when American teachers were questioned, as they were repeatedly, "as to how this admirable result was secured, they attributed it first of all to the national character, and second to the system of trusting the pupils."

One might go on at length in this way, tracing scores of educational matters in their descent from England. I have mentioned neither the Catechism nor the New-England Primer, nor have I alluded to the grander features in the great educational trend. I have simply touched two or three things of an obvious kind, just enough to show that each detail in the schools has had a growth or retrogression of its own corresponding to changes in the life and spirit of the people, and to enforce the thought that, under a government like ours, the schools cannot do other than reflect the people.

In this way our school system has gradually acquired a distinctive, American character, as if it had never had anything to do with the mother country to which we can trace back so many of its features. Its development during the last half century has been peculiarly marked, largely owing to the wisdom and zeal of one who for some time was an honored citizen of Dedham,-I refer to Horace Mann, the first secretary of our Board of Education.

Sometimes people inquire: "Are the schools of to-day really training their pupils any better than the humble schools of the past?" Is the Dedham High School, for instance, doing any better work than the rude school planted here two hundred and fifty years ago? How a man with any knowledge of the past can give other answer than an emphatic "yes" to such inquiries, I cannot conceive. I know how natural a thing, and often how good a thing, it is to idealize the past. I know, too, how sensitive we are to the defects of the present. And I know, consequently, how easy it is to fall into the wail that the former days were better than our own. But if we trust our history a little more for right views of the past, and our philosophy a little more for right views of the present, we shall not fail to recognize the gain of the last two centuries and a half.

We may, however, readily concede this, that gain is never unmixed gain. We push improvement to the verge of luxury, but every improvement has its own vexation. High culture, as in the garden, brings in its train of pests, and it takes a higher culture to drive them out. Are some of our schoolhouses palaces? No palace ever made a scholar or ever will. Are methods more agreeable, teachers more considerate, studies more like play, and school a daily entertainment? This is the approved and sunny goal of the new education. But what if the pupil's nerve become soft and limp? What if drudgery and weariness in the pupil be readily taken as signs of a vicious system rather than as incidents of a toil that tells? What if the hard but blessed gospel of work be feebly preached, or preached not at all?

The spirit of the old school training and that of the new I sometimes liken to two methods of learning to swim. The learner puts on his tight-fitting bathing suit, girds himself with a life preserver, goes into the water with the confidence of an athlete, is told how to strike out, and after a while becomes a happy swimmer; or, if not, he has had a good time idling in the water. The Puritans would have seized him vi et armis, stripped him to the skin, tossed him in beyond his depth, and then cried out, "Swim for it or go to the bottom!" And so through splashing and spluttering and untold terror, the hapless youth would have learned how to do it or hated the water ever thereafter.

'Tis the school of adversity vs. the school of prosperity. If we shun the hard, grinding, merciless ways of the former, how shall we strengthen the heroic and self-reliant spirit in the latter?

O that we might have attractive books, inviting schoolhouses, grand, lovable and helpful teachers, all the highways of learning thick with flowers and redolent of incense, without running the old and terrible risk of lulling to a stupid repose on beds of ease the sturdier and finer forces of the human soul.

Again I congratulate you, good people of Dedham, on the virility of the seed planted here two hundred and fifty years ago, and on the great educational tree that has sprung from it and now flourishes in your midst. Some of its buds, doubtless, are blighted from time to time; some of its fruit falls unripened or lives on with stunted growth; some of its limbs need trimming, grafting or removal; but it is a sturdy, prolific tree withal, whose branches bear,- some thirty-fold, some sixty, and some a hundred.

XI.

AMERICA.

BY THE AUDIENCE AND CHORUS.

The exercises, carried out in accordance with the plan, came to a successful end at half-past ten o'clock; and the occasion will long be remembered as an important step in our educational progress, not only on account of the pleasant features of the event, but because of its close bearing upon the elevation and improvement of our school system.

The Committee desire to thank the Historian and the distinguished guests for their presence and inspiring words; to express their grateful appreciation of the valuable assistance given by Mr. Samuel W. Cole in making the music so marked a success, and of the aid given by teachers in our schools to the same end; to thank the ushers, Mr. Lusher G. Baker, Mr. John B. Fisher, Mr. C. Eastman Webb, and Mr. Elmer E. Clapp, for their services; and to speak of the taste displayed by Mr. Arthur B. Cutter and Mr. Henry P. Cormerais in arranging the decorations.

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