"Some natures are so undecided in character that they become only what their surroundings make them. Others only partially absorb tastes and sentiments that form the influence about them. They maintain a decided individuality; yet they are most always noticeably marked with the general character of their surroundings. It is very, very seldom that a nature is fixed from infancy in one channel."
I told her that I knew of a people whose minds from infancy to mature age, never left the grooves they were born in. They belonged to every nationality, and had palaces built for them, and attendants with cultivated intelligences employed to wait upon them.
"Are their minds of such vast importance to their nation? You have never before alluded to intellect so elevated as to command such royal homage." My friend spoke with awakened interest.
"They are of no importance at all," I answered, humiliated at having alluded to them. "Some of them have not sufficient intelligence to even feed themselves."
"And what are they?" she inquired anxiously.
"They are idiots; human vegetables."
"And you build palaces for them, and hire servants to feed and tend them, while the bright, ambitious children of the poor among you, struggle and suffer for mental advancement. How deplorably short-sighted are the wise ones of your world. Truly it were better in your country to be born an idiot than a poor genius." She sighed and looked grave.
"What should we do with them?" I inquired.
"What do you do with the useless weeds in your garden," she asked significantly. "Do you carefully tend them, while drouth and frost and lack of nourishment cause your choice plants to wither and die?"
"We are far behind you," I answered humbly. "But barbarous as you think we are, no epithet could be too scathing, too comprehensive of all that was vicious and inhuman, to apply to a person who should dare to assail the expense of those institutions, or suggest that they be converted to the cultivation of intellect that could be improved."