John Stuart Mill, who is distinguished as a
philosopher, is innocent of a college training. James Whitcomb Riley,
our American Burns, is not a "college man." Hugh Miller, the
Scotchman, whose fame as a geologist is known to all the world of
science, did not go to college.
Take statesmanship. Henry Clay wrested his education from books,
experience, and downright hard thinking; and we Americans still like
to tell of the immortal Lincoln poring over the pages of his few and
hard-won volumes before the glare of the wood-fire on the hearth, or
the uncertain light of the tallow dip. Benjamin Franklin got his
education in a print-shop.
In American productive industry, the most conspicuous name,
undoubtedly, is that of Andrew Carnegie; yet this great ironmaster,
and master of gold as well, who has written as vigorously as he has
wrought, was a Scotch immigrant. George Peabody, the philanthropist,
never was inside a college as a student. He was a clerk when he was
eleven years old.
At least three of the most astonishing though legitimate business
successes which have been made in the last decade in New York were
made by men not yet forty-five years old, none of whom had any other
education than our common schools.
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