It comes to be true that the most elaborate dinner-givers are the poorest entertainers, that instead of new ideas, pleasant memories and the ring of music, all one carries away from the house where they have been feasted is indigestion and their _menu_ card. This extravagance is a feature of social life which sensible people can not afford to countenance. There is too great danger that by it the truly desirable and helpful features will be injured; that while epicureans will support the elegance, people of simple habits will be driven in a measure from society; that social life will be changed to feasting, and conversation, wit and music placed a step below eating and drinking. AN UNJUST COMPLAINT. It would be a strange thing if the public schools of the country gave entire satisfaction. They are so numerous, they cost so much, such large hopes are built on them, they so pervasively affect the most sensitive social regions—those of the family—that a very large amount of criticism, a huge aggregate of discontent, would be properly and naturally expected. The wonder is that there is so little dissatisfaction. Perhaps the most sensitive spot just now is the pass examinations—or the system of regulating the rise of pupils from one department to another. It is affirmed, for example, that in New York and other cities the teachers are constantly employed in coaching their pupils for examinations. It is declared that there is very little of proper teaching, that most of the work is simply cramming for the sake of passing, and that the pupils really learn very little, and are not in any proper sense being educated. The whole mass of these children are being crowded up a stairway—and the getting up, by whatever means, into the higher grades is the sole object of teachers and pupils. It is easy to see that there must be much use of the spirit of emulation, and the pride of standing, in teaching great masses of young people. There are owlish philosophers who would have children and young people act from the motives that are supposed to regulate the lives of their grandfathers. A public school boy or a college boy is often, perhaps commonly, spoken of as though he were a companion of Socrates and George Washington. This kind of critic assumes that the lad knows all wisdom and only needs to select some bits of knowledge and chew them with the relish of a Plato. The critic can not put himself in the boy’s place. He can not realize that the boy does not know everything, and does not much care to learn anything. This critic has the practical teacher at a great advantage; knowing boys and girls as saints and philosophers, he can condemn the practical instructor who has never met any such boys and girls. The teacher wants to get work out of his pupils; and he goes about it practically, and does get the work done. At the end of his work, the pupils are doubtless very unsatisfactory. In fact, we are all of us, always more or less unsatisfactory.