

Marble mantel pieces, to be good, must be expensive. A simple pine mantel piece with a little incised ornament is far better than white or cold gray marble. Raised, stuck-on ornament is objectionable, whether in wood or stone, but mantel pieces, book-cases and cabinets give a fine opportunity for domestic carving, and one can but wonder that more home ingenuity is not expended on the construction and carving of mantels and other woodwork in our rooms, such as doors and windows. I have seen a wooden mantel piece small, plain, and somewhat cheap and inferior-looking, so improved by a little carving, judiciously introduced by the man of the house—a small panel set in here, and the edge of the shelf prettily finished—that the whole thing grew dignified at once and became a worthy ornament of the “spare room,” when painted in harmony with the rest of the woodwork. The youngest whittlers might be taught to use tools for the family good, if parents were only willing to go to a little trouble and expense in providing models, tools and wood for their use, and a comfortable chimney nook where the work could be carried on. In the schools of Philadelphia Mr. Leland has shown how much may be done by boys and girls when their efforts are wisely directed.

When there is no room in the house specially set apart as a library, cabinets and book cases form an important part of the sitting room furniture. I would have book shelves of some sort in every room of a house; but in the room where the family gathers there should be a special shelf for books of reference. An encyclopædia is of as much value to the household as a wood lot is to the farm. Better wear your old silk gown or shabby overcoat another year, or two years even, and have your book of reference always at hand for the general good. The unabridged dictionary is a necessity, and should stand in its rack easy of access to school children and their elders as well. A household book of poetry, Dana’s or Bryant’s, or whatever may be better, and an equally comprehensive volume of religious verse like Gilman’s, or Palgrave’s choice “Golden Treasury,” should be well thumbed by the children, and should be placed temptingly at hand, not locked behind glass doors. Glazed doors are demanded by collectors who revel in vellum, uncut leaves, and rare editions, but cases that are well backed and that have leathern, or even moreen or flannel, valences tacked to the shelves, will serve well enough to protect books in a house where all the reading matter is for daily use or study.

A low book case three or four feet high and broad enough to fill a generous wall space, running, if need be, across one side of the room, may be found ample enough for a family whose library is limited. Pictures and vases can be ranged upon its top. I know a room that holds three or four such book cases of ebonized pine, filled with books and made gay with valences of scarlet moreen, which yet scorns to be called “the library,” and is only known as the family “sitting room.” Valences of leather or wool are sufficient to protect the books from dust if the cases are well backed.

In addition to the book case, hanging shelves for children’s books, or cabinets for collections of any sort, can be made of pine, and when absolutely plain, if neatly varnished, need not prove unsightly. They may even be made very ornamental by a bright curtain, plain or embroidered, with rings attached that run lightly over a brass rod or wire, and screen the contents of the shelves from the too inquisitive eye.

It is really a happy day for a household when one of its members develops a hobby and begins to make a collection—not of buttons or business cards, but of something on which genuine study will not come amiss, and there is hardly any line in which one is likely to interest himself where he may not often pick up for a mere trifle much that will be of special value to his collection, much that, by itself, would be comparatively worthless, but which in a collection has added worth and dignity; and any collection makes a new point of interest in a home. In a quiet country town where I once lived, the boys of the village took to collecting butterflies and insects. Farmers carried turpentine or benzine in their pockets, and would come home from their haying fields with hats gay with the captured moths and butterflies they were taking to the collectors of their several households. Thus homes hitherto utterly wanting in any æsthetic influence, seemed to brighten into something positively charming, when father and mother, son and daughter clustered about the drawers in the front parlor, exhibiting to any chance visitor the fragile treasures so carefully arranged within them, and when a new specimen was captured the collector would

“Run it o’er and o’er with greedy view,
And look and look again, as he would look it through.”

Think of the many lines in which the collector may work! The postage stamp craze was by no means to be despised; it was a good geography lesson for the children, and well up to the times, throwing in a little history as well. Coin collecting is yet more profitable in the same lines, and when confined to the coins of one’s own land, gives a wide enough range for the average collector. For the out-of-door student there are shells, sea mosses and birds’ eggs, flowers to press, and minerals to secure. One boy hunts up Indian relics, another collects weapons of various sorts, from

“The old queen’s arm which Gran’ther Young
Fetched back from Concord, busted,”

to an Australian boomerang or a South Sea Island club brought by the sailor uncle from some voyage of long ago. One dear, old lady has a choice collection of bits of lace all dated and named; another of pieces of brocade, an admirable commentary on silk manufactory. Here we find a treasurer of fans, and there of snuff-boxes; here of children’s photographs, and there of photographs or autographs of famous men; and everywhere, all over our land, will be found the covetous collector of rare, old china and pottery. Let the children be encouraged to interest themselves in some such lines as these, not so as to make nuisances of themselves and museums of their homes—there will be little danger of that—but enough to give them a wholesome enthusiasm in some particular line of study. A vast deal of general information is disseminated through a household, unconsciously absorbed, as it were, when each one has a hobby of his own, and gives out of his choicest discoveries for the common good.

