The Art of Living

But Mrs. Cæsar’s drawing-room, in her new house on Belport Avenue, has been furnished from a very different point of view than her first one, which shows how rapidly tastes change in a progressive society. Mrs. Cæsar and Julius chose everything themselves this time as they did before, but they had learned from experience, and from the new work of the contemporary decorator. There is plenty of unoccupied space now to show her possessions to advantage, and there are not too many possessions visible for the size of the parlor; there is neither so much uniformity of color and design as to weary the eye, nor so much variety or eccentricity as to irritate it; consequently, the effect on the visitor is not that he is in a room intended for luxurious display, but in an exquisitely furnished room adapted for daily use. In other words, the controlling idea at present, of those who seek to make their houses charming, seems to be to combine comfort with elegance so skilfully that while one may realize the latter, one is conscious only of the former. Though decorators are still experimenting, as probably they always will be, to attain novel effects, they are disposed to make use of queer or attenuated hues, Moorish blazonry, stamped leather, peacock feathers, elephant tusks, stained-glass windows, and Japanese lacquer-work with much more discretion than a few years ago. Virgin-white instead of dirt-brown lights up our halls and stair-cases, and the vast chandeliers which used to dazzle the eye no longer dangle from the ceiling. Indeed, it seems as though it would be difficult to make the interior of the homes of our well-to-do class more comfortable and attractive than they are at present. It may be that some of our very rich people are disposed to waste their energies in devising and striving for more consummate elegance, thereby exposing us all to the charge that we are becoming too luxurious for our spiritual good. But there can be little question that the ambition to surround one’s self with as much beauty, consistent with comfort, as one can afford is desirable, even from the ethical standpoint.

Undeniably our point of view has changed extraordinarily in the last thirty years in regard to house-furnishing, as in regard to so many other matters of our material welfare, and there certainly is some ground for fearing that the pendulum is swinging just at present too far in the direction opposite to that of high thinking and low living; but, after all, though the reaction from ugliness has been and continues to be exuberant, it is as yet by no means wide-embracing. In fact, our cultivated well-to-do class – though it is well abreast of the rest of the civilized world in aspiration and not far behind it in accomplishment, with certain vivifying traits of its own which the old world societies do not possess or have lost – is still comparatively small; and there is still so much Stygian darkness outside it in respect to house-furnishing and home comfort in general, that we can afford to have the exuberance continue for the present; for there is some reason to believe that most of the descendants of our old high thinkers have become high livers, or at least, if low livers, have ceased to be high thinkers. Mutton-soup for breakfast and unattractive domestic surroundings seem to comport nowadays with ignoble aims, if nothing worse; moreover, it must not be forgotten that the plain people of the present is no longer the plain people of forty years ago, but is largely the seed of the influx of foreign peasants, chiefly inferior and often scum, which the sacredness of our institutions has obliged us to receive.

II

If we have become cosmopolitan in the matter of domestic comfort and elegance as regards our drawing-rooms, the same is certainly true of our dining-rooms, and dinner-tables. But here it seems to me that we are more justly open to criticism on the score of over-exuberance. That is, the fairly well-to-do class, for the plain people of foreign blood, and the low liver of native blood, eat almost as indigestible food, and quite as rapidly and unceremoniously, as the pie and doughnut nurtured yeoman of original Yankee stock, who thrived in spite of his diet, and left to his grandchildren the heritage of dyspepsia which has become nervous prostration in the present generation. It seems as though our instincts of hospitality have grown in direct ratio with our familiarity with and adoption of civilized creature comforts, and any charge of exuberance may doubtless be fairly ascribed to the national trait of generosity, the abuse of which is after all a noble blemish. But, on the other hand, facts remain, even after one has given a pleasing excuse for their existence, and it may be doubted if a spendthrift is long consoled by the reflection that his impecuniosity is due to his own disinclination to stint. May it not truthfully be charged against the reasonably well-to-do American citizen that he has a prejudice against thrift, especially where the entertainment of his fellow man or woman is concerned? The rapid growth of wealth and the comparative facility of becoming rich during the last half century of our development, has operated against the practice of small economies, so that we find ourselves now beset by extravagant traditions which we hesitate to deviate from for fear of seeming mean. Many a man to-day pays his quarter of a dollar ruefully and begrudgingly to the colored Pullman car porter at the end of his journey, when he is “brushed off,” because he cannot bring himself to break the custom which fixed the fee. It would be interesting to estimate what the grand total of saving to the American travelling public would have been if ten instead of twenty-five cents a head had been paid to the tyrant in question since he first darkened the situation. If not enough to maintain free schools for the negro, at least sufficient to compel railroad managements to give their employees suitable wages instead of letting the easy-going traveller, who has already paid for the privilege of a reserved seat, pay a premium on that. The exorbitant fees bestowed on waiters is but another instance of a tendency to be over-generous, which, once reduced to custom, becomes the severest kind of tax, in that it is likely to affect the warmest-hearted people.

