"The teachers have to be there all the time, except when they go in retreat. They take turns about retreat. But we are in two choroi; I am choros-boy now, James is anti-choros. Choros have school in January, February, March, July, August, September. Next year I shall be anti-choros." "Which do you like best,--off-term or school?" said I. "O, both is as good as one. When either begins, we like it. We get rather sick of either before the three months are over." "What do you do in your off-terms?" said I,--"go fishing?" "No, of course not," said he, "except Strep, and Hipp, and Chal, and those boys, because their fathers are fishermen. No, we have to be in our fathers' offices, we big boys; the little fellows, they let them stay at home. If I was here without you now, that truant-officer we passed just now would have had me at home before this time. Well, you see they think we learn about business, and I guess we do. I know I do," said he, "and sometimes I think I should like to be a Proxenus when I am grown up, but I do not know." I asked George about this, the same evening. He said the boy was pretty nearly right about it. They had come round to the determination that the employment of children, merely because their wages were lower than men's, was very dangerous economy. The chances were that the children were over-worked, and that their constitution was fatally impaired. "We do not want any Manchester-trained children here." Then they had found that steady brain-work on girls, at the growing age, was pretty nearly slow murder in the long run. They did not let girls go to school with any persistency after they were twelve or fourteen. After they were twenty, they might study what they chose. "But the main difference between our schools and yours," said he, "is that your teacher is only expected to hear the lesson recited. Our teacher is expected to teach it also. You have in America, therefore, sixty scholars to one teacher. We do not pretend to have more than twenty to one teacher. We do this the easier because we let no child go to school more than half the time; nor, even with the strongest, more than four hours a day. "Why," said he, "I was at a college in America once, where, with splendid mathematicians, they had had but one man teach any mathematics for thirty years. And he was travelling in Europe when I was there. The others only heard recitations of those who could learn without being taught." "I was once there," said I. * * * * *