people as are over anxious about what figure they make in foreign eyes to know they make none.
I have been attracted to the window every morning since I have been here by the troops of children passing to the public school, their hands full of books and slates; the girls dressed in cheaper materials, but much like those of our village-schools, except that their rich German hair is uncovered, and they all, the poorest among them, wear good stockings—so much for the universality of German knitting. Education is compulsory here as in Prussia; the parent who cannot produce a good reason for the absence of the child pays a fine. I went into the girls' school nearest to us this morning. They looked as intelligent, as early developed, and as bright as our own children.
They went successfully through the exercises in reading, geography, and arithmetic. At an interval in these lessons, the master, who was a grave personage some sixty years old, took from a case a violin and gave them a music lesson, which, if one might judge from the apparent refreshment of their young spirits, was an aliment well suited to them. What is to be the result of this education system in Germany? Will people, thus taught, be contented to work for potatoes and black bread?
We have been in search of an infant school which we were told was near the Porte.
