28. SCHOOLS AND TEACHERS. 1. Looking into the near future, I see the aisles of the school-room widen into the broad streets of the city. The boys are business men. One commands the steamship, one operates the telegraph, and another runs an engine; one is a railroad director, and another rides over the road to take his seat in the senate of the United States. One works a gold mine, another an iron mine, and another a coal mine; one is a merchant, one a banker, one a Wall-street speculator; one is a farmer in the west, another a manufacturer in the east; one is a merchant, another a mechanic, and a third is an inventor. 2. The girls have become women. Some preside as queens in home circles, some are teachers, some are writers, some are artists, and others are skilled in household work. I realize that the life of a nation is made up of mothers that guard the homes of the men who drive the plow, build the ships, run the mills, work the mines, construct machinery, print the papers, shoulder the musket, and cast the ballots; and it is for all these that the public schools have done and are now doing their beneficent work. 3. When I ponder over the far-reaching influence of the teacher and the school, I comprehend, in some measure, the relation to our national well-being, of our American system of free public schools-the best, notwithstanding its defects and shortcomings, that the world has ever known. It is the duty of every teacher to strive with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might, to perfect a system of education which shall train a race of men and women in the next generation, that shall inherit, with the boundless resources of our favored land, something of the energy, enterprise, talent, and character of the sturdy pioneers who settled and subdued the wilderness. 4. Only timid and despairing souls are frightened into the belief that the foundations of society are breaking up on account of over-education in the common schools. Neither representatives of the Caste of Capital nor the Caste of Culture can convince the American people that vice, crime, idleness, poverty, and social discontent are the necessary result of an elementary education among the workers of society. No demagogue, with specious statements, can lead any considerable number of citizens to regard the school-master as a public enemy. 5. The free common school is the Plymouth Rock of American liberty. If the system of free schools, as now conducted and organized, fails to meet the needs of social progress, not the extent, but the kind and quality, of education must be changed. Neither high school nor university must be lopped off from our free-school system. 6. It is only through skilled labor, wisely and intelligently directed, that a people can become or remain permanently prosperous and happy; it is only by means of intelligent and educated voters that liberty can be preserved; and it is only by means of a more complete education among all classes that humanity can rise to a higher type of social evolution. There is no slavery so oppressive as that of ignorance. 29. ELEMENTS OF THE AMERICAN 1. The English colonists in America, generally speaking, were men who were seeking new homes in a new world. They brought with them their families and all that was most dear to them. Many of them were educated men, and all possessed their full share, according to their social condition, of knowledge and attainments of that age. 2. The distinctive characteristic of their settlement is the introduction of the civilization of Europe into a wilderness, without bringing with it the political institutions of Europe. The arts, sciences, and literature of England came over with the settlers. That great portion of the common law which regulates the social and personal relations and conduct of men, came also. 3. The jury came; the habeas corpus came; the testamentary power came; and the law of inheritance and descent came also, except that part of it which recognizes the rights of primogeniture, which either did not come at all, or soon gave way to the rule of equal partition of estates among children. 4. But the monarchy did not come, nor the aristocracy, nor the Church, as an estate of the realm. Political institutions were to be framed anew, such as should be adapted to the state of things. But it could not be doubtful what should be the nature and character of these institutions. A general social equality prevailed among the settlers, and an equality of political rights seemed the natural, if not the necessary consequence. DANIEL WEBSTER. SECTION III. RECITATIONS AND READINGS: POETRY. 1. THE CROWDED STREET. 1. Let me move slowly | through the stréet, 2. How fast the flitting figures | come! Sóme bright with thoughtless smiles, and sóme | 3. They páss-to toil, to strife, to rèst; To halls in which the feast | is spread; 4. And some to happy homes repair, Where children pressing cheek to cheek, 5. And sóme, who walk in calmness hére, Shall shudder when they reach the door | 6. Youth, with pale cheek | and slender fráme, Or early in the task | to die? 7. Keen son of tráde, with eager brów! 8. Who of this crowd | to-night | shall tread | Whó | writhe | in throes | of mórtal páin? In His large love | and boundless thought. 11. These struggling tides | of life | that seem | In wayward, aimless course to ténd, Are éddies of the mighty stream | 2. THE BUILDERS. 1. All | are architects of Fàte, 2. Nothing | useless is | or lòw ; Each thing in its place | is bèst; Are the blocks | with which we build. 4. Truly shape | and fashion thèse; Leave no yawning gaps | between; BRYANT, |