daily newspapers advertisements like the following:
"Wanted, lessons in the evenings by a gentleman of neglected education;"
"Wanted, lessons in grammar and conversation (_sic_) by a married
couple." It was by answering such advertisements as these that I fell
upon the most satisfactory portion of my labors in this country, and met
with pupils of both sexes the memory of whom will be to me a source of
pride as well as of pleasure as long as I live. Ladies and gentleman of
good social standing they were, who, bitterly regretting neglected early
opportunities, had the moral courage to "go to school"--with the wise
meekness and receptiveness engendered in fine natures by ultimate
self-disparagement--even when their avocations seemed to preclude the
possibility of sustained and fruitful study. But when I contemplate a
long array of such pupils (covering a period of three years)--from the
young banker's clerk or embryo lawyer chagrined with himself because of
the poor figure he cut at last week's party, and commendably determined
to try and remedy his defects, to the mature business- or even
professional-man, humiliated because his accomplished wife's every
sentence made him feel ashamed of his squandered youth, and so
constrained, at the eleventh hour, to employ a private tutor--it is
difficult for me not to recognize that in a country where the children
enjoy so many privileges, where they are taught regularly,
systematically, patiently, conscientiously--where, in short, everything
is taught, and everything is taught well--there must be some mistake in
the exercise of the parental guardianship that creates and fosters the
aimlessness and impatience which prevent so many of the children from
reaping adequate benefit from their noble heritage.

One thing that occasioned me a good deal of trouble and anxiety in my
first school was the system of "marking" for each lesson with a view to
obtaining a weekly average standard. Not that I was unused to the
method, but I had never before seen it pushed to such an extent nor
pursued on exactly the same principle. A boy would be marked up by his
various teachers in about a dozen subjects during the week, and on
Friday a printed slip would be handed him showing his weekly average in
each subject and in all the subjects taken together. An average of 95
per cent. was quite common; 80 was not in high favor; 70 was shaky,
while 60 was quite bad. A quarter's experience of it convinced me that