Dr. Rounds was a modest man; he was not self-conscious; he did not believe that the world would stop when he died, or that his death would be an irreparable loss to the cause of education. He was only anxious not to be found wanting in any department of work to which his duty called him. He realized the full force of the word "ought." "I ought to do it," or "I ought not to do it," settled the question for him beyond any further debate. He sought to build this thought into the character of his students, and today, whenever you find a graduate of Farmington or Plymouth under Dr. Rounds, you find a man or woman in whose mind the performance of duty is paramount to everything else.

Dr. Rounds was president of this Council at its meeting in Denver, in 1895. He arranged an excellent program and presided with the dignity and fairness characteristic of the man. That meeting of the Council is recognized today as among the best ever held. At this meeting the Committee on State School Systems made its final report on the Rural School Problem. Dr. Rounds left the chair in order that he might urge immediate action in view of the importance of the subject. The discussion which followed eventuated in the appointment of a committee of twelve to consider the whole subject and report in two years. Dr. Rounds was placed on this committee and subsequently was made chairman of the Sub-committee on Supply of Teachers.

I think he himself wrote that division of the report. He entered with energy and enthusiasm into the general work of the committee. His acquaintance with the country schools of New Hampshire and Maine rendered his services of great value. For years he had been studying the different questions which came before the committee for solution. He thought he saw the opportunity which he had long sought of doing something permanent to elevate the country schools, and it is only a matter of justice that due credit should be given to him for a large share of whatever there may be of excellence in that report. I am very sure that

those of that committee who remain and who remember his zeal and earnestness at that time will agree with me in this estimate of his usefulness to us in our labors.

To human sight it seems a matter of regret that Dr. Rounds could not have been spared to finish the work he had in mind. At the time of his death his intellect was not dimmed nor his zeal abated. His work Psychology for Teachers, on which he had spent much time and study, was just ready to put into shape for the printer. So also his lecture. "Joan of Arc," in the study of whose life he had spent years, and of other matters in which he was greatly interested. But it was not to be.

It is not, however, always given us to clear up the desk, to read the last proof, to write the last letter, to put everything in readiness for the newcomer before we close the lid and go home.

Under a somewhat cool exterior Dr. Rounds carried a warm, emo

tional heart. He was true to his friends, true to his associates, true to the instincts of his earlier and his mature years, and to the relations which he sustained to his God.

Viewing the life of Dr. Rounds from his cradle to his grave-boyhood, youth, manhood-the membership of this Council can show no finer example of the refining, elevating, broadening influences of unselfish devotion to one great purpose.

In closing I venture to quote from State Superintendent Stetson. He says:

He was one of the closest and sanest observers of life in New England, the great West, the new South, and modern Europe, produced in Maine. His knowledge of historic, social, industrial, political, and educational conditions made him an exceptionally intelligent and safe investigator in these several fields of activity, and made it possible for him to contribute a master's share toward the solution of our most difficult problems. To all questions he brought a thoro knowledge of the best writers, an intimate personal acquaintance with educational thinkers and workers, a willingness to make a painstaking examination of actual conditions.

At its meeting at Detroit in 1901, this Council paid its last tribute of respect to two of its most honored members. Today, after the lapse of one year, we are again called upon to mourn the loss and to record our estimate of the worth of two others who have passed

"Into the undiscovered country from whose bourne
No traveller returns."

Only one short year has passed

"So soon does brother follow brother,

From sunshine to the sunless land."

Last year Barnard and Hinsdale

this year Rounds and Parker; next year- but sufficient unto the day is the sorrow thereof.

In the beautiful cypress-shaded English cemetery in Rome, these words of Shelley are inscribed on the monument to Keats. They are appropriate today:

Peace, peace, he is not dead, he doth not sleep;

He hath awakened from the dream of life;

'Tis we who, lost in stormy visions, keep

With phantoms an unprofitable strife.

Colonel Francis Wayland Parker

WILBUR S. JACKMAN, DEAN OF THE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

For almost a quarter of a century it has rarely happened that the National Educational Association has met in its annual session without feeling in some of its meetings the personal influence of Colonel Parker thru his commanding and inspiring presence. It is inevitable, therefore, as we realize that he can return in the flesh no more, that there

should crowd to the minds of all of us - his friends-the memories of those days when with words of cheer and serious admonition he sought to uplift and to sustain the members of his profession in the vigorous discharge of their duties to their pupils, to the public, and to themselves.

It has been difficult to choose the theme for this occasion. I need not

recall history, for with that you are already familiar. It is vain to speak as a prophet; for the verdict of the future must rest with those who are yet to try the teachings of the great schoolmaster in the crucible of their experience. I would not devote myself to educational theories alone; for on this day of all days it is the man we remember, and not a philosophy. There remain, then, to us who enjoyed his friendship and who knew him well but the simpler things. At this time, when feelings of deep personal loss must supersede all others, it seems most fitting, as it is most pleasant, to pass in brief review those qualities of mind and soul that distinguished him as a teacher and a man.

At the close of an active career, in which he encountered many obstacles, in which he often ran ruthlessly against the wishes and best judgment of his associates and friends, we find that he has endeared himself to the teachers in American schools as few other men in our history have done. To win one's way into the affections of people requires more than a system of philosophy; it requires the spirit of a genuine man. The characteristics, therefore, which give him place are personal not less than professional. Some one has said that when the Almighty wishes to bring about a great event he creates a man and lets him loose in the world. It is not impossible that the future may declare that our fallen leader was such a man. A natural iconoclast, as the sparks fly upward, he was born to trouble. He was the arch-infidel of orthodoxy in educational creeds. Incisive in his thinking, in his best days he could demolish with a word where another, smothering courage in discretion, used arguments in folios.