As to the sitting room furniture, there are a few essentials that must be emphasized. There should be a table large enough for half a dozen people to sit around of an evening—a round one is best—strong, solid, and covered with a serviceable cloth. There are handsome woolen table covers that grow yet handsomer with age as their colors mellow together, but the best is expensive. A square of plain felt does very well, and is in better taste than the scarlet and green felt cloths stamped with black figures that were so prevalent twenty years ago. A figured cloth shows spots less than a plain one. If a mat of some sort, or even a newspaper, is always laid down under any lamp that burns kerosene, and if a blotter is always used where writing or painting is going on, a plain cloth ought to last for years. Light should abound where the family sit together, sunlight by day and good gas or lamp light by night should be generously supplied. A good duplex burner or a double student lamp uses no more oil than several small lamps dotted down here and there, about the room, and it brings the family together about the central table. So with the drop light, which is an essential where gas is used. The wise woman discards gas in her sitting room, however, and uses good oil, which is far better for the eyes. There should be a writing desk in the room. The old-fashioned secretary was a valuable piece of sitting room furniture, and many a good one has been recalled from the attic within the last few years, and, by a judicious use of soda water, has been freed from old paint, and when scrubbed and rubbed, it has shone as good as new, and much more useful than the modern Davenport. There should be large, easy chairs, not too low, for the use of the men of the house, and for elderly people who find it hard to rise gracefully and with ease from soft, low chairs. There should also be low chairs with broad seats, and short arms, or none at all, for those who must busy themselves with sewing, knitting, and embroidery, and comfortable camp chairs that can be lightly lifted by the children and carried here and there about the room. Let the chairs, in fact let everything be strong and comfortable in this room. A heavy man is often put to great inconvenience because the chairs at his disposal are too flimsy to bear his weight. There are countless stories told of the Rev. Phillips Brooks, and men of his build, who dare not laugh at a dinner party lest their chairs resolve themselves into kindling wood at the first mirthful shake. In my own parlor there is one chair deep, broad, and of marvelous strength, bought with an eye to the needs of a friendly neighbor of grand dimensions. “This is a chair that Mr. B. can’t break,” said the kindly donor who had witnessed the collapsing of ordinary parlor chairs under his ponderous weight. Remember that no chair should be expected to do service that has not connecting rungs between the legs.

There should be, also, a lounge or sofa in this room, with ample pillow, not a round horse-hair cylinder, but something useful, restful, and not too fine. Let the color be as perfect as may be, but if the material of which it is made be really too splendid for daily use, its glories should be veiled behind a strong, washable tidy. I have seen a gray linen square or towel, with drawn work at the ends, such as costs fifty cents, perhaps, at the linen shops, with a few long-stemmed poppies bending together in a row at one end, wrought in outline, with the familiar legend, “We are all nodding, nid, nid, nodding,” running sleepily down the center. That had just sentiment enough, and art enough for its place and use. Tidies are mere clutter if not intended to be brushed against and used. Paintings on blue satin, decked out with lace, are out of taste in any room, however fine, and out of place on any chair. No chair should be too daintily dressed out to be sat upon; and no painting should so hang as to invite shoulders clad in black broadcloth to rub themselves against it. “Tidies” or “chair backs,” if used at all, should be of a firm material, not easily crumpled, should be firmly attached, should give off little or no lint, and should be washed when they are soiled, or thrown away. They are better when off the white.

There should be a wrap of some sort, afghan, Mexican or army blanket, railway rug or shawl thrown over the foot of the sofa, with which to cover up the invalid of the household, or any one who is tempted to lounge awhile.

Other sitting room comforts, though not essentials, are a sewing table, stand or basket with drawers or pockets attached, for the convenience of needlewomen, a portable screen, two-leaved and not too large, that can shut off draughts from rheumatic shoulders, and an occasional hassock or footstool—“crickets” our grandmothers called them in New England.

