— to assign them, by and by, as they shall develop aptitude, to various special courses of study and training in the physical, mechanical and military sciences, in political history and economy, international law, the principles and practice of civil administration and in all departments and branches of knowledge, skill in which is useful for public government service in these modern times. And through the whole process of this education, it is to be impressed upon them that they belong and are to belong to their nation, for whose sake they are elected to enjoy these great and peculiar opportunities. The result will be, if all goes well and the plan is carried out, — and there is apparently nothing now to prevent it, — that in the year 1887 or thereabout there will go from this country to China a body of somewhere near a hundred men who have grown up under exceedingly favorable conditions from early youth to manhood here among us, destined to hold places of importance in the government and in the society of their native land, better equipped in all save experience to do for that land what most needs to be done, and inspired for their work with a more enlightened sense of patriotic duty and responsibility than any other hundred of her sons of their
