Joel Dorman Steele, teacher and author

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Preface

TO the systematic habits and affectionate forethought of Joel Dorman Steele and Esther Baker Steele, his wife, those who would know something of his life and teachings are indebted for accuracy of dates and illustration of characteristics made possible in this biography, edited thirteen years after his death. It was Dr. Steele's custom to date and preserve in excellent order for reference all press notices of the public events with which he was connected ; to record every personal change of location, his frequent journeyings, and the progress of his different literary labors ; and to file with care all important letters belonging to the consideration and business details of his plans. Meantime, Mrs. Steele, for reasons of sentiment, kept everything in the nature of correspondence which came to her from her husband during their twenty-seven years of married life.

As soon as Dr. Steele by the originality of his school system and the fame of his text books became extensively known, he found himself, like

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all men of note, the subject of frequent newspaper sketches, and he was often called upon by writers who requested facts and incidents pertaining to his history. Of personal publicity, however, he was wary, knowing that simple statements often suffered the common fate of facts — perversion from the original truth. It thus occurred that as time passed and it became evident that his hold on life was increasingly precarious, his wife, among other things which she sadly pondered in her heart, thought of the growing call for fuller particulars in reference to his life, and of the insufficiency of anything ever written. And she sometimes urged him to set down in order enough of personal experience for a story that would be satisfactory to his friends.

On the afternoon of May 14, 1886, his fiftieth and last birthday, Dr. and Mrs. Steele went for their usual daily drive over the beautiful hills which overlook the Chemung Valley. Chatting about the anniversary, its home observance, the telegrams, and unexpected gifts from various friends outside the family, he remarked that he had been preparing a gift to his wife for that day, but had not been well enough to complete it. She laughingly responded that though it was not usual to make presents on one's own birthday, she was curious to know what he had intended for her. He then announced that since his return from Florida, three weeks before, he had been making

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a sketch for the autobiography she had so much desired, but that the need for haste had hampered and the excessive recurrence of the personal pronoun had repelled him, and he feared he should have neither time nor strength to finish it or shape it as he wished. Mrs. Steele, having always a half-conscious foreboding of the coming shadow, and feeling the value of even the merest outline, expressed her delight at his intention, and begged him to complete the sketch, offering to transpose it afterward into a proper literary form and thus relieve him from further responsibility. It was, therefore, so agreed upon between them. i

Eleven days later, and before Mrs. Steele had seen the still unfinished sketch, the sudden summons came. The shock of bereavement long unfitted her for the sacred duty. Meanwhile a host of business cares and various book revisions overtaxed her time and strength. And always, when in any pause of work or access of energy she turned toward the pathetic task, she found herself by reason of her overwhelming sorrow peculiarly unnerved and incapacitated.

Finally, after many attempts to settle to the undertaking, and constant repetition of the discomfiture of grief, she put her mass of material into the hands of another with the expectation of issuing the memorial book on the tenth anniversary of her husband's death. Three years afterward, the volume being still unfinished, the

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material was recalled with a renewed resolve to undertake a personal preparation. And still affliction, as before, touched by the hand of retrospect, wakened to its first intensity and prevented her.

The year 1899 saw the conveying of Mrs. Steele's magnificent gift to the city of Elmira, N. Y., " The Steele Memorial Library," erected by her in remembrance of her husband. Determining to make the book a part of this memorial offering, she now intrusted it to one who, while realizing that such an achievement is worthy a service of highest equipment, has brought in its stead only sincerity, appreciation, and affectionate remembrance.

By virtue of this, however, it is offered to those for whom it is designed with a good degree of confidence, for in it will be found an honest story, being mostly a revelation of the man it concerns in his own words, through letters and otherwise. Such an ingenuous disclosure of his everyday habit of mind in its various moods, times, and circumstances, cannot but be welcome to his many friends and to the students of his books in every state of the Union.

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Table Of Contents

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Preface v

Introduction : Autobiographical xi

Chapter I The Good Fortune Of Birth

NO man of sane possibilities need be wholly the victim of heredity, nor does the best descent insure exalted character. But it is one of the recompenses of intelligent, righteous, and devoted parenthood that its children generally carry into the working world, aspirations, tendencies, and purposes which perpetuate and increase the usefulness of their ancestry. The potency of lineage and environment was strikingly exemplified in the life of Joel Dorman Steele.

