With much care, this wise, sensible person went on to examine more closely how Ottilie proceeded with her little pupils, and expressed his marked approbation of it.  “You are entirely right,” he said, “in directing these children only to what they can immediately and usefully put in practice.  Cleanliness, for instance, will accustom them to wear their clothes with pleasure to themselves; and everything is gained if they can be induced to enter into what they do with cheerfulness and self-reflection.”

In other ways he found, to his great satisfaction, that nothing had been done for outward display; but all was inward, and designed to supply what was indispensably necessary.  “In how few words,” he cried, “might the whole business of education be summed up, if people had but ears to hear!”

“Will you try whether I have any ears?” said Ottilie, smiling.

“Indeed I will,” answered he, “only you must not betray me.  Educate the boys to be servants, and the girls to be mothers, and everything is as it should be.”

“To be mothers?” replied Ottilie.  “Women would scarcely think that sufficient.  They have to look forward, without being mothers, to going out into service.  And, indeed, our young men think themselves a great deal too good for servants.  One can see easily, in every one of them, that he holds himself far fitter to be a master.”

“And for that reason we should say nothing about it to them,” said the Assistant.  “We flatter ourselves on into life; but life flatters not us.  How many men would like to acknowledge at the outset, what at the end they must acknowledge whether they like it or not?  But let us leave these considerations, which do not concern us here.

“I consider you very fortunate in having been able to go so methodically to work with your pupils.  If your very little ones run about with their dolls, and stitch together a few petticoats for them; if the elder sisters will then take care of the younger, and the whole household know how to supply its own wants, and one member of it help the others, the further step into life will not then be great, and such a girl will find in her husband what she has lost in her parents.

“But among the higher ranks the problem is a sorely intricate one.  We have to provide