as they
were; the successes will be a clear gain.

But investigation and trial will show a natural aptitude or instinct in
children that will aid in their improvement and reformation. There has
been in one of our public schools a lad, who, at the age of fourteen
years, could not recall distinctly the circumstances of his life
previous to the time when he was a newsboy in the city of New York. He
was ignorant of father, mother, kindred, family name, and nation. At an
early age, he travelled through the middle, southern and south-western
states, engaged in selling papers and trash literature; and, for a time,
he was employed by a showman to stand outside the tent and describe and
exaggerate the attractions within. When he was in his fourteenth year,
he accepted the offer of a permanent home; his chief object being, as he
said, to obtain an education. "I have found," said he, "that a man
cannot do much in this country unless he has some learning." This truth,
simple, and resting upon a low view of education, may yet be of infinite
value if accepted by those who, even among us, are advancing to adult
life without the preparation which our common schools are well fitted to
furnish. And the case of this lad may be yet further useful by showing
how compensation is provided for evils and neglects in mental and moral
relations, as well as in the physical and natural world. Though ignorant
of books, he was thoroughly and extensively acquainted with things, and
consequently made rapid progress in the knowledge of signs; for they
were immediately applied, and of course remembered. In a few months, he
took a respectable position among lads of his age. The world had done
for this boy what good schools do not always accomplish,--made him
familiar with things before he was troubled with the signs which stand
for them. There is an ignorance in manhood; an ignorance under the show
of profound learning; an ignorance for which schools, academies and
colleges, are often responsible; an ignorance that neither schools,
academies nor colleges, can conceal from the humblest intellects; an
ignorance of life and things as they are within the sphere of our own
observation. From this most deplorable ignorance this boy had escaped;
and the light of learning illumined his mind, as the sun in his daily
return reveals anew those forms of life, which, even in an ungenial
spring and early summer, his rays had warmed into existence, and
nourished and che