This tendency to be needlessly lavish in expenditure is most conspicuous when we are offering hospitality in our own homes. Among the viands which we have added to the bills of fare of humanity, roast turkey and cranberry-sauce, Indian meal, and probably baked beans, are entitled to conspicuous and honorable mention, but is it not true, notwithstanding champagne is a foreign wine, that the most prodigious discovery in the line of food or drink yet made by the well-to-do people of this country, is the discovery of champagne? Does it not flow in one golden effervescing stream, varied only by the pops caused by the drawing of fresh corks, from the Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World to the Golden Gate? And the circumstance that every pop costs the entertainer between three and four dollars, seems in no wise to interrupt the cheery explosions. There are some people who do not drink champagne or any other wine, from principle, and there are some with whom it does not agree, but the average individual finds that the interest of festive occasions is heightened by its presence in reasonable abundance, and is apt to deplore its total absence with internal groans. But surely ninety-nine men in our large cities out of one hundred, who are accustomed to entertain and be entertained, must be weary of the sight of this expensive tempter at the feast, which it is so difficult to refuse when set before one, and which is so often quaffed against better judgment or inclination. The champagne breakfast, the champagne luncheon, the champagne dinner, and the champagne supper, with a champagne cocktail tossed in as a stop-gap, hound the social favorite from January to December, until he is fain to dream of the Old Oaken Bucket, and sooner or later to drink Lithia water only.

With perpetual and unremitting champagne as the key-note of social gatherings, no wonder that the table ornaments and the comestibles become more splendid. A little dinner of eight or ten is no longer a simple matter of a cordial invitation and an extra course. The hostess who bids her contemporaries to dine with her most informally ten days hence, uses a figure of speech which is innocuous from the fact that it is known to be a deliberate falsehood. She begins generally by engaging a cook from outside to prepare the dinner, which must surely wound the sensibilities of any self-respecting couple the first time, however hardened to the situation they may become later.

At this stage of my reflections I am interrupted by my wife, Barbara – for I was thinking aloud – with a few words of expostulation.

“Are you not a little severe? I assume that you are referring now to people with a comfortable income, but who are not disgustingly rich. Of course, nowadays, the very rich people keep cooks who can cook for a dinner-party, cooks at eight dollars or more a week and a kitchen maid; so it is only the hostess with a cook at four and a half to six dollars a week and no kitchen maid who is likely to engage an accommodator. But what is the poor thing to do? Give a wretched, or plain dinner which may make her hair grow white in a single night? Surely, when a woman invites friends to her house she does not wish them to go away half starved, or remembering that they have had disagreeable things to eat. In that case she would prefer not to entertain at all.”

“The question is,” I answered, “whether it is more sensible to try to be content with what one has, or to vie with those who are better off. We do not attempt to dine on gold plate, nor have we a piano decorated with a five-thousand-dollar painting by one of the great artists, like Patterson, the banker. Why should we endeavor to compete with his kitchen?”

“The clever thing, of course, is to find a cook for six dollars a week who can cook for a dinner-party,” answered Barbara, pensively; “and yet,” she added, “though our cook can, the chances are that nine out of ten of the people who dine with us think that we hired her for the occasion.”

“Precisely. Just because the custom has grown so. It is sheer extravagance.”

“After all, my dear, it is a comparatively small matter – a five-dollar bill.”