He was one of a distinguished family, the earliest American progenitors of which were John and George Steele, brothers, who emigrated to America within ten years after the departure of the Mayflower. They belonged to an important English family and gave to their posterity an honored coat of arms. John Steele, the ancestor of Joel Dorman Steele, led in 1635 a pioneer band from Massachusetts to Connecticut, where his party laid the foundations of the future Hartford. From him, a long line of notable descendants manifest a fine family excellence, many winning distinction as school men, soldiers, and clergymen. There was a Samuel who was deputy to the General Assembly in 1668-69 ^'^^

1672-77; a Samuel who married Mercy, granddaughter of Governor William Bradford of Plymouth Colony ; there was a Lavinia who married Hon. Augustus Porter of the famous Niagara Falls family and whose brother was Secretary of War under John Quincy Adams ; there was a Salmon who watched with the dead body of General Warren, and who was one of a number of Revolutionary patriots. In the Steele genealogy the name of Allen or Allyn is found as early as in 1757 and is repeated eight times, the last to bear it in the line with which this memoir has to do being the father of Dr. Steele.

This Allen was born May 24, 1808, in Salisbury, New York, and was early left motherless, with the prospect of an uncertain fortune. But his mother on her deathbed, with tender and solemn admonition, had pressed upon her beloved son the claims of godliness. Her dying words were never forgotten, and at thirteen the lad joined the Methodist Church, feeling, even though so young, that he might some time be called to preach. At twentyone he received his first appointment ; at twenty-five he entered upon the peace of home life, she who joined her destiny to his having passed but little beyond her childhood's years. Sabra Dorman, born September 13, 18 1 6, was the daughter of Dr. Joel Dorman, graduate from a New Haven Medical College, and of Olivia Lawrence, his wife, who belonged to one of the oldest and most respected families in Yates Co., New York.

To Allen and Sabra Steele, in the hope of their youth, was born, on the 14th day of May, 1836, a son. The year that gave the babe to the arms of the mother, took from her, suddenly, her cherished father, but his honorable name, bestowed upon the little one, was des-

The Good Fortune of Birth

tined to become famous throughout and beyond the nation. Of it he wrote nearly fifty years later, in a letter to his wife, inclosed in his last will : " My name I have tried by a life of earnest toil to make honorable, and I leave it unspotted, so far as I know, by any unworthy act of mine."

The love and blessings of a dying mother went before the conscious intellectual intents and decisions of the boy " Dorman," as they had gone before those of his father, for he too was destined to lose the earthly proofs of maternal care while yet leaning upon them, and, by the laying on of the hands of bereavement, was early appointed to the discipline of pain.

Thus, at the age of fifteen, he stood with the dawnings of future fervors in his boyish face, touched with the grief of his recent loss. He was wan from the wasting of a fever like that which had deprived him of his mother and which had brought him within sound of the whispering shores of death. Behind him lay an ancestry which by its aspirations, its mental and moral vigor, its conscientiousness, and its recognition of all righteous claims had resulted in the exalted nature which was his from the cradle. It is probable also that the ancestral capacity for rigid adherence to the sense of duty, and of uncomplaining acceptance of physical discomfort if necessary to spiritual and intellectual attainment, had sinlessly defrauded the great soul of adequate housing. This inherited bodily frailty made his whole existence a marvellous example of conquering courage. For

" The child grew and waxed strong in spirit."

Of every man, whose occupation touches the diviner things of life, it may be said, as truly as of the poet, that he is " born, not made ; " and of none is this more notably true than of the teacher. No discerning student of Hfe can read the story, from birth to death, of the fifty years allotted to the subject of this memoir without reverent perception of the office to which he was pre-ordained.

Not that the young boy had any precocious intimation of the line of work he would pursue. But from his first intellectual awakening, with intuitive selection, he appropriated, omitted, accepted, rejected, sought, and shunned, according to the needs of one steadily growing toward the light, and into full flower and fruitage.

His religious nature was early stirred, and the quiet tastes of the student showed themselves, with the instincts of that delicacy and fine, sensitive insight which were always his marked characteristics. But along with these traits, moderating them and insuring symmetry, were the fresh young impulses and delights of one who loved nature in all her moods. Added to this saving grace was a wholesome ability to turn to prosaic tasks, with cheerful pleasure in their small and practical details.

And over all, and through all his days, dominating every desire and animating every deed, the faith he kept with his conscience made possible that which he became, — one able to vivify the thought of his generation and to waken high enthusiasms in the young.

The world took note of three lines of effort in which Dr. Steele was eminently capable. As Student, Teacher, and Author he earned its attention and applause. And, marking the steps that led to his eminence, we find in his youngest endeavors indications of what he became.

