never saw anything remarkable in him," said one of his old
college professors to me; "if anything, he was rather a dull student."
It seems, then, that even colleges are not always institutions for
"discovering aptitude." It was reserved for Chrystie Street in Willard's
case.

Once a week another teacher comes to the Tombs school, and tells the
boys of our city's history, its famous buildings and great men, trying
so to arouse their interest as a first step toward a citizen's pride.
This one also is sent by a club of women, the City History Club, which
in five years has done strange things among the children. It sprang from
the proposition of Mrs. Robert Abbe that the man and the citizen has his
birth in the boy, and that to love a thing one must know it first. The
half-dozen classes that were started for the study of our city's history
have swelled into many scores of times that number, with a small army of
pupils. The pregnant fact was noted early by the teachers, that the
immigrant boy easily outstrips in interest for his adopted home the
native, who perchance turns up his nose at him, and later very likely
complains of the "unscrupulousness" of the Jew, who forged ahead of him
in business as well.

The classes meet in settlement, school, or church to hear about the
deeds of the fathers, and, when they have listened and read, go with
their teachers and see for themselves the church where Washington
worshipped, the graves where the great dead lie, the fields where they
fought and bled. And when the little Italian asks, with shining eyes,
"Which side were we on?" who can doubt that the lesson has sunk into a
heart that will thenceforward beat more loyally for the city of his
home? We have not any too much pride in our city, the best of us, and
that is why we let it be run by every scalawag boss who comes along to
rob us. In all the land there is no more historic building than
Fraunces' Tavern, where Washington bade good-by to his officers; but
though the very Chamber of Commerce was organized there, the appeal of
patriotic women has not availed to save it to the people as a great
relic of the past. The last time I was in it a waiter, busy with a lot
of longshoremen who were eating their lunch and drinking their beer in
the "Long Room," had hung his dirty apron on a plaster bust of the
Father of his Country that stood upon the counter about where he
probably sat at the historic feast. My angry remonstrance brought only