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VOL UHT. TIVI
NUJIBF.R EIGHTEEN
CUMMING IS COMING Has Already Come!
Beautiful 'Mountain To Inn, With 'Royal Citizens and Progressibe Ideals —Nelv Public School "a Lighthouse” to that Section
Sy WILLIAM D. UPSHAW.
ERILY the town of Cumming, Ga., is
worthy to be on the map.
Cumming is grandly coming—it has
already come!
A dozen years ago I had literally
swung over the fourteen miles of hills
and valleys from Buford to Cumming—
for I was not then able to ride in a
buggy, and on a rocking chair, fastened
V
on a plank bed, supported by four spiral springs. I
had gone along under a wagon sheet (it was raining)
toward the historic capital of Forsyth county, stop
ping at a school on the roadside to try to drop some
sparks of inspiration into the hearts and minds of
those bright country boys and girls.
The Pollock Literary Society.
And then, after the Hightower Association, at Coal
Mountain, I had visited many communities in that
section, talking on Christian Education and trying
to light up the valleys and gild the mountain tops
with some of those gleams of Mercer light which had
so recently fallen into my own heart. Beginning at
Coal Mountain, I organized a chain of literary clubs,
naming each for some member of the Mercer
faculty or famous alumnus of the institution. The
first I named “The Pollock,” in honor of that king
among men, Dr. P. D. Pollock, who was then the
beloved President of Mercer University.
Thus I had sown lots of love and hard work in the
heart-soil of those mountain boys and girls, and
having met many echoes of that happy work in
schools and colleges and out on the cam
pus of the b'g old world, I had long been
anxious to go back to Cumming, which
was the “springboard” of those opera
tions in the golden long ago.
An Organizing Genius.
And so, when Prof. T. P. Tribble,
Superintendent of the Cumming Public
School, invited me to come and give a
platform lecture for the benefit of his
school library, I was like that dear old
creature wlfo had been left over in the
matrimonial market, and when the prop
osition came late in life, she said: “Yes,
and thanky, too.”
It was a trying ride over those four
teen miles of winter roads, but the “vis
ion on the mountain top paid for the
climbing.”
I found that on the site of the old
Hightower Institute, which had gone
down for lack of organized support (a
strong argument for the strength and
stability of the Mercer correlated system
of schools and colleges), the heroic peo
ple of that little inland town had built a
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:t PROF. T. P. TRIBBLE. g
City H r ew rea l successes
among the inlanu ... ith.
Prof. T. P. Tribble, a umvei.,.ty graduate, with
high scholarship and a good case of “old-time re
ligion,” had proved to be the organizing genius of
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H CUMMING PUBLIC SCHOOL. «
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ATLANTA. GA., JUNE 23, 1910.
the movement, while the big-hearted, plucky trus
tees, E. L. Tatum, Dr. A. Strickland, Rev. F. T. Wills,
E. F. Smith and T. J. Pirkle, backed by the citizens
generally, stood loyally around him. A splendid
nine months’ school thus organized and sup
ported in a country town of a few hundred inhabi
tants is no easy matter, and it shows the kind of
stalwart stuff that the citizens of Cumming are
made of.
Although barely two years old, the new school of
Cumming has gripped the youth of all that section,
and I found a fine set of bright boys and girls from
the rural districts boarding in town and drinking in
the information and inspiration offered them by
Prof. Tribble and his consecrated assistants —Miss
Omie Duncan, Miss Georgia B. Crowder, Miss Leila
Bishop and Miss Lillian Reeves —all in love with
their work in the literary department.
A Splendid Sign-—Parents at School.
When I spoke to the students that, afternoon, I
noted something that I do not always see when I
visit schools—l saw a great, big crowd of parents,
who had come out, not merely to hear the stranger
talk, but to express, by their presence, their interest
in their children and to give encouragement to the
teachers who occupy such a vital, sacred place in
either the uplift or downfall of their boys and girls.
Give me a community, where the parents often
visit the school to cheer pupils and teachers, and I
will show you a school that throbs with life, love,
hope and victory!
My lecture crowd at the Court House at night
would have done credit to a town five
times as large as Cumming. I tell you,
CUMMING IS COMING—yea, it did come
that night. And that big crowd and
“John” and I had a big time under that
well-known citizens’ “Hat.”
Talking of Chautauqua.
I turned aside and took extra time that
night to emphasize the vital foundation
importance to every community of bring
ing the best lecturers and musicians of
the country either in a lyceum course or
a Chautauqua. . Cumming is thinking now
of a late Summer Chautauqua.
My, my! what an inspiration it would
be if a stirring Chautauqua should be
planted at Cumming every year!
It would fire that whole mountain sec
ton with intellectual ideals and educa
tional purpose and make the valleys and
mountains to glow with that “light super
nal that never shone on land or sea.”
TWO DOLLARS 59 YEAH.
TIVE CENTS A COPY.
