hours a day in school without learning something incessantly. The few
rags and tatters of book-information they acquired were but the
merest fringes on the great garment of learning acquired by these
public-school children, which was to wrap them about all their lives.
What they learned during those eight years of sitting still and not
whispering had nothing to do with the books in their desks or the lore
in their teachers' brains. The great impression stamped upon the wax
of their minds, which became iron in after years, was democracy--a
crude, distorted, wavering image of democracy, like every image an
ideal in this imperfect world, but in its essence a reflection of the
ideal of their country. No European could have conceived how literally
it was true that the birth or wealth or social position of a child
made no difference in the estimation of his mates. There were no
exceptions to the custom of considering the individual on his own
merits. These merits were often queerly enough imagined, a faculty for
standing on his head redounding as much, or more, to a boy's credit as
the utmost brilliance in recitation, or generosity of temperament, but
at least he was valued for something he himself could do, and not for
any fortuitous incidents of birth and fortune.

Furthermore there lay back of these four hundred children, who shaped
their world to this rough-and-ready imitation of democracy, their
families, not so intimately known to each other, of course, as the
children themselves, but still by no means unknown in their general
characteristics; four hundred American families who were, on the
whole, industrious, law-abiding, who loved their children, who were
quite tasteless in matters of art, and quite sound though narrow in
matters of morals, utterly mediocre in intelligence and information,
with no breadth of outlook in any direction; but who somehow lived
their lives and faced and conquered all the incredible vicissitudes of