“Pardon me. Five dollars for the cook, because one’s own cook is not good enough; three or five dollars for an accommodating maid or waiter, because you cannot trust your chamber-maid to assist your waitress; eight dollars for champagne, and so on.”

“Do not say ‘your’ – mine can.”

“Her, then – the woman of the day. I am trying to show that a small informal dinner is a cruelly expensive affair for the average man with a comfortable working income.”

“I admit that a dinner for eight or ten is expensive,” said Barbara. “It means twenty-five dollars at the lowest, even if you have your own cook. But what is one to do? You don’t seem to appreciate that a good plain cook cannot usually prepare dinner-party dishes, and that a plain dinner is now almost as different from a dinner-party dinner as a boiled egg is from caviare.”

“Precisely. There is the pity of it. The growth here of the French restaurant and the taste for rich and elaborate cookery has doubtless been a good thing in its way, if only that it is now possible to obtain a tolerably well-cooked meal at most of the hotels in our large cities and principal watering-places; but why should people of moderate means and social instincts feel constrained to offer a banquet on every occasion when they entertain? I for one consider it a bore to have so much provided when I go out to dinner.”

“You must admit,” said Barbara, “that dinners are not nearly so long as they were a few years ago. Now, by means of the extra service you complain of, and by keeping the number of courses down, a dinner ought not to last longer than an hour and a half, whereas it used to take two hours and over. In England they are much worse than here. You are given, for instance, two puddings, one after the other, and ices to follow.”

“I agree,” said I, “that we have curtailed the length so that there is not much to complain of on that score. I think, though, that comparatively plain dishes well served are quite as apt to please as the aspics, chartreuses, timbales, and other impressive gallicisms under which the accommodating party cook is wont to cater to the palates of informally invited guests. I sometimes think that the very few of our great great-grandfathers who knew how to live at all must have had more appetizing tables than we. Their family cooks, from all accounts, knew how to roast and boil and bake and stew, culinary arts which somehow seem to be little understood by the chefs of to-day. Then again, the old-fashioned Delft crockery – blue ships sailing on a blue sea – was very attractive. Our modern dinner-tables, when arrayed for a party, have almost too much fuss and feathers. Women worry until they get cut glass, if it is not given them as a wedding present, and several sets of costly plates – Sèvres, Dresden, or Crown Derby – are apt to seem indispensable to housekeepers of comparatively limited means.”

“Cut glass is lovely, and the same plates through seven courses are rather trying,” said Barbara, parenthetically.

“Of course it is lovely, and I am very glad you have some. But is not the modern American woman of refined sensibilities just a little too eager to crowd her table with every article of virtu she possesses – every ornamental spoon, dish, cup, and candlestick – until one is unable to see at any one spot more than a square inch of tablecloth? In the centre of the table she sets a crystal bowl of flowers, a silver basket of ferns, or a dish of fruit. This is flanked by apostle or gold-lined spoons, silver dishes of confectionery of various kinds, silver candlesticks or candelabra fitted with pink or saffron shades, one or two of which are expected to catch fire, an array of cut glass or Venetian glass at every plate, and, like as not, pansies strewn all over the table.”

“The modern dinner-table is very pretty,” responded Barbara. “I don’t see how it could be improved materially.”

“I dare say, but somehow one can’t help thinking at times that the effort for effect is too noticeable, and that the real object of sitting down to dinner in company, agreeable social intercourse, is consequently lost sight of. If only the very rich were guilty of wanton display, the answer would be that the rank and file of our well-to-do, sensible people have very simple entertainments. Unfortunately, while the very rich are constantly vying to outstrip one another, the dinner-table and the dinner of the well-to-do American are each growing more and more complex and elaborate. Perhaps not more so than abroad among the nobility or people of means; but certainly we have been Europeanized in this respect to such an extent that, not only is there practically nothing left for us to learn in the way of being luxurious, but I am not sure that we are not disposed to convince the rest of the civilized world that a free-born American, when fully developed, can be the most luxurious individual on earth.”

