Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/242

Rh binds them; prevents them from developing education, industry, and every good social institution which gives strength and greatness to a nation.

It is a pure and noble joy to behold the development of the life of freedom in the Northern States; and in spite of various pernicious off-shoots, which as yet run wild and produce disorder, the whole presents a glorious spectacle. For the whole movement of the social system tends upwards; it is a growth of cultivation and improvement which embraces all classes, every branch of activity, and which extends to the most remote points, and includes the most humble individual. It corresponds with the glorious image of our mythological Ygdrasil, of which every single leaf derives vital aliment from the common root, and is watered by the Norna's hand from the renovating fountain of Urda.

Besides, the community has come clearly to feel within itself, and has clearly and forcibly expressed the same in word and deed, that it is the duty of the State so to provide for every individual member that he may become a perfected human being.

Hence the comprehensive and excellent system of popular education which commenced in the “pilgrim” State of Massachusetts, and which has since been adopted, and is being adopted, with modifications and improvements, in all the Free States of the Union. On all hands have arisen free public schools, where children, boys and girls, in separate schools, receive free education, to fifteen or sixteen years of age, when they may, from these schools enter the high-schools and academies, unless they prefer to enter practical life with that amount of knowledge which the public schools have given them, and which does not appear to be so insignificant, as many of the “best men,” and the first statesmen have not studied in any other schools than in these and—in that of life.

I would, before everything else, present to the womanly