I have been trying {to} find a few minutes in my writing hours to write you but have been constantly mortgaged. I stick in now late at night, as Harry & I are to leave early tomorrow for Chicago on a call from the World’s Fair Commns. to help them decide about sites. Last week we were at several points centering on New York; the most interesting being West Point, where I shd like to take you. We were called there by the Supdet for advice. The most interesting thing we saw there was the collection of drawings of the last graduating class. I don’t know how many—perhaps a hundred—arranged in order of merit, free hand, topographical, mechanical, black and white and tinted. The range was not great, the poorest being good enough for ordinary purposes, the best not strikingly fine. The cadets were in camp and made a fine show. The quarters were singularly bare & cheap, furniture rude, neat, of course, as far as scrubbing and paint would make them so. It was fine to see the set up of the men. You ought to gain in that respect. The old men—grey beards—carried themselves even better than the younger, showing the effect of early forming a good habit. First, a matter of compulsion and gymnastics, it sticks.

I meant to save & send you all that appeared about the Herald’s prize essays but going to New York, I lost the tabular statement, giving an order of merit for a good number—perhaps fifty of the competitors. Your name was not among them. I enclose one little bit which has a thought in it to be considered. I don’t know that I quite agree. But I rather think of a young man it is generally true that the cultivation of the critical faculty is stunting to the literary faculty. I question if it is not so up to a certain point, and a comparatively high point, in all arts. It has struck me, for example, that most people who are very critical about music, acting, painting have little enjoyment of them. But that is up to a certain point. High cultivation—very high, high to a degree that is very rare—gets the better of the difficulty. And the most critical writer may be the most graceful, e.g. Lowell.

The proposition for a three years college course has drawn out some notable discussion. There has been a drift in it that I had not expected to the notion that preparatory training in study—i.e. the ordinary academic & [166]collegiate education—may profitably break joints more than has hitherto been allowed with professional study. I enclose what Profr Shaler says about it. I am not ready to adopt his view with reference to men in general. Perhaps it depends on what the profession is, or rather upon the character of the professional study in view, the necessary early studies of some professions being of a very general cultivating tendency. To read Blackstone and Kent is a capital mental exercise—and a capital bit of literary training. In your case I do not feel that there is any question from the start. You should steadily pursue a course of reading and of thinking upon the suggestions of that reading, that would have the effect of both general and special professional training. You should have gone with interest and a good appetite and digestion through all the literature of the profession before you leave college, and do a good deal of what, if you were to be a chemist, would correspond in the college course with laboratory work. All that the college allows you in the field of fine arts, both as to observation of examples and as to history; and all it allows in the pursuance of a general liberal education, in the way of drawing, &c. You must make the most of, for the reason that it not only gives you what it is intended to give all who take it, but sends you forward materially in such study for a purpose as is generally taken after the college course.

William P. is living with us, taking your place as best he can. Good fellow. In working hours he is at the Arboretum. I almost wish you were with him but I suppose you are better off on the whole where you are.

Your affect Father

Touching this matter of “straighter” early school instruction, Goodwin’s position seems to be pretty well established but I don’t see the mode in which the alleged advantage is obtained sufficiently defined. If it is by an improved or more scientific order of instruction, all right. But if it is by holding the mind more continuously, strictly and strenuously to study with less freedom, spontaneity and babyisness than is at present customary with us, will not some power and quality be dwarfed? That is to say, prematurely and unnaturally checked in development? It seems to me that that is a wise question of pedagogical science here which the public discussion of preparatory school methods does not sufficiently recognize.