I do not know whether it was the result of Dr. Coit’s own prophetic nature or the result of a more reasoned theory about the education of boys; but the fact remains that at St. Paul’s School you were encouraged to dream. You were permitted to wander alone in the woods. You were left much to yourself; and the fact that you were a thoughtful child, slow in development and perhaps backward in your studies was allowed for. They understood the need of letting God attend the child, and of not being too much worried about the outcome. There is a divergence of feeling among modern school-masters as to how much boys should be left to themselves. The freedom accorded to us at St. Paul’s resulted, no doubt, from the original domestic, non-institutional atmosphere of the place. A boy who is living at home in the country always has a good deal of time to himself. The school was at first a mere country home in which a clergyman conducted the education of boys--appending it to his own family life; and the traditions of boyhood-in-the-country survived as the school grew to more serious proportions. The place itself, moreover, was an example of independence and natural growth rather than of watched assistance. It was not the child of riches, receiving all that money and thought could give even from its birth onward; but was rather the child of hunger and thirst, thriving upon neglect, and gaining in character and in vigor throughout a youth of hardy loneliness. To my mind the isolation of St. Paul’s is its strongest feature, its rarest influence. The founding of institutions is done to-day by the circulation of petitions, by the calling of friends into a circle and the issuing of stock or advertisements. Hardly any other method is deemed possible by practical men. The institutions thus founded are in very close touch with their public. They rely upon their patrons, and are controlled by their clients. They become the creatures of the age they live in. But St. Paul’s School was not the creature of any age. It was the child of one man who planted his house upon a hill. As it has owed nothing to the age, so it has remained inaccessible to the influences of the age. It is not in competition with other schools; it is not affected by the fluctuating and journalistic currents of contemporary thought; it has, one might say, no relation to the superficial influences in America. The place seems not to be a part of modern American life. We know, of course, that the school is in reality a part of that life, and relies, as every school must, on the community at large into which its roots extend. The apparent isolation of St. Paul’s comes from the fact that it represents few influences. These influences are everywhere prevalent, but they are not everywhere visible. The school seems to live to itself; but in reality it draws its life from those deep and invisible sources of religious feeling which exist, but which do not come to the surface in contemporary life.