My father in these years was a trustee of Antioch College, and this brought our household into touch with the illustrious figure of whom all men spoke.  My memory holds more than a film of him, rather a vivid picture, his stately height dominating my boyish inches, as I stood in his presence.  He was spare to the point of being gaunt, every fibre charged with a magnetism which caused a throb in the by-stander.  Over penetrating eyes hung a beetling brow, and his aggressive, resonant voice commanded even in slight utterances.  I recall him in a public address.  The newspapers were full of the Strassburg geese, which, nails being driven through their web feet to hold them motionless, were fed to develop exaggerated livers,—­these for the epicures of Paris.  “For health and wholesome appetite,” he exclaimed, “I counsel you to eschew les pates de foie gras, but climb a mountain or swing an axe.”  No great sentence in an exhortation to vigorous, manful living.  But the scornful staccato with which he rolled out the French, and the ringing voice and gesture with which he accompanied his exhortation, stamped it indelibly.  From that day to this, if I have felt a beguilement toward the flesh-pots, I still hear the stern tones of Horace Mann.  In general his eloquence was extraordinary, and I suppose few Americans have possessed a power more marked for cutting, bitter speech.  His invective was masterly, and too often perhaps merciless, and it was a weapon he was not slow to wield on occasions large and small.  In Congress he lashed deservedly low-minded policies and misguided blatherskites, but his wrathful outpourings upon pupils for some trivial offence were sometimes over-copious.  There are Boston schoolmasters, still living perhaps, who yet feel a smart from his scourge.  His personality was so incisive that probably few were in any close or long contact with him without a good rasping now and then.  My father was the most amiable of men, yet even he did not escape.  As an Antioch trustee he was in charge of funds which were not to be applied unless certain conditions were satisfied.  Horace Mann demanded the money, and it was withheld on occasions and a deluge of ire was poured upon my poor father’s head.  It did not cause him to falter in his conviction of Horace Mann’s greatness and goodness.  Nor has this over-ready impetuosity ever caused the world to falter in its reverence.  He came bringing not peace but a sword, in all the spheres in which he moved, and in Horace Mann’s world it was a time for the sword.  He was a path-breaker in regions obstructed by mischievous accumulations.  There was need of his virile championship, and none will say that there was ever in him undue thought of self or indifference to the best humanity.