There are thousands upon thousands of instances which prove that the dead line of fifty is not only false but positively vicious. It is working intolerable harm in many ways, particularly in school rooms and in the ministry.

A splendid rebuke to the notion that a man's usefulness is lost at fifty was the recent action of the school authorities of Cambridge, Massachusetts, in paying a deserved tribute to Superintendent Francis Cogswell, upon the completion of his fiftieth year of service in the schools of that city. On the evening of June twenty-seventh, 1904, over five hundred public officials, principals of schools, teachers, and citizens met in the Cambridge Latin School hall to tender their congratulations to the superintendent. It was a fitting reception to a public official who, at the age of seventy-five, was not growing out of his work, but growing into it.

President Eliot of Harvard University paid a fine tribute to the character and ability of Mr. Cogswell. General William A. Bancroft made a highly complimentary address from which I quote a few lines of special interest:

"Ten years ago Mr. Cogswell went to the mayor of the city and said, 'If you think I am too old to be superintendent of schools, I will resign.' He who was mayor smiled, but marvelled much. He did not then think that Mr. Cogswell was too old, neither does he now think that he is too old. Mr. Cogswell is still superintendent.

"Some expression of the high esteem in which this man is held his fellow-townsmen desire to make. As a part of this expression, a committee has caused to be put upon canvas, by the art of a fellow-townsman, a representation of his features. The committee, Mr. Mayor, has requested me to present this portrait to the city, and to ask you, as the city's highest representative, to have it hung in the City Hall. As long as this community shall endure, we think it will be worth while for its people to contemplate the character of him whose face this painting depicts."

There is striking significance in this incident. Instead of turning the venerable superintendent "out to grass," as the majority of school authorities would have done, he was honored by a public reception, and continued in the service. Moreover, the large portrait in oil of Mr. Cogswell was suspended in the City Hall that thousands who enter there hereafter may behold the man who, after fifty years of continuous service as an educator, did not grow old in heart nor suffer the impairment of intellect.

Those super-serviceable persons who are continually insisting upon drawing the dead line on a man's activity at fifty or sixty years, will be compelled to leave Mr. John Ueber out of their calculations. He lives in New Orleans, and is the oldest teacher, in point of actual service, in the United States. To his credit are set down sixty-five years of unbroken labor in the schoolroom. The school in which Mr. Ueber was on duty for such an extraordinary period was a private institution, established early in the last century. For over fifty years Mr. Ueber had his brother Jacob for an associate, and the fiftieth anniversary of their joint service was cel ebrated with particular enthusiasm by their former pupils and friends. In 1904, Mr. John Ueber retired from the school, not because of any dead line, but at the urgent request of his children, who thought that after sixty-five years of continuous teaching, he should have some time which he could call his own.

Many of Mr. Ueber's pupils became public men of note. The school was non-sectarian, and was unique because of the fact that the principal text book was the Bible. Pupils of all shades of religious belief were admitted, and there was no proselyting. But one rule of the school was as fixed as the law of the Medes and Persians - all had to study the Bible.

Mr. Ueber is nearly ninety years old. In explaining why he has been spared to enjoy so many years of educational work, he says that he has always lived in contentment. Growing old has not caused him trouble. He has preserved his health by using the good things of this world but not abusing them.

At the time I am writing this chapter, Professor Zephaniah Hopper of Philadelphia, has completed his sixty-second year as a teacher, and for fifty years he has been connected with the Central High School of that city. In 1904 he had reached his eightieth year, and yet the pernicious dead line was not drawn upon him. He enjoys the refreshing belief that he is good for several years more of teaching, and the members of the board of education are of the same opinion, for they have requested him to continue his service in the Central school; and in recognition of his long, efficient, and conscientious work in shaping the lives of the young men and women who have been his pupils, the honorary degree of doctor of philosophy has been conferred upon him.

The reception given to Professor Cogswell suggests that President Eliot is in his seventy-first year, and that his educational work is as thorough to-day as it was thirty-six years ago when he became the head of one of the greatest universities on this continent.

Another gentleman whose life and work play havoc with the dead line theory, is James B. Angell, President of the University of Michigan. I do not contend that at the age of seventy-seven his constructive powers are as great as thirty years ago, but there are some interesting and helpful facts which shine out in his life of to-day. He still possesses a remarkable degree of vitalizing force. His strong faculty enables him to "do things" very much as he did before He crossed the half-century line.

He has lost none of the influence which years since inspired the students at Ann Arbor. Dr. Angell is a cheerful, active gentleman of nearly eighty, whose life teaches the great lesson that there should be an indivisible companionship between a hopeful and aspiring soul and old age.

In this noisy, worrying, complex world it is refreshing to turn to such modest, able educators as those named in this chapter. They are masters of their years. They are also models of "the simple life." And in their profession of training the minds and hearts of boys and girls and young men and women, they are among the great men of their time.