1890.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 4. 183 



of their childhood on farms or else in some country village, 

 where they had abundant opportunity for observation in 

 fiirm life. We might indeed ask the question, Would it be 

 possible for a writer or a poet of any great eminence to arise 

 whose only experience was a city experience ? 



Daniel Webster, a farmer's son, spending his days on a 

 little farm and his evenings studying by the firelight in the 

 little farm-house, is often held up to us as a wonderful pict- 

 ure ; it would be vastly more wonderful to picture him 

 as the son of a man liviag in the city, on the small salary of 

 a clerk or the moderate wages of a working-man, the boy by 

 day in some crowded school of the great city, his evenings 

 in the street attracted by the sights and the distractions the 

 city affords. No, great men do not come up in that way, 

 and these men are not mere accidents ; such growth as theirs 

 has its foundation deep down in the laws which govern the 

 development of human intellect. 



Many good people think that the reason why the country 

 is a better place morally to bring up children in (and par- 

 ticularly wayward children) than the city, is because there 

 are fewer temptations. This idea has only a small basis of 

 truth ; all places have their temptations, — the city one 

 kind, the country another; but temptations are in both. 

 This theory is a relic of that old monkish idea, that the way to 

 make a saint of a sinner is to remove him from temptation, — 

 shut him up in a monastery, where the allurements and sins of 

 the world cannot reach him ; but great men are not developed 

 in that way ; the growth of character is a positive and not a 

 negative process. It is what the country lad does, what he 

 learns, and the strength he accumulates and develops, that 

 makes him. It is not what he avoids and shuns, but what he 

 meets and overcomes, that gives him strength for the battles 

 of life ; the rugged strength and rugged morals developed 

 alono; with the work of the farm are his arms and his defence 

 in the battle of life. 



An Independent Middle Class. 

 The stability of American institutions must rest on the 

 existence of an independent middle class, numerous enough 

 to be powerful by their votes, and with convictions strong 



