autonomous, and placed beyond the control of current opinion," will
require much money; his parents must therefore be rich; they must already
have inherited wealth, or have obtained it by ability or labour. The
course of training to be given to youth includes travelling for six
years in foreign countries under private tutors, studying human
history, ethnic, social, political, industrial, æsthetic, religious;
gems of poetry; the elements of geometry; mechanics; art, plastic,
and graphic; reading Confucius, Sakya-muni, Themistocles, Socrates,
Julius Caesar, Paul, Mahommed, Charlemagne, Alfred, Gregory VII., St.
Bernard, St. Francis, Savonarola, Luther, Queen Elizabeth, Columbus,
Washington, Lincoln, Homer, Virgil, Dante, Tennyson, and Lowell.

The boys on the prairies had to earn their bread; they could not
spend six years travelling around and studying all the writers above
mentioned, making themselves morally autonomous, and worshipping
their own deepest and eternal selves. The best men America has
produced were reared at home, and did chores out of school hours.

When I was expelled from school by the Yankees, Mr. McEvoy, the
leading Irish politician, called me aside and said: "Whisper, you
just hang round until next election, and we'll turn out the Yankee
managers, and put you in the school again." The Germans were slow in
acquiring political knowledge as well as in learning the English
language; but language, politics, and law itself are the birthright
of the Irish. By force of circumstances, and through the otherwise
deplorable failure of Miss Priscilla, I resumed work in the school
before the election, but Mr. McEvoy, true to his promise, organised
the opposition--it is always the opposition--and ejected the
Yankee managers, but in the fall of 1850 I resigned, and went a long
way south.