Barbara looked a little grave at this. “Everything used to be so ugly and unattractive a little while ago that I suppose our heads have been turned,” she answered. “After this I shall make a rule, when we give a dinner-party, to keep one-half of my table ornaments in the safe as a rebuke to my vanity. Only if I am to show so much of the tablecloth, I shall have to buy some with handsome patterns. Don’t you see?”

Perhaps this suggestion that our heads have been turned for the time being by our national prosperity, and that they will become straight again in due course of time, is the most sensible view to take of the situation. There can be no doubt that among well-to-do people, who would object to be classed in “the smart set,” as the reporters of social gossip odiously characterize those prominent in fashionable society in our large cities, the changes in the last thirty years connected with every-day living, as well as with entertaining, have all been in the direction of cosmopolitan usage. It is now only a very old-fashioned or a very blatant person who objects to the use of evening dress at the dinner-table, or the theatre, as inconsistent with true patriotism. The dinner-hour has steadily progressed from twelve o’clock noon until it has halted at seven post meridian, as the ordinary hour for the most formal meal of the day, with further postponement to half-past seven or even eight among the fashionable for the sake of company. The frying-pan and the tea-pot have ceased to reign supreme as the patron saints of female nutrition, and the beefsteak, the egg, both cooked and raw, milk and other flesh-and-blood-producing food are abundantly supplied to the rising generation of both sexes by the provident parent of to-day. The price of beef in our large cities has steadily advanced in price until its use as an article of diet is a serious monster to encounter in the monthly bills, but the husband and father who is seeking to live wisely, seems not to be deterred from providing it abundantly.

From this it is evident that if we are unduly exuberant in the pursuit of creature comforts, it is not solely in the line of purely ornamental luxuries. If we continue to try our nervous systems by undue exertion, they are at least better fitted to stand the strain, by virtue of plenty of nutritious food, even though dinner-parties tempt us now and then to over-indulgence, or bore us by their elaborateness. Yet it remains to be seen whether the income of the American husband and father will be able to stand the steady drain occasioned by the liberal table he provides, and it may be that we have some lessons in thrift on this score still in store for us. There is this consolation, that if our heads have been turned in this respect also, and we are supplying more food for our human furnaces than they need, the force of any reaction will not fall on us, but on the market-men, who are such a privileged class that our candidates for public office commonly provide a rally for their special edification just before election-day, and whose white smock-frocks are commonly a cloak for fat though greasy purses. Yet Providence seems to smile on the market-man in that it has given him the telephone, through which the modern mistress can order her dinner, or command chops or birds, when unexpected guests are foreshadowed. Owing to the multiplicity of the demands upon the time of both men and women, the custom of going to market in person has largely fallen into decay. The butcher and grocer send assistants to the house for orders, and the daily personal encounter with the smug man in white, which used to be as inevitable as the dinner, has now mainly been relegated to the blushing bride of from one week to two years’ standing, and the people who pay cash for everything. Very likely we are assessed for the privilege of not being obliged to nose our turkeys and see our chops weighed in advance, and it is difficult to answer the strictures of those who sigh for what they call the good old times, when it was every man’s duty, before he went to his office, to look over his butcher’s entire stock and select the fattest and juiciest edibles for the consumption of himself and family. As for paying cash for everything, my wife Barbara says that, unless people are obliged to be extremely economical, no woman in this age of nervous prostration ought to run the risk of bringing on that dire malady by any such imprudence, and that to save five dollars a month on a butcher’s bill, and pay twenty-five to a physician for ruined nerves, is false political economy.

“I agree with you,” she added, “that we Americans live extravagantly in the matter of daily food – especially meat – as compared with the general run of people in other countries; but far more serious than our appetites and liberal habits, in my opinion, is the horrible waste which goes on in our kitchens, due to the fact that our cooks are totally ignorant of the art of making the most of things. Abroad, particularly on the Continent, they understand how to utilize every scrap, so that many a comfortable meal is provided from what our servants habitually cast into the swill-tub. Here there is perpetual waste – waste – waste, and no one seems to understand how to prevent it. There you have one never-failing reason for the size of our butchers’ and grocers’ bills.”

