THE DANGERS OF CUTTING LOOSE 

 FROM TOWN DRUDGERY 



THE late Matthew Arnold found nothing 

 more characteristic to say about us than 

 that we Americans and our institutions are un- 

 interesting. The length of our railroads, our 

 piles of money, our big buildings, our vast 

 spaces on land and water did not impress him. 

 The human interest was lacking partly because 

 so much of our time or attention and our talk 

 was taken up with these other material matters 

 in themselves not peculiarly interesting. Sir 

 Lepel Griffin, in a harsher review of us and our 

 institutions, says that he would rather live 

 almost anywhere than here, and again he re- 

 marks that we are uninteresting. As a nation, 

 we may have attained to a higher level in ma- 

 terial matters than the great nations of the Old 

 World ; but the work of our public schools in 

 turning out vast armies of pupils, knowing all 



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