The covering of tables, chairs, etc., affords an opportunity to introduce color into the room, but it is not at all necessary that the chairs should all be covered with stuffs of the same quality or color. Unless very well chosen, plain colors are apt to stare, like the sharp green “rep” that was so long popular, and whose good wearing qualities made it so hard to displace. If the manufacturers had only kept pace with the times, and produced the stuff in good, plain shades that would keep their colors, or figured in good designs, it would still hold its own against all the so-called tapestry goods that the upholsterers offer us. “Rep,” however, was utterly unsuitable for curtains; it was stiff and wiry, and hung in ungainly folds.

For our sitting room some light drapery at the windows is advisable. If the room has no blinds, there should be some sort of thick shades or venetian blinds. There is a yellowish brown holland that is admirable for the purpose; but with outside or inside blinds, a thin curtain like Madras muslin is all that is necessary to shade the blackness of the windows at night, or to temper the brightness of the sunlight by day. The advantage of Madras muslin or Cretan cloth over lace, muslin, or cheese cloth curtains lies in the color and figure; colored and figured curtains showing to better advantage against the light than plain white, and looking fresher much longer; they “furnish” a room more.

Whatever curtains are used, they should be hung with rings from rods of brass, bamboo, or wood—varnished pine is good enough—so that they can be pushed entirely to one side with ease. Rods should not be too large and should be finished at the ends with some simple ornament, as a plain ball which pulls off at one end, so as to allow the rings to slip over the rod. The curtains may be long, if hung outside the window frame, and just reach the floor, or they may hang from the upper sash and just reach to the window ledge, so as to cover only the window; or they may be half curtains hanging from a small rod or wire so as to screen only the lower sash. It is not at all necessary to treat the windows alike. A bay window may have a long, heavy curtain running across the bay and forming a nook where two or three may sit cosily together, and the other windows may be treated to sash or half-sash curtains of soft silk, Madras muslin, or even Turkey red calico. Where a window is filled with plants, the little half curtain running upon a brass wire and falling over the lower sash serves, on winter nights, as a slight protection for the plants from outer air, and can be thrust to one side by day, and tucked up out of sight. A little drapery is a great relief in a room where there are bare floors and much display of woodwork in doors and window frames. Then, a portière in place of a closet door, a hanging before a book case, or curtains at the windows would relieve the bareness of the room as nothing else could. Curtains should not repeat the color of the walls, nor should portières be of the same material and color as the curtains. Woodwork, however, when painted should repeat the wall color, though it should be somewhat lighter in shade.

There lacks but little to make our home parlor complete. A piano, if practice thereon will not interfere with the occupancy of the room by the household; otherwise let the piano be kept where music lessons given and studied will not disturb the family serenity; for many reasons the drawing room is the best place for the piano, it is more likely to be treated with respect by mischievous fingers there than in the living room; and a clock, the plainer the better—no little French fanciful affair, but something substantial, that can last like the tall, ancestral eight-day time piece. Should the clock stand on the mantel it is not essential to have balancing ornaments on either side. The choicest treasures of the house should indeed adorn the mantel piece, but it is never necessary to have two of a kind standing at equal distances from the center.

This is the room in which all things should seem to grow into a likeness to the household, and to grow old with it. Here no changes should be made but for good cause, and always for the better, never by the wholesale. Nor should furniture be introduced that is so staringly new and gay as to put the rest out of countenance and make it look shabby by comparison. There are plenty of good stuffs subdued enough in color to harmonize with any long used parlor, no matter how old the carpet nor how faded the chair seats. Whatever is good and old, though worn, let us respect, preserve, and repair.

NATIONAL AID TO EDUCATION.

BY GENERAL JOHN A. LOGAN,

U. S. Senator from Illinois.

To bring to light and expose to public gaze our national defects or social deformities is an unpleasant and generally thankless task, but so long as we shirk it, just so long will they remain to our national detriment and disgrace. To be conscious of disease, to locate and properly diagnose it, is to be half-way on the road to good health.

It is not necessary in this age of enlightenment to dwell upon the manifest and manifold advantages to a people and to a nation, of education. They are palpable, and conceded by all men. Illiteracy, then, must as plainly be a disadvantage to a nation, a hindrance to the advancement and welfare of its people, and an evil which should be eradicated.

