only as a direct benefit to its recipients, but as an
element of strength and safety in organized society. Considered in these
aspects it should nowhere be better appreciated than in this land of
free institutions consecrated to the welfare and happiness of its
citizens, and deriving its sanction and its power from the people. Here
the character of the people is inevitably impressed upon the government,
and here our public life can no more be higher and purer than the life
of the people, than a stream can rise above its fountain or be purer
than the spring in which it has its source.

That we have not failed to realize these conditions is demonstrated by
the establishment of free public schools on every side, where children
are not only invited but often obliged to submit themselves to such
instruction as will better their situation in life and fit them to take
part intelligently in the conduct of the government.

Thus, in our schools the young are taught to read, and in this manner
the seed is sown, from which we expect a profitable return to the state,
when its beneficiaries shall repay the educational advances made to them
by an intelligent and patriotic performance of their social and
political duties.

And yet if we are to create good citizenship, which is the object of
popular education, and if we are to insure to the country the full
benefit of public instruction, we can by no means consider the work as
completely done in the schoolroom. While the young gathered there are
fitting themselves to assume in the future their political obligations,
there are others upon whom these obligations already rest, and who now
have the welfare and safety of the country in their keeping. Our work is
badly done if these are neglected. They have passed the school age, and
have perhaps availed themselves of free instruction; but they, as well
as those still in the school, should, nevertheless, have within their
reach the means of further mental improvement and the opportunity of
gaining that additional knowledge and information which can only be
secured by access to useful and instructive books.

The husbandman who expects to gain a profitable return from his
orchards, not only carefully tends and cultivates the young trees in his
nurseries as they grow to maturity but he generously enriches and cares
for those in bearing and upon which he must rely for ripened fruit.

Teaching the children of our land to read is but the first