which has gradually changed to personal regard and a high measure of confidence, as year by year has manifested how ripe the scholarship of this comparative stranger to our educational circles; how broad and mellow and luminous his skill as a teacher; how thorough and profound his knowledge of what the schools, from the primary to the Normal grade (his latest suggestions as to the latter being found elsewhere in this issue, in his annual report), need in appliances and in the teaching art; how clear his conception of duty as the chief of his great department; how sound the ring of his utterances when discussing the questions of school polity or suggesting lines of progress for legislative action-rising conspicuous among those about him, as he has always done whatever his field of labor, and brushing aside mere martinetism with the broad influence of general principles.

The foremost scholar and probably the ablest man in the common school work, he has rapidly grown to be a welcome and familiar presence everywhere in Pennsylvania; with warm greeting from hosts of friends because of personal good-will; and with an official record such as to merit the highest compliment possible to any State Superintendent of Public Instruction-that of re-appointment by an Executive of an opposite political faith, in deference to what he regarded a sense of duty to the Commonwealth. The situation was unique. Mere partisanship, however intelligent and devoted to the public welfare, would neither have encouraged nor permitted what, in the opinion of Governor Pattison, the public good demanded, and what he had resolved should be done in the best spirit of the new article in the advanced political creed-tenure of office and civil service reform. Men said this would never be. Dr. Higbee neither asked for the position nor made effort to bring influence to bear that he might retain it, but quietly awaited the event, gratefully declining many offers of friendly aid while the appointment was pending. Not that he was at all indifferent as to the result, but he felt that he had been "called"; the position had come without his seeking it; if his first term was to be his last-it was well. He was confident that the Governor would, in his discretion, do as seemed best in discharge of his official duty.

Now that so many school men in all parts of Pennsylvania know Dr. Higbee, it has been thought that brief personal mention of fact or incident, casually referred to in the freedom of personal intercourse, and

some statement of impressions fixed through years of intimate acquaintance, would be of especial interest in these columns. When we enjoy a man we want to know more about him-all about him, if that were possible.

His father, at one time a man of large means, having by an ill-starred endorsement lost his property, it was early the good fortune of the son to feel the necessity for selfdependence.

In deference to the wishes of his mother,, he declined a desirable appointment as cadet to the United States Military Academy at West Point-turning aside from a branch of the national service for which he seemed especially fitted from his ardent love of adventure, his great strength and skill in all athletic sports, his fearless energy, good judgment, fine social qualities, rare mental gifts, and the ready command of all his powers at any moment. Had he entered the army thirty-five years ago, and studied the science and art of war as he has since devoted himself to the sciences and arts of peace, he would, doubtless, long ere this have attained high military rank and reputation.

Instead of West Point, he entered the University of Vermont, where, at the same time that he was one of the most brilliant students in the recitation room or on the platform, he became known as the champion foot-ball player of New England, as well as one of her champion wrestlers, having in his college days encountered but one man— and he a Canadian of firm-set limb and mighty strength of loins-whom he could not put down and keep down in this goodnatured test of bodily skill and strength and endurance. A good wrestler must be "good" all over, and weak nowhere. He was also a famous cricketer, until a finger broken by the ball compelled him to forego the vigorous game.

On a recent visit of his brother from the Pacific coast, a few months ago, the latter inquired whether he remembered how he (Dr. H.) had learned to skate, saying that it had impressed him as a remarkable thing at the time, and that he had often thought of it since. We mention the incident here as illustrating his boyhood mastery of a boyhood art, as perhaps not another lad in ten thousand has acquired it. The boy had buckled on his skates for the first time, but had hardly got upon the ice before a sudden and stunning fall put an end to his anticipa tions of sport. He promptly took them off, and could not be induced to put them on again during the winter. Ice coming again

graduation, he was offered a most desirable position in the office of one of the leading lawyers of Vermont, a gentleman in possession of a large and lucrative practice, which he wished to leave in the hands of an able successor. Had he accepted this promising offer, he would, no doubt, have become known as a lawyer of profound learning, and as an eminently successful advocate of splendid forensic ability. His gifts as a public speaker, his mastery of statecraft, and the fiery energy of argument, or appeal, or denunciation, which would then have been cultivated rather than repressed-ambition lending its sharp spur to his intentwould have made him known prominently in the political arena of struggle and preferment, during the memorable era of the past thirty years.

