Page 65 - 1916 February - To Dragma

144 TO DRAG MA OF ALPHA OMICRON PI

chapters longer accounts of their work than were given in the Sep-
tember number. These accounts may be embodied in the Chapter
Letters or written separately.

Material for this number must be i n the Editor's hands by
April 10 at the latest. She will gladly answer questions concerning
proposed articles, and she does hope that you're all going to help.

THOMAS ARNOLD

"As one lamp lights another, nor grows less,

B So nobleness enkindleth nobleness."
E N E A T H the altar of Rugby Chapel in England there lies
the least that is left upon this earth of a great man. Elected
to the principalship of Rugby School in 1827, Thomas Arnold, by
the influence of his personality and the grandeur of his example,
raised the character of Rugby during the fifteen years of his labor
there, until it was known throughout England and even upon the
Continent as "an institution which fostered boys of noble character
withifl its walls." He was, many believe, the greatest teacher of the
nineteenth century; for it is a significant and an inspiring fact,
that although he was a scholar of great ability, and a writer of
renown upon theological subjects, yet his fame as a teacher far
eclipses that of any other achievement. He was no theorist; he
met problems as they presented themselves to him with the weapons
which he had at hand. To be just, honest, and truthful he ever
held to be his first aim. With all this there were intense sympathy
with his fellows, the most generous friendship, the most expansive
benevolence.

In Rugby, indeed in England, his influence still lives. To the
boys of the present his character is still cited as a noble example
of that which a Rugby boy should strive to attain. Prospective
students read of him in that classic of school life, Hughes' Tom
Brown's School Days, which will always be a more fitting and last-
ing memorial than that in Rugby Chapel.

He died suddenly at Rugby in 1842. The effect of his death
upon Tom Brown, and the thoughts to which it gave rise, Hughes
has described in the above-mentioned book. Fifteen years later
his own son, Matthew Arnold, returning to Rugby one November
evening, wrote thus of him in the poem Rugby Chapel.

"O strong soul, by what shore
Tarriest thou now? For that force,
Surely, has not been left vain.!
Somewhere, surely, afar,
In the sounding labour-house vast
Of Being, is practiced that strength,
Zealous, beneficent, firm!"