about him. Nobody could know him, to be sure, without knowing that he was original; nobody could read what he wrote without recognizing that he observed and thought and expressed himself first-hand and in his own way. There was nothing second-hand about him, nothing that was a mere reflection of other people's ideas. He was as little stereotyped as anybody could be. He believed in originality, too, and wanted to cultivate it and make room for it. He once said to me as I suppose he often said to others that he believed education could get more out of one wild-eyed rebel than it could from a regiment of conformists. Yet he believed in system, too, and in organized effort, and in the need of regular and persistent work and of cooperation, leadership and discipline. He had far too philosophic a mind, his grasp of fact was far too comprehensive and clear, to allow him to rest content with his own flashes of insight or those of others. He had the amateur spirit, but he was never a dilettante: he knew that no stroke of genius, however brilliant, would have large consequences unless it could be followed up, implemented, worked over into other minds, shared, spread, elaborated and kept going. It was this other side of his nature, this patience with system and organization, and willingness to support it, that would be left out in any account of Joseph Lee that emphasized only his originality, or indeed in any account that dealt exclusively with his views on play.. It would be equally misleading to make too much of his individuality or his individualism. Or course, he was a striking person, just as a person; not queer, but full of differences. And he admired differentness: he used to talk about liking apple trees because they were unexpected and informal. He liked people that had roughnesses and irregularities in their appearance, manners and ways of doing things. But he had a thoroughly social mind and he was a thoroughly social person; and if this should

seem to be an inconsistency or contradiction, I am sure it may properly be regarded as a conflict fully resolved in the personality and thinking of Joseph Lee. For he did really want everybody to be himself, to live his own life, to get all the flavor out of it, all its thrill and humor and glory; yet he was no atomist, never a defender of irresponsibility, nor an exponent or admirer of unheeding vitality. He valued human togetherness as much as he did human differences. Much as he admired William James, he was philosophically more nearly a disciple of Josiah Royce; which is as much as to say that he responded eagerly to the emphasis of James on the plurality, variety and unpredictable "givenness" of things but sensed underneath this saltiness of experience a unity which pragmatism and pluralism miss or disregard. I gather this conclusion partly from a chance remark of his to the effect that James was after all "an Irishman in philosophy," but chiefly from conversations I had with him about Froebel and the kindergarten. He saw something permanently valuable in Froebel's attempt to use symbols and the gathering of kindergarten youngsters in a circle as a means of making children emotionally receptive to the unity of the world, not alone as a social fact or a social goal but also as a universal fact and a final pattern for all life. I believe he understood and exemplified in his own living the ancient philosophical and religious idea of variety in unity, a conception which is at once mystical and practical, permitting any amount of emphasis on individuality, and delight in it, without denying the bond of oneness in the ultimate nature of things or the community of human existence.

If Joseph Lee had not believed in organized social effort, he would never have supported the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The university training of teachers and school officers is no vagabond undertaking, nor a oneman game. Those who knew Mr. Lee as a writer on play and as President of the National Recreation Association may be surprised to

learn that he was deeply interested in training superintendents of schools at Harvard University; but his close associates in the fecreation movement and any attentive reader of his writings-will recognize that all his interests were far-reaching. His support of professional training in education at Harvard was connected with his work in immigration, in family welfare, on the School Committee of Boston, on the Harvard Board of Overseers, and in the playground movement. It was all of a piece. He saw things in relation and acted on a wide front. His method of helping the Harvard School was characteristic. He quietly gave the school men and then he left them strictly alone. For five years he paid my own salary, through the University, and he was kindness itself to me and mine; but he never made the slightest attempt to influence my thinking. Later he paid the salary, also for five years of Professor George E. Johnson; and I am sure he would have said that he could not possibly teach Johnson anything but had learned many important lessons from him. I do not mean that Mr. Lee would have given men to the school in any field or for any purpose. Although he once said to me that the superintendent of schools might become in New England (if he knew enough and had the right quality) the spiritual successor of the Puritan minister as leader of the community, he never offered to give the school a professor of educational administration. Johnson was a teacher of play and recreation and I began as a teacher of the history of education, emphasizing the theories of Froebel. Thus we both represented interests dear to the Lees. Nevertheless Mr. Lee did for us what he always did: he helped us without the least attempt to dominate or dictate.