The Good Fortune of Birth

At nine years of age, as he himself has told us, he began to feel " the first real zest of a student's love of work." At eleven he wrote his first composition. He was then a member of a Troy, N. Y., school, the " Boys' Academy," where he began Greek and French, having already done some fundamental study in Latin.

The composition, entitled "Albany," and dated September 26, 1847, is preserved, its painstaking, childish hand setting forth those facts about the capital city which, to the boy, were most conspicuous. With the seriousness due the gravity of his task he wrote the little treatise. It is very exact in description, expressed in noticeably correct language, and redeemed from too precocious precision by some refreshing mistakes in spelling, and — after a ponderous paragraph specifying the strength of materials and thickness of its walls — the confident assertion that the Capitol "is probaly the most permanent building in the world."

This initial production proves how early its writer began to exercise his quick and careful observation and how soon the tendency to impart to others the knowledge he had gained showed itself. It was the instinct of the teacher.

The first experience of the future master of schools covered a part of the summer after he was seventeen years old. The story of its dull and dragging days he has recorded. He vaguely felt the failure of the lifeless routine to which custom bound him. It bore down the heart of the boy, not yet quickened by the dawning discernments that finally illuminated his work with splendid intelligence.

His next teaching, at twenty, was the shift of a college student in need of money to further his education.

Between it, and that summer term against the monotony of which his individuality had protested, lay the industry of many undertakings. Farming, book-keeping, reading, writing, and clerical work in a publishing house had been the varying occupations advancing him toward an efficient readiness which made him better capable of instruction.

However he was as yet impelled simply by the acquisitiveness of a learner. He was gathering, but it had not yet been shown him how he should give. It was only when the appeal of other minds had moved his own to helpful response that he heard and knew his call. Once knowing it he was ever faithful to its persuasion, and thenceforth was pre-eminently the teacher. Thus, in 1875, when he had become widely known as an author, he called his address, delivered before the New York State Teachers' Association, " What a New York Teacher saw in the German Schools."

His first public honors were won by his work in the schoolroom when, in 1870, the Regents of the University of the State of New York conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Philosophy " in consideration of eminent success as a teacher." The next year he was elected President of the New York State Teachers' Association, and in 1883 he became a life member of the National Educational Association, at which time it was said of him, " In all things he has undertaken he has acquitted himself with honor, and imparted a nobility and dignity to the teachers' profession." Among other words spoken in his memory by an educational writer in 1886 were these:

" His delicate health forced him to forego many attractive engagements and much congenial pleasure, but he never

The Good Fortune of Birth

allowed it to shut him out from the closest intimacy with the brotherhood of teachers, and failing strength abated not a jot of interest in them and all their concerns. We all remember, at the close of a Holiday Conference last December, his allusion to himself as on the downward slope of life, and his earnest wish that he might still be counted one of us."

Only they who are guided by the intuitions of righteous intelligence so find and fulfil their vocation.

Chapter II The Growing Teacher

LOOK through the long roll of renowned names that have enriched the history of our repubUc in every Hne of noble accomplishment, and realize the debt the nation owes the farm. Among them all it would be hard to find that of any man who, if he were not the son of a farmer, had not in some way come into touch with farm life during his formative years.

Joel Dorman Steele was no exception. His mother was daughter of a man who had resigned the life of an efficient physician for that of a farmer ; her clergyman husband had bought a country place when their son was but half-grown, and through its outdoor duties and pleasures the delicate lad gained in health and strength ; during school-life he bent alternately above his books and over the hoe, the rake, the sickle, and the scythe ; thus, he took to the tasks of the desk the steadiness of plodding, patient, rural industry ; and carried to the fields the quickened apprehensions of the scholar, which lifted him above the mere performance of homely labor and taught him the inner suggestions of seed-time and harvest. To the end of life Dr. Steele was a lover of the soil and its rewards, and the fresh spirit of such a lover permeated all his literary work.

