important subjects, and that they were leagues beyond that terrible
repetition of A B C, to which, I fear, that most of our free
metropolitan schools are still necessarily confined. You and I,
reader, were we called on to superintend the education of girls of
sixteen, might not select, as favorite points either the
hypothenuse or the ancient methods of populating young colonies.
There may be, and to us on the European side of the Atlantic there
will be, a certain amount of absurdity in the Transatlantic idea
that all knowledge is knowledge, and that it should be imparted if
it be not knowledge of evil. But as to the general result, no
fair-minded man or woman can have a doubt. That the lads and girls
in these schools are excellently educated, comes home as a fact to
the mind of any one who will look into the subject. That girl
could not have got as fair at the hypothenuse without a competent
and abiding knowledge of much that is very far beyond the outside
limits of what such girls know with us. It was at least manifest
in the other examination that the girls knew as well as I did who
were the Romans, and who were the Sabine women. That all this is
of use, was shown in the very gestures and bearings of the girl.
Emollit mores, as Colonel Newcombe used to say. That young woman
whom I had watched while she cooked her husband's dinner upon the
banks of the Mississippi had doubtless learned all about the Sabine
women, and I feel assured that she cooked her husband's dinner all
the better for that knowledge--and faced the hardships of the world
with a better front than she would have done had she been ignorant
on the subject.

In order to make a comparison between the schools of London and
those of New York, I have called them both free schools. They are,
in fact, more free in New York than they are in London; because in