Joel Dorman Steele. By Mrs. George Archibald. (Gay and Bird.
5s.)—Mr. Steele's name is probably known to few persons in England beyond those who make a professional study of educational work and literature. At the age of twenty-three, after being a bookkeeper in a bank, and a clerk in a book-store, and having passed through college and spent a year as a junior teacher in Mexico Academy, Oswego, N.Y., he was appointed Principal of the Academy. From this he went to Elmira. He found this place in a condition of great disorder, and came to the conclusion that only the severest measures would avail. He tells in his autobiography, written a few weeks before his sudden and early death, and only too short (it contains twenty-two pages), "how he laid a raw-hide whip on the desk before him, and declared he would flog the first girl or boy who moved from her or his seat." Ile never had to use it. The theorising opponents of corporal punishment should "make a note." Mr. Steele was indeed no common man, being one of those magically powerful personalities, of the Arnold type, with which the world is blessed from time to time. This volume contains, besides the autobiography, an account of his life and work (be died in his fifty-first year), and various papers from his pen.
Previous page