On the home farm at West Barre, Orleans County, New York, in the summer of 1858, the recent collegiate,

The Growing Teacher

working, and waiting for the next thing, received a call to teach Greek, Latin, and the Natural Sciences in Mexico Academy, Oswego County, New York. John Raymond French, afterward Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Vice-Chancellor of Syracuse University, was at that time Principal at Mexico, and, needing an instructor, had written to certain of the Faculty of Genesee College for advice. The result was the receipt of such recommendation of " Mr. J. D. Steele, a regular graduate of Genesee College," as brought about his entrance upon the duties of a teacher's profession in August, 1858. Mexico, a village of about a thousand people, had become an educational centre on account of its Academy, one of the oldest and best conducted in the State. A list of its text-books at that time shows that the course was laid out with intelligent care and wise choice of authors. Besides the solid branches, it contained also some accomplishments of the day, such as the study of melodeon music, and the making of ornamental waxwork, flowers, wreaths, crosses, and the like. The melodeon merits a passing mention. When first introduced, it was esteemed a triumph in the evolution of reed instruments. It was then without pedals, the bellows being worked with the elbows, the box-like frame resting on a table or the lap, the size easily admitting of the latter* disposal. Its capacity was little more than four octaves and the keys somewhat resembled those of the modern typewriter. Later it was enlarged, put on its own legs and indulged in an increased inflation because of its pedals. It had at this stage become the immediate forerunner of the cabinet organ, and in addition to the pleasure its manipulation gave to modest music lovers it was found sufficient for the practical study of counterpoint. Obsolete as it long since became, it served well the times for which it was invented, and in 1858 twenty thousand of the improved forms were sold in the United States.

On taking up his work in Mexico the new professor became a member of the principal's family, and the familiar relations thus established founded an intimacy which was without break until the death of Dr. Steele. After this event the sympathy between the households was, if possible, yet deeper. Later, when Dean French had also been taken, there still survived the fidelities and hospitalities of an earnest friendship, manifested by those who, each in her place, had shared most closely the lives of the distinguished men.

For three years, with an ardor which marked his career from first to last, the young teacher performed the duties of his position, and even if the limits of that time had bounded his professional life, yet would the lesson of his service be well worth the conning. Four decades have preserved in and beyond the little town many memories and illustrations of the essential quality of his power.

Born instructor as he was, he manifested from the first his intense yearning, not only to teach the truth but to teach the application of truth to life, and his solicitude for his pupils can only be expressed by the old evangelistic phrase : "A burden for souls." "Honor" had already become his watchword.

The second year of his stay in Mexico saw him, by the resignation of Principal French, promoted to be master of the school, and it is touching to see how his apprehension of accountability warred with the natural buoyancy and high spirits of his youth.

The Growing Teacher

In an institution which had so advanced a curriculum, there were students fitted by age for social fellowship with the principal, and constantly he guarded the dignity of his position against any personal slips of decorum which, however innocent in themselves, might imperil his authority and the good of the school. To one of warm and active friendliness this required a nice balance of judgment and conduct.

His earnestness to avoid careless intercourse with his pupils is well illustrated by an extract from a letter written to Mrs. Steele in i860, when she was absent on a visit.

He was then but twenty-four years of age, and after an evening of merry relaxation in company with several of the older scholars, he wrote :

" I intended to-night to have a pleasant, social chat, but the first I knew the talk was at sixes and sevens, as it so often has been before. ... It does not seem becoming to my position. . . . Pray for me that I may learn to influence others aright. ... I have been terribly lonesome all day and when they came in I was glad, thinking it would render the evenuig more tolerable. But it would have been better to be lonesome than to laugh and talk as I did to-night. Not worse than I have done dozens of times before, but worse than I meant to do again. . . . O, let us both try to live in a way more becoming our profession. You are better than I am. I feel your restraining influence and I need it. . . . We shall travel together toward Heaven and mayhap induce others to go with us — those who look to us as patterns, those who put confidence in us. Let us make them respect our conduct and example."

The conduct he deplored is shown by the confessions of the letter to have been merely a boyish abandonment to gay conversation, badinage and laughter, common to

II the happy young the world over. How httle he merited self-reproach may be judged from the words of those who viewed his work of that time, either as outside adults or as students.

Said Dean French, in a reminiscence over thirty years afterward :

" He was eminently successful, enthusiastic, untiring and greatly beloved by his pupils. Thorough as he was as an instructor, he was no less efficient as a disciplinarian. The position of Principal of the Academy he filled with great

Charles L. Stone, an eminent lawyer of Syracuse, New York, was, in 1895, requested by a friend to give his impressions of Dr. Steele. He had been a pupil in the Mexico Academy, at about the age of thirteen, and his response to the request was an eloquent and discriminating letter. Evidently, in turning back to the memory of his school days, the very emotions and inferences which had moved the boy's mind revived to impel the pen of the man.

" He was my first ideal man," wrote Mr. Stone. " Rather tall, spare, light hair worn long, a clear and scholarly face, young, a general favorite alike with pupils and parents, an excellent and enthusiastic teacher, a good executive — a disciplinarian rather by moral force and a bearing that unconsciously turned the thoughts and ambitions of the boys toward honorable and manly courses. He carried about with him an atmosphere of inspiration to youth.