But he turned resolutely from all this to the higher life of the teacher-student, of college professor and president; to the quiet round of clerical duty-so often a life of actual privation-accepting whatever of duty or obligation a wise Providence might have in store. And well was that choice made.

As

a clergyman, his rank is undisputed as one of the foremost divines in the Reformed Church of the United States. He has preached thousands of able discourses, but has in his possession probably not a dozen sermons completely written out, being exceedingly impatient of manuscript, seldom caring to re-read a paper or to repeat an address-though at the same time very careful, painstaking and accurate in the preparation of any formal paper or official report, for illustration of which the reader is referred to his annual reports as Superintendent of Public Instruction.

In the field of instruction, his rank is simply extraordinary. Men skilled in specialties say of him, "Dr. Higbee should teach nothing but Greek,"-"Dr. Higbee should never teach anything but Latin "nothing but Philosophy of History""nothing but English Literature"-" nothing but Church History and Exegesis "nothing but Mathematics"-in fact, nothing but the specialty in which he happens, for any length of time, to be giving instruction, because in it he has become so able a master. So thorough is his acquaintance with these varied lines of study and research that he turns, at times, for relaxation and pleasure, to the calculus in mathematics, or to the Greek comedy in the original, for the enjoyment it affords.

As chairman of the general committee on music and the revision of the hymnal of the

Reformed Church some years ago—with his accustomed broad-gauge thoroughness, in order that the work might be as well done as possible-he made a collection of hymnology, mediæval and modern-Latin, German and English-which is spoken of by those competent to form a reliable judgment, as probably the most complete to be found anywhere in Pennsylvania. Had he devoted his life to Music or Painting, he would have been a master in either direction, the work that he has done as an amateur being sufficient evidence of this.

For an ordinary lifetime he has been on the footing of acquaintance, more and more familiar as the years have passed, with the master spirits of all the ages of history kings whose brows are encircled not with shifting metal crowns but with the aure'ola of immortality; who rule by divine right in the realm of the intellect and in that sphere higher yet, the empire of the heart; whose voices speak to all succeeding generations; whose thought has challenged and quickened the thought of all great thinkers since their time. He is as familiar with Socrates as with Luther; with St. Paul as with Milton; with Aristophanes as with Shakespeare; with Chaucer as with Longfellow or Tennyson. He knows, as Lord Macaulay did, with a rich fullness of personal experience," the feeling which a man of liberal education naturally entertains towards the great minds of former ages," and this is constantly manifesting itself in his addresses and reports. More than any other man we know, "they have filled his mind with noble and graceful images."

Many of his pupils speak of him as a man with the gift or power of inspiring in them a new and nobler enthusiasm, such as no other man could arouse. We have heard our most earnest Superintendents and Principals of Normal Schools, as well as teachers, say this of him in the work he is endeavoring to do in the State. Built firmly into the development of the mind, his work tells mightily in the life of the soul.

The secret of his power lies in the fact that he lives constantly in two worlds-the spiritual, invisible to the eye of sense, being ever the substantial; and the material, upon which we tread and with which we are in contact on every side, ever the fleeting. For him the past and the future are always the present. In habit of thought like this, life is forever lifted out of the sphere of the commonplace-quite apart from the dollarand-cent struggle for power and gain-into that altitude where the " strength of the

known personally a man so many-sided, or capable of high-grade work on so many lines of effort or another man of whom such an article as this could be written. He will, of course, say on reading it that it is not true of him! Modest disclaimer by a man of merit is ever comely, and generous selfnegation delightful; but the witness is here ruled ont of court. What is written must stand. We believe it-and the present seems a case in which it is not best to wait until a man is dead before the many may learn facts well known to the few.

