revolutionary changes were brought about by Colonel Parker alone; and were he here today he would not permit the claim that these results, so far as he was concerned, were attained thru the discovery by himself of anything entirely new. But no one familiar with the facts will deny that he played an important part. His virtue lay in trying to do, and in a measure succeeding in doing, what others for centuries had said should be done. He did not do the actual work of his subordinates, it is true. But he encouraged, he inspired, he supported, he protected them, and made their work possible. He was able to do this because he completely controlled the situation. Never was responsibility for a great work more happily placed. He made common cause with the least of his teachers. He praised work that in itself was often abominable and indefensible, except that it represented honest effort and displayed elements of originality on the part of the teacher. Many, many times he said, “Go ahead, work it out; now it is crude, but something good will come of it I am sure. We will stick together; and, remember, if they get after you, they must take me first." Will our schools ever succeed until the principals everywhere seek as patiently to cultivate the individual strength of their teachers, and thus as heroically defend them against superintendents, the boards of education, and even against the people themselves? It was in the face of opposition almost up to the point of bodily violence that the teachers were able to contribute their best efforts toward the demonstration of a few things that are now generally accepted as true. They ranged thru the whole domain of nature and man to find the appropriate educational content for the children in every grade. No matter how unusual the region of research, scarcely a corner in the field was left unexplored. Reading, and to some extent number and all the forms of expression, were brought into harmonious relationship with each other and to the central or nutritive subjects thru the necessity for their use as a means of study.

Colonel Parker's work was a distinct and practical contribution in an organized effort to supplant empty symbols with vital things. In this he was always stubbornly aggressive. When Froebel said, "Come, let us live with the children," he introduced the era of the new education. How often have we heard the man whom we honor today repeat the watchword of the great reformer! Like Froebel himself much that he accomplished grew out of a genuine love for little children. They were neither rich nor poor, neither high nor low-they were children all alike to him. The leaven that is leavening the whole lump of the educational systems of the world is the care now bestowed upon childhood. It was his careful and loving consideration of the child, of his physical, mental, and moral needs, that enabled him to do so much toward revolutionizing educational methods. It was genuine affection rather than philosophy that stirred him to send the children into the fields and woods to live

with nature, thereby inspiring them with a love for her and infusing them with a spirit of freedom. It was love back of reason that moved him to provide the children with the wholesome and happy industry that makes them at once interested partakers in the world's work and life. Because he worshiped at the shrine of childhood he did much to relegate the poverty-stricken skeletal text-books to oblivion and to put in their places the best of the whole world's literature. From sympathy and an innate sense of justice which grew out of his real belief in the actual goodness of children, he supplanted methods of force and cruelty with those of courtesy and kindness; and thus, by example rather than by logic, he has taught us to substitute law for caprice in our educational system.

As a means to the great end of education he believed in the scientific training of teachers. The training he sought to cultivate was developed thru constant practice under motives of the purest altruism. He tried, therefore, to establish in the school those normal relations under which human beings must always live. Hence his earnest endeavors to identify the work of the school with the interest of the home. Accordingly his conception of the duties of the teacher called for wide and genuine knowledge and also for the most expert skill in its application to the art of teaching. His students will easily recall how endlessly he toiled to secure the proper conditions to bring into active use all that they had ever learned, whether it was in school, in the city, or on the farm. It was a peculiar and most unusual type of mind that he could

not inspire with a love of study and a desire to act.

The source of his inspiration lay not in sounding phrases, but in the fact that he was a toiling student himself as well as a mighty doer of the word. He browsed incessantly in books without becoming their slave. He had the boundless interest of a true student in everything in nature, whether it was on the earth, in the heavens above, or in the waters underneath. He was full of the idea of final usefulness and ultimate design, and under this conception he perpetually labored to arrange all things in a symmetric and rational whole. His interest in childhood, in the class-room, and in the school was, however, but a part of his larger concern for the thoughts and doings of people; and they in turn were always mightily attracted by him. He was a born leader, and while many gave him but grudging allegiance, yet by cogent reasoning, and at times by reckless dash, he compelled the educational world first to listen and then to follow. His profound belief in his personal mission added impressive influence to what he said and did. He spoke only to deliver a message; in every act he moved toward a definite goal.

