“It is the teacher that makes the school, that sets its standard and determines its success or failure. Every one is familiar with the assertion of President Garfield that Mark Hopkins, sitting on one end of a log with a student on the other, would constitute a university. He did not particularize about the student, but he was careful to provide that the head of the institution was to be Doctor Hopkins. Only a trained and tried educator could fill the requirements for the head of a seat of learning that was to be dignified by the name of a university…

“There no doubt often arises a feeling on the part of the teaching force of the nation that they are lacking in public appreciation. They do not occupy positions which bring them into general prominence. Their compensation is not large in any event and, considering the length of time and the necessary expense required in preparation, is often very meagre. But if their rewards are not large, they are seldom exposed to that species of criticism, often turning into positive abuse, which is the lot of many elective public servants. If they will but consider the estimation in which they hold those who formerly stood in the relationship of teachers to them, they will, at once, be forced to conclude that, in the opinion of those whose opinion they value, they are not without appreciation and honor. And they must know that whoever can pause for a moment to estimate the value of their work, the importance of their calling, its high requirements in learning and in character, will be moved to admiration for their devotion and their sacrifice.

“In addition to this, the opportunity to teach the youth of America, with all the boundless possibilities that lie before each one of them, is a positive guarantee that this calling, continued for any length of time, will bring the teacher into contact with some who are marked with genius and will be known to fame. The opportunity in such a vocation to inspire reverence for the truth and a determination to master it, and live by it, is a compensation of satisfaction beyond what wealth can buy. To lead and infuse the youth of the country in that capacity is to be a minister to the republic.” (Calvin Coolidge, at the Thursday evening session of the 64th annual Jefferson County Teachers’ Institute and School Directors’ Convention, First Methodist Episcopalian Church, Reynoldsville, Pennsylvania, December 21, 1922)

“Who can say that there is any keener intellect now than that which made the civilization at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates, with its transportation, banking, commerce, and public laws five thousand years ago, or raised the pyramids, or wrote the Iliad, or wrought the wondrous forms of beauty in art and literature that have come down from ancient times? So near as we can read it, the history of the world has been alternate light and shadow, in which dark ages have followed golden ages. There have been eras which shine forth with great brilliancy through multitudinous records, and other eras notorious by the absence of recorded achievements. The old saying that there are but three generations from shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves, has had its counterpart in the history of nations. A people gather, grow strong under adversity, weaken under prosperity, and fall, first victims of weakness within and then victims of strength without. No one can deny this. Nor need it unduly alarm us. The American theory of society is founded in part on this condition…We need not feel that therefore there has been and will be no progress…The increase of knowledge, the development of science, have only given society new weapons with which it is possible for civilization to commit suicide. So far as we can see that happened time and again in the ancient world…Lands under the oppression of despotism crumbled, even if their allies won. Lands under the inspiration of freedom remained firm, enduring to the end. Neither shall we know by how wide a margin the cause of that civilization we represent, under the most tremendous shock that ever shook the world, yet survived. The great fact is that so far it has survived. It is ours to say whether it shall survive.” (‘The Power of the Moral Law’ by Calvin Coolidge, addressing the Community-Chest Dinner, Springfield, Massachusetts, October 11, 1921)

At last, here is the book I wanted to read on Grover Cleveland. It was, unbeknownst to me, underway while I was working on ‘The Cleveland Reader,’ with the same desire to see ‘Grove,’ inexplicably marginalized as he has been over the last seventy years, restored to a deserved place of honor among Presidents. Any biography since Nevins’ masterpiece, A Study in Courage (and his collection of Cleveland’s Letters), labors in the protective shadows of the scholar’s initial efforts. However, Mr. Senik’s biography has done what all excellent biographers should do: elucidate the era in which the subject lives, both capable of sympathizing with his strengths and ably critiquing his weaknesses. He has demystified the Gilded Age for those who find Cleveland’s America a perplexing, even alien, world. It remains one of the most unstudied periods of U. S. history. The service rendered by Mr. Senik to guide readers through the tariff, pensions, civil service reform, election processes, and foreign policy equips even the novice with a confidence that post-Reconstruction America is not an intimidating, mapless wilderness but a country now known to us. His early mention of Cal Coolidge gave us hope that he would come back to Cal in the Afterword, itself a superb essay on why Cleveland has fallen in estimation and why he ranks higher than popular consciousness places him. Mr. Senik did not go back to connect Coolidge, however, at the end of his book and yet that is one small flaw in an otherwise superlative work. Cleveland was that anomaly of defiant honesty and self-sacrificing obligation that makes him an instant statesman, struggling to descend to common politician. It was against his nature. Nevertheless, this ‘man of iron’ can continue to inform our public discourse and enrich our political future, if we dare to partake of even an ounce of his courage and character.