The Last Leaf: Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America and EuropeHosmer, James Kendall
History
The Last Leaf: Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America and Europe
Hosmer, James Kendall
History; United States -- History
open his book, and calculating narrowly the parallax, to hold
it concealed below the rail, while he diligently conned the page
following. In his turn he rose well-primed, and spouted glibly, and so
on down the class. Rumour went that our childlike professor declared
he had never known anything like it. Nearly every man got the perfect
mark. This was a fiction. The professor's idea was that we were old
enough to know what was good for us, and ought to be above childish
negligence and tricks. If some men saw no use in botany, he would
not waste time in beating it into them. He left the blind and the
sluggards in their wilful ignorance, but had generously helpful hands
for all wiser ones who saw the value of trimming their lamps. All such
he would take to his garden personally to direct and inspire, and
our better men felt all through their lives how much that meant. In
general we soon came to feel and appreciate a most kindly influence
as proceeding from him. I think we had no teacher whom we at the last
regarded more affectionately or approached more closely; and many an
indolent one was won to warm interest and diligence.
Those were the days when the older science was rocking to its
foundations in a re-shaping at the hands of new and brilliant men.
Faraday, we might have heard of, but Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, and the
rest, were names all unknown, as were also the revolutionary ideas,
the conservation and correlation of forces, the substitution of
evolution in the scheme of the universe for the plan of special
creations. Here all unconsciously we were in contact with a man
who was in the thick of the new scientific movement, the friend and
partner in their strivings of the daring new interpreters of the
ways of God to men, and who was to have recognition as a specially
effective apostle of the new dispensation. Abraham himself entertained
his angel no more unawares than we, but gleams of fine radiance
sometimes broke through even to our purblind perceptions. Once
unfurling a quite too long and heedless pair of ears to what I
supposed would be a dull technical deliverance, I found myself
suddenly caught and wonderfully stimulated.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account