I assume that my wife, who is an intelligent person, must be correct in this accusation of general wastefulness which she makes against the American kitchen. If so, here we are confronted again with the question of domestic service from another point of view. How long can we afford to throw our substance into the swill-tub? If our emigrant cooks do not understand the art of utilizing scraps and remnants, are we to continue to enrich our butchers without let or hindrance? It would seem that if the American housewife does not take this matter in hand promptly, the cruel laws of political economy will soon convince her by grisly experience that neither poetry nor philanthropy can flourish in a land where there is perpetual waste below stairs.

Education

I

On occasions of oratory in this country, nothing will arouse an audience more quickly than an allusion to our public school system, and any speaker who sees fit to apostrophize it is certain to be fervidly applauded. Moreover, in private conversation, whether with our countrymen or with foreigners, every citizen is prone to indulge in the statement, commonly uttered with some degree of emotion, that our public schools are the great bulwarks of progressive democracy. Why, then, is the American parent, as soon as he becomes well-to-do, apt to send his children elsewhere?

I was walking down town with a friend the other day, and he asked me casually where I sent my boys to school. When I told him that they attended a public school he said, promptly, “Good enough. I like to see a man do it. It’s the right thing.” I acquiesced modestly; then, as I knew that he had a boy of his own, I asked him the same question.

“My son,” he replied slowly, “goes to Mr. Bingham’s” – indicating a private school for boys in the neighborhood. “He is a little delicate – that is, he had measles last summer, and has never quite recovered his strength. I had almost made up my mind to send him to a public school, so that he might mix with all kinds of boys, but his mother seemed to think that the chances of his catching scarlet fever or diphtheria would be greater, and she has an idea that he would make undesirable acquaintances and learn things which he shouldn’t. So, on the whole, we decided to send him to Bingham’s. But I agree that you are right.”

There are many men in the community who, like my friend, believe thoroughly that every one would do well to send his boys to a public school – that is, every one but themselves. When it comes to the case of their own flesh and blood they hesitate, and in nine instances out of ten, on some plea or other, turn their backs on the principles they profess. This is especially true in our cities, and it has been more or less true ever since the Declaration of Independence; and as a proof of the flourishing condition of the tendency at present, it is necessary merely to instance the numerous private schools all over the country. The pupils at these private schools are the children of our people of means and social prominence, the people who ought to be the most patriotic citizens of the Republic.

I frankly state that I, for one, would not send my boys to a public school unless I believed the school to be a good one. Whatever other motives may influence parents, there is no doubt that many are finally deterred from sending their boys to a public school by the conviction that the education offered to their sons in return for taxes is inferior to what can be obtained by private contract. Though a father may be desirous to have his boys understand early the theory of democratic equality, he may well hesitate to let them remain comparatively ignorant in order to impress upon them this doctrine. In this age, when so much stress is laid on the importance of giving one’s children the best education possible, it seems too large a price to pay. Why, after all, should a citizen send his boys to a school provided by the State, if better schools exist in the neighborhood which he can afford to have them attend?

This conviction on the part of parents is certainly justified in many sections of the country, and when justifiable, disarms the critic who is prepared to take a father to task for sending his children to a private school. Also, it is the only argument which the well-to-do aristocrat can successfully protect himself behind. It is a full suit of armor in itself, but it is all he has. Every other excuse which he can give is flimsy as tissue-paper, and exposes him utterly. Therefore, if the State is desirous to educate the sons of its leading citizens, it ought to make sure that the public schools are second to none in the land. If it does not, it has only itself to blame if they are educated apart from the sons of the masses of the population. Nor is it an answer to quote the Fourth of July orator, that our public schools are second to none in the world; for one has only to investigate to be convinced that, both as regards the methods of teaching and as regards ventilation, many of them all over the country are signally inferior to the school as it should be, and the school, both public and private, as it is in certain localities. So long as school boards and committees, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, are composed mainly of political aspirants without experience in educational matters, and who seek to serve as a first or second step toward the White House, our public schools are likely to remain only pretty good. So long as people with axes to grind, or, more plainly speaking, text-books to circulate, are chosen to office, our public schools are not likely to improve. So long – and here is the most serious factor of all – so long as the well-to-do American father and mother continue to be sublimely indifferent to the condition of the public schools, the public schools will never be so good as they ought to be.

