ery different from sapphires. The bringing together
of 65,000,000 small granite blocks will not turn these stones into
diamonds. It is only when each stone is a gem that the increase of
number means the increase of beauty. No nation is moving forward
toward supremacy merely because the weak individuals began to go in
droves. In our education we are singing peans and praise about our
schools and new methods of education. Meanwhile Frederic Harrison
insists that in fifty years the public schools of Great Britain have
turned out not one mind of the first order. Some of those who have
achieved renown in literature or statecraft were self-educated. The
rest enjoyed the help of some parent or friend, who very early in the
child's career took the pains to search out the child's strongest
faculty, and then asked some tutor or teacher to assist in nourishing
the special talent toward greatness.

At home, President White is telling us that our authors and poets are
dead, and have no successors. Nor could it be otherwise. When a
skillful driver wishes to develop the speed of a thoroughbred colt, he
specializes upon this one animal. No sensible horseman would put forty
colts upon a track and try to develop their speed by driving them
around in a drove. It remains for the parents of this country to adopt
the method of training their children in droves, and educating them in
herds. Our common-school system began in the necessity for the
division of labor. Settling in the wilds of New England, the men went
into the forests with axes, or to the field with their hoes. The
mothers went into the garden or to the loom. Rather than that their
children should have no education, many parents came together and
asked some one man or woman to do the work for all. Thus our common
schools were born out of poverty and emergency.

But at length has come a time when parents, in blind worship of a
system, have farmed their children out to intellectual wet-nurses.
Many children who possess talent of the first order in the realm of
poetry or literature are compelled during the most precious period of
life to spend years upon subjects that yield them no culture effect.
Meanwhile their enthusiasm is wasted, and their strongest faculties
starved. Only when it is too late do they discover the cruel injustice
that has been wrought upon them, and recognize that they must remain
unfulfilled prophecies. Our common schools have wrought most
effectively for our