Said Richard Cobden in a speech in the House of Commons: "Of all the pathetic fallacies perpetuated, none seems to me more cruelly absurd than the English Boarding-School for boys. The plan of taking the child of seven, eight or ten years away from his parents, and giving him into the keeping of persons who have only a commercial interest in him, and compelling him to fight for his life among little savages as unhappy as himself, or sink into miserable submission, seems too horrible to contemplate." Yet this plan of so-called education continued up to about fifty years ago, and was upheld and supported by the best society of England, including the clergy, who were usually directly "particeps criminis" in the business. Logic and reason failed to dislodge the folly, and finally it was left to a stripling reporter, turned novelist, to give us Squeers and Dotheboys Hall. This fierce ridicule was the thing which finally punctured the rhinoceros hide of the pedagogic blunder. There is one test for all of our educational experiments--will it bring increased love? That which breeds hate and fosters misery is bad in every star. Compare the boarding-school idea with the gentle philosophy of Friedrich Froebel, and note how Froebel always insists that the education of the mother and her child should go forward hand in hand. Motherhood is for the mother, and she who shifts the care of her growing child to a Squeers, not only immerses her child in misery but loses the opportunity of her life. When Richard was sixteen he was transferred from the boarding-school to his uncle's warehouse in London. His position was that of a poor relation, and his work in the warehouse was to carry bundles and manipulate a broom. His shy and sensitive ways caught the attention of a burly and gruff superintendent, whose gruffness was only on the outside. This man said to the boy, before he had been sweeping a week: "Young 'un, I obsarve with my hown hies that you sweeps in the corners. For this I raises your pay a shilling a week, and makes you monkey to the shipping-clerk." In a year the shipping-clerk was needed as a salesman, and Richard took his place. In another year Richard was a salesman, and canvassing London for orders. Very shortly after he became convinced that to work for relations was a mistake. Twenty years later the thought crystallized in his mind thus: Young man, you had better neither hire relatives nor work for them. It means servility or tyranny or both. You do not want to be patronized nor placed under obligations, nor have other helpers imagine you are a favorite. To grow you must be free--let merit count and nothing else. Probably this was what caused a wise man to say, "The Devil sent us our relatives, but thank Heaven we can choose our friends for ourselves."