heir Latin, Greek,
French, German, and English, and their local and European history
well. Their knowledge of Latin and of either French or English,
sometimes of both, is far superior to anything required of a student
entering any college or university in America. I have asked many
pupils to read passages at sight in Latin, French and English in
schools in various parts of Germany and there is no question of the
grip they have upon what they have been taught. I am, alas, not a
scholar, and can only judge of the requirements and of the training
and its results in subjects where I am at home; and I must take it for
granted that these boys and girls are as well trained in other
subjects where I am incapable of passing judgment. It is improbable,
however, that the same thoroughness does not characterize their work
throughout the whole curriculum. The examination at the end of the
secondary-school period, called Abiturienten-examen, is more thorough
and covers a wider range than any similar examination in America. It
is a test of intellectual maturity. It permits no gaps, covers a wide
ground, leaves no subject dropped on the way, and sends a man or woman
to the university, with an equipment entirely adequate for such
special work as the individual proposes to undertake.

It seemed to me that in many class-rooms the ventilation was
distinctly bad, but here too I must admit an exaggerated love for
fresh air, born of my own love of out-door exercise.

There are practically no schools in Germany like the public schools
for boys in England, and our own private schools for boys, like Saint
Paul's, Groton, Saint Mark's, and others, where the training of
character and physique are emphasized. Here again I admit my prejudice
in favor of such education. I should be made pulp, indeed, did I try
to run through the boys of a fifth or sixth form at home, but, from
the look of them, I would have undertaken it for a wager in Germany.

It is not their fault, poor boys. Practically the whole emphasis is
laid upon drilling the mind. Moral and physical matters are left to
the home, and in the home there are no fathers and brothers interested
in games or sport, and in this busy, competitive strife, and with the
small means at the disposal of the majority, there is no time and no
opportunity. Boys and girls seldom leave home for distant boarding-schools.
They go from home to school and from school home every day,
and have none of the advantag