He never apologized for his being a teacher, but he endeavored to magnify his calling and to raise it to the level of a profession of which he sought to make us proud. He carried the energy and vitality of a dozen

men into the single purpose of his life, but he allowed no strength to be absorbed by side issues. He was absolutely immune against the itch of greed, and he could spend his last dollar like a king. Not all the speculative fury of Chicago in the days of her greatest boom could. cause him to swerve from the straight and narrow path of the consecrated teacher.

No sketch of Colonel Parker can be complete if it fails to accord to the work and influence of Mrs. Parker an important place. Coolheaded and clear in her thinking, with deep insight into the actual worth of men and things, she was his constant counselor while she lived, and many times she did yeoman work in helping to turn the wavering scales in his favor. She knew him and understood his work and appreciated his trials as perhaps no one else ever could. A brilliant teacher, original in her methods, a graceful and effective speaker, in the class-room, in the faculty meetings, and on the public platform she was always a loyal supporter and an intelligent exponent of his ideas and work.

row.

It used to be a motto of Colonel Parker's that we should plan as if we expected to live forever, but work as tho we knew we should die tomorLiving in accord with this sentiment, no man was ever better fitted to live, and no one could have been more fully prepared to go. After a great work for long years in behalf of the children, teachers, and the people, at a time when a new epoch of great promise opened before him, he was called upon to lay his burden down. Thus to die on Pisgah's heights were sad indeed had he not with each rising sun entered into his land of promise, where he reveled with its flowers and fruit. "Time is the false reply," said he, " and heaven is quality." The living present kept full to the brim his cup of joy. His ashes peacefully rest mingled with the soil of his native New Hampshire. But his spirit will live everywhere in the hearts and work of thousands of teachers, and thru them it will continue to minister to the welfare of the children and the race.

To those of us who are living on borrowed time, these occasions of tribute paying to the memory of our departed associates are specially impressive. As we see the ranks of those who were our early associates in this Council and in the National Educational Association thinning year by year, we realize that we shall soon pay our last tribute and join the departed.

When I was state commissioner of schools of Ohio, all too young for such a position, two young men were principals, respectively, of public schools in Cleveland and Dayton. These young men were Charles C. Rounds and Francis W. Parker. It was my privilege

to visit the Kentucky Street School, Cleveland, in charge of Mr. Rounds, and so favorably impressed was I with the man and the school that I improved the first opportunity to open to Mr. Rounds the superintendency of an Ohio city. He declined the position, feeling it to be his duty to return to Maine to be near his aged parents. He accepted there a position at less than one-third of the salary offered him in Ohio, but this, in the providence of God, opened to him his life-work as principal of the normal schools in two New England states, Maine and New Hampshire. I cannot add to what has been so well said of his work and influence in these two positions, or to Dr. Sabin's intelligent estimate of Dr. Rounds' ability, character, and standing as an educator mate that has the merit of overstating nothing.

--an esti

From our first acquaintance in Cleveland to Dr. Rounds' death we were close friends; and our friendship grew closer from year to year. In the last few years of his life we were associated each year in the instruction of teachers in different states, and in this relation I had the opportunity to form an intelligent judgment of his ability as an educator and of his high character as a man. I was most favorably impressed with his ability to see the relations of educational questions to other questions, which guarded him against the weakness of exploiting half-truths as universal principles. Dr. Rounds was too comprehensive a thinker to be a hobby rider. In his death the cause of education has lost one of its sanest advocates.

After his patriotic service in the army, Colonel Parker did not long remain in Dayton. He went to Germany to prepare himself for what proved to be his life-work. We next heard of him as superintendent of the schools of Quincy, Mass., where his reforms in school work attracted the attention of the country. From Quincy to his death, Colonel Parker was a conspicuous figure among American educators; and it was fitting that the Council's tribute to his memory should be voiced by one who was his intimate associate in the closing work of his life-a just and loving tribute to an unique and noble service.

I was not only associated with Colonel Parker in the Association and Council for years, but we were at times co-instructors in teachers' institutes and summer schools. While I could not accept all that seemed to him at the time the very gospel of education, we held a considerable body of educational doctrine in common, and we certainly heartily agreed in our advocacy of more vital school training a wiser and more consecrated effort to meet the needs of childhood. So far as I know, there never was a break in our friendship.