It was Mrs. Lee's interest in the kindergarten that led Mr. Lee to study and believe in the philosophy of Froebel. By nature and by her own training Margaret Cabot Lee was a living example of the serenity and the sympathy which are or were the keynotes in the character of the good kindergartner. She was at once self-contained and infinitely kindly. Perhaps Mr. Lee might not have acquired any great faith in Froebel's ideas if he had not found them exemplified in his wife; but he had an unprejudiced grasp of them, simply as ideas. Indeed, he developed them, especially

in his treatment of play as a way of life at all ages. It is not his thinking about play, however, that I ought to emphasize, for that part of his work is well known to readers of Recreation: although I ought to record the fact that he was himself for one year Lecturer on Play at Harvard. It is more to the point to make it clear that he recognized the importance of the social aspect of Froebel's theory and that he carried into his own work and thought the hope and faith that education might serve as a means toward human brotherhood.

I suppose it is inevitable that all of us who are professionally absorbed in educational work should get shortsighted about it. For twenty-two years Joseph Lee was a member of the Overseers' Committee for the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and I cannot suppose that the things we talked about in the meetings of that Committee always seemed to him important. But never, so far as I can remember, did he evidence any lack of interest or tell us that we were bogging down into the routines of our job. On the contrary, he often discussed matters of detail in such a way as to bring out their significance. I remember that we were concerned at one time as we still are - about questions relating to the size of schools. We planned researches to discover the optimum number of pupils in an elementary school building. Mr. Lee lifted that question at once to the level of a more philosophic inquiry: he had been reading a sociological study and a book on physics and he remarked that in every phase of life the size of the unit is of basic importance. He was thus constantly concerned with large questions of ends and means and with the best methods of finding the truth. All this was in no sense unrelated to his continued interest in play; but if one knew of him only that he wanted the life of young and old to be made free and joyous through recreation and through art, it might not be clear that he made the philosophic connection between play in the life of the individual and the enduring values of the life of mankind.

I believe Mr. Lee suggested G. E. Johnson for appointment at Harvard because he too had a philosophic view of play. "Jim" Johnson was one of the most lovable men I ever knew; and he had a quiet profundity of mind that made him the most valuable of academic colleagues

Q

UITE some years ago, when I had written

"How the Other Half Lives," I received

a letter postmarked "Brookline, Mass.," and signed "Joseph Lee," asking some purely academic question about sweating. Now, sweating is a nuisance at all times, not to be borne, and with an academic discussion of it I never had any patience. A club seems to me to fit it better. And I remember thinking, "Who now is this fellow come to bother me?" and feeling rather ungracious about it. I hope Mr. Lee has forgotten it. First impressions are but poor stuff. I suppose it depends on the man who receives them. The years that have passed have shown me and all of us Mr. Lee as he really is: the practical, common-sense champion of the boy and of his rights, in school and home and in the playground,-particularly in the playground, where the boy grows into the man. To him it has been given to grasp the full meaning of Froebel's warning that through his play the boy gets his first grip on moral relations. That at last we are beginning to heed the warning is due, here in our country, largely to the clear reasoning and lucid statement of Joseph Lee. Nothing could be less academic, in its accepted meaning, than the campaign he has urged for "the Men of To-morrow."

Hence he comes in his own right to tell us of "constructive and preventive philanthropy" at the close of the century that is past, and that he should have such a story to tell is by long odds the best testimonial to the century. At the head of it all he puts the preservation of the home, which, he says, is part and parcel of the fight for good government. Yes! and the biggest part of it; for unless we can preserve it, say, rather, restore it in our cities, we shall not long enjoy the government or the freedom for which we would all so gladly die and sometimes, illogically, find it so hard to live. Had not Mr. Lee's book ended with the century, he would have been able to point to the certain signs that we are winning the fight for the people's

homes. It was worth living just to be in that fight.

