53 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



"Plato," the student suggested. 



"Yes. I ain't got nothin' agin him, you understand, and reckon 

 he may be a pretty clever fellow ; but I'll tell you what's a fact. lie 

 ain't worth his salt when the grass is in the cotton ; so, Dan, jus' grab 

 that hoe hangin' in the tree out there, and scorn the grass, and lam 

 the cotton to look up." 



"Great goodness ! " the affrighted young man exclaimed, "I can't 

 stand it out there ! " 



" Oh, but you mustn't pay no attention to the body. The sun 

 won't hurt your soul. Come on, or your grub stops." 



The young man sighed, and like the scriptural personage, arose 

 and followed his father. Two hours later a panting and perspiring 

 Platonist wielding a heavy hoe was seen striking at the fox-tail grass. 



This story illustrates the superstition and ignorance which have 

 characterized the great mass of mankind regarding educational matters. 

 It is a fact at this day that the vast majority of pupils in attendance 

 at our colleges do not know what they want. It is also a fact that 

 the parents who send them do not know what value their children are 

 to get for the sacrifice made. They have a vague idea that their chil- 

 dren are to be " educated," and are accordingly to take their place 

 among the first of the land. This simple conception is carefully 

 coddled at commencements, where the public are congratulated on 

 the fact that they are to be taken under the protecting wing of the 

 "educated" (i. e., the college-bred) man. The common people are 

 elegantly assured that they will be supremely blessed, in some myste- 

 rious and unspecified manner, by the presence of " educated " men 

 among them ; while at the same time it appears that the " educated " 

 man will have a very nice and agreeable job in taking care of the 

 public. And the amazing superstition that a study of books (and 

 those, too, almost irrespective of the wants of either pupil or public) 

 is education, persists in defiance of all sense and experience. 



The same simple faith appears in the making of charitable bequests. 

 No statistics regarding educational endowments are afforded by the 

 census, nor are any at hand, hence the subject can not be presented in 

 its full aspect. But we know that endowments are daily announced in 

 the newspapers. Young men and women are to be hired to study the- 

 ology by means of fellowships, to look at the stars, to study the lan- 

 guages, and the sciences, or whatever the whim of the " benefactor " 

 happens to be. The climax is reached when, as was lately announced 

 in the London "Times," an immense sum is set aside from the ordi- 

 nary course of business to aid young men in becoming civil engineers. 

 That education, if valuable, should be paid for like everything else of 

 value ; that it should stand on the same footing as all other things, and 

 that its value is best secured by its ability to appeal to the spontaneous 

 desires of the public, and to win its financial support precisely as Booth 

 or Patti or Theodore Thomas win their support that is to say, by re- 