It is probably too early to determine definitely what are the contributions which Colonel Parker made to the improvement of the American school. He wrote little which may permanently abide, and no one saw this more clearly than himself. He once said to me, as if in jest, "I write to put my errrors behind me." Indeed, most of Colonel Parker's positive utterances were tentative. He reserved the right to reject or modify tomorrow what he uttered or held today. He said of himself: "I am a searcher for the truth." It remains for his disciples and associates to select and formulate the teachings of Colonel Parker which may have abiding value in the perfection of American education, especially of elementary education.

One thing, however, seems to me clear: Colonel Parker will live in educational history as the devoted apostle of childhood. In every child he saw the image of God, and so he not only loved, but, in a sense, worshiped little children. I never heard him speak on child training that he did not seem to be in the presence of a group of children under eight years of age. His school vision was horizontal. He rarely lifted his eyes to the upper grades or to the college. In the center of civilization he saw a little child; and the one thing to him eternally true was that the wise and loving care and nurture of that child would make all human interests secure.

MISS BETTIE A. DUTTON, Cleveland, O. It would not be fitting after these beautiful memorial papers to attempt any formal analysis of the character or of the work

of Dr. Rounds; yet I would bring at least a single leaf to place in the garland which Dr. White has wrought, in tribute to these, our brothers, whom we have today in loving memory.

Dr. Rounds was to me indeed as a "brother beloved." Coming to the principalship of one of the Cleveland schools when a young teacher, intimately associated with my own brother in his teaching and in our home, it was my happy privilege to be taken into a comradeship which was then, and has ever since been, of priceless value to me in my educational work. Mr. Rounds was but six years a teacher in the schools of Cleveland, yet he left on the work in that city an impress which has never been effaced. Remarkable evidence of this permanence of impress was not long ago afforded when returning to his eastern home from a lecture tour in the West. He stopped in Cleveland for a brief time, when informal opportunity was given his friends to greet him. They came in throngs -not former pupils alone, but patrons and friends, business and professional men-bearing glad witness to the value of the instruction received from Dr. Rounds in their early school years. It was a royal greeting, worthy of prince or king. With Dr. Rounds' loyal devotion to the integrity of this Council and to the National Educational Association you are all familiar; yet you may not have known, a fact revealed in committee work, that more than once were the highest honors of each offered to him, and on his part declined on the sole ground of his belief that they should go to another. No personal preferment, no possible gain had weight with him, balanced in the light of fair dealing, of absolute right.

With Dr. Rounds as president, the Denver meeting of the Council was a memorable one a meeting of rare value and vigor. Those present at the sessions will readily remember how graciously he presided and how effectively he succeeded in realizing its early ideals as an educational "Council."

JOHN W. COOK, President Northern Illinois State Normal School. -I have been especially interested in the remarks which have been made upon the life and character of my dear friend, Colonel Parker. It is with some hesitation that I attempt to add a word to what has been said, for I feel that whatever is uttered upon an occasion of this kind should be most carefully considered. I am reluctant, however, to keep my seat, and hence beg your indulgence for what I shall have to say.

The most striking characteristic of Colonel Parker was his sublime faith in childhood. He loved to idealize it and to clothe it with all that was beautiful and full of hope. Any disposition to interfere with its spontaneity, to lessen its joy, to make life hard and mechanical, brought to his lips the most strenuous and indignant protest. His sublime faith in the possibilities of humanity gave him the most exalted estimate of the function of the teacher. To his thought there was not in the wide world so sacred a calling. No other position was such a vantage ground for help to humanity. He was forever shaming us for our low ideals and for our inadequate conception of the dignity of our calling. He would have the teacher at once the most rarely gifted by nature and the most generously equipped by training of all of the workers of the world. In consequence of this fiery enthusiasm he was unique and fascinating. To oppose him seemed like assaulting a sacred cause. It was inevitable that his extreme views should encounter hot and passionate opposition. I never found myself combating any of his notions, however, without a lurking fear that such opposition might identify me with that Philistinism which regarded with indifference his fundamental doctrine of the worth of the child and the inestimable value of the teacher.

Colonel Parker has left no successor. In his mental constitution he was thoroly individualized, and the qualities which gave him such extreme prominence were largely personal rather than doctrinal. His influence was immediate and direct. He could not bear to write books; hence nothing that he has contributed to educational literature can fairly reflect his charming personality. It seemed to him so inert without his insistent word and admonition and suggestion. He was at his greatest and best in the presence