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I am at one with you in hating "hush up" as I do all other
forms of lying; but I venture to submit that the compromise
of 1871 was not a "hush up." If I had taken it to be such, I
should have refused to have anything to do with it....

There has never been the slightest ambiguity about my position
in the matter; in fact, if you will turn to one paper on the
School Board written by me before my election in 1870, I
think you will find that I anticipated the pith of the present
discussion.

The persons who agreed to the compromise did exactly what all
sincere men who agree to compromise do. For the sake of
the enormous advantage of giving the rudiments of a decent
education to several generations of the people, they accepted
what was practically an armistice in respect of certain
matters about which the contending parties were absolutely
irreconcilable.

To return to his activity on the School Board. His vigorous work as
chairman of the committee appointed to frame an educational scheme was
marked by great breadth of view. He desired the elementary schools
to be linked at the one end with infant schools; at the other with
continuation schools and some scheme for technical education. A
perfect scheme would provide what he first called a ladder from the
gutter to the university, whereby children of exceptional capacity
might reach the places for which nature had fitted them. His sense of
fitness would have welcomed even more warmly some system whereby the