for mental drill, but for
stimulus to original work. The association of students with a general
audience is a gain to both parties. Many persons follow regularly the
instruction of the class who have not participated in the exercises.
Moreover, the students, by their connection with the popular audience,
are saved from the academic bias which is the besetting sin of teachers:
more human interest is drawn into the study. The same effect follows
from the miscellaneous character of the students who contribute
exercises. High university graduates, experts in special pursuits,
deeply cultured individuals who have never before had any field in which
to exhibit the fruits of their culture, as well as persons whose
spelling and writing would pass muster nowhere else, or casual visitors
from the world of business, or young men and women fresh from school, or
even children writing in round text,--all these classes may be
represented in a single week's work; and the papers sent in will vary in
elaborateness from a scrawl on a post-card to a magazine article or
treatise. I have received an exercise of such a character that the
student considerately furnished me with an index; I remember one longer
still, but as this hailed from a lunatic asylum I will quote it only for
illustrating the diversity of the spheres reached by the movement. Study
participated in by such diverse classes cannot but have an all-roundness
which is to teachers and students one of the main attractions of the
movement.

But we shall be expected to judge our system by results: and, so far as
the unit courses are concerned, we have every reason to be satisfied.
Very few persons fail in our final examinations, and yet examiners
report that the standard in university extension is substantially the
same as that in the universities--our pass students being on a par with
pass men in the universities, our students of 'distinction' reaching the
standard of honors schools. Personally I attach high importance to
results which can never be expressed in statistics. We are in a position
to assert that a successful course perceptibly influences the _tone_ of
a locality for the period it lasts: librarians volunteer reports of an
entirely changed demand for books, and we have even assurances that the
character of conversation at 'five o'clock teas' has undergone marked
alteration. I may be permitted an anecdote illustrating the impression
made upon the universities themselves.