Montaigne, speaking of education in the sixteenth century, said: “It is the custom of schoolmasters to be eternally thundering in their pupils’ ears, as if they were pouring into a funnel, while the pupils’ business is only to repeat what their masters have said.” He is taught that “a tutor ... should, according to the capacity he has to deal with, put it [the child’s mind] to the test, permitting his pupil himself to taste and relish things, and of himself to choose and discern them.... Too much learning stifles the soul, just as plants are stifled by too much moisture, and lamps by too much oil. Our pedants plunder knowledge from books, and carry it on the tips of their lips, just as birds carry seeds to feed their young.... We toil and labor only to _stuff the memory_, but leave the _conscience and understanding unfurnished and void_.” [Sidenote: Twentieth century schools cram] As late as January, 1900, Edward Bok, editor of the _Ladies’ Home Journal_, wrote concerning the cramming process of the popular schools: “Do American men and women realize that in five cities of our country alone there were, during the last school term, _over sixteen thousand children_ between the ages of eight and fourteen taken out of the public schools because their nervous systems were wrecked, and their minds were incapable of going on any further in the infernal cramming system which exists to-day in our schools?... Conservative medical men who have given their lives to the study of children place the number whose health is shattered by overstudy at more than 50,000 each year.... It is cramming, cramming, cramming. A certain amount of ‘ground must be gone over,’ as it is usually called. Whether the child is physically able to work the ‘ground’ does not enter into the question.” The writer dwells upon the evils of night study, and continues: “True reform always begins at the root of all evils, and the root of the evil of home study lies in the cramming system.” [Sidenote: Mrs. Lew Wallace on cramming] Mrs. Lew Wallace says: “Go into any public school, and you will see girls pallid as day lilies and boys with flat chests and the waxen skin that has been named the school complexion. Every incentive and stimulus is held out; dread of blame, love of praise, prizes, medals, badges, the coveted flourish in the newspapers—the strain never slackens.... The burden is _books_. The tasks imposed on the young are fearful. The effort seems to be to make text-books as difficult and complicated as possible instead of smoothing the hill so high and hard to climb.” In her characteristic style, Mrs. Wallace condemns the usual methods of teaching arithmetic and language:— “Said a mother, ‘Two and two are what?’” “The boy hesitated. “‘Surely you know that two and two make four.’ “‘Yes, mama; but I am trying to remember the process.’ “Process, indeed!...