BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF DAVID PERKINS PAGE. Taken from Barnard's Journal of Education. AM 66 MONG the self-educated teachers of our time, the men who, as was said of old, of poets, were born, not made" teachers, and in whom the instinct for knowledge, and for imparting it to others, was sufficiently strong to overpower all obstacles and carry them to the highest eminence in their profession, there are none who have excelled the subject of this brief memoir. DAVID PERKINS PAGE was born at Epping, New Hampshire, on the 4th of July, 1810. His father was a prosperous, though not an affluent farmer, and his early life was passed as a farmer's boy, with that scant dole of instruction which, forty years ago, fell to the lot of farmers' sons in small country villages in New Hampshire, or, for that matter, anywhere in New England. From his earliest years, however, the love of books was the master-passion of his soul, and in his childhood he plead often and earnestly with his father for the privilege of attending an academy in a neighboring town, but the father was inexorable; he had determined that David should succeed him in the management of the farm, and he did not consider an academical education necessary for this. His refusal doubtless exerted a good influence on his son; for a mind so active as his, if denied the advantages of the school, must find vent |