These Girls Of Sixteen And Seventeen Got Up One After Another And Gave Their Opinions On The Subject - How Far The Devil Was Right, And How Far He Was Manifestly Wrong.

I was attended by one of the directors or guardians of the schools; and the teacher, I thought, was a little embarrassed by her position.

But the girls themselves were as easy in their demeanor as though they were stitching handkerchiefs at home.

It is impossible to refrain from telling all this, and from making a little innocent fun out of the superexcellencies of these schools; but the total result on my mind was very greatly in their favor. And indeed the testimony came in both ways. Not only was I called on to form an opinion of what the men and women would become from the education which was given to the boys and girls, but also to say what must have been the education of the boys and girls from what I saw of the men and women. Of course it will be understood that I am not here speaking of those I met in society or of their children, but of the working people - of that class who find that a gratuitous education for their children is needful, if any considerable amount of education is to be given. The result is to be seen daily in the whole intercourse of life. The coachman who drives you, the man who mends your window, the boy who brings home your purchases, the girl who stitches your wife's dress, - they all carry with them sure signs of education, and show it in every word they utter.

It will of course be understood that this is, in the separate States, a matter of State law; indeed, I may go further, and say that it is, in most of the States, a matter of State constitution. It is by no means a matter of Federal constitution. The United States as a nation takes no heed of the education of its people. All that is left to the judgment of the separate States. In most of the thirteen original States provision is made in the written constitution for the general education of the people; but this is not done in all. I find that it was more frequently done in the Northern or free-soil States than in those which admitted slavery, as might have been expected. In the constitutions of South Carolina and Virginia I find no allusion to the public provision for education; but in those of North Carolina and Georgia it is enjoined. The forty-first section of the constitution for North Carolina enjoins that "schools shall be established by the legislature for the convenient instruction of youth, with such salaries to the masters, paid by the public, as may enable them to instruct at LOW PRICES" - showing that the intention here was to assist education, and not provide it altogether gratuitously. I think that provision for public education is enjoined in the constitutions of all the States admitted into the Union since the first Federal knot was tied except in that of Illinois.

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