mind . . .24
Throughout the following spring (1885) he advanced plans for a summer school of practical theology for the benefit of Hawaiian ministers. He blew this idea up into an almost impossible dream:
. . . There is much enthusiasm about my proposed People's University, a sort of Church Correspondence School, a Chautauqua Literary & Scientific Circle with our Pastor as Head . . . I propose to publish 4 books with 12 lessons each to be recited to the pastor, and at the end of every lesson to have examination papers provided and circulated, the answers to be written and sent to Honolulu for correction: at the end of six months print a list of members and names of those who pass over 75% correct replies . . . This is a project I have had in mind for three years . . . I propose mingling general information with Biblical study and for the first four books have planned a Hawaiian Grammar, a Biblical Geography, a General History, and Biblical Introduction to the Old Testament.25
While the People's University never left the planning boards for the post office, preparation of the suggested materials continued as he created new study helps and texts and refined old ones. He was perennially at this. "I have also prepared a Manual of Parliamentary Proceedings, the Common Rules of Order, for deliberative bodies, and after careful study of the church Manual, the Students have conducted in due form on assigned topics, a church meeting, a committee meeting, association meetings."26
Excerpts from later annual reports bespeak the never ending kaleidoscope of Institute affairs; "In 1886 there were 14 students, all married, some with 3-4 children. The medical examination, now required, cleared all adults and children . . . All gather together for a sunrise prayer meeting, Sundays. A Bible School has been maintained for the children."27
"The Rhetorical Society has held a weekly meeting for training in the management of public assemblies, an effective style of extemporaneous speaking, logical discussion of mooted points, and tersely written homiletical discourses . . ."28
Among visitors registered in the guest book at the Institute for 18881889 was the English portrait painter Edward Clifford. He gave $10 for the use of the school, which spent the money framing photographs of the different classes. A visit to the leper settlement and Father Damien was Clifford's primary purpose in visiting the islands. He was there two weeks and stopped over afterward in Honolulu.29
There was steady growth in the school program. There was little change in enrollment but the preparation of text materials, improvement in instructional methods and the selection of students, summer pastorates in town and country, ordinations for local island parishes and for work in Micronesia, went on apace. A new set of facilities was needed: dormitory space for married students, more and better equipped classrooms, and an improved chapel.
A campaign for funds was launched in 1888. Soon sufficient money was in hand and the contract for the new facility was let for $8327. The same site on Punchbowl Street was used. J. Outerkirk was the contractor, H. W. Mcintosh, the supervising architect. There were 16 suites of rooms included among the other facilities.30
Dr. Hyde liked the new building. "Other forms of faith may advocate and exemplify asceticism and squalor based in sordid notions of human life. But the gospel of the grace of God, as it comes to us, is a gospel of beauty and delight as well as sympathy with affliction and suffering."31
He covered other activities in his annual report in 1891. "One pleasing development of practical Christianity is the readiness and success with which some of the students have taken up the work of street preaching. This meeting, face to face, a crowd of men indifferent to religion, or opposed to its claims, has reacted intensely and favorably on the piety of the students themselves. Students visit from house to house for conversation and prayer, Bible reading and distribution of religious reading in connection with the Hawaiian Evangelical Association."32 Dr. Hyde in his Institute had reached an optimum level of performance.
"I enclose a program," he wrote to the American Board, "of the closing exercises of the NPMI. Ten out of the 19 students will graduate this year, and for all of them vacant parishes are ready."33 There was even greater drama in a parallel excerpt a year later. "But what is better, every one of the present class of students has signified his readiness to go to Micronesia into the foreign missionary work. What theological seminary on the mainland can show a record like that? Eight out of the ten are married, and the wives are equally ready with the husbands . . . It will not be an easy matter for the Hawaiian churches to support them, and so I write to urge again the propriety of the American Board's assuming the support of the Gilbert Islands Catechists, sent out from the G.I. Training School."34
He had foreseen more clearly than anyone the need of an understudy who would be trained in his way of operation and would then be ready to assume the leadership role. His first mention of this was long before, in 1883. He kept up a running barrage of reminders to the point of its being a matter of self-torment. ". . . I hope," he wrote Judson Smith in 1888, "you will see the importance of having someone on the ground in training to take up my work when it may be necessary for me to retire. I never was stronger or better physically than I am now, but no one can tell when the debilitating climate may tell on my strength so severely that I may break down. There is no indication now of anything of that kind, though I feel that brain-work here is so exhausting as to use up one's brain power entirely. I am not wearied merely, but all such power is gone, as utterly, as if the brain were a log of wood. The will is as vigorous as ever, but the tool is blunted past all possible use. I have to stop because I cannot go on: I cannot think. It is a curious sensation to have this full physical vigor, but the brain power all spent . . . "35
He may have been sounding such a note of despair just to provoke action in Boston. His greatest intellectual accomplishments illumined the final and golden decade of his life. Still nothing happened. March 7 he wrote another letter to Boston. He was planning his next mainland trip scheduled for the summer of 1890. ". . . One reason I am asked to go on is to secure some one as a helper in the Institute who can be in training to take my place. I cannot calculate on more than ten years of active work in the future, and some one ought to be in readiness."
Even the pressure of a personal survey that summer produced no results. So absorbed was he in this continuing failure to enlist a helper, that in the comparative seclusion and relaxation of the ship returning him to Hawaii in September, he composed an article for the reputable Congregationalist under the title, "New Times, New Men, New Methods." It was built around the need for strong leaders and constituted a review of the times generally; education, religion, and social and economic life. If it were dated 1970, it would still be applicable.36
Institutions fashioned by the personality and energy of one man are in jeopardy if adequate succession is not assured. And it was likely more of a problem in the Institute since Dr. Hyde did not have a board of directors specifically and solely charged with direction of the work. But he recognized this potential hazard and it became an obsession: ". . . I do wish," he wrote, "That you would secure someone such as I have specified, for an assistant in the NPMI. Some one ought to be here and in training to take my place. No one that might come after me could possibly receive such help as I did from the old missionaries then living, and as I stand ready to give to anyone that comes while I can give help."37
For the next three years a letter seldom went to the American Board without mention of the NPMI succession. He employed any favorable opening to press the matter. Once he capitalized on a personal injury. ". . . I went inside my toolroom last Friday to get some curtain fixtures to repair a broken window shade at the Institute. I was standing on a box and fell . . . "38 He bruised his muscles, dented a pail, etc. Another time he reported availability of $5500 in cash to subsidize an assistant.39 Still with all this, except for one false start, nothing happened.
The Hydes had taken a long respite from Hawaii in the summer and fall of 1893. He was invited to attend the eighty-third annual meeting of the American Board in Worcester, Massachusetts, October 10-13; he accepted, and delayed his Hawaii return accordingly. It was his first visit to such an annual meeting in 17 years. He was 61.
Seemingly his campaign for an associate might be advanced by a personal appearance. It is likely the following portion