WILLIS E. JOHNSON

TEXT-BOOK AUTHOR

"I'd rather be the author of `Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard' than to have the glory of beating the French tomorrow," said the mighty General Wolfe on the eve before the fatal battle of Quebec, during the French and Indian War. And, why not? Gray spent eight years writing those twenty-nine short stanzas that will stand forever upon the sacred pages of historic literature to immortalize his name. There is no higher glory extant than to become an author. It is safe to say that Theodore Roosevelt attaches far greater importance to his "Winning of the West" than he does to his "winning" at San Juan

It is with pardonable pride that South Dakota, as a young state, points to the relatively large number of authors which she has already produced. It was a South Dakotan (the lamented Kittredge) who wrote our present splendid copyright law. Several South Dakota authors were among the very first to protect their literary productions, under its wise provisions.

Among this class of people, and in a measure, standing in a class by himself, is Willis E. Johnson, Ph. R., M. A., vice president of the Northern Normal and Industrial School at Aberdeen, South Dakota.

While the state, to date, has produced in proportion to its population, an abnormally large number of authors of fiction and of historty, few have as yet gained recognition in the field of science, except Dr. Wenzlaff and Prof. Johnson. The latter is, first of all, a man of well defined mental processes. He reasons in parallelisms instead of in circles. Truths only, and processes for obtaining truths, are his cynosures. To him fiction is a lamentable monstrosity. He reads and applies it sparingly. His ambition is to delve in, rather than to soar up. He makes no efforts to launch upwards into supernatural realms where legions of white-winged angels flirt with the departed spirits of old-time saints; oh! no—not Johnson, he's not built that way; he's a philosopher.

WILLIS E. JOHNSON

His maiden effort was his "Mathematical Geography," published by the American Book Company, of Chicago. All through these long years that geography has been in the common school curriculum, there has remained in every text book on the subject, and in all teaching processes of it, a loophole. Johnson's philosophic eye caught it. We had put into our old school readers Edgar Allen Poe's beautiful "Three Sundays in a Week." We had filled a section of our arithmetics with problems on "Longitude and Time." Wt had garbled into our later day geographies an inaccurate blending known as the "International Date Line." Likewise, we had filled our geometries and trigonometries with formulas for ascertaining the heights of objects and their respective distances, and had filled our books on physics with propositions intending to illustrate how bodies are lightened by centrifugal force resulting from rotation, and the corresponding diminution or increase in the weight of bodies below or above the surface of the earth. Johnson said: "These things are all related ideas —all resultant from natural science—all spring from and belong to the same thing; hence, all of them can, and should, be incorporated in one book—a practical mathematical geography." He wrote it; the American Book Company published it. Nine editions have been exhausted. and still the sales go on. Why? Simply because a practical mind had treated a practical subject in a practical manner.

What next? Johnson saw that as a young state we hadn't a great deal of valuable history; that what we did have was stretched at certan points until it cracked, so as to make it fill up space for publishing houses. He saw, too, the relation of history and civics; how one author puts the constitution of the United States, the Declaration of Independence, the Presidential Succession Law, and other correlated material into one book and calls it "History," while another writer embodies the same facts into a similar volume and calls it "Civics." Therefore, he conceived the idea of condensing the history and the civics of the state into one brief volume entitled, "South Dakota, a Republic of Friends"; and of making it concise and crowding it as full as possible of practical facts—those things that a busy public need and demand. He did it; the Capital Supply Company, of Pierre, published it. Five thousand volumes were soon sold, and within a year and a half a third edition was necessary to supply the demand.

Not all! Professor Johnson incorporated in this book a song entitled "South Dakota" — writing both the words and the music, himself—which is now being sung throughout the state. He breathed into its treasured lines that lofty patriotism characteristic of the "Sunshine state." Here again was a new field of endeavor. We needed a state song (we shall soon have another one from the pen of J. W. Cotes of Clark). The only one we had was our old "Dakota Land," wherein the author made us all to

The spirit of Johnson's "South Dakota" song has been caught up by the foreign born citizen in our state, with the result that Reverend Bens of Eureka, recently translated it into German. Still more, the descendants of our distinguished Sioux aborigines wanted it, so Rev. Dr. Edward Ashley, of the Cheyenne Indian agency, has translated it into the Sioux tongue for them. This makes the first stanza read:

BIOGRAPHICAL

Like others who have won distinction, Professor Johnson's success in life is not the result of accident, but is in direct proportion to his preparation to succeed. Born at Delano, Minnesota in 1869 he left home at a comparatively early age and entered the state normal school at St. Cloud, Minnesota. After completing his normal course he continued his education at Carleton College, Ilinois Wesleyan and the University of Chicago.

His teaching experience covers rural, village and city school work, a member of the faculty of the state normal at St. Cloud, and the one at Mayville, North Dakota, and for the past ten consecutive years vice president of the Aberdeen (South Dakota) Normal and Industrial School.

Johnson is also a member of the editorial staff of "Encyclopedia for Ready Reference;" and the author of the "Supplement" to Frye's Advanced Geography, published by Ginn & Company. He is married and has five sons; owns two beautiful homes in the city of Aberdeen, and has settled down to make his permanent residence among us. Welcome! Thrice welcome! worthy citizen, teacher, author, philosopher, lecturer.