In order to make a comparison between the schools of London and those of New York, I have called them both free schools. They are, in fact, more free in New York than they are in London; because in New York every boy and girl, let his parentage be what it may, can attend these schools without any payment. Thus an education as good as the American mind can compass, prepared with every care, carried on by highly-paid tutors, under ample surveillance, provided with all that is most excellent in the way of rooms, desks, books, charts, maps, and implements, is brought actually within the reach of everybody. I need not point out to Englishmen how different is the nature of schools in London. It must not, however, be supposed that these are charity schools. Such is not their nature. Let us say what we may as to the beauty of charity as a virtue, the recipient of charity in its customary sense among us is ever more or less degraded by the position. In the States that has been fully understood, and the schools to which I allude are carefully preserved from any such taint. Throughout the States a separate tax is levied for the maintenance of these schools, and as the taxpayer supports them, he is, of course, entitled to the advantage which they confer. The child of the non-taxpayer is also entitled, and to him the boon, if strictly analyzed, will come in the shape of a charity. But under the system as it is arranged, this is not analyzed. It is understood that the school is open to all in the ward to which it belongs, and no inquiry is made whether the pupil's parent has or has not paid anything toward the school's support. I found this theory carried out so far that at the deaf and dumb school, where some of the poorer children are wholly provided by the institution, care is taken to clothe them in dresses of different colors and different make, in order that nothing may attach to them which has the appearance of a badge.
Political economists will see something of evil in this. But philanthropists will see very much that is good.
It is not without a purpose that I have given this somewhat glowing account of a girls' school in New York so soon after my little picture of New York women, as they behave themselves in the streets and street cars. It will, of course, be said that those women of whom I have spoken, by no means in terms of admiration, are the very girls whose education has been so excellent. This of course is so; but I beg to remark that I have by no means said that an excellent school education will produce all female excellencies.
The fact, I take it, is this: that seeing how high in the scale these girls have been raised, one is anxious that they should be raised higher. One is surprised at their pert vulgarity and hideous airs, not because they are so low in our general estimation, but because they are so high. Women of the same class in London are humble enough, and therefore rarely offend us who are squeamish. They show by their gestures that they hardly think themselves good enough to sit by us; they apologize for their presence; they conceive it to be their duty to be lowly in their gesture. The question is which is best, the crouching and crawling, or the impudent, unattractive self-composure. Not, my reader, which action on her part may the better conduce to my comfort or to yours. That is by no means the question. Which is the better for the woman herself? That, I take it, is the point to be decided. That there is something better than either, we shall all agree--but to my thinking the crouching and crawling is the lowest type of all.
At that school I saw some five or six hundred girls collected in one room, and heard them sing. The singing was very pretty, and it was all very nice; but I own that I was rather startled, and to tell the truth somewhat abashed, when I was invited to "say a few words to them." No idea of such a suggestion had dawned upon me, and I felt myself quite at a loss. To be called up before five hundred men is bad enough, but how much worse before that number of girls! What could I say but that they were all very pretty? As far as I can remember, I did say that and nothing else. Very pretty they were, and neatly dressed, and attractive; but among them all there was not a pair of rosy cheeks. How should there be, when every room in the building was heated up to the condition of an oven by those damnable hot-air pipes.
In England a taste for very large shops has come up during the last twenty years. A firm is not doing a good business, or at any rate a distinguished business, unless he can assert in his trade card that he occupies at least half a dozen houses--Nos. 105, 106, 107, 108, 109 and 110. The old way of paying for what you want over the counter is gone; and when you buy a yard of tape or a new carriage--for either of which articles you will probably visit the same establishment--you go through about the same amount of ceremony as when you sell a thousand pounds out of the stocks in propria persona. But all this is still further exaggerated in New York.
Mr. Stewart's store there is perhaps the handsomest institution in the city, and his hall of audience for new carpets is a magnificent saloon. "You have nothing like that in England," my friend said to me as he walked me through it in triumph. "I wish we had nothing approaching to it," I answered. For I confess to a liking for the old-fashioned private shops. Harper's establishment for the manufacture and sale of books is also very wonderful. Everything is done on the premises, down to the very coloring of the paper which lines the covers, and places the gilding on their backs. The firm prints, engraves, electroplates, sews, binds, publishes, and sells wholesale and retail. I have no doubt that the authors have rooms in the attics where the other slight initiatory step is taken toward the production of literature.