The richest men in America to-day, the multi-millionaires, are not the product of the universities, but mainly of the public schools. Carnegie, Rockefeller, Schwab, men of the great steel combine, the oil magnates, the great railway magnates, the great mine owners, were all men of limited education at the beginning. Among great merchants, however, the university man is found, and among the Harvard and Yale graduates, for example, may be found some of America's most distinguished men. But Lincoln, the martyred President, had the most limited education, and among public men the majority have been the product of the public school, which suggests that great men are natural geniuses, who will attain prominence despite the lack of education. The best-educated men in America to my mind are the graduates of West Point and Annapolis, the military and naval academies. These two institutions are extremely rigorous, and are open to the most humble citizens. They so transform men in four years that people would hardly recognize them. The result is a highly educated, refined, cultivated, practical man, with a high sense of honor and patriotism. If America would have a school of this kind in every State there would be no limit to her power in two decades. Despite education, the great mass of the people are superficial; they have a smattering of this and that. An employer of several thousand men told the Superintendent of Education of the District of Columbia that he had selected the brightest boy graduate of a high school for a position which required only a knowledge of simple arithmetic. The graduate proved to be totally unfit for the position and was discharged. Later he became the driver of a team of horses. America abounds in thousands of educational institutions, yet there is not one so well endowed that it can say to the world we wish no more money. It is singular that some multi-millionaire does not grasp this opportunity to donate one hundred millions to a great national school or university, to be placed at Washington, where the buildings would all be lessons in architecture of marble after the plans of a world's fair. Instead they leave a few thousands here and a few there. Carnegie, the leading millionaire, gives libraries to cities all over the States, each of which bears the name of the giver. The object is too obvious, and is cheap in conception. In San Francisco some years ago a citizen tried the same experiment. He proposed to give the city a large number of fountains. When they were finished _each_ one was seen to be surmounted by his own statue. A few were put up, how many I do not recall, but one night some citizens waited on a statue, fastened a rope to its neck, and hauled it down. So peculiar are the Americans that I believe if Mr. Carnegie should place his name on ten thousand libraries, with the object of attaining undying fame, the people, by a concerted effort, would forget all about him in a few decades.