WHAT WE LOSE AND WHAT WE GAIN. 2 19 



keeping, to necessitate pretty steady drudgery 

 upon my part the year round. In the mean- 

 time, my children attended a little school which 

 was quite as good as any preparatory school of 

 the same type to be found in the city. 



From the experience that I have had with 

 children's schools, I have been led to think 

 that the most pretentious are often the least 

 productive of any good to the child, and I pre- 

 sume that most parents will agree in condemn- 

 ing the ultra-fashionable and most expensive 

 schools as wonderfully well designed to make a 

 child all that it should not be. With the pri- 

 mary schools there is scarcely any choice to be 

 made between those of the city and the coun- 

 try. The home life of the child before twelve 

 years of age counts for so much in forming the 

 character and the intellectual judgment of the 

 child that schools, good or bad, are not of 

 great weight. If any thing, the little, unpre- 

 tentious district school of the smallest country 

 village is better than the city school, because 

 there are fewer children, and consequently 

 their idiosyncrasies are more likely to have full 

 play. The worst that can be said of our pub- 

 lic-school system is that it tends to eliminate 



