TWO CELEBRATED CRIPPLES.

Auckland Star, Volume XXIX, Issue 226, 24 September 1898, Page 4 (Supplement)

TWO CELEBRATED CRIPPLES.

HUE KING OF 'CRAMMERS' AND EMPEROR OF EGYPTOLOGISTS.

""LIVE AND DIE INVINCIBLE

'?(From Our Special Correspondent.)

LONDON.

August 13

The deaths have this week been announced —almost simultaneously—of two remarkable men who struggled into fame and fortune despite lasting physical disabilities of the cruellest end most painful character. Tha best known to Englishmen was V alter "Wren, 'the cripple coach.' For more than thirty years Wren bore the reputation of an" unequalled 'crammer' for the Indian Civil Service. Iv the East his name and reputation were far more familiar than any other living notables. Nearly every Anglo-Indian official had in the pride of youth and clay of uncertainty passed through his expert, hands, ancl not a few bore with them for years afterwards the scars of his terrible tongue. Wren himself might have been (he always said he would have been) a Cabinet Minister if in boyhood a horse's kick hadn't injured him and resulted whilst he was at Oxford, and at the crisis of his academical fortunes, in spine disease. The luckless lad was obliged to leave oft' reading for honours and to content himself with a pass degree. The disease made rapid progress, and he presently became, permanently crippled. For many years of his life he lived night and "day on an inclined couch, beingwheeled from one room to another and never going up or down stairs. To the end of his days he could not walk without the aid of two sticks, and the. spinal disease set up a variety of internal mischiefs. Yet. in spite of a physical condition which would have seemed to most men an absolute bar to effort, he set himself resolutely to make his fortune. He established himself in London and took pupils tor all examination*... It was soon recognised that he had some special qualifications for a teacher. He excelled in discerning a boy's capacity, m fore- ' ji.o- him to concentrate on the particular subject for which he was fitted, and in making him master thoroughly whatever he processed to learn. Ihe minimum of subjects and an absolute knowledge of them were the principles which he instilled into his pupils. Very soon other 'crammers' and the public schools Avere hopelessly beaten. Wren's men year after rear headed the lists. But he was an awful disciplinarian, weeding out tne weak the careless, and the incompetent remorselessly. His frail painwracked frame concealed a phenomenal will power, and before it and beneath the lash of his mordant tongue the most outrageous of lusty prodigals limply subsided. Here, however, ?s the secret of Wren's method in Wren's OAvn words: — -\ e-ood lady (he says) came to me with her son, and at the close of a Ion"- intervieAV, in which she had represented him as possessing all the virtues of an unfallen archangel, she casually inquired about his religious training. I replied, "Madam, you pay me to "prepare your son to pass the competitive examination for the Civil Service, not for Paradise. If your son is all that you say of him he stands in need of no religious training?' but I went .on to say "There is no place m which your son will be more sharply looked "after from a moral point of view than Avith me. for I have three <r o lden rules which are enforced inexorably - first, pay in advance; secondly, no money'it-turned; thirdly, work or go." ' To like effect he said on another occasion:—'The moment I find any pupil weakening or impairing his chances of success at the examination —and every failure at an examination, be it remembered, brings discredit upon my teaching—! am down upon him. I don't preach to him and discourse solemnly upon his fate in the next world if he continues to indulge bis passions in this. I say to him there and then, short and sharp, Look here, my boy; you stop that, or you go Your father has paid me to l nit' you through, and if you. do as I tell you I will put you through; but it you won't, I keep your money and send you about your business." ' For" twenty years Wren had an unbeaten record. In 1860-he passed sixteen men into the 1.C.5., and this rate of success was maintained to the end. Of late years increasing infirmity had made it'impossible for him to do more than -«-ive general superintendence to his business, but he had. the satisfaction of knowing that his personal efforts and absolute knoAvledge of what was required for the I.C.S. examination had made 'Wren's' one of the permanent institutions of the educational world. Outside his work Walter Wren Avas a stalwart Radical and active politician. With five others he founded the National Liberal Club, and in its early days his wheel chair was often en evidence there. He also belonged to the Savage Club ancl often attended the Saturday sing-songs. During the last few years he had been obliged to spend the greater part of his time on the south coast, and, in spite of all that could be done by medical skill and the devotion of his family, his strength gradually ebbed away" under a combination of maladies! The end came tragically, for he was seized by a paralytic attack justas he was starting from his house to attend the marriage of his daughter to his colleague and successor. He liA-ed only eight days after the seizure 'He will (says an- obituary notice in the "Times") be sincerely reo-retted by the friends who kneAV his sterling merits and not least by his former pupils, in whose fortunes he took a fatherly interest. Far beyond the circle of friendship his career will be remembered as a standing proof that no amount of infirmity and disease can prevent a clear intelligence and a strong will from makng life honourable, prosperous, and useful to the world?

George Ebers, the famous German novelist and Egyptologist, who died on Sunday, aged 61, also suffered much. He came of a family of bankers, being descended from the wellknown Court Jew Ephraim, who helped Frederick the Great in so many of his money difficulties. Born after the death of his father in Berlin on March 1. 1837, Ebers gave early indication of that taste for archaeological research which finally placed him in the front rank of Egyptology. His boyhood was spent in an atmosphere of culture. His mother was well-known in Berlin literary society, and under the roof of the brothers Grimm, the great German philologists and folklorists, young- Ebers fmmd that vironment which developed-and determined the bent of his genius. While

reading law at the university of Gottingen, he was stricken Avith an illness from which he did not wholly recover for many years. Paralysed" in both legs, all active occupation was denied him, and he turned, himself wholly to the study of Egyptology. Jacob Grimm introduced him to Lepsius, then the first of Egyptologists whose contemptuous remarks on hearing of Ebers' first work, 'A Princess of Egypt? were characteristically Teutonic. The great scholar was surpiised that his disciple should waste his time on such 'allotria' as romance. Nevertheless 'A Princess of Egypt' brought Ebers fame and fortune, and several of his subsequent works AA-ere likewise successful. The best known here is Tarda? a picture of old Egyptian life in the period of the Eameses. This Avas followed by 'Homo Sum? a romance which brings the reader to Mount Sinai, and 'The Sisters? Avhich carries one to the temple of Serapis and to . the Royal house of the Ptolemvs.