Ex-State Supt. Hickok, who, from the quiet seclusion of his home in Philadelphia, still manifests a sympathetic interest in the cause to which he gave the best years of his life under very trying circumstances, has incidentally touched this subject from his own point of view, in reply to a private letter written shortly after the appointment of Dr. Higbee for a second term. Though published so late as perhaps to have lost some of its point, it possesses an interest that will attract attention among school men. put the letter into type as deserving to become a part of the permanent record of the present situation in our school affairs, from the standpoint of a veteran observer:

We

cations, as in the present case. Dr. Higbee's simple presence in the School Department as a clergyman, disarms and neutralizes the unfounded but tenacious prejudice that still existed against the common schools as "godless" and demoralizing, and his official testimony proves it to be groundless. We know that they level up, not down. In some localities, the only idea of order and discipline, good manners, good principles, respect for authority, that children get, they get in the common schools. The clamor referred to has died out, and under clerical leadership we have more than ever for the schools the sympathy and friendly influence of the churches, which is so pervading and powerful, and whose co-operation, but not interference, is so desirable. Christianity, like the air we breathe and the sunlight that blesses us, is a diffused and subtle atmosphere, that bears healing on its wings far beyond sectarian lines, and through the spiritual sense can be felt like an intangible but positive presence in all educational work.

Genial and broad-minded, Dr. Higbee is and cannot fail to be popular, his usefulness steadily growing with ripening experience. With MacAlister in Philadelphia regenerating the First School District, and himself in the School Department with its comprehensive jurisdiction, the educational interests of Pennsylvania were never in better or safer hands than now, and we have a right to cherish "great expectations as to ultimate results.

Rev. Elnathan Elisha Higbee, D. D., LL.D., was born in Burlington, Vermont, March 27, 1830. His parents were people of good descent and of marked intellectual power, and the son, while a mere lad, was noted for his skill in the solution of puzzling problems in arithmetic and algebra that came to him from all the region for many miles around. When quite young he entered the University of Vermont, where he distinguished himself in a class of great ability, and was graduated with honor in 1849. He taught a common school in his native state before he was sixteen years of age. After graduation, he was induced, through the influence of his brother-in-law, Rev. Dr. Geo. W. Aughinbaugh, now President of Mercersburg College, Franklin Co., Pa., to engage in teaching in Emmittsburg, Frederick county, Md. Here he was employed as tutor in the family of the late Hon. Joshua Motter, whose daughter he afterwards married. He also taught a year as assistant teacher in the High School of Lancaster, Pa. While in Emmittsburg his mind was turned to the Christian ministry, and he soon after entered the Theological Seminary of the German Reformed Church,

"What things have we seen Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have So nimble, and so full of subtle flame, [been As if that every one from whom they came Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest."

So run Beaumont's lines, and in just such company would this man Higbee be most at home, for he knows and delights in the dramas of Shakespeare and the contemporary writers of his era as not another man in tens of thousands can. Dyspepsia! He is one of the gladdest souls that breathe vital air and revel in the sunlight.

Physically, he is a man of tough, wiry constitution, with great power of endurance, and wholly equal to the arduous duties of the two important positions which he occupies. Though, of course, past the climax of physical strength, if necessity arose he could, as of old, strike a blow like a sledge-hammer, with the quickness of thought and the precision of the skilled boxer. When the Institute season or that of examination and visitation of Normal and Orphan Schools is on, he travels continuously by day and night, working and speaking all the while, with frequent sermons on Sundays, at times preaching twice in one day-and this for weeks together, coming out of his busy campaign strong and vigorous.

The only physical ailments to which he has any predisposition, are pneumonia from exposure to cold, nervous stricture of the muscles of breathing which results from occasional asthmatic trouble, and an annually recurring hay-fever annoyance-neither nor all of which have in any sense prevented the full and complete discharge of the varied and important duties devolving upon him as Superintendent.

What was designed to crush him, and would have crushed a weaker official, has but given him new strength, and made more evident the granite temper of his mind and the steel-like quality of his endurance. His numerous friends have been more outraged than even himself at the unremitting efforts which have been made to destroy the reputation, to belittle the character and work, and if possible, to bring into popular contempt, the ripest scholar and one of the very