Stephen Crane

New York Tribune/August 4, 1890

Never Too Late to Learn

How to Pick up a Pin – The Philosopher at Play – Old Music – Art – Song

Avon-by-the-Sea, Aug. 3 (Special).—It has become an exceedingly popular notion of late years to found summer schools at seaside and mountain resorts, so that people in their thirst for knowledge might combine the cool breezes from hillside or ocean with useful instruction and entertainment. This idea has taken such root that dozens of summer schools are flourishing all over the country. It is a noticeable fact, too, that the students of our schools and colleges are not the ones that take all the advantages of the course in summer instruction, but the business and professional men and teachers themselves are present in large numbers. On the grounds of the Seaside Assembly here one may see—and learn a great lesson from the sight—a man with the sharpl, keen eye of business, and, it may be, with gray hairs on his forehead, wending his way with his books to the Hall of Philosophy to take a lesson in French, or to Otis Hall to study art. It is a familiar scene anywhere to see the old man, who has battled with adversity, put his hand on a young man’s head and say: “My boy, study hard; don’t give up your books. How much more I might have been in the world if I had thought more of my Caesar’s Commentaries and my geometry than I did of sleighride parties and corn huskings.” But here the old man has a partial way out of his difficulties. Of course, many of his lost opportunities can never be regained, but if when he comes to a beautiful summer resorts for his vacation he spends an hour a day taking a course in a language or in some study that concerns his business, he receives an immense benefit. The teachers here find that men and women in middle life make just as enthusiastic scholars as the young people who are satisfying their first cravings after knowledge.

In Madam Alberti’s classes in physical culture, it is interesting to note the look of surprise on people’s faces, many of them showing the marks of age, when they learn for the first time the proper way to pick up articles from the floor or the scientific method of taking a chair, or, as an old farmer said to a friend, when asked how he liked the lecture, “I’m going on sixty-six year-old, an’ I never knew how to shet a door or git out’n a wagon before.”

The teachers and instructors here are all of recognized ability, and the lecturers that come here are men who stand at the head of their respective pursuits in science or art. On next Monday the session of the American Institute of Christian Philosophy opens. The Rev. Charles F. Deems, D.D., of New York, the president was here a few days ago, making the final arrangements for the opening. The learned members of the institute are already making their appearance with their baggage at the hotels and boarding houses. The guests claim that they can tell the members of the institute from afar by a certain wise, grave and reverend air that hangs over them from the top of their glossy silk hats to their equally glossy boots. A member gazes at the wild tossing of the waves with a calm air of understanding and philosophy that the poor youthful graduate from college, with only a silk sash and flannel suit to assert his knowledge with, can never hope to acquire. When he learns to row on the lake or river, to his philosophical mind he is only describing an arc from the rowlock as a centre, with a radius equal to the distance between the fulcrum or rowlock and the point of resistance, vulgarly known as the tip end of the car. When he “catches a crab” and goes over backward, he gets up and, after rubbing the back of his head, he calmly returns anew to what he calls a demonstration of the principles of applied force. He watches the merry dancers at the hotel hops with an air that says: “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.” Yet he has no doubt in his own mind, from certain little geometric calculations of his own, that he could waltz in such a scientific manner, with such an application of the laws of motion, that the best dancers would, indeed, be surprised.

Professor L.C. Elson, of the Boston Conservatory of Music, gave two of the finest lectures here ever listened to on the Assembly grounds. He had with him several rolls of old music on parchment taken from monasteries in Europe more than 600 years ago, and now worth more than their weight in gold.

Among the noted teachers connected with the art department of the Seaside Assembly is Professor Conrad Diehl, of New York. His genial manner has already made him many friends here and his lectures are of intense interest to his enthusiastic pupils. He began his career in art as an apprentice to some of the Arts Industries in Illinois. From there he went to the Art school in Munich for a five years’ course. He returned to Chicago with a large picture of the play scene in “Hamlet,” which he presented to the Chicago Art Association in 1865. The same year he went to Paris and entered Gerome’s atelier classes at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. It was there he painted his large picture from “Macbeth,” with which he came to Chicago in 1867. He assumed charge of the classes of the Chicago Academy of Design, which he conducted with but a short intermission up to the time of the great fire. He saved his picture by cutting the canvas out of the frame. Then he went to St. Louis and established an art school. The donation of the “Macbeth” picture to the city as a nucleus of a public gallery called into existence the St. Louis Art Society. It was in the public schools of St. Louis that he developed his “Grammar of Form Languages.” After serving some time as the head of the art department of the Missouri State University, he came to New York and became the co-laborer of John Ward Stimson in the New York Institute for Artist Artisans.

Among other prominent people connected with the Assembly is Mr. Albert G. Thies, the well-known New York tenor. Mr. Thies has been spending his summer here, and while so doing has become identified with the Assembly in a musical capacity. He has a voice of great compass and sweetness, with which he has several times charmed the guests of the hotels and the Assembly audiences. He has had adventures and escapades in foreign lands such as fall to the lot of but few singers. He was educated first as a pianist, and made a tour of the Continent, playing in London, Paris, Vienna, Dublin and so on. In studying voice culture to improve his phrasing, he discovered that he had a splendid tenor voice. So he abandoned the piano, became a singer, and finally made a tour of the world. After his return to London his adventuresome spirit took him to Africa. There he became a friend of Chinese Gordon, and was thrown in connection with Henry M. Stanley in a number of ways. He played and sang before all the British magnates of southern Africa, and finally had the pleasure of playing before royalty, in the person of the old Chief Cetewayo, styled “King” of the Zulus, but at the time a prisoner in the hands of the English. The old “King” was much pleased with Mr. Thies’s performance, and had about made up his mind to give one of his wives to the musician. In fact, he brought the four then with him in for Mr. Thies’s inspection. They were all over six feet four inches in height. The “King” seemed rather dazed at finding his elegant gift “declined with thanks.” The American musician was in southern Africa at the time of the smallpox plague, when 9,000 people were down with the disease, and 3,000 deaths occurred. He helped to nurse the sufferers and escaped unscathed. He returned to America, settled in New York, and began a musical career in America which has been very successful.