Reluctantly I left the incredible acres of technical apparatus munificently provided in America for the training of teachers, and, having risen to the roof and seen infants thereon grabbing at instruction in the New York breeze, I came again to the more normal regions of the school.  Here, as everywhere else in the United States (save perhaps the cloak-room department of the Metropolitan Opera-House), what chiefly struck me was the brilliant organization of the organism.  There was nothing that had not been thought of.  A handsomely dressed mother came into the organism and got as far as the antechamber of the principal’s room.  The organization had foreseen her, had divined that that mother’s child was the most important among a thousand children—­indeed, the sole child of any real importance—­had arranged that her progress should be arrested at just that stage, and had stationed a calm and diplomatic woman to convince her that her child was indeed the main preoccupation of the Horace Mann School.  A pretty sight—­the interview!  It charmed me as the sight of an ingenious engine in motion will charm an engineer.

The individual class-rooms, in some of which I lingered at leisure, were tonic, bracing, inspiring, and made me ashamed because I was not young.  I saw geography being taught with the aid of a stereoscopic magic-lantern.  After a view of the high street of a village in North Russia had been exposed and explained by a pupil, the teacher said:  “If anybody has any questions to ask, let him stand up.”  And the whole class leaped furiously to its feet, blotting out the entire picture with black shadows of craniums and starched pinafores.  The whole class might have been famishing.  In another room I saw the teaching of English composition.  Although when I went to school English composition was never taught, I have gradually acquired a certain interest in the subject, and I feel justified in asserting that the lesson was admirably given.  It was, in fact, the best example of actual pedagogy that I met with in the United States.  “Now can any one tell me—­” began the mistress.  A dozen arms of boys and girls shot up with excessive violence, and, having shot up, they wiggled and waggled with ferocious impatience in the air; it was a miracle that they remained attached to their respective trunks; it was assuredly an act of daring on the part of the intrepid mistress to choose between them.

“How children have changed since my time!” I said to the principal afterward.  “We never used to fling up our hands like that.  We just put them up....  But perhaps it’s because they’re Americans—­”

“It’s probably because of the ventilation,” said the principal, calmly corrective.  “We never have the windows open winter or summer, but the ventilation is perfect.”

I perceived that it indeed must be because of the ventilation.

More and more startled, as I went along, by the princely lavishness of every arrangement, I ventured to surmise that it must all cost a great deal.