ILLIKOIS DAIBTMBN'S ASSOCIATION. 61 



livelihood by milking and making butter and cheese. A strong bond of 

 sympathy is created between the professional teacher and those pupils who 

 desire to make intellectual labor their life work. The pride of the teacher 

 centres in these. He assists them to climb to the very heights whereon he 

 has found so much of pleasure and profit. The others he forgets or only 

 beckons them to follow. It is pleasant for such a teacher to work 

 with such pupils. It is pleasant for him to sift from 600 students, 

 20 boys— industrious, capable, ambitious to scale the same intellectual pin- 

 nacles which he has scaled and then lead them along and up the winding 

 courses of algebra, geometry, trigonometry, botany, rhetoric, chemistry ; to 

 read with them Caesar, Sallust, Cicero and Virgil ; to travel a thousand par- 

 asangs by the side of Xeaophon ; to sing again the Homeric song and, using 

 the Greek verb as a turning pole, induce them to practice such mental gym- 

 nastics as will give them endurance and strength for the great intellectual 

 combats of life. All this is pleasant but in the very agreeableness of the 

 work there lurks danger. 



"Higher departments" have been created in our schools but the agricul- 

 tural classes do not believe that they are for them. Let it be granted that 

 the course of study is good— excellent ; what boots it so long as the future 

 tillers of the soil will not take it ? Let it be granted that algebra, geometry, 

 botany, zoology, chemistry— precisely as taught in our public schools to-day 

 are just what the farmer boy needs , what of it so long as the farmer boy 

 himself does not believe it? Certain it is that as the course of study stands 

 to-day, the young agriculturist washes his face, combs his hair, puts on his 

 coat and takes a peep at the outside of it and then goes back to his overalls 

 and the plow. The young lawyer pulls off his coat and appropriates it. 



At the State's expense a bountiful feast has been provided. All the young 

 people in the land have been invited to come in and partake. It is even pro- 

 posed to " go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in." 

 The farmers boys come. They go to the table as eagerly as any. They eat 

 daintily. They taste of this and of that, lose their appetites, push back their 

 chairs and, mentally pale and puny, go to their homes. The merchant boys 

 sit long after the farmer boys have left. But even they when put upon a 

 diet of algebra, geometry, trigonometry and latin, one after another push 

 back their chairs and either go to their life work, or seek more palatable food 

 at the tables set by the Bryant & Stratton's or the Eastman's. But the law- 

 yer boys and the doctor boys and the teacher boys and the preacher boys- 

 how greedily they eat I Dish after dish is cleared. Platter after platter is 

 emptied and dissapears. Neither do they seem so particular as to the quality 

 of the food or the condiments. If it's food they'll eat it and look longingly 

 for more. They are the last to push back their chairs. They leave the table 

 only when all the food provided by a generous State has been placed thereon 

 and by them appropriated. When all the dishes have been emptied and 

 they are told that there is no more, hungrier than ever they were before, they 

 reluctantly push back their chairs and go out in search of —more food 1 



This is not an overdrawn picture of our public schools to-day. This di- 

 vergence in taste which, as has been stated is the fundamental cause of 

 much that is criticised has led those who prepare the food for the tables to 



