"Yes, I expected they would be high," I said.

"Not at all. They are the lowest in New York. Smart private schools
will charge five or six hundred dollars a year."

Exhausted, humbled, I at last quitted the warmed Horace Mann ozone for
the harsh and searching atmosphere of the street. And I gazed up at the
pile, and saw all its interiors again in my mind. I had not grasped the
half nor the quarter of what had been so willingly and modestly shown to
me. I had formed no theory as to the value of some of the best juvenile
education in the Eastern States. But I had learned one thing. I knew the
secret of the fine, proud bearing of young America. A child is not a
fool; a child is almost always uncannily shrewd. And when it sees a
splendid palace provided for it, when it sees money being showered upon
hygienic devices for its comfort, even upon trifles for its distraction,
when it sees brains all bent on discovering the best, nicest ways of
dealing with its instincts, when it sees itself the center of a
magnificent pageant, ritual, devotion, almost worship, it naturally
lifts its chin, puts its shoulders back, steps out with a spring, and
glances down confidently upon the whole world. Who wouldn't?

* * * * *

It was an exciting day for me when I paid a call next door to Horace
Mann and visited Columbia University. For this was my first visit of
inspection to any university of any kind, either in the New World or in
the Old. As for an English university education, destiny had deprived me
of its advantages and of its perils. I could not haughtily compare
Columbia with Oxford or Cambridge, because I had never set foot even in
their towns. I had no standards whatever of comparison.