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Items of Interest Gathered Here and There
Education in Georgia.
State -School Commissioner Merritt’s report to
the General Assembly for the school year ending
December 31, 1906, presents statistics showing that
teaching is very poorly paid. The average pay to
woman teachers in South Carolina, for example, is
only $23.20, and in sixty-four cities of America the
average pay of all educational wmrkers, including
superintendents, is less than S3OO a year. Mechanics,
wage-earners and even manual laborers are far bet
ter paid.
Georgia’s record is better than that of a few
states in this particular, but that is saying little.
Those who mold the minds of our children should
be well-equipped and superior persons, but how
often can the efforts of such persons be obtained
for less than a day laborer’s wages'?
Yet there is no lack of interest in education
among us. Mr. Merritt reports that from all parts
of Georgia come gratifying accounts of ‘‘improve
ment in school buildings, apparatus, grounds, etc.
In the rural districts two hundred and twenty-two
new buildings were erected during the year. By
private subscriptions the patrons contributed more
than $90,000 of the cost, which was $186,565.
Twenty-one buildings in towns and local systems
were erected at a cost of $246,000. This latter
amount includes some expenditures made in enlarg
ing and improving old buildings. In round num
bers the value added to the school property, during
the year, was $693,000.
“There was an increased enrollment of 27,748,
and the remarkable increase in daily attendance of
37,786. The average length of term was increased
thirteen days, or nearly three weeks. This increase
added to the increase in daily attendance, gives
twenty-five per cent more days of schooling than
was given the children the previous year. An in
crease of eleven per cent in the salaries paid teach
ers, in large measure, accounts for much that be
speaks progress.
“There was an increase of more than forty per
cent in the number of libraries and an increase in
the number of volumes, of 24,013, or twenty-two
per cent. Much interest and enthusiasm has de
veloped in this line of work. In many communi
ties the school library is bringing the patrons in
personal touch with the influences of the school.” —
The Macon Telegraph.
The Death of Richard Mansfield.
Dramatic art has lost in Richard Mansfield its
foremost American exponent. In other days it was
an experience approved in any one to have seen
Edwin Booth. More universal than Booth was the
unusual combination of the great actor and the great
play producer in the dead Mansfield. He was a
man alone and apart from the people of his pro
fession. He was many-sided, being painter, student,
writer and builder in an art ancient but too often
vitiated. He created stage characters, individual
izing them so completely and with such consummate
fulfilment of possibilities that they were his. Like
other eminent actors he distinguished certain
Shakespearean roles, but he went further and cre
ated stage beings which will live in public memory
for long years. He died at fifty, prematurely ex
hausted, a sacrifice to the art he had ennobled. He
produced twenty-seven plays, twenty winning him
artistic or financial success, or both. In his first
play he was merely a>ehance player. He unex
pectedly filled a vacancy and instantly became a
star. Os a phase of his London life he wrote:
“For years and years I went home to my little
room —if I fortunately had one-—and perhaps a tal
low dip was stuck in the neck of a bottle, and I
was fortunate if I had something to cook for my
self over the lire. I have wandered about the streets
of London, and if I had a penny I invested it in
baked potatoes from the baked potato man on the
corner. I have put those potatoes into my pocket,
and after I had warmed my hands I would swallow
the potatoes. That is the truth.
But finally he came to his own, and for twenty
four years was a star. His last creative triumph
was his dramatization of Ibsen’s poetic drama, Peer
The Golden Age for September 12, 1907.
Gynt, He had many gifts, but his power lay in
his intellect. The esteemed dean of all American
dramatic critics, William Winter, of New York,
says of Mansfield:
“He v 7 as not at any time a person of wayw r ard
life, pursuant of pleasure and careless of oppor
tunity. He was earnest, diligent, faithful, consci
entious and true —improving every chance of win
ning distinction that came within his reach, and he
thoroughly earned and entirely deserved every lau
rel that ever was awarded to him. The develop
ment of his mind was the expansion of the intel
lect that accompanies the gradual predominance
of a noble and patient spirit over resentment
and exasperation at the injustice of the world. The
highest attribute of his acting was imagination,
and, next to that attribute, came humor, in which
his mind was uncommonly rich. He had a kind
heart and, by nature, he was magnanimous, of a
sweet disposition, wishful to be loved, and exceed
ingly susceptible to kindness.”—The Standard.
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Around the World in Forty Days.
