Politics we are all too prone to forget between campaigns; literature and the graphic arts engage only our languid attention and science interests us only when our imaginations are mightily stirred. But we all know how the young idea should be taught to shoot. We are either reactionaries, lamenting the good old times of the three _r’s_ and the little red schoolhouse, or we discuss with much gravity such weighty problems as the extension or curtailment of the elective system, or we fly to the defense or demolition of the ideas of Dewey and other reformers. It is folly not to hold opinions where no one is sure of anything and every one is free to strut in the silken robes of wisdom. Many of us receive at times flattering invitations to express opinions touching the education of our youth. Though my own schooling was concluded at the algebra age, owing to an inherent inability to master that subject or even comprehend what it was all about, I have not scrupled to contribute to educational symposia at every opportunity. Perhaps I answer the riddles of the earnest critics of education the more cheerfully from the very fact of my benightedness. When the doors are closed and the potent, grave, and reverend signiors go into committee of the whole to determine why education does not indeed educate--there, in such a company, I am not only an eager listener but, with the slightest encouragement, I announce and defend my opinions. Millions are expended every year for the public enlightenment, and yet no one is satisfied either with the method or the result. Some one is always trying to do something for culture. It seems at times that the efforts of the women of America to increase the remnant that is amiably disposed toward sweetness and light cannot fail, so many and so zealous are the organizations in which they band themselves for this laudable purpose. A little while ago we had a nation-wide better-English week to encourage respect among the youth of this jazzy age for the poor old English language. I shall express without apology my opinion that in these free States we are making no marked headway in the attempt to improve spoken or written English. Hardly a day passes that I do not hear graduates of colleges confuse their pronouns; evil usages are as common as the newspapers. And yet grammar and rhetoric are taught more or less intelligently by a vast army of overworked and underpaid teachers, according to the text-books fashioned by specialists who really do try to make themselves intelligible.