CHAPTER XV THE CALL OF THE ILLITERATES

Plato said, “I believe that every immortal soul is the offspring of a divine thought, of a divine purpose, and that God has in His mind a picture like unto which He would have everyone of us to become.” It cannot be that God so just, so merciful, ever had it in His mind that any human being should be ultimately and forever illiterate. It is not the will of our Heavenly Father that millions remain in ignorance or that thousands have filled illiterate graves, that

Knowledge to their eyes her ample page Rich with the spoils of time did ne’er unroll,

nor is it by the will of the illiterates themselves but through the shortsightedness and selfishness of educated men.

The illiterate is more to be pitied than the blind, the deaf, the dumb, the lame, and he has an affliction, in a measure, equal to that of the insane. The illiterate can see, but is blind to all the lore over which the masters have striven and left to bless the world; he can hear, he can distinguish sound, but cannot appreciate music; he can talk, but is powerless to express the sweetest combinations of his native language or the highest emotions of his soul; he can walk, not with the upright, independent step of the educated man, but even in his shambling gait he reveals the burden that he bears; he has a mind, not muddled as the insane, but dwarfed, undeveloped and unacquainted with all the beautiful things for which it was created. “Short-armed ignorance,” says Shakespeare. Short-armed indeed! Unable to reach the book on the shelves of yonder public library; unable to reach the magazine on that news-stand and to enjoy its contents or to reach the newspaper and keep himself informed of the progress of events and the movements of his fellow men; unable to reach the absent one with a message from his own heart; unable to reach the Sunday school lesson or church hymnal; unable to reach the Lord’s prayer, the Twenty-third Psalm or Christ’s Sermon on the Mount.

Those who would keep the illiterates out of their chance or who claim that they do not want to learn do them a great injustice. Undoubtedly there has long been a striving upward among the mass of illiterates which has needed but a helping hand to turn into actual achievement. Since many have been taught in the past decade it has given new hope and the urge to others, and has started them out seeking their sight. Like blind Bartimeus who sat by the roadside crying, “Thou son of David have mercy on me” the illiterates cry from everywhere. “Give me sight--have mercy on me.” They call from the deep forests where brawny woodsmen with stunted brain fell the trees to build America’s homes, its ships and bridges, they call from the pit of the mine where men, bent and blackened, dig the precious ore which sends a gleam athwart a million hearth-stones, they call from the noise and hum of the factory where men slave and women toil to conserve the food and to produce the fabric which feeds and clothes their fellow-men, they call from the mountain fastnesses where men, walled in, have preserved the blood of a noble race to pour like the elixir of life into the nation’s blood-stream, they call from the Southern cotton fields where Lincoln’s black brother toils and knows no real emancipation--the emancipation of the mind--but waits for us to come and set him free. They call from the Western plains where dwell the sons of pioneers who braved the loneliness and dangers of a vast wilderness that they might advance the outposts of civilization.

Hasten the day when the rural as well as the city dweller, no matter where he may be, whether in the Southern cotton fields or on the Western plains, in the mountains, or by the sea, shall have a school which is not only open to his children and his grand-children by day, but one which is open to his father, his mother, his wife, his hired man and himself at night. Hasten the day when there shall be no men and women in this country of ours who have eyes to see and yet see not the splendid truths which have been written in books, and who have hands to write but write not the thoughts which, if recorded, might stamp with genius someone whom in its urgent need the world is seeking to-day.

But why do you ask me should this tale be told To men grown old, or who are growing old? It is too late! Ah, nothing is too late Till the tired heart has ceased to palpitate. Cato learned Greek at eighty. Sophocles Wrote his grand Œdipus, and Simonides Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers When each had numbered more than fourscore years.

...

Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last, Completed Faust when eighty years were past. These were exceptions, but they show How far the gulf stream of our youth may flow Into the arctic regions of our lives When little else than life itself survives. What then! Shall we sit idly down and say, “The night has come; it is no longer day?” The night has not yet come; we are not quite Cut off from labor by the failing light. Something remains for us to do or dare, Even the oldest tree may some fruit bear. Not Œdipus Coloneus, or Greek ode, Or tales of pilgrims that one morning rode Out of the gateway of the Tabard Inn, But other something could we but begin, For age is opportunity no less Than youth itself, though in another dress. And as the evening twilight fades away, The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

* * * * *

Transcriber’s Notes:

The one footnote has been moved to the end of its chapter.

Illustrations have been moved to paragraph breaks near where they are mentioned.

Variations in spelling, punctuation, and hyphenation were retained as they appear in the original publication, except that obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

p. 137: 1910 in the original publication, which cannot be correct based on the context (in 1910, when)

p. 193: Poem is an extract from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Morituri Salutamus.”