I remember such an instance on the occasion when I saw and heard him for the first time. It was on the public platform before a convention of teachers in an eastern city. At the close of his lecture on "The Artist or Artisan, Which?" he sat down and invited the teachers to ask some questions. In those days, perhaps more than later, he had an alluring way of drawing out an unsuspecting questioner until he had him. fairly focused in the bright light of everybody's attention, and then he would suddenly run him thru with the rapier of his wit. After the teachers had exposed some of the more glaring features of his infidelity. as to current school customs, a principal arose as if to apply the final test for his sanity, and said, "But, Colonel Parker, do you mean to say that if the school board made the children buy spelling books and take them to school that you wouldn't use them?" His face became radiant with one of his smiles as he replied, with great show of enthusiasm, "Oh, yes, I'd

use them; of course I would; I'd put them into the stove and heat the house with them." It was on that day that he converted my soul.

He was an uncompromising foe to all forms of conventionality - that individual and social stiffness that almost inevitably comes with age. He sought to act upon the spirit of the law, sometimes, it is true, with small regard for the letter. Bound by no conventions and fettered by no traditions, creating none himself, he was ever free to take fresh points of view and to inaugurate new lines of action. Every day was literally for him a new beginning. Great flexibility of mind, which admitted of his constant readaptation to changing conditions, was the remarkable trait in his later years. If he was absurdly inconsistent, his were the inconsistencies of growth of the flower that gives but little hint of the

fruit.

He solaced himself, with Emerson, that "consistency is the hobgoblin of petty minds," and in that consolation his soul remained undisturbed, altho his rapid shifting from point to point in the course of his thinking. and exposition was often the despair of his students and the faculty. The result is that he will probably live in the future with the briefest history ever written of a man who has actually done so much. As he declined to accept a creed handed down from the past, so he himself refused to impose a creed upon his followers, or even to suggest a watchword under which disciples in the future might assemble. He has given us no fixed definition of education, but he formulated many definitions as he grew. He has left but few books, and these he himself outlived, and those of us who knew him best will scarcely care to read them except as they represent history, so far do they fall below the level of what he actually was in his work. It would seem, therefore, that the history of Colonel Parker, if ever written, must first be wrought out in concrete form by those who were personally associated with him as students and teachers: and, could he speak today, they, I am sure, would be his chosen biographers.

As to the educational value of the multitude of details that filled his busy days, there must always be widely varying opinions; but as to the great cardinal traits of character there can be no disagreement. He never failed to stand by his convictions regardless of the opposing odds. No considerations of peace or quiet, no thoughts of expediency, no ties of faith or friendship even, seemed to have the slightest weight when he considered that a question of principle was at stake. By a few keen thrusts at fixed opinions in the soberest of conventions he could create a raging turmoil in which his soul found pure delight. Nor was his attitude toward the public less uncompromising than it was toward those whom he opposed within the profession. Many instances may be recalled, such as the night when he went to the city hall to espouse the despised cause of the fads as represented by clay modeling and manual training. At

that tumultuous meeting he discounted the tactics of a shrewd lawyer who was supported by a crowd that, it was said, had been "packed" for the occasion. Here is where we shall miss his leadership and support. Will we will those whom he tried to train in trustworthiness, in times of stress and strain, stand for the rights of the children against the aggressive impudence of those who in the past decade have threatened their welfare? Have we the courage to take up those heaven-born innovations that come from time to time into our schools as fads and foster them until they win their rightful place?

We may with great profit go back a few years and note the growth of rational ideas in school affairs. A few years ago the belief was almost universal that in learning to read a vocabulary should first be acquired thru the use in each of the early grades of a book or two that had been prepared expressly for the purpose of offering words to the children. Learning to write consisted merely of training in the drawing of letters. Drawing was an exercise, where it existed at all, that stood apart and alone, utterly useless as a means of expression. We were but emerging from the days of the flat copy into the use of objects that were scarcely more interesting or more educative. The employment of color in painting, as a necessary form of expression in the hands of children, was practically unknown. Clay-modeling had no standing whatever in the curriculum, and it was the focal center against which all the anti-fad diatribes were hurled. Even manual training was in its infancy, playing almost no part in the related work of the school. It was in 1883 that there was established in the Practice Department in thé Cook County Normal School a manual-training room, which, I believe, Colonel Parker claimed was the first of the kind in this country. In one of his reports he says: "My first experience of genuine spontaneous attention was the sight of the first class at work with saw and plane." Thru the proper functioning of the various forms of expression they have now been placed among the means of study, whereas before they had been regarded as ends in themselves. Within this period, too, falls the discovery that the invention of the printing press, with the art of printing, is a practical and invaluable adjunct in modern educational methods. For years the work in the normal school was almost at a standstill for the reason that no natural connection could be made between the experiences of the children and the books with which they could be supplied. But the fad of the printing press, expensive and troublesome as it was, solved the difficulty and gave a tremendous impulse to every phase of work in the school. The greatest blessing of the decade, however, was the discovery that the children were being starved on the dessicated verbiage of the books. This led to all there is of nature study and the occupations, and to the new geography.

It would be preposterous, of course, to assume that these rapid and