nese, if desired). There are schools of art,
law, medicine, nature, forestry, sculpture; schools to teach one how to
write, how to dress, how to eat, and how to keep well; schools to teach
one how to write advertisements, to cultivate the memory, to grow
strong; schools for shooting, boxing, fencing; schools for nurses and
cooks; summer schools; winter schools.

And yet the American is not profoundly educated. He has too much within
his reach. I have been distinctly surprised at crude specimens I have
met who were graduates of great universities. The well-educated
Englishman, German, and American are different things. The American is
far behind in the best sense, which I am inclined to think is due to
the teachers. Any one can get through a normal school and become a
teacher who can pass the examination, and I have seen some singular
instances. If all the teachers were obliged to pass examinations in
culture, refinement, and the art of _conveying_ knowledge, there would
be a falling of pedagogic heads. The free and over education of the poor
places them at once above their parents. They are free, and the daughter
of a ditch laborer, whose wife is a floor scrubber, upon being educated
is ashamed of her parents, learns to play the piano, apes the rich, and
is at least unhappy.

The result is, there remains no peasant class. The effect of education
on the country boy is to make him despise the farm and go to the city,
to become a clerk and ape the fashions of the wealthy at six or eight
dollars a week. He has been educated up to the standard of his "boss"
and to be his equal. The overeducation of the poor is a heartless thing.
The women vie with the men, and as a result women graduates, taking
positions at half the price that men demand, crowd them out of the
fields of skilled labor, whereas the man, not crowded out, should,
normally, marry the girl. In power, strength, and progress the American
nation stands first in the world, and all this may be due to splendid
educational facilities. But this is not everything. There result strife,
unhappiness, envy, and a craze for riches. I do not think the Americans
as a race are as happy as the Chinese. Religious denominations try to
have their own schools, so that children shall not be captured by other
denominations. Thus the Roman Catholics have parochial schools, under
priests and sisters, and colleges of various grades. They oppose the use
of the Bible in the public school, a