We would earnestly advise the Directors never to shrink from taking the public into their confidence.  The public is wiser and better than any man or any board.  A plain statement every year of the real condition of the College, the real difficulties in the way of its organization, would have been far better than the carefully uttered nothings of which the Annual Reports have generally consisted.  It was to Philadelphia that Girard left his estate.  The honor of Philadelphia is involved in its faithful administration.  Philadelphia has a right to know how it is administered.

The President of the College is Major Richard Somers Smith, a graduate of West Point, where he was afterwards a Professor.  He has served with distinction in the Army of the Potomac, in which he commanded a brigade.  To learn how to be an efficient President of Girard College is itself a labor of years; and Major Smith is only in the second year of his incumbency.  The highest hopes are indulged, however, that under his energetic rule, the College will become all that the public ought to expect.  He seems to have perceived at once the weak point of the institution.

“I find in the College,” he says in one of his monthly reports,

“a certain degree of impatience of study, an inertness, a dragging along, an infection of ‘young-Americanism,’ a disposition to flounder along through duties half done, hurrying to reach—­what is never attained—­an ’easy success’; and I observe that this state of things is confined to the higher departments of study.  In the elementary departments there is life; but as soon as the boy has acquired the rudiments of his English or common-school education, he begins to chafe, and to feel that it Is time for him to go out, and to make haste to ’finish (!) his studies,’—­which of course he does without much heart.”

And again:—–­

“The ‘poor white male orphan,’ dwelling for eight or ten years in comfort almost amounting to luxury, waited upon by servants and machinery in nearly all his domestic requirements, unused to labor, or laboring only occasionally, with some reward in view in the form of extra privileges, finds it hard to descend from his fancied elevation to the lot of a simple apprentice; and his disappointment is not soothed by the discovery that with all his learning he has not learned wherewithal to give ready satisfaction to his master.”

It has been difficult, also, to induce the large manufacturers to take apprentices; they are now accustomed to place boys at once upon the footing of men, paying them such wages as they are worth.  Men who employ forty boys will not generally undertake the responsibilities involved in receiving them as bound apprentices for a term of years.

To remedy all these evils, Major Smith proposes to add to the College a Manual Labor Department, in which the elder boys shall acquire the rudiments of the arts and trades to which they are destined.  This will alleviate the tedium of the College routine, assist the physical development of the boys, and send them forth prepared to render more desirable help to their employers.  The present Board of Directors favor the scheme.