country, whose sweat of blood attests
the bale and blast which this evil spirit has wrought. If uprightness,
if courage, if humanity and rectitude and the mind conscious to itself
of right, are anything more than a name. Let the young men who mean to
make time minister to life scorn and scotch and kill this debasing and
stupid practice.

And why is not some legitimate and wholesome safety-valve provided by
authority to let off superabundant vitality, that boys may not, by the
mere occasions of their own natures, be driven into wickedness?
Class-Day is very well, but it comes only once a year, and what is
needed is an opportunity for daily ebullition, so that each night may
square its own account and forestall explosion. Why should there not be,
for instance, a military department to every college, as well as a
mathematical department? Why might not every college be a military
normal school? The exuberance and riot of animal spirits, the young,
adventurous strength and joy in being, would not only be kept from
striking out as now in illegitimate, unworthy, and hurtful directions,
but it would become the very basis and groundwork of useful purposes.
Such exercise would be so promotive of health and discipline, it would
so train and harmonize and _limber_ the physical powers, that the
superior quality of study would, I doubt not, more than atone for
whatever deficiency in quantity might result. And even suppose a little
less attention should be given to Euclid and Homer, which is of the
greater importance nowadays, an ear that can detect a false quantity in
a Greek verse, or an eye that can sight a Rebel nine hundred yards off,
and a hand that can pull a trigger and shoot him? Knowledge is power;
but knowledge must sharpen its edges and polish its points, if it would
be greatliest available in days like these. The knowledge that can plant
batteries and plan campaigns, that is fertile in expedients and wise to
baffle the foe, is just now the strongest power. Diagrams and
first-aorists are good, and they who have fed on such meat have grown
great, and done the State service in their generation; but these times
demand new measures and new men. It is conceded that we shall probably
be for many years a military nation. At least a generation of vigilance
shall be the price of our liberty. And even of peace we can have no
stronger assurance than a wise and wieldy readiness for war. Now the
education of our unwarlike days is not a