Jules Verne’s imaginary record for encircling
the globe has been halved by the actual performance
of a British army officer. The United States was
not traversed in this trip, the officer selecting the
Canadian Pacific route. Says The Scientific Ameri
can : 'ii
“The prophetic and lively imagination of the
late Jules Verne recorded one of its most daring
flights when he wrote that entertaining work,
‘Around the World in Eighty Days’; and it is
probable that none of us nvlio read ils chapters
supposed that he would live to see the day when
the Frenchman’s estimate of eighty days would be
cut in half by an enterprising officer of the British
army, who set out to test the speed of modern
around-the-earth travel for himself. In a recent
letter to the London Times. Lieutenant-Colonel
Burnley Campbell w 7 rote that he landed at Dover
on June 13 at the completion of a trip around the
world which occupied forty days and nineteen and
one-half hours. He left Liverpool on May 3 at
7:30 P. M., reached Quebec at 3P. M., on May 10,
and was at Vancouver on the Pacific coast at 5
A. M. on May 16. Leaving there about noon cf
the same day, he reached Yokonama on May 26,
Tsuruga on May 28, and leaving there by steamer
at 6P. M. he reached Vladivostok May 30. Here,
after a wait cf about four hours, he took a Trans-
Siberian train, reaching Harbin on May. 31, Irkutsk
on June 4, Moscow on June 16, and Berlin on June
12. On the following day he was at Ostend, which
he reached at 7:30 A. M., and at 2:50 P. M. cf the
same day he landed in England at Dover. Through
out the whole trip Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell was
remarkably fortunate in making connections; cth
erwise his time would have been several days
h >nger. ’ ’
A "Babel of Prints ” For Blind Beaders.
The multiplicity of systems of typography for the
blind is condemned in The World’s Work (New
York, August) by Helen Keller, who attributes it
to the “lack of enthusiasm, intelligence, and co
operation on the part of those who have charge
of institutions for the blind.” The trustees of
such institutions, she charges, know almost nothing
about the needs and difficulties of blind people, and
the confusion caused by the different kinds of blind
print is a natural result. Writes Miss Keller:
“An obvious illustration of their incompetency
and the absence of co-operation between the schools
is the confusion in the prints for the blind. One
would think that the advantages of having a com
mon print would not require argument. Yet every
effort to decide which print is best has failed. The
Perkins Institution for the Blind, with a large
printing fund, clings to Line Letter —embossed char
acters, shaped like Roman letters—in spite of the
fact that most of the blind prefer a point system.
The Pennsylvania Institution for the Blind offers
its readers American Braille, a print in -which the
letters sre composed of raised dots. This is a modi-
fication of the system which was perfected by
Louis Braille three-quarters of a century ago, and
is still the system used throughout Europe. The
New York institution invented, controls, and advo
cates New York Point, another species of Braille.
The money appropriated by the National Govern
ment to emboss books for the blind is used for all
the types. The new periodical, The Matilda Zieg
ler Magazine for the Blind, the boon for which we
have waited for many years, is printed in American
Braille and New York Point. The same book, ex
pensive to print once, has to be duplicated in the
various systems for the different institutions. Other
prints are yet to come. They are still in the cru
cible of meditation. A plague upon all these prints!
Let us have one system, whether it is an ideal one
or not. For my part. I wish nothing Had been
invented except European Braille. There was al
ready a considerable library in this system when
the American fever for invention plunged us into
this babel of prints, which is typical of the many
confusions from which the blind suffer throughout
the United States.
“We Americans spend more money on the edu
cation of defectives than any other country. But
we do ne t always find the shortest, easiest and most
economical way of accomplishing the end we have
in view. We desire to bring the greatest happiness
to the largest number. We give generously as
earnest of our desire, and then we do not see that
our bounty is wisely spent.”—The Literary Digest.
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The Unlvritten Late.
(From the Detroit Free Press.)
Father sits and chuckles,
Mother’s coming back;
Even now she’s speeding
O’er the railroad track.
Father worked a brand new trick.
Best he over saw;
Says that Ma s obeying
The unwritten law’.
Father wrote and told her,
Things were going right;
’Cept he lest a lot of sleep
.Almost every night.
In his letter, father
Said that, she might stay;
Although he was lonesome
With his wife away.
“If the air is bracing,
And is helping you,
Don’t be in a hurry,
Stay a w r eek or two.
I’ve a cold that’s settled
Somewhere on my chest;
But I wouldn’t worry —
Stay and get your rest.
“Have a good time, mother,”
Father w'rote to say;
“Though, of course, I miss you,
While you are away.”
Mother got his letter,
Need I to explain,
Mother packed her trunk and ran
Straightway to the train.
Father sits and chuckles,
Laughs the whole day through;
Says that Ma would not have come,
Had he told her to.
But he knew she’d hurry
When his note she saw;
Father’s found away to use
The unwritten law.
* n
If we let ourselves get into habits of temper that
are unamiable, into a direction of thought that is
uncharitable, we make our way downward with
cumulative energy, every day’s ill-doing having at
its back the weight of every preceding day’s ill
doing, and so deepening the fall and strengthen
ing the growth by the multiplied force of all that
has gone before.
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