either before the three months are over."

"What do you do in your off-terms?" said I,--"go fishing?"

"No, of course not," said he, "except Strep, and Hipp, and Chal, and
those boys, because their fathers are fishermen. No, we have to be in
our fathers' offices, we big boys; the little fellows, they let them
stay at home. If I was here without you now, that truant-officer we
passed just now would have had me at home before this time. Well, you
see they think we learn about business, and I guess we do. I know I do,"
said he, "and sometimes I think I should like to be a Proxenus when I am
grown up, but I do not know."

I asked George about this, the same evening. He said the boy was pretty
nearly right about it. They had come round to the determination that the
employment of children, merely because their wages were lower than
men's, was very dangerous economy. The chances were that the children
were over-worked, and that their constitution was fatally impaired. "We
do not want any Manchester-trained children here." Then they had found
that steady brain-work on girls, at the growing age, was pretty nearly
slow murder in the long run. They did not let girls go to school with
any persistency after they were twelve or fourteen. After they were
twenty, they might study what they chose.

"But the main difference between our schools and yours," said he, "is
that your teacher is only expected to hear the lesson recited. Our
teacher is expected to teach it also. You have in America, therefore,
sixty scholars to one teacher. We do not pretend to have more than
twenty to one teacher. We do this the easier because we let no child go
to school more than half the time; nor, even with the strongest, more
than four hours a day.

"Why," said he, "I was at a college in America once, where, with
splendid mathematicians, they had had but one man teach any mathematics
for thirty years. And he was travelling in Europe when I was there. The
others only heard recitations of those who could learn without being
taught."

"I was once there," said I.

* * * * *

The boat's repairs still lingered, and on Sunday little Phil. came round
with a note from his mother, to ask if I would go to church with them.
If I had rather go to the cathedral or elsewhere, Phil. would show me
the way. I preferred to go with him and her together. It was a pretty
little church,--quite open and airy it would seem to us,--excellent