We Americans boast, and boast rightfully, of the high position in the scale of intelligence we occupy as a people; but pride in that fact should not blind our eyes to our existing imperfections. We are proud of the attainments of our men of letters; we rejoice in the achievements of our scientists and inventors; we glory in our rapid advance among the nations to wealth and power; and we fail to give serious heed to the hundreds of thousands of our people who are growing up every year in clouded ignorance, without even the rudiments of education.

If we examine with care our census returns and the reports of our Bureau of Education, we will be startled by some of the facts they reveal. To follow many of these revelations in detail might lead to an accusation of making invidious distinctions, but there are enough to which the attention of the country may be called without the shadow of justification for such a charge. Let us look at these.

Take the Bulletin of “Illiteracy in the United States,” as returned at the tenth census, and its first line reveals the deplorable fact that of the 36,761,607 persons of ten years of age and upward, 4,923,451 (over one-seventh) are unable to read, and 6,239,958 (nearly one-sixth) are unable to write.

It appears, moreover, from other census tabulations presented[D] to the United States Senate that, of the 50,155,783 persons constituting our population in 1880, there were equally proportioned between the white and colored races, 4,204,363 of both sexes over twenty-one years of age unable to write, or about 2,000,000 “illiterates” out of the 10,000,000 persons at that time entitled to vote; or, in other words, one of every five voters in the United States unable to write his name. From other statistics of that census it appears also that 1,640,000 voters were unable to read. Thus we have the astounding assurance that while one in every five voters can not write the ballot that he wishes to deposit, one in every six voters can not even read the ballot that he places in the box!

It is this one illiterate voter in every five (or six) voters who holds the balance of power at our elections.

While a very large proportion of our population, and also of that portion of it which exercises the elective franchise, can both read and write, yet a great number of these are very little the more intelligent because their limited ability to do either or both is so imperfect and so rarely availed of. Alluding to these, a committee of the United States Senate (Report 101, Pt. 2, first session, Forty-eighth Congress), said: “Of those who can write, multitudes do not place a sentence on paper twice in a lifetime. Thousands never get an idea from the printed page.” Yet these are the men who may at any time subject the country to their control—men who hold the weighty balance of political power.

To the patriot, to the lover of republican institutions, to the advocate of unrestricted individual suffrage, this fact is appalling. But it is none the less a fact that should be known. Nor may the advocates of monarchical systems of government and of restricted suffrage take comfort from that fact. That the deciding ballot in our political contests may be an ignorant one does not prove the evil or folly of unrestricted suffrage. Not at all. Cancer in the breast does not prove the folly of life. Nor is a jammed finger necessarily fatal. These simply remind us that in the one case the knife, and in the other the lotion, should be quickly and efficiently used. So with the ignorant ballot. Its existence merely proves the absolute necessity of prompt and vigorous action to enlighten it—of educating him who casts it—of taking counsel from the past and present and providently guarding the future. It teaches us that while we are properly horrified at any desecration of the sacred right of suffrage—whether by bulldozing, ballot-box stuffing, false counting, or other methods of intimidation or of fraud—it is high time to arouse ourselves to a state of facts existing around us and under our very noses, constituting a sacrilege only differing from these others in degree; to realize, in time to remedy it, that at every election we witness, at almost every voting precinct in the land, a constant, never-failing, almost winked-at desecration by power-clad ignorance of that right; to realize the great dangers from this source that we have thus far happily escaped; to properly apprehend the possible perils thus stored up for us in the bosom of the future, and by timely, energetic and sufficient action to arrest them. Thus the very knowledge that one in every five of our voters exercises ignorantly this undue and prodigious power must nerve a free and enlightened people to make immediate and adequate provision both to aid and to make obligatory the elementary education of those who in due time will inherit from us the right of suffrage.

It can not be too often or too strongly urged, under the light of this revelation from the census returns, that an ignorant ballot is a dangerous ballot, because it may be at once heedless, and easily deceived; that an educated ballot is, to the degree of education, an enlightened ballot—possibly wrong-headed or mistaken at times, but as a rule careful, brave and pure; and that, as the ballot is placed in the hands of all Americans, education—the means by which they may discriminatingly cast that ballot—should be open and free to all.

The very existence of the Republic depends upon the proper use of the potential ballot. Education alone can teach that proper use. Hence it is that “education to all” is the chief corner stone of the Republic; and to make that secure, no effort however great, no expense however large, should be withheld.

