ll in time become so irksome--especially if
it is his lot to fall upon inferior schools--that he will be disposed to
sacrifice all his pecuniary advantages and chances of unlimited
promotion for the sake of a little peace of mind and unhampered leisure.

My readers are not to suppose that my object is to institute a full
comparison between the schools of England and the United States: I have
not the wide experience of American schools that would justify me in
attempting such a task. For instance, although I have made a careful
study of the working methods and interior economy of the common schools
of the three American cities in which I have exercised my
vocation--namely, Boston, New York and Philadelphia--I have never taught
in the public schools; and any survey of the educational facilities of
the country that leaves them out would resemble a performance of
_Hamlet_ with the role of the prince omitted. Nevertheless, my brief
sojourn here has been a chequered and, in some respects, an amusing one;
and any one who chooses to hear my record of it may add as much salt as
he pleases, for I promise to be perfectly frank in my utterances.

I obtained my first pupils by answering a newspaper advertisement--I
have already named the three cities which my experience covers--and they
consisted of two young ladies, aged respectively eighteen and twenty-two
years. Their education had been thoroughly neglected, or, rather, they
had idled away the golden chances of their youth, and now their
ignorance, for ladies of their social standing, was astonishing. But
mark the anomaly: had they been Englishwomen of the same rank and
similarly uneducated, they would have been uncouth and ungrammatical in
speech, awkward in manner and dowdy in dress. There is no people upon
whom the transforming, refining effects of a thorough training are so
marked--because, it must be confessed, the native soil so much needs
cultivation--as upon the English people. But these girls were ladylike
in manner, tastefully dressed, and their speech was entirely free from
the barbarisms of an uneducated Englishwoman's language: I hasten to
add, however, that I would sooner have the Englishwoman for a pupil. Two
Englishwomen who required assistance from a private tutor would submit
in patience to a prolonged course of laborious and irksome work, all
unmindful of the doings of society and the absorbing interests of the
hour, so long as the ultimate object was some day