agriculture and of mechanics. Those
boys and girls who were planning to go to college required an advance
course in those purgatorial topics which, for some inexplicable reason,
are still regarded as necessary preliminaries to a college education.
Most of the girls in Lowville and the immediate vicinity hope to marry
sooner or later, and to preside over wholesome, clean homes. For
home-making, also, there were certain possible educational provisions.

As prospective farmers, mechanics, college students, business men and
women, as prospective fathers and mothers, the boys and girls of
Lowville were looking to the schools--high as well as elementary--for an
education which should enable them to do successfully and efficiently
those things which life was holding before them.

Furthermore, Lowville had no spot around which community interests and
civic ideas could center. There was intelligent interest in Lowville,
its streets, schools, trees, houses, and business interests; there was,
too, an interest, expressed among the neighboring farmers, in the
wonderful strides of agriculture; furthermore, men and women were
anxious to discuss political and social happenings in other parts of the
world.

What more natural than that the school be converted into a center of
interest and education for Lowville and the surrounding territory.
Adults, as well as young folks, needed school help. Adults as well as
young folks should then be accommodated in the Lowville schools.

III The School's Opportunity

"There was a peculiar opportunity," said Mr. Breeze, in his crisp direct
way. "The place needed organizing in educational lines. People were
anxious to have it done. They wanted the advantage of a modern
educational institution, but no one had provided it, so I made up my
mind that my business was to do it."

Mr. Breeze made his first innovation in the course of study,
supplementing the old course by domestic science, several phases of
agriculture and mechanics. Then he correlated the various branches in
such a way that the subjects all harmonized with the work which any
particular student was doing.

"We made up our minds," Mr. Breeze explained, "that if we were to hold
the children and to educate them usefully, we must make our course fit
the things which they had to do in life. The work must come down to
earth. It had to be practical--that is, applicable to everyday affairs.
Some people confuse practical with pecuniary. Ther