City children, on the other hand, would reap worlds of physical benefit and untold inspiration from periods of recreation and study in the country, with its quiet, its greens and bronzes and yellows, its birds and animals, its sky that sits like a dome on the earth, its hopefulness. Winter sleigh rides and coasting would give new vigor and ambition. Why spend so much on teaching physiology, geography, and nature study, if in the end we fail to send the child where alone nature and hygiene tell their story? Why tax ourselves to teach history and sociology and commercial geography out of books when excursions to the city and country will paint pictures on the mind that can never be erased? What more attractive or more reasonable than appetizing, warm meals, or cool salads and drinks for the boys and girls who carry their little dinner pails and baskets down the long road where everything runs together in summer and everything freezes in winter? One needs little imagination to see the "smile that won't come off," health, punctuality, and school interest resulting from the school meal. Again, if children must have teeth filled and pulled, eyes tested and fitted for glasses, adenoids and enlarged tonsils removed, surely the school environment offers the least affrighting spot for the tragedy. Thence goblins long ago fled. There courage, real or feigned, is brought to the surface by the anxious, critical, competitive interest of one's peers. [Illustration: A SOUTH IRELAND ARGUMENT FOR "DOING THINGS"] The economic defense of these remedies is many-sided. An English drummer once instructed me during a railroad journey from southern to northern Ireland. As we entered the fertile fields of Lord Dunraven's estate near Athlone, I expressed sympathy for other countries impoverished of soil, of wealth, and of thrift. My instructor replied: "It would pay the government to bring them all to this land free once a year, just to show them what they are missing." That his idea of an investment is sound has been proved by railroads and land companies and even by states, who give away excursions to entice settlers and buyers. Ambition at almost any cost is cheaper than indifference to opportunity. It would be cheaper for our American taxpayer to send school children to city and country than to pay the penalty for having a large number of citizens with narrow interests, unconscious of the struggles and joys of their co-citizens. Free meals, free books, free rides, free eyeglasses, are cheaper than free instruction for the second, third, and sixth terms in studies not passed because of physical defects,--infinitely cheaper than jails and almshouses, truant officers and courthouses.