om one of her
ex-pupils, a girl of fourteen who is at home keeping house for her
father, and who said to her in the course of their conversation: "I
do just love washing days; I get up before six and start. Then, when
all the washing is done, I scrub everything bright in the copper
while I have the hot soapsuds." Accustomed as he (or she) is from his
(or her) earliest days to sincere and fearless self-expression, the
Utopian child is entirely incapable of indulging in cant; and the
genuineness of the sentiment which dictated those words is therefore
above suspicion. To work vigorously, to do well whatever he (or she)
has to do, is a real pleasure to the Utopian child. Indeed his whole
being is a living response to the familiar precept: "Whatsoever thy
hand findeth to do, do it with thy might."

And what he does with his might is always well worth doing. His
constant effort to express himself has, as its necessary counterpart,
a constant effort to find out what is worth expressing, to get to the
truth of things, to see things as they are. The consequent growth
of his perceptive powers may be looked at from two points of view.
On the one hand his growing capacity for getting on terms with
things--for feeling his way among them, for "getting, the hang" of
them, for making himself at home with them, for learning their ins
and outs, for understanding their ways and works--will give him the
power of putting forth an appropriate _sense_ in response to the
demands of each new environment, and, through the medium of this
sense, of converting information into knowledge. For this reason new
"subjects" have no terror for Egeria and her pupils. Though she has
never thought in subjects, she is ready to extend her curriculum in
any direction in which she thinks that her children are likely to
find interest or profit. The versatility, the mental agility, of the
children is as remarkable as their activity. The current of their
energy is ready to adapt itself to every modifying influence, to
every change of geological formation, that it may encounter in its
course, and to shape its channel or channels accordingly.

On the other hand, as healthy vigorous growth is always upward (and
downward) as well as outward, the lateral extension of the child's
perceptive powers must needs be balanced in Utopia by the gradual
elevation of his standpoint, with a corresponding widening of his
outlook, and the proportionate deepening of his insight. Wh