The pupil’s manners and appearance are also cared for. He is taught how to appear and act no less than how to read and write; how to walk, stand, and speak; that his hands and face should be kept clean, as well as his papers and books. A blot upon his page and a smudge upon his face are regarded as equally bad. “A book befouled,” the teacher tells us, “with grime is wasted, and our simple economical habits will not suffer such waste; turn over any of these books, which are in daily use, no leaf is torn or dog-eared, nor the covers defaced with scribbling.” The same observation would apply to the school furniture and building. The desks, though extremely plain, look as if they are daily washed and polished; not a spot nor splash of ink to be seen on their surface, not any evidence of the bad boy’s knife; the large corridors and spacious stairways show no scratch or scrawl; the wall free from fingermarks and inscriptions, and no bits of paper on the floor. The children, representing all classes of society, from the patrician to the poorest peasant, are neatly and comfortably clad; none dirty, ragged, or shoeless. To an expression of surprise at this, we are informed “that if a child comes to school with face begrimed or clothes torn, he is washed, cleaned, and mended up, and then sent home; the mother gets ashamed on finding that some other woman, or it may be a man, has had to wash her child; the child also becomes mortified, and it is never necessary to repeat the treatment.” The moment that a pupil is on the street he has passed from the circle of his home, and that moment has commenced the school’s authority. The regulations, printed on slips and dropped in every house, contain, among a score of others, the following rule relating to conduct on the street: “Delay of any kind between the scholar’s home and school is not allowed. No whooping, yelling, throwing stones and snow-balls, teasing children, ridiculing age or deformity can be endured. Grown persons shall be met with kind civility, politely greeted as they pass, and thus shall honor be reflected on the school.” There is very little contumacious absence from school. The children have the habit of going to school as a matter of course, and the parents equally the habit of acquiescing in their going. The Federal Factory Act of 1877, with a purpose of preventing any interference with attendance at school, forbids the employment, in a mill or public workshop, of any child until he has attained the age of fifteen. And every Swiss _recruit_ for military service is required to pass an _examen pédagogique_, with a view of enabling the authorities to ascertain the degree of instruction attained by the youth of the country. This examination consists of arithmetic, geography, and Swiss history; and those who do not come up to the minimum educational standard are required to undergo instruction at the _recruit_ school, and the odium