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 al- 

 most anywhere than here, and again he remarks 

 that we are uninteresting. As a nation, we may 

 have attained to a higher level in material mat- 

 ters than the great nations of the Old World ; 

 but the work of our public schools in turning 

 out vast armies of pupils, knowing all the same 

 things and viewing every thing from the same 

 229 