Here then, with the fact staring us in the face, that the one potential vote of every five votes that decides all the great political questions of the day—questions involving the most complex and far-reaching principles of government—questions of finance, of diplomacy, of commerce, of trade, of the tariff, of the relations of capital and labor, and others whose solution perplexes the minds of our very ablest statesmen—is an utterly ignorant vote, can the American people hesitate to demand of Congress not only immediate but adequate remedial legislation in the shape of ample national aid to elementary education for all of school age, and obligatory attendance within reasonable limits?

But this is not the only fact bearing heavily upon the question of the necessity of national aid to our public school system. If we examine the details of these census tabulations we shall find that much the larger portion of this illiteracy is found in some thirteen or fourteen states. Taking these states and territories in which the proportion of “illiterates” (those unable to write) to the total state or territorial population of ten years of age and upward exceeds 25 per cent., we find that ratio to be: In Alabama, 50.9 per cent.; Arkansas, 38; Florida, 43.4; Georgia, 49.9; Kentucky, 29.9; Louisiana, 49.1; Mississippi, 49.5; New Mexico, 65; North Carolina, 48.3; South Carolina, 55.4; Tennessee, 38.7; Texas, 29.7; and Virginia, 40.6. Massing these twelve states and one territory together, we find they include a population of 10,079,130 of ten years of age and upward, of which number no less than 4,324,513, or over two fifths, are unable to write—forty-three out of every one hundred unable to sign their own names—while of the 26,682,477 persons of like age in the remaining states and territories, the number of such illiterates is but 1,915,445, or a little over seven in every one hundred.

We are all of course aware that this large proportion of illiteracy in the states named is largely owing to the presence of the colored population. Nevertheless the fact remains that these people, to whom all the rights of citizenship have been accorded, and who will hereafter form a very important and possibly predominating factor in the administration of the affairs of many of these states, as well as an important factor in national affairs, must remain for a long time in ignorance unless some other means of educating them be adopted than that which now obtains.

But let no one deceive himself with the idea that this undue and lamentable ratio of illiteracy in these particular states is due wholly to the presence of the colored population. Unfortunately illiteracy prevails to a very considerable and almost an alarming extent among their native white population also. Thus the census tabulations show that the proportion of “illiterates” (those unable to write), in the total native white population, ten years of age and upward, is: In Alabama, 25 percent.; Arkansas, 25.5; Florida, 20.7; Georgia, 23.2; Kentucky, 22.8; Louisiana, 19.8; Mississippi, 16.6; New Mexico, 64.2; North Carolina, 31.7; South Carolina, 22.4; Tennessee, 27.8; Texas, 13.9; and Virginia, 18.5. Massing them we find that of the 6,010,714 native whites, ten years of age and upward, within the territorial limits mentioned, there are as many as 1,395,441—being 23.2 per cent., or nearly one in every four of the whites—unable to write. It is evident, therefore, that the surprising illiteracy in these states is not wholly attributable to the presence therein of the colored race.

It is somewhat humiliating to have to confess to the world by our own official figures that one out of every four of the native whites over ten years of age in twelve states and one territory of our Republic is unable to write his own name, especially when we compare it with the additional fact, derived from the same tabulation, that the illiteracy of the foreign born of these same localities does not rise in any instance above 10.9 per cent.

Turning to the other side of the picture we may find some grains of comparative consolation in observing the fact that of the remaining 19,775,075 native whites, ten years of age and upward, in the United States only 860,019—or 4.3 per cent., being one in twenty-three—are unable to write. This favorable condition of one part of the country, however, only serves to bring out in sharper contrast the sad condition of the other part, and should spur the philanthropist and statesman to renewed and more strenuous effort to obliterate, or at least ameliorate, this alarming sectional inequality in the degree of illiteracy.

Were it not for the hope of ultimately removing this inequality by attaining an educational homogeneity or equality on the higher level as between the sections, one might almost be tempted to wish for an educational equalization on the lower grade; for as long as that inequality continues to exist, so long must it prove a source of irritation and danger in a thousand forms.

As to the situation in the old slave states, where the colored population is proportionately large, it is not difficult to understand it. We can appreciate the dread on the part of the whites of an “uprising,” as it is termed, of the colored people. But the words of Jefferson[E]—possibly prophetic unless averted by the exercise of wisdom and fairness—have in them a depth of meaning that none but those whites can fully realize when, speaking of the slaves, he says: “And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice can not sleep forever; that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a _revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among the possible events_; that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take sides with us in such a contest.”

Aside from the overawing influence of a large standing army there is but one thing that can prevent a race-conflict, the very possibility of which we dread to contemplate, and that is the benign and liberalizing influence of education, resulting in a free and untrammeled exercise of the elective franchise. Give the former and you will unquestionably secure the latter.

