teen years, they would prove competent to the removal of
ninety-nine one hundredths of the evils with which society is now
infested in one generation, and that they would ultimately redeem the
state from social vices and crimes.

The Hon. Horace Mann, late Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of
Education, issued a circular in 1847, in which he raised the question
now under consideration. This circular was sent out to a large number of
the most experienced and reputable teachers in the Northern and Middle
States, all of whom were pleased to reply to it. Each reply corroborates
the position here stated; and, taken together _as a whole_, they are
entitled to implicit credence. The whole correspondence is too
voluminous to be here exhibited; I can not, however, forbear introducing
a few illustrative passages.

Says Mr. Page, the late lamented principal of the New York State Normal
School, "Could I be connected with a school furnished with all the
appliances you name; where all the children should be constant
attendants upon my instruction for a succession of years; where all my
fellow-teachers should be such as you suppose; and where all the
favorable influences described in your circular should surround me and
cheer me, even with my moderate abilities as a teacher, I should
scarcely expect, after the first generation submitted to the experiment,
to fail _in a single case_ to secure the results you have named."

Mr. Solomon Adams, of Boston, who has been engaged in the profession of
teaching twenty-four years, remarks as follows: "Permit me to say that,
in very many cases, after laboring long with individuals almost against
hope, and sometimes in a manner, too, which I can now see was not always
wise, I have never had a case which has not resulted in some good degree
according to my wishes. The many kind and voluntary testimonials given
years afterward by persons who remembered that they were once my
way-ward pupils, are among the pleasantest and most cheering incidents
of my life. So uniform have been the results, when I have had a fair
trial and time enough, that I have unhesitatingly adopted the motto,
_Never despair._ Parents and teachers are apt to look for too speedy
results from the labors of the latter. The moral nature, like the
intellectual and physical, is long and slow in reaching the full
maturity of its strength. I was told a few years since by a person who
knew the history of nearly all my pupils for the f