"She has, however, been able to vaunt herself in the matter of those things which by nature are companions of the home. She has always been noted for her great churches, and has had the finest pulpit orators of the day, and now she is as strong in that direction as she ever was in the past. Her private schools have been known far and wide, while so long as she controlled her public schools, they, too, stood extremely high. Since consolidation they have fallen somewhat behind the march. In dividing government among the boroughs, Mr. Grout achieved much. Where the greatest good was done was where centralization was left with the least sway. In school matters centralization rules absolutely, and to that extent the schools have been forcibly drawn away from the people, and the development has lain in the direction of complexity of educational system, rather than in that of perfecting the children in the rudiments of scholarship. Of late years we have taught our boys how to sew, even if we did neglect their spelling. This increases the number of special teachers, adds to the city's bills, but enables the school superintendents to read splendid reports of new and special courses when they attend pedagogic conventions. Your Exposition loaded New York's educational authorities with medals and prizes and honorable mentions. I would not censure you for this. No men ever worked harder for such honors. The trouble is they work too hard over frills and neglect the essentials. Were your judges to-day to hold an examination among our grammar scholars upon the three subjects, reading, writing and arithmetic, I am inclined to believe that you would send hurry orders for the return of many of those prizes. "In school matters Brooklyn is at a loss no further than are the other boroughs of the greater city. She is at a loss because Mr. Grout's advice was not taken. In short, we so highly prize our sewers, our streets and our pavements that we directed that they be given directly into our own charge and under our own borough president, and then we held our children in such light esteem that we surrendered them into the keeping of a centralized board of education, which is in turn in the keeping of the board of superintendents, in which body Brooklyn has but a small voice. It has reminded me of those people who personally care for their own dogs and horses and leave their children to servants and hired tutors. The system has been wrong. The wrong system has been made top-heavy. The results have been poor. "Brooklyn has developed the home life of America to a greater extent than any other city has done. She has few palaces. She has few hovels. She has a great army of American mothers and fathers that are bringing up the next generation of men and women, and she is rearing them in thousands of comfortable homes, where body develops with mind and where the spiritual welfare is an important factor.