“I am perfectly satisfied, my dear madam, where Frank is. He studies hard, which is the great point, and I think the general system of the establishment good. I am always unwilling to make a change in a child’s school, without I see strong reasons for doing so, for much time I think is lost in changing studies and teachers. New systems, new books, are always introduced, and not often for the better, and as long as Frank studies well, and has time for exercise, I am satisfied where he is.”
“The scholarship may be equal,” replied Mrs. Harrington, “in these great schools, although even that I doubt, but what I chiefly object to for my son, Mr. Ashhurst, is the contaminating influence of such a crowd of all sorts of boys.” (Now Mrs. Harrington had a holy horror of “all sorts” of people, at any time of life.) “Now the moral influence must be so much purer, so much healthier, of a select number of boys, whose families you know.”
“There, my dear madam, I differ from you,” said Mr. Ashhurst, smiling. “I look upon the moral influence of a public school as decidedly—not perhaps what you would call purer—but healthier than that of a ‘select few.’ Indeed, if it were not for the languages, I had rather Frank went to a district school than any other.”
“Oh, Mr. Ashhurst! A district school! You surely are not in earnest. Pray, what advantage can they or any public school have over a private one?”
“Just the one,” said Mr. Ashhurst, smiling, “that you seem so much to dread—‘all sorts of boys.’ Manliness of character, that first point in education, is only to be acquired by throwing a boy early on himself. Of course it is a parent’s duty to watch over his child; and to cultivate the higher moral feelings is the home part of the business. But to make him hardy and vigorous in mind as well as body is the great object of out-door education.”
“But, my dear sir, you would not wish your son to acquire unrefined habits and boorish manners, which he must, if you condemn him to mix with his inferiors, by way of making him hardy, as you call it.”
“By no means,” replied Mr. Ashhurst. “But I am very far from thinking that I condemn him to mix with his inferiors, when I let him find his own footing among his equals, and perhaps superiors. And I look to the influence of home for the refinement of his habits and manners.”
Mrs. Harrington had been a little annoyed at the turn the conversation had taken—not that it altered her views and opinions in the least, what conversation ever does—but that her husband happened to be present; and as he occasionally indulged in some slap against the “white-kid gentry,” she feared Mr. Ashhurst’s arguments might meet a more ready acquiescence than she desired, so saying,
“Well, we must talk this over another time,” hastily turned the subject, and there the matter dropped.
“Ashhurst is a sensible man,” observed Mr. Harrington to his wife as they walked home.