Near the site of the village of the Illinois Indians, the village where
Pere Marquette went from hut to hut in his ministries just before his
death journey; where La Salle gathered about his rock-built castle his red
allies to the number of thousands and attempted to build up what La Barre,
in his letter to Louis XIV, characterized as an imaginary kingdom for
himself--there is a beautiful river city, bearing the Indian name of
"Ottawa," and in the midst of it a large building that was for me the
capital of an imaginary kingdom, my one-time world, though it is called a
township high school. I speak of it because it is typical of the
instruction and influence that have come out of the long past, and that
are looking into the long future, in thousands of the towns and cities
that have each about them as many aspiring men, women, and youth as La
Salle had savage souls about his solitary castle in the wilderness.
These are the new Rocks St. Louis, these the eagles' nests of the new
Nouvelle France--I have visited scores of them--at Peoria, that was Fort
Crevecoeur; at Joliet, where is now one of the best-equipped schools in
the valley; at Marquette, upon Lake Superior; at Chicago, where I spoke
one day to four thousand high-school boys and girls, for in most of these
schools the boys and girls are taught together.
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