288                            PARIS  IN AMERICA.
defence against gentleness and affection. On this point,
again, experience gives the lie to ancient wisdom, which
is only old error. It is the women of New England who,
with missionary devotion, exile themselves among the
corruption of the South and the solitudes of the West, to
rear young souls, and give them to the truth and to God.
We have masters who are second to none, but our best
endowed instructors often fail where a Yankee girl does
marvels. Childhood belongs to woman ; it is a natural
law, which we have had the merit to recognize and
apply."
" Amen," replied I, shrugging my shoulders ; " let us
go then to admire these timid ewes and docile sheep, led
by a shepherdess jxo less innocent than her flock."
I entered the schoolroom ill-humoredly ; I cannot en-
dure unreasonableness ; but, I confess it to my shame,
scarcely had I set foot in the sanctuary when I was fas-
cinated.
I found myself in a vast apartment, well supplied with
air and light from large windows ; the walls were of ex-
quisite neatness and hung at intervals with maps, pictures
of natural history, and physical and geometrical figures.
Each child had his desk, isolated by four passages intersect-
ing each other about him. Seated before this varnished
table, which shone like a mirror, alone and without a neigh-
bor, the scholar was his own master ; if he were abstracted,
if he did not work, on him fell the whole responsibility.
The teacher, placed on a platform, surveyed at a glance
the long files of desks, ranged one behind another—a
surveillance scarcely necessary among an ambitious peo-
ple, where each one is anxious to instruct himself in order
to arrive at fortune and power ! The vices of the Ame-
ricans serve them bettor than our virtues serve us.