" I was young, I knew him but a short time, my impressions were boyish, I had no intimate acquaintance with him, as the conditions forbade, but I admired him and I remember I liked to watch him and observe his movements. Still I regarded him with some awe ! He seemed to me on a

The Growing Teacher

plane which I might only hope to attain, if at all, after protracted study and discipline.

" I think his eyes were blue. Once he opened them in the midst of his morning prayer at chapel, and it seemed to me as if the light from them penetrated through the boy whose whispers had disturbed his devotions.

" Perhaps this may not be of interest to others. I sat down, not intending to say so much, and have wandered on in a sort of unreserve I am not accustomed to. The impressions I record were those made upon the mind of a young boy unacquainted with the world."

It is doubtful whether any tribute to a teacher could be of more worth than this fresh and fair remembrance of childish appreciation. By it is unquestionably proven the influence of character on the young, and its value as a teacher's qualification. Unformulated until after years had calmed the impulses, the discernments of the inexperienced boy bear the test of time, and minify many a labored estimation.

A fitting addition to the words just quoted are those written after Dr. Steele's death by a lady of unusual culture — a pupil of a later academy. They tell the same story of guiding and inspiring power :

" Looking back, I am more and more amazed — as my comprehension becomes more perfect — at the wonderful knowledge of human nature he possessed and the skill with which he touched its springs of action. He was almost clairvoyant in his ability to read individual needs and idiosyncrasies, and a genius in providing for and directing them. Far and wide over the world those whom he trained are doing brave battle for ' honor ' and earnest work, with an ever-growing admiration for the delicacy yet strength of the methods he used in imparting enthusiasm."

What a recompense to him, who stood in the first days of his professional ambitions, somewhat overborne with the charge he had to keep, could he have known that men and women of mark would some day see how his hand had touched the plastic period of their lives ! But amid all his busy plans for service, he asked for himself only the consciousness of duty done ; the ability to enlarge the vision of others ; a fair reward for his tasks ; and some leisure, when his work was done, for a book, a little garden, a bit of travel, and the peace of bodily rest to fit him for yet greater exertions.

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Chapter III The Marriage Of True Minds

WHEN the new teacher entered Mexico Academy, the members of the faculty, as well as the students, were personally unknown to him, and he had studied with interest a catalogue containing their names. It chanced, however, that a change had been made after the catalogue was printed, and he was, therefore, entirely unprepared, when he met the music teacher, to see a dark-haired, brown-eyed young lady of vivacious, candid manner and an altogether indescribable charm.

Forty years later, a lady, who was present when the pair were introduced, said :

" It is impossible to give in words any idea of the look with which Professor Steele regarded Miss Baker. Between his evident admiration and his surprise his face was a study. I think it was a case of love at first sight. At any rate it was soon plain that something was likely to happen."

In less than a year from the time the two met, the something which their friends had foreseen happened, the wedding taking place at the home of the bride's father early in the summer vacation. The marriage was hastened by the prospective groom's unexpected election to the office of principal of the academy, an advancement which made him more confident of his ability to become at once the responsible head of a household. Miss Baker's father. Rev. Gardner Baker, united the pair.

The wisdom of the immediate union was noted from the first. " There seemed," said a gentleman, once a pupil of both, " to be a natural affinity of soul, and the marriage was apparently one of those ordained by Heaven."

" I never knew," said Dean French, after the death of Dr. Steele, "a happier married life than was theirs. Their mutual devotion was remarkable."

Mrs. Steele, like her husband, was the child of a Methodist parsonage, and knew the wandering life of the itinerant's family. Her father relinquished the hope of a university education under the conviction that he must not postpone his entrance upon work as a minister. He often referred to this turning point in his life, wondering what would have been his career had it not been so changed by his emotional religious nature.

Those conversant with circuit riding in the first quarter of the century know something of the sacrifice his decision implied. But he cheerfully did the things he felt God had given him to do, with no thought of complaint.

It is likely that this quality of happy surrender was one of his gifts to his daughter, whose steadfast association in all her husband's work, of every kind, so sped the tasks of fresh and hopeful endeavor and held up his hands in weary days.

Gardner Baker's wife, to whom he was married in 1827, was Miss Esther Scott, daughter of Captain Enos Scott, a man prominent in the " general training days " of long ago. Of those days Mrs. Steele once wrote to a friend :