to receive the most degraded one, would that degraded one but come
to the world in proper spirit, sat down amid perfunctory applause
led by the officers and attendants of the institution, and the boys
rose to sing. The brightening of their faces told that their work as
performers was more to their liking than their position as auditors.
They threw back their heads and waited with well-disciplined
eagerness for the signal to begin. Then, with the strength and
native music there are in some three hundred boys' throats, there
rolled out the words of the song of the State.

There were lips which opened only because they must, but as a whole
they sang with the same heartiness, the same joy in singing, that he
had heard a crowd of public-school boys put into the song only the
week before. When the last word had died away it seemed to Philip
Grayson that the sigh of the world without was giving voice to the
sigh of the world within as the well-behaved crowd of boys sat down
to resume their duties as auditors.

And then one of the most important of the professors from the State
University was telling them about the kindness of the State: the
State had provided for them this beautiful home; it gave them
comfortable clothing and nutritious food; it furnished that fine
gymnasium in which to train their bodies, books and teachers to
train their minds; it provided those fitted to train their souls, to
work against the unfortunate tendencies--the professor stumbled a
little there--which had led to their coming. The State gave
liberally, gladly, and in return it asked but one thing: that they
come out into the world and make useful, upright citizens, citizens
of which any State might be proud. Was that asking too much? the
professor from the State University was saying.