more sluggish pupils, and thus get more study out of them. I have
known entire schools instructed to aim at the highest places in
society, and the most exalted offices of life. I have known
enthusiastic old fools who made it their principal business to go
from school to school, and talk such stuff to the pupils as would
tend to unfit every one of humble circumstances and slender
possibilities for the life that lay before him. The fact is
persistently ignored, in many of these schools, established
emphatically for the education of the people, that the majority of
the places in this world are subordinate and low places. Every boy
and girl is taught to "be something" in the world, which would be
very well if being "something" were being what God intended they
should be; but when being "something" involves the transformation
of what God intended should be a respectable shoemaker into a very
indifferent and a very slow minister of the Gospel, the harmful
and even the ridiculous character of the instruction becomes
apparent.

There are two classes of evil results attending the inculcation of
these favorite doctrines of the school teachers--first, the
unfitting of men and women for humble places; and, second, the
impulsion of men of feeble power into high places, for the duties
of which they have neither natural nor acquired fitness. There are
no longer any American girls who go out to service in families.
They went into mills from the chamber and the kitchen, but now
they have left the mills, and their places are filled by Scotch
and Irish girls. Why is this? Is it because that among the
American girls there are none of poverty, and of humble powers?
Is it because they are not wanted? Or is it because they have
become unfitted for such services as these, and feel above them?