That the local as well as sectional inequality in education can be overcome by no other means than by national aid, will be further demonstrated. Nor is it just that we should expect or ask it to be otherwise. No matter now what may have caused this inequality, the fact that it exists is that which now momentously concerns us. We know it can not be removed by recurring to the cause; and it will become more and more evident as we examine the subject that only by speedy and efficient congressional action can we now insure that future educational equilibrium, not only between the races and between the sections, but also between the people in each state, which will have so important a bearing upon the destinies of this nation, and is so essential to the continued peace, prosperity and contentment of its people.

Another fact of great importance, as bearing upon the necessity for national aid to education, is revealed by the census returns. It is a curious as well as an important revelation, because it shows that the ratio of children or persons under twenty-one years of age to the adults, is considerably larger in some states than in others, and correspondingly increases the educational burden.

The principle involved in this condition of affairs may be simply illustrated thus: Suppose the head of each family had to pay directly for the education of his own children. Then, even with an equality of means, the burden would, as a matter of course, fall heavier on the one with a numerous than the one with a small progeny.

To make apparent the effect of this inequality in the proportion of minors to adults in different parts of our common country, let us suppose that the mean average cost of schooling is four dollars per annum for each child.

It appears that in Connecticut, out of every one hundred persons, fifty-nine are adults, and forty-one are minors. At this supposed rate, then, the fifty-nine adults would have each to pay two dollars and seventy-eight cents per annum in order to make up the one hundred and sixty-four dollars per annum needed for the education of the forty-one children. It appears also that in South Carolina, out of every one hundred persons, forty-three are adults and fifty-seven are minors. At the supposed rate, then, these forty-three adults would have each to pay five dollars and thirty cents per annum in order to make up the two hundred and twenty-eight dollars per annum needed for the education of the fifty-seven children.

Now, this is a very important fact, indeed, and must lead all fair minded advocates of education to modify somewhat the criticisms they may have made touching the expenditure in the South for education as compared with that in the North and West; for here it becomes palpable that two dollars and seventy-eight cents per adult in Connecticut is equivalent to five dollars and thirty cents per adult in South Carolina for the schooling of the children respectively, in those states. Nearly twice as much in one state as in the other.

But this result is from an assumed uniform mean average standard of the cost of educating each child in the Union. Let us test the matter by a comparison founded on actual cost. Take, for instance, the states of Maine and Mississippi.

In Maine there are fifty-eight adults to forty-two minors in every one hundred persons. In Mississippi there are forty-three adults to fifty-seven minors in every one hundred persons. In Maine[F] the educational expenditure per capita of the school population is four dollars and sixty-seven cents per annum. This enforces an annual expenditure for this purpose of three dollars and thirty-eight cents by each adult. An equal school tax of four dollars and sixty-seven cents per annum for each scholar, imposed upon the adult population of Mississippi would call for six dollars and nineteen cents from each adult—or nearly twice what the adult of Maine must pay.

The effects of this disparity will be more fully dwelt upon at a later period. But it must surely be already apparent that this inequality of the educational burden created by the disparity existing between the populations of various portions of our country can alone be met and remedied by some aid from the general government.

It is true that the facts thus far adduced indicate rather the necessity for national assistance to certain sections or states than for general and uniform aid to all. But a further study and the development of other facts will, as we proceed, more fully reveal, not alone the wisdom and necessity of such aid to all, but the character and extent of the aid required.

Before we reach that period, however, there are facts touching other phases of inequality of burden that are worthy of close and careful consideration.

Careful tabulations from the census returns show that a school enrollment of 22.4 per cent. of the total population of Missouri amounts to but 88.6 per cent. of the school population of that state, fixing the standard of school age as between six and sixteen years; while a school enrollment of 22 per cent. of the total population of New Jersey is equal to[G] 101.5 per cent. of her school population. Hence, although Missouri has a somewhat larger percentage in school of her total population than has New Jersey, yet she lacks more than 11 per cent. of having all her children of school age enrolled as scholars; while a slightly smaller per cent. of her total population places more than all the school age children of New Jersey in school. So also with Vermont, where a school enrollment of 22 per cent. of the total population gives 109.5 per cent. in school, of all of school age.

Comparing Nebraska and Connecticut, we find that while 22.3 per cent. of the total population of the former state enrolled in the schools amounts to but 95.4 per cent. of her children of school age, 21.3 per cent. of the total population of the latter state enrolled in the schools is equivalent to 110.3 per cent. of her children of school age.

