=Attitude of ancestors.=—­Whether he realizes it or not, he reduces the average of humanity and is a burden upon society both in a negative and in a positive sense.  In him society loses a worker and gains a dependent.  Every taxpayer of the community must contribute to the support which he is unable to provide for himself.  He watches other children romp and play and laugh; but he neither romps, nor plays, nor laughs.  He is inert.  Some ancestor chained him to the rock, and the vultures of disease and unhappiness are feeding at his vitals.  He asks for bread, and they give him a stone; he asks for life, and they give him a living death; he asks for a heaven of delight, and they give him a hell of despair.  He has a right to freedom, but, in place of that, he is forced into slavery of body and soul to pay the debts of his grandfather.  Nor can he pay these debts in full, but must, perforce, pass them on to his own children.  Sad to relate, the father and grandfather look upon such a child and charge Providence with unjust dealing in burdening them with such an imperfect scion to uphold the family name.  They seem blind to the patent truth before them; they seem unable to interpret the law of cause and effect; they charge the Almighty and the child with their own defections; they acquit themselves of any responsibility for what is before their eyes.

=Hospitals cited.=—­Our hospitals for abnormal and subnormal children, and our eleemosynary institutions, in general, are a sad commentary upon our civilization and something of a reflection upon the school as an exponent of and a teacher of life.  If the wards of these institutions, barring the victims of accidents, are the best we can do in the way of coming upon a solution of the problem of life, neither society nor the school has any special warrant for exultation.  These defectives did not just happen.  The law of life is neither fortuitous nor capricious.  On the contrary, like begets like, and the law is immutable.  With lavish hand, society provides the pound of cure but gives only superficial consideration to the ounce of prevention.  The title of education will be cloudy until such time as these institutions have become a thing of the past.  Both pulpit and press extol the efforts of society to build, equip, and maintain these institutions, and that is well; but, with all that, we are merely trying to make the best of a bad situation.  Education will not fully come into its own until it takes into the scope of its interests the child of the future as well as the child of the present; not until it comes to regard the children of the present as future ancestors as well as future citizens.