ammar schools to the high school. May there not be suspicion of
partiality? If a boy or girl is rejected, you look for some social,
political, or religious influence which has caused the rejection, and
the parent and child complain. Here is a great evil; for the real and
apparent justice of the examination and decision by which pupils are
transferred from one school to another is vital to the success of the
system.

There is another advantage in the system of public high schools, which I
imagine the people do not always at first appreciate. It is, that the
private school, with the same teachers, the same apparatus, and the same
means, cannot give the education which may be, and usually is, furnished
in the public schools. This statement may seem to require some
considerable support. We must look at facts as they are. Some people are
poor; I am sorry for them. Some people are rich, and I congratulate them
upon their good fortune. But it is not so much of a benefit, after all,
as many think. It is worth something in this world, no doubt, to be
rich; but what is the result of that condition upon the family first,
the school afterwards, and society finally? It is, that some learn the
lesson of life a little earlier than others; and that lesson is the
lesson of self-reliance, which is worth more than--I will not say a
knowledge of the English language--but worth more than Latin or Greek.
If the great lesson of self-reliance is to be learned, who is more
likely to acquire it early,--the child of the poor, or the child of the
rich; the child who has most done for him, or the child who is under the
necessity of doing most for himself? Plainly, the latter. Now, while a
system of public instruction in itself cannot be magnified in its
beneficial influences to the poor and to the children of the poor, it is
equally beneficial to the rich in the facility it affords for the
instruction of their children. Is it not worth something to the rich
man, who cannot, from the circumstances of the case, teach self-reliance
around the family hearth, to send his child to school to learn this
lesson with other children, that he may be stimulated, that he may be
provoked to exertions which he would not otherwise have made? For, be it
remembered that in our schools public sentiment is as well marked as in
a college, or a town, or a nation; that it moves forward in the same
way. And the great object of a teacher should be to create a public
sentime