“I asked General Lawrence pretty pointedly,” continued Mildred, “if, so long as a fair education could be had in our schools without cost, he felt justified in taking other people’s money to give his children accomplishments.” “And pray what did he say to that?” I inquired. “Why, nothing,” answered Mildred. “He looked absolutely dazed, as if it were a totally new idea. In fact, I do not think that it had occurred to him that children could be brought up respectably without knowing French and dancing. “I wanted to tell him,” said Mildred, “that I counted the best part of my education to be the years that I spent studying geography and arithmetic with both boys and girls, with white and black, with rich and poor, with Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, in a public school, where success was gauged by individual merit alone, and where we little bigots and partisans learned to be tolerant and respectful toward one another. One of the most salutary things I ever learned was that the son of a ragpicker, in my class, was a better mathematician than I, and that a mulatto girl across the aisle usually outranked me. “I told General Lawrence it was my firm conviction that his children would be far more benefited by a few years’ study of ordinary English branches with ordinary children than by anything else he could do for them educationally, for I feared that they were growing up to know only one side of life and only one class of people, and their knowledge and sympathies would be narrow. He nodded assent, and I went on. “My third condition was, that he and his wife should sign a paper promising for the next three years to allow no debts to any one but me, or some agent authorized by me, to run beyond a month’s time. Any failure to meet such debts promptly must be immediately reported to me for settlement, for which I should take a mortgage on his furniture and personal effects. “I told him that my intention was not merely to help his immediate and pressing need, but to entirely free him from debt. Nevertheless, I was unwilling to undertake this, unless he were ready to rigidly insist upon living within his income, thus teaching his children some lessons of self-sacrifice and thrift. I told him plainly that I was sure a little different management would reduce his doctor’s bills, for I had reason to think that his children’s constant ailing was due to the foolish way in which they had been indulged. He looked amazed and annoyed at this, and begged me to specify. “I replied, ‘Mrs. Lawrence herself told me of three parties which her eight-year-old Gladys attended within a single week, and she afterwards remarked incidentally that the child had a tendency to insomnia and dyspepsia and was taking medicine all the time. Moreover, your older daughter privately informed me that she had begun a diet of vinegar and slate-pencils to reduce her plumpness.