aining different apartments for male and female pupils! And
it is in these miserable abodes of accumulated dirt and filth, deprived
of wholesome air, or exposed, without adequate protection, to the
assaults of the elements; with no facilities for necessary exercise or
relaxation; no convenience for prosecuting their studies; crowded
together on benches not admitting of a moment's rest in any position,
and debarred the possibility of yielding to the ordinary calls of nature
without violent inroads upon modesty and shame, that upward of _two
hundred thousand children_, scattered over various parts of the state,
are compelled to spend an average period of eight months during each
year of their pupilage! Here the first lessons of human life, the
incipient principles of morality, and the rules of social intercourse
are to be impressed upon the plastic mind. The boy is here to receive
the model of his permanent character, and to imbibe the elements of his
future career; and here the instinctive delicacy of the young female,
one of the characteristic ornaments of the sex, is to be expanded into
maturity by precept and example! Is it strange, under such
circumstances, that an early and invincible repugnance to the
acquisition of knowledge is imbibed by the youthful mind? that the
school-house is regarded with unconcealed aversion and disgust, and that
parents who have any desire to preserve the health and the morals of
their children exclude them from the district school, and provide
instruction for them elsewhere?"

A volume might be filled with similar testimony; but one more quotation
from another state must suffice. After noticing the common evils already
referred to, the superintendent remarks as follows:[68] "But this notice
of _ordinary_ deficiencies does not cover the whole ground of error in
regard to the situation of school-houses. In some cases they are brought
into close connection with positive nuisances. In a case which has
fallen under the superintendent's own personal observation, one side of
the school-house forms part of the fence of a hog-yard, into which,
during the summer, the calves of an extensive dairy establishment have
been thrown from time to time (disgusting and revolting spectacle!), to
be rent and devoured before the eyes of teacher and pupils, except such
portions of the mutilated and mangled carcasses as were left by the
animals to go to decay, as they lay exposed to the sun and storm. It is
true