And then the play! "The boy without a playground," says he, "is father to the man without a job, and the boy with a bad playground is apt to be father to a man with a job that had better have been left undone." If he had written nothing else, he would have earned a place among the real sages of the day, of whom there are not too many. No one has understood boy-nature better, and, after all, boy-nature is just the beginning of man-nature. It isn't for his badness the boy admires the tough, but for the real heroic stuff that is in him, for his courage, his resourcefulness, his daring. "Give these qualities their legitimate means of expression in hard organized play," and burg.. lary "will be abandoned as an inferior form of sport."

Mulberry Bend was "materially worse" than the rest of the neighborhood, than any other place I ever saw or heard of. It was a pigsty, only the pigs were men. Therefore the men became pigs in that foul spot. I do not remember Bromley's map, but if it had only two alleys in the Bend, it must have been woefully bad. I knew a dozen, yes, two dozen. And if there are hundreds of such alleys in Boston, that town is not fit to be on any map. But there are none such. Neither is there the least mystery about why murder ceased in the Bend when the pigsties were torn down: the sunlight came in, that was all, and grass and flowers and birds, and with them peace. Where the slum rules un

challenged, everybody feels more or less like sticking his neighbor when he as much as makes a face at him. And I do not know but the feeling is natural: life is not worth living in such a place.

But that was not what I started to say; just this, that Mr. Lee has written a good and useful

book, though not half as good and useful as he is himself; and he has shown the faith that is in him by

(Continued on page 582)

A

S Secretary of the Harvard Class of 1883 I have been asked to write about Joseph Lee as a member of that Class. I do this gladly, the more so because it gives an opportunity to quote some of Lee's own words spoken to, or written for, the Class.

In college, Lee was a member of numerous clubs and societies but, while he doubtless enjoyed his membership in these, I think they never were, as with some, of transcendent importance in his college life.

He was interested in athletics. He played our Fresh

football on

man team, taking part

in five matches. In our Sophomore year he rowed on our Class crew and at our Fiftieth Anniversary of graduation he was number three in the eight which made a gallant appearance on the Charles River, rowing, despite its years, in much of its old time form. In our Junior and Senior years he entered the middleweight sparring contests which took place in the old Hemenway Gymnasium. In the former year he won, in the latter he was beaten, but only by the late William H. Page of New York, an unusually good boxer.

His record in scholarship, while not outstanding, was good. He was especially interested in Political Economy (as Economics was then called), History and Philosophy. He graduated fifty-seventh in a class of two hundred and five. He was always a loyal member of our Class, and, of late years especially, was a pretty regular attendant at our dinners and gatherings. He was always ready to respond when called upon to speak to us and he usually was called

upon, for the Class took great pride in its distinguished classmate.

At a Class dinner in 1908, celebrating the Twenty-fifth Anniver sary of our graduation, Lee spoke on "Paternalism." The Massachusetts Legislature sits annually. There had been, as there still is, a strong feeling in favor of biennial sessions only. The following are extracts from Lee's speech:

"My talk is in favor of paternalism. I suppose I am the only man here who is on that side. The current talk is all against public action of every sort, and especially against legislation. Newspapers

and public speakers are always saying that it would be better if our legislators met less often, and had shorter sessions, and if they didn't do anything when they do meet. I believe that this talk is all rot, that the truth is exactly the opposite, that progress is to be sought not in suppressing the means by which the public purpose is announced, but on the contrary, by making such expression more adequate. People say that legislation is ineffective, that a law is of no use until it has public opinion back of it, and that when you have public opinion the law is unnecessary. The same may be said of an axe. If you lean it up in the corner of the wood shed it will not accomplish much except to accumulate rust. But all the same a man can cut down more trees in an afternoon with an axe than he can chew down with his teeth. ....Another thing that is always said against legislation is that it puts an end to competition. You might as well say that the Marquis of Queensbury Rules interfere with competition.