Report Volume 2

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: certificates. He prepares and furnishes plans, on application, for building school houses. He works up the interests of the various educational associations. He makes suggestions to the Legislature, and meets with its committees when any educational question is under consideration, and is the friend of the great cause at court, always ready to defend it when attacked, or to push it to victory when opportunity offers. He visits, as his office duties allow, the Teachers' Institutes, and speaks on all great occasions when he can propagate the ideas that underlie the system. That something of this work may be comprehended I will state, that, during the past seven years, I have delivered seven hundred and eighteen public addresses and given many hundreds of blackboard prelections, class exercises, etc., in the Institutes. This has involved much expense, amounting to quite seven hundred dollars a year, much sacrifice of the sweets of home, the privations incident to many thousands of miles of travel by rail, steamer, stage, on horseback, and on foot, and the vicarious suffering sometimes occasioned by the kind of entertainment to which he is subjected in his itineracy. This field-work of the Superintendent is not required by the letter of the law, and no provision is made for the payment of his expenses. This service is cx-gratia, and, should it fail to receive the deserved recognition by a generous public, upon which it has been expended, he would feel, indeed, that republics are ungrateful. When in the field, I have always had my mail sent to me, and carried a portion of my work with me, so that I have employed the leisure I could gain while abroad in executing office duties. So much of this work is done in seclusion that I fear the public but feebly apprehendthe exacting charact...