It must certainly be a source of constant discouragement to the earnest-minded people in this country, who are interested in education, and are at the same time believers in our professed national hostility to class distinctions, that the well-to-do American parent so calmly turns his back on the public schools, and regards them very much from the lofty standpoint from which certain persons are wont to regard religion – as an excellent thing for the masses, but superfluous for themselves. Of course, if we are going, in this respect also, to model ourselves on and imitate the older civilizations, there is nothing to be said. If the public schools are to be merely a semi-charitable institution for children whose parents cannot afford to separate them from the common herd, the discussion ceases. But what becomes, then, of our cherished and Fourth of July sanctified theories of equality and common school education? And what do we mean when we prate of a common humanity, and no upper class?

It is in the city or town, where the public school is equal or superior to the private school, that the real test comes. Yet in these places well-to-do parents seem almost as indifferent as when they have the righteous defence that their children would be imperfectly educated, or breathe foul air, were they to be sent to a public school. They take no interest, and they fairly bristle with polite and ingenious excuses for evading compliance with the institutions of their country. This is true, probably, of three-fifths of those parents, who can afford, if necessary, to pay for private instruction. And having once made the decision that, for some reason, a public school education is not desirable for their children, they feel absolved from further responsibility and practically wash their hands of the matter. It is notorious that a very large proportion of the children of the leading bankers, merchants, professional men, and other influential citizens, who reside in the so-called court end of our large cities, do not attend the public schools, and it is equally notorious that the existence of a well-conducted and satisfactory school in the district affects the attendance comparatively little. If only this element of the population, which is now so indifferent, would interest itself actively, what a vast improvement could be effected in our public school system! If the parents in the community, whose standards of life are the highest, and whose ideas are the most enlightened, would as a class co-operate in the advancement of common education, the charge that our public schools produce on the whole second-rate acquirements, and second-rate morals and manners, would soon be refuted, and the cause of popular education would cease to be handicapped, as it is at present, by the coolness of the well-to-do class. If the public schools, in those sections of our cities where our most intelligent and influential citizens have their homes, are unsatisfactory, they could speedily be made as good as any private school, were the same interest manifested by the tax-payers as is shown when an undesirable pavement is laid, or a company threatens to provide rapid transit before their doors. Unfortunately, that same spirit of aloofness, which has in the past operated largely to exclude this element in the nation from participation in the affairs of popular government, seems to be at the bottom of this matter. Certainly much progress has been made in the last twenty years in remedying the political evil, and the public good appears to demand a change of front from the same class of people on the subject of common education, unless we are prepared to advocate the existence and growth of a favored, special class, out of touch with, and at heart disdainful of, the average citizen.

The most serious enemies of the public schools among well-to-do people appear to be women. Many a man, alive to the importance of educating his sons in conformity with the spirit of our Constitution, would like to send his boys to a public school, but is deterred by his wife. A mother accustomed to the refinements of modern civilization is apt to shrink from sending her fleckless darling to consort, and possibly become the boon companion or bosom friend, of a street waif.

She urges the danger of contamination, both physical and moral, and is only too glad to discover an excuse for refusing to yield. “Would you like to have your precious boy sit side by side with a little negro?” I was asked one day, in horrified accents, by a well-to-do American mother; and I have heard many fears expressed by others that their offspring would learn vice, or contract disease, through daily association with the children of the mass. It is not unjust to state that the average well-to-do mother is gratified when the public school, to which her sons would otherwise be sent, is so unsatisfactory that their father’s patriotism is overborne by other considerations. All theories of government or humanity are lost sight of in her desire to shelter her boys, and the simplest way to her seems to be to set them apart from the rest of creation, instead of taking pains to make sure that they are suitably taught and protected side by side with the other children of the community.

