The most serious enemies of the public schools among well-to-do people appear to be women. Many a man, alive to the importance of educating his sons in conformity with the spirit of our Constitution, would like to send his boys to a public school, but is deterred by his wife. A mother accustomed to the refinements of modern civilization is apt to shrink from sending her fleckless darling to consort, and possibly become the boon companion or bosom friend, of a street waif. She urges the danger of contamination, both physical and moral, and is only too glad to discover an excuse for refusing to yield. “Would you like to have your precious boy sit side by side with a little negro?” I was asked one day, in horrified accents, by a well-to-do American mother; and I have heard many fears expressed by others that their offspring would learn vice, or contract disease, through daily association with the children of the mass. It is not unjust to state that the average well-to-do mother is gratified when the public school, to which her sons would otherwise be sent, is so unsatisfactory that their father’s patriotism is overborne by other considerations. All theories of government or humanity are lost sight of in her desire to shelter her boys, and the simplest way to her seems to be to set them apart from the rest of creation, instead of taking pains to make sure that they are suitably taught and protected side by side with the other children of the community. Excellent as many of our private schools are, it is doubtful if either the morals are better, or the liability to disease is less, among the children who attend them than at a public school of the best class. To begin with, the private schools in our cities are eagerly patronized by that not inconsiderable class of parents who hope or imagine that the social position of their children is to be established by association with the children of influential people. Falsehood, meanness, and unworthy ambitions are quite as dangerous to character, when the little man who suggests them has no patches on his breeches, as when he has, and unfortunately there are no outward signs on the moral nature, like holes in trousers, to serve as danger signals to our darlings. Then again, those of us who occupy comfortable houses in desirable localities, will generally find on investigation that the average of the class of children which attend the public school in such a district is much superior to what paternal or maternal fancy has painted. In such a district the children of the ignorant emigrant class are not to be found in large numbers. The pupils consist mainly of the rank and file of the native American population, whose tendencies and capacities for good have always been, and continue to be, the basis of our strength as a people. There is no need that a mother with delicate sensibilities should send her son into the slums in order to obtain for