Massachusetts has to send 19.2 per cent. of her total population to school in order to equal 104.8 per cent. of her children of school age, while Illinois has to send to school 24.5 per cent. of her population to reach a like ratio of enrolled scholars to children of school age.

Even in states situated so near to each other as Pennsylvania and New York we observe this inequality. In the former, where the school enrollment is 22.8 per cent. of the total population, it is but 99.4 per cent. of the children of school age, while in New York 23 per cent. of the total population enrolled in the schools is 112.4 per cent. of her children of school age.

Thus far have been selected for comparison some of those states the ratios of whose school enrollment to the total population were about the same. But while these contrasts bring out very clearly the inequality in the burden of educating the children of our country, yet there are more marked illustrations at hand.

Take Arkansas, West Virginia and New York, for instance. In Arkansas the school enrollment is 13.5 per cent. of population, and but 51.3 per cent. of the children of school age. At the same ratio a school enrollment of 23 per cent. of total population in Arkansas would be but 87.4 per cent. of the children of school age. West Virginia has a school enrollment of 23.3 per cent. of total population, which is only 87.9 per cent. of her children of school age. Yet New York, as we have already seen, by an enrollment of 23 per cent. of her total population secures schooling for 113.3 per cent.—more than all—of her children of school age.

Comparing other states, one with the other—such as Alabama with Maine, Georgia with New Hampshire, Tennessee with Rhode Island, Mississippi with Massachusetts, etc.—we see similar, and in some cases even greater inequality.

Let us now apply these facts practically, and thus reach a clearer understanding of the effect of this great disparity.

The actual mean average cost of the schooling of each public school scholar in the United States is about ten dollars. Assuming then that the adult population of each state bears the burden of educating its children, and that all the children of school age in each state are enrolled in the schools—as they should be—let us ascertain how much the tax per capita would be on the adults bearing this burden in each state and territory. In other words, let us discover how much in each state and territory must every adult (male or female) pay every year in order to supply the ten dollars per annum that it costs to educate each and every child in that state or territory.

It would cost each adult in Montana, $1.95; in Wyoming, $2.12; Nevada, $2.12; Colorado, $2.20; Arizona, $2.34; New Hampshire, $2.78; Idaho, $3.00; Massachusetts, $3.23; Dakota, $3.30; Rhode Island, $3.22; California, $3.33; Connecticut, $3.27; Maine, $3.43; Vermont, $3.46; New York, $3.56; District of Columbia, $3.77; Washington, $3.94; New Jersey, $4.02; Michigan, $4.15; Oregon, $4.29; Delaware, $4.31; Pennsylvania, $4.26; Ohio, $4.55; Maryland, $4.55; Nebraska, $4.77; Minnesota, $4.70; New Mexico, $4.65; Wisconsin, $4.86; Illinois, $4.88; Indiana, $5.00; Iowa, $5.10; Missouri, $5.28; Kansas, $5.32; Louisiana, $5.54; North Carolina, $5.67; Virginia, $5.59; Texas, $5.86; Kentucky, $5.65; Florida, $5.78; Utah, $6.07; Alabama, $6.12; Arkansas, $6.12; Georgia, $5.98; South Carolina, $5.98; Tennessee, $6.00; West Virginia, $5.86, and Mississippi, $6.28—while, massing the entire Union, the cost to each adult in it would be $4.70.

Thus we find that while the school tax on each adult in New York would be but $3.56, in the adjoining state of Pennsylvania it would be $4.26; that while in Massachusetts it would be but $3.23, in Illinois it would be $4.88—a difference of $1.65 per capita to the adult; that while in New Hampshire it would be but $2.78, in Mississippi it would be more than double that amount. But the reader can himself, by a glance at the list presented, perceive even more glaring inequalities than these in the relative burdens which would be imposed upon the adult population of the various states and territories, were that burden to be placed entirely on their shoulders.

If it be the true policy of a nation to equalize, as far as possible, the necessary burdens imposed upon its people, then we certainly have before us in these statistics, a condition of facts demanding serious consideration and efficacious action by the general government.

If inequality in the burdens imposed in order to educate our children be any argument in favor of national aid to education—and who will venture to deny it?—then we have in these statistics positive evidence of very great and possibly hitherto unsuspected inequalities; inequalities of which none could be aware without a close and critical analysis of the figures, the developments of which as previously hinted, may well cause us to modify somewhat the reproaches we may have felt inclined to cast upon some of our states for what seemed to be a lack of proper effort on their part in the direction of education.

