That there should be a spot in the United States having the atmosphere of another world, that is the valuable and wonderful part of St. Paul’s School. To plunge a boy even for the fraction of a year into this pool is to give him a new outlook upon humanity. What is it that we lack in America? Why, we lack variety. Our interests and pleasures, our occupations in social, in commercial, in religious life are all so stamped with the identical pattern--each of them is so like the rest--our views and feelings are so narrow--that to put an American youth to school in Central Asia for a year or two, under the Grand Llama, would be apt to make a man of him. We need to give our boys an insight into some species of life that belongs to the great world, the historic world, the empire of the soul. We cannot snatch this life from Europe without running the danger of that expatriation which makes men shallow. We must find and create centres of it upon our own shores--centres of social life devoted to unworldly aims. Not only for our children, but for ourselves have we felt this need. New well-springs in our heart and intelligence are unlocked by living for some period of our lives in such a community; and the earlier in life we can receive this experience the richer will it leave us. A school is far more than the school community which gives it a name. A school is the whole body of graduates, friends, and fosterers, whose affections are attached to the place, whose memories go back to it, whose character has been formed by it. These people, though they exist dispersedly, have an influence in common. They belong to a club. They are united by one of the strongest ties that can bind men together. This club is as much a part of the school as the school itself. The stream of boys flowing from the club to the school constitutes a sort of river of time, a perpetual current of the ideas of the founder, an immortality of influence. This stream must change, of course, but it changes slowly--so great is the conservatism of boys at school, and of old boys sending their sons to a school. I suppose that of all human institutions a boys’ school is, by its nature, the most traditional and old-fashioned. The boys regard themselves as the school, and regard the masters as necessary figureheads; and in any large school, where the mass and volume of young life rolls on without much possible interference from above, there is a good deal of truth in the conception. When one hears other people talking about their pet school there is a personal ring to the conversation which does not always please us. The truth is that the foundation of a school is a matter of personal magnetism, and that any school becomes a sort of clan or clique. It is no accident that certain particular boys are sent to a certain particular school. They go there as the needle swings to the pole. They flow there as the ants flow to their native hill. The matter is settled by personal affinity.