The life of Horace Mann was full of severe work. Few men have had the grace to return so uncompromising an answer to the question whether their service was to be rendered to God or Mammon. He had the gift of separating religion from its accidental trappings, and of recognizing in the simplest intuition of accountability for our neighbor's welfare the best working hypothesis. Like Theodore Parker, he excelled the common citizen, not in reach of skepticism, but in might of faith. His was never that gentlemanly sort of virtue which devotes unoccupied corners of the being, as it were in decorative fashion, to the interests of humanity. He would toil patiently at the humblest crank-work, content to move puppets who received whatever public credit was to be had. Mr. Mann abandoned a political career that was calculated to satisfy a generous ambition, to take the newly created office of Secretary of the Board of Education, unassociated with dignity or emolument. "If the position is not honorable now," he replied to the remonstrances of a friend, "then it is clearly for me to elevate it; and I would rather be creditor than debtor to the title." He combined in a rare degree the working powers of the enthusiast with the balance of the philosopher. He wrought at high-pressure, yet looked to no immediate or showy success. "If no seed were ever sown save that which would promise the requital of a full harvest, how soon would mankind revert to barbarism!" The exclamation was with him no disregarded truism.