While, however, reproachful criticism of them still appears to some extent justifiable, yet the deductions from rearrangement and classification of the census and educational bureau tables show that the fault does not altogether lie at the doors of those among whom the greatest amount of illiteracy is found.

In order to make this clear let us examine the ratio of children enrolled in schools, not to the state, but to the adult population. That ratio is, in Alabama, 34.6 per cent.; Arkansas, 31.4; California, 35.2; Colorado, 17.7; Connecticut, 36.1; Delaware, 34.6; District of Columbia, 32.1; Florida, 35.8; Georgia, 42; Illinois, 50; Indiana, 54.3; Iowa, 56; Kansas, 53.8; Kentucky, 36.3; Louisiana, 19.8; Maine, 40; Maryland, 31.4; Massachusetts, 33.5; Michigan, 44; Minnesota, 47.8; Mississippi, 48.6; Missouri, 47.7; Nebraska, 45.5; New Hampshire, 31.3; New Jersey, 40.7; New York, 40.3; North Carolina, 40.7; Ohio, 47.8; Pennsylvania, 42.2; Rhode Island, 30.2; South Carolina, 32.3; Tennessee, 49.1; Texas, 25.2; Utah, 44.4; Vermont, 38; Virginia, 35.4; West Virginia, 51.8; Wisconsin, 50.4, and in the entire Union, 42 per cent.

Now, the mean average number of children in the United States enrolled in the schools being forty-two to every one hundred adults, what is our surprise to find, in the figures just given, that every New England state, as well as New York, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia, falls below this average, while on the other hand, every northwestern state (including Ohio, Missouri and Kansas), as well as Mississippi, Tennessee and West Virginia, stands above it!

That in proportion to the adult population of those states, there are more children at school in Mississippi, Tennessee and West Virginia, than in any of the New England states, is, indeed, an astounding revelation.

Supposing, then, the cost of educating a child in those states to be the same, it follows that each one hundred adults in Mississippi, Tennessee, and West Virginia are paying more to educate their children than is paid by the same number of adults in any New England state!

At first sight these statistical results fairly stagger one, and give rise to doubts of their accuracy. But a careful examination of them will satisfy any reasonable mind that these developments are veritable facts, if the census returns and the school enrollment reported by the Commissioners of Education are to be accepted—being based upon and directly calculated from them. Even supposing the existence of some deficiencies in the returns or some minor errors in the calculations, the general facts they reveal must be accepted as true.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

FOOTNOTES

[D] By Senator Butler, of South Carolina.

[E] “Notes on Virginia, Fourth American Edition, N. Y. 1801,” p. 241.

[F] See Report of Commissioner of Education for 1881, page 49.

[G] The surplus of percentage being due doubtless to the attendance at school of some children beyond the school age prescribed by law.

THE PARSON’S COMFORTER.

BY FREDERICK LANGBRIDGE.

The parson goes about his daily ways
With all the parish troubles in his head,
And takes his Bible out, and reads and prays,
Beside the sufferer’s chair, the dying bed.

Whate’er the secret skeleton may be—
Doubt, drink, or debt—that keeps within his lair,
When parson comes, the owner turns the key,
And lets him out to “squeak and gibber” there.

It seems a possibility unguessed—
Or little borne in mind, if haply known—
The he who cheers in trouble all the rest
May now and then have troubles of his own.

Alas! God knows, he has his foe to fight,
His closet-atomy, severe and grim;
All others claim his comfort as of right,
But, hapless parson! who shall comfort _him_?

A friend he has to whom he may repair
(Beside that One who carries all our grief),
And when his load is more than he can bear
He seeks his comforter, and finds relief.

He finds a cottage, very poor and small,
The meanest tenement where all are mean;
Yet decency and order mark it all:—
The panes are bright, the step severely clean.

He lifts the latch—his comforter is there,
Propt in the bed, where now for weeks she stays,
Or, haply, seated knitting in her chair,
If this be one of those rare “better days.”

A tiny woman, stunted, bent, and thin;
Her features sharp with pain that always wakes;
The nimble hand she holds the needles in
Is warped and wrenched by dire rheumatic aches.

Sometimes, but seldom, neighbors hear her moan,
Wrung by some sudden stress of fiercer pain;
Often they hear her pray, but none has known,
No single soul has heard her lips complain.