JOHN B. MUBPHY 339 lived with the family. The teachers were students in the Law- rence University at Appleton, Wis., four miles distant, and were working their way through college by teaching five days — returning to the university on Saturdays for recitation. The parents realized the value of education and often made use of this expression : ^ ^ Education, my children, is not for the purpose of making an easier living, but for the purpose of making labor more effectual and productive. If you are edu- cated there are no man's achievements which you cannot equal or excel, if you but have industry and integrity, and are tem- perate. ' * When one considers the type of courage and work which was necessary to make a success of life for these immigrants, we might well say that all coveted attainments in modern life should easily be realized, but as his mother so frequently said,
- * They do not come by wishing but by working. ' '
Passing from the country school and the home to the city school gave to the youth a new horizon, broad and inspiring. How frequently he refers to the great influence teachers ex- ercise in shaping the destiny of their pupils I In the Appleton Grammar School, he came under the personal supervision of Prof. B. H. Schmidt, who emigrated from Germany at the age of 17, having had but a meager granunar school education, and entered the Wisconsin State University at Madison, grad- uating with honors from the classic course at the age of 22. This man possessed an overpowering personality. He was totally indifferent to form and heedless of conventionalities. He was a lover of truth, a lover of science, an exemplar of democracy in education. An indefatigable worker, there was no day or night too long for him to labor with his pupils ; he was no respecter of hours for labor: ** Purposes and purposes attained" was his maxim. The establishment of the Friday evening debating or liter- ary society was a field in which his great influence was exerted. He attended the meetings regularly, he encouraged thorough investigation of the themes under discussion, he fostered re- search and guided the student in the best and most forceful means of presenting his subject to his audience. The disci-