Excellent as many of our private schools are, it is doubtful if either the morals are better, or the liability to disease is less, among the children who attend them than at a public school of the best class. To begin with, the private schools in our cities are eagerly patronized by that not inconsiderable class of parents who hope or imagine that the social position of their children is to be established by association with the children of influential people. Falsehood, meanness, and unworthy ambitions are quite as dangerous to character, when the little man who suggests them has no patches on his breeches, as when he has, and unfortunately there are no outward signs on the moral nature, like holes in trousers, to serve as danger signals to our darlings. Then again, those of us who occupy comfortable houses in desirable localities, will generally find on investigation that the average of the class of children which attend the public school in such a district is much superior to what paternal or maternal fancy has painted. In such a district the children of the ignorant emigrant class are not to be found in large numbers. The pupils consist mainly of the rank and file of the native American population, whose tendencies and capacities for good have always been, and continue to be, the basis of our strength as a people. There is no need that a mother with delicate sensibilities should send her son into the slums in order to obtain for him a common school education; she has merely to consent that he take his chances with the rest of the children of the district in which he lives, and bend her own energies to make the standards of that school as high as possible. In that way she will best help to raise the tone of the community as a whole, and best aid to obliterate those class distinctions which, in spite of Fourth of July negations, are beginning to expose us to the charge of insincerity.

When a boy has reached the age of eleven or twelve, another consideration presents itself which is a source of serious perplexity to parents. Shall he be educated at home – that is, attend school in his own city or town – or be sent to one of the boarding-schools or academies which are ready to open their doors to him and fit him for college? Here again we are met by the suggestion that the boarding-school of this type is not a native growth, but an exotic. England has supplied us with a precedent. The great boarding-schools, Rugby, Eton, and Harrow, are the resort of the gentlemen of England. Though termed public schools, they are class schools, reserved and intended for the education of only the highly respectable. The sons of the butcher, the baker, and candlestick-maker are not formally barred, but they are tacitly excluded. The pupils are the sons of the upper and well-to-do middle classes. A few boarding-schools for boys have been in existence here for many years, but in the last twenty there has been a notable increase in their number and importance. These, too, are essentially class schools, for though ostensibly open to everybody, the charges for tuition and living are beyond the means of parents with a small income. Most of them are schools of a religious denomination, though commonly a belief in the creed for which the institution stands is not made a formal requisite for admission. The most successful profess the Episcopalian faith, and in other essential respects are modelled deliberately on the English public schools.

The strongest argument for sending a boy to one of these schools is the fresh-air plea. Undeniably, the growing boy in a large city is at a disadvantage. He can rarely, if ever, obtain opportunities for healthful exercise and recreation equal to those afforded by a well-conducted boarding-school. He is likely to become a little man too early, or else to sit in the house because there is nowhere to play. At a boarding-school he will, under firm but gentle discipline, keep regular hours, eat simple food, and between study times be stimulated to cultivate athletic or other outdoor pursuits. It is not strange that parents should be attracted by the comparison, and decide that, on the whole, their boys will fare better away from home. Obviously the aristocratic mother will point out to her husband that his predilection for the public school system is answered by the fact that the State does not supply schools away from the city, where abundant fresh air and a famous foot-ball field are appurtenant to the institution. Tom Brown at Rugby recurs to them both, and they conclude that what has been good enough for generations of English boys will be best for their own son and heir.

On the other hand, have we Americans ever quite reconciled ourselves to, and sympathized with, the traditional attitude of English parents toward their sons as portrayed in veracious fiction? The day of parting comes; the mother, red-eyed from secret weeping, tries not to break down; the blubbering sisters throw their arms around the neck of the hero of the hour, and slip pen-wipers of their own precious making into his pockets; the father, abnormally stern to hide his emotion, says, bluffly, “Good-by, Tom; it’s time to be off, and we’ll see you again at Christmas.” And out goes Tom, a tender fledgeling, into the great world of the public school, and that is the last of home. His holidays arrive, but there is no more weeping. He is practically out of his parents’ lives, and the sweet influence of a good mother is exercised only through fairly regular correspondence. And Tom is said to be getting manly, and that the nonsense has nearly been knocked out of him. He has been bullied and has learned to bully; he has been a fag and is now a cock. Perhaps he is first scholar, if not a hero of the cricket or foot-ball field. Then off he goes to college, half a stranger to those who love him best.

