Francis B. Carpenter, Six Months at the White House

“ [225] right of being a backwoodsman. I'll show you the difference between spruce, pine, and cedar, and this shred of green, which is neither one nor the other, but a kind of illegitimate cypress.” He then proceeded to gather specimens of each, and explain the distinctive formation of foliage belonging to every species. “Trees,” he said, “are as deceptive in their likeness to one another as are certain classes of men, amongst whom none but a physiognomist's eye can detect dissimilar moral features until events have developed them. Do you know it would be a good thing if in all the schools proposed and carried out by the improvement of modern thinkers, we could have a school of events?”

“A school of events?” repeated the lady he addressed.

“Yes,” he continued, “since it is only by that active development that character and ability can be tested. Understand me, I now mean men, not trees; they can be tried, and an analysis of their strength obtained less expensive to life and human interests than man's. What I say now is a mere whimsey, you know; but when I speak of a school of events, I mean one in which, before entering real life, students might pass through the mimic vicissitudes and situations that are necessary to bring out their powers and mark the calibre to which they are assigned. Thus, one could select from the graduates an invincible soldier, equal to any position, with no such word as fail; a martyr ”