by a mixture with the wholesome
society of so many school-fellows, in less time than I have spoken
of, he has sunk to his own level, and is contented to be carried on
in the quiet orbit of modest self-knowledge in which the common mass
of that unpresumptuous assemblage of boys seem to move: from being a
little unfeeling mortal, he has got to feel and reflect. Nor would it
be a difficult matter to show how, at a school like this, where the
boy is neither entirely separated from home, nor yet exclusively
under its influence, the best feelings, the filial for instance, are
brought to a maturity which they could not have attained under a
completely domestic education; how the relation of a parent is
rendered less tender by unremitted association, and the very
awfulness of age is best apprehended by some sojourning amidst the
comparative levity of youth; how absence, not drawn out by too great
extension into alienation or forgetfulness, puts an edge upon the
relish of occasional intercourse, and the boy is made the better
_child_ by that which keeps the force of that relation from being
felt as perpetually pressing on him; how the substituted paternity,
into the care of which he is adopted, while in everything substantial
it makes up for the natural, in the necessary omission of individual
fondnesses and partialities, directs the mind only the more strongly
to appreciate that natural and first tie, in which such weaknesses
are the bond of strength, and the appetite which craves after them
betrays no perverse palate. But these speculations rather belong to
the question of the comparative advantages of a public over a private
education in general. I must get back to my favorite school; and to
that which took place when our old and good steward died.

[Footnote 1: Under the denomination of _gage_.]

[Footnote 2: I am told that the late steward [Mr. Hathaway], who
evinced on many occasions a most praiseworthy anxiety to promote the
comfort of the boys, had occasion for all his address and
perseverance to eradicate the first of these unfortunate prejudices,
in which he at length happily succeeded, and thereby restored to one
half of the animal nutrition of the school those honors which painful
superstition and blind zeal had so long conspired to withhold from
it.]

And I will say that when I think of the frequent instances which I
have met with in children, of a hard-heartedness, a callousness, and
insensibility to the loss o