This is fine and manly perhaps, in the Anglo-Saxon sense, but does it not seem just a little brutal? Are we well-to-do Americans prepared to give up to others, however exemplary, the conduct of our children’s lives? Granting that the American private boarding-school is a delightful institution, where bullying and fags and cocks are not known, can it ever take the place of home, or supply the stimulus to individual life which is exercised by wise parental love and precept? Of course, it is easier, in a certain sense, to send one’s boy to a select boarding-school, where the conditions are known to be highly satisfactory. It shifts the responsibility on to other shoulders, and yet leaves one who is not sensitive, in the pleasing frame of mind that the very best thing has been done for the young idea. In our busy American life – more feverish than that of our English kinsfolk whose institution we have copied – many doubtless are induced to seek this solution of a perplexing problem by the consciousness of their own lack of efficiency, and their own lack of leisure to provide a continuous home influence superior or equal to what can be supplied by headmasters and their assistants, who are both churchmen and athletes. Many, too, especially fathers, are firm believers in that other English doctrine, that most boys need to have the nonsense knocked out of them, and that the best means of accomplishing this result is to cut them loose from their mothers’ apron-strings.

It is to be borne in mind in this connection that the great English public schools are a national cult. That is, everybody above a certain class sends his sons to one of them. On the other hand, the private boarding-schools on this side of the water, fashioned after them, have thus far attracted the patronage of a very small element of the population. It is their misfortune, rather than their fault, that they are chiefly the resort of the sons of rich or fashionable people, and consequently are the most conspicuously class schools in the country. Doubtless the earnest men who conduct most of them regret that this is so, but it is one of the factors of the case which the American parent with sons must face at present. It may be that this is to be the type of school which is to become predominant here, and that, as in England, the nation will recognize it as a national force, even though here, as there, only the sons of the upper classes enjoy its advantages. That will depend partly on the extent to which we shall decide, as a society, to promote further class education. At present these schools are essentially private institutions. They are small; they do not, like our American colleges, offer scholarships, and thus invite the attendance of ambitious students without means. Moreover, they are almost universally conducted on a sectarian basis, or with a sectarian leaning, which is apt to proselytize, at least indirectly.

While those in charge of them indisputably strive to inculcate every virtue, the well-to-do American father must remember that his sons will associate intimately there with many boys whose parents belong to that frivolous class which is to-day chiefly absorbed in beautiful establishments, elaborate cookery, and the wholly material vanities of life, and are out of sympathy with, or are indifferent to, the earnest temper and views of that already large and intelligent portion of the community, which views with horror the development among us of an aristocracy of wealth, which apes and is striving to outdo the heartless inanities of the Old World. He must remember that a taste for luxury and sensuous, material aims, even though they be held in check by youthful devotion to the rites of the church, will prove no less disastrous, in the long run, to manhood and patriotism, than the lack of fresh air or a famous foot-ball field.

If, however, the American father chooses to keep his sons at home, he is bound to do all he can to overcome the physical disadvantages of city life. Fresh air and suitable exercise can be obtained in the suburbs of most cities by a little energy and co-operation on the part of parents. As an instance, in one or two of our leading cities, clubs of twelve to fifteen boys are sent out three or four afternoons a week under the charge of an older youth – usually a college or other student – who, without interfering with their liberty, supervises their sports, and sees that they are well occupied. On days when the weather is unsuitable for any kind of game, he will take them to museums, manufactories, or other places of interest in the vicinity. In this way some of the watchfulness and discipline which are constantly operative at a boarding-school, are exercised without injury to home ties. There is no doubt that, unless parents are vigilant and interest themselves unremittingly in providing necessary physical advantages, the boys in a crowded city are likely to be less healthy and vigorous in body, and perhaps in mind, than those educated at a first-class boarding-school. It may be, as our cities increase in size, and suburbs become more difficult of access, that the boarding-school will become more generally popular; but there is reason to believe that, before it is recognized as a national institution, sectarian religion will have ceased to control it, and it will be less imitative of England in its tone and social attitude. Until then, at least, many a parent will prefer to keep his boys at home.

II

“Supposing you had four daughters, like Mr. Perkins, what would you do with them, educationally speaking?” I said to my wife Barbara, by way of turning my attention to the other sex.