Makers and Romance of Alabama HistoryRiley, B. F. (Benjamin Franklin)
History
Makers and Romance of Alabama History
Riley, B. F. (Benjamin Franklin)
Alabama -- Biography; Alabama -- History
From the walls of the Green Springs school went forth young men by the
hundreds with initial equipment which not only made the mastery of a
college course more easy and pleasant, but which served to lift them into
future prominence. Passing from under the tutelage of Dr. Tutwiler and
bearing a certificate with his name on it, was a guarantee worth the
having by any young man. From this rural retreat this skilled man of
letters sent into the swelling ranks of usefulness in this and adjoining
states, hundreds of young men who have helped to make their commonwealths
resplendent. It was not a demonstrative work, in the sense of showiness,
but it was demonstrative as it found expression in richness of result and
in exalted citizenship. Thus labored for many years this sage teacher and
mellow scholar, and far more than can be computed is Alabama indebted to
Henry Tutwiler.
DANIEL PRATT
Genuine worth is frequently overlooked because it does not appear in the
glare and rush of demonstration, and because it may modestly shrink from
the spectacular. The solid distinction reached by many is due to
conditions which lie out of sight and without which many who reach
positions of prominence would not have been heard of beyond their native
horizons.
Impelled by ambition, many see and seize the opportune moment presented,
fall into the current created by others, and are borne to eminence. Lying
back of that which the world esteems greatness are causes created of which
many avail themselves to ride to popular spectacularity, and yet these may
be only the superficial and surface effects.
In what are usually esteemed the humbler walks of life are oftentimes
giants who set in motion the tides of influence which make great
communities and even states, and yet whose worthy claims are never
heralded to the world as are the deeds of those who reach the popular
heights toward which the eyes of the public are accustomed to turn.
To this worthy class in the quieter walks of life belong numbers of the
best men of every generation whose vocations are such as to hide them from
the popular view, and yet without whom the greatness and the prosperity of
a commonwealth could not be.
Belonging to this class was Daniel Pratt, a native of New Hampshire, a
carpenter by trade, and a man in whose capacious brain were great
enterprises. Utterly without pretention, he was at first a common
laborer, working at his trade in different cities in Georgia for a period
of about fifteen years, in the early part of the century.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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