eternal
destinies. Thence he must have learned to reverence himself and his
profession, and to look upon its otherwise ill-requited toils as their
own exceeding great reward.

If such are the difficulties and the discouragements, such the duties,
the motives, and the consolations of teachers who are worthy of that
name and trust, how imperious then the obligation upon every enlightened
citizen who knows and feels the value of such men to aid them, to cheer
them, and to honor them.

But let us not be content with barren honor to buried merit. Let us
prove our gratitude to the dead by faithfully endeavoring to elevate the
station, to enlarge the usefulness, and to raise the character of the
schoolmaster amongst us. Thus shall we best testify our gratitude to the
teachers and guides of our own youth, thus best serve our country,
and thus most effectually diffuse over our land light, and truth, and
virtue.

[Footnote 39: Bacon.]

* * * * *

=_John W. Francis, 1789-1861._= (Manual, pp. 487, 532.)

From his "Reminiscences."

=_122._= PUBLIC CHANGES DURING A SINGLE LIFETIME.

He who has passed a period of some three score years and upward, some
faithful Knickerbocker for instance, native born, and ever a resident
among us, whose tenacious memory enables him to meditate upon the
thirty thousand inhabitants at the time of his birth, with the almost
oppressive population of some seven hundred thousand which the city at
present contains; who contrasts the cheap and humble dwellings of
that earlier date, with the costly and magnificent edifices which now
beautify the metropolis; who studies the sluggish state of the mechanic
arts at the dawn of the Republic, and the mighty demonstrations of skill
which our Fulton, and our Stevens, our Douglas, our Hoe, and our Morse,
have produced; who remembers the few and humble water-craft conveyances
of days past, and now beholds the majestic leviathans of the ocean which
crowd our harbors; who contemplates the partial and trifling commercial
transactions of the Confederacy, with the countless millions of
commercial business which engross the people of the present day, in our
Union; who estimates the offspring of the press, and the achievements of
the telegraph, he who has been the spectator of all this, may be justly
said to have lived the period of many generations, and to have stored
within his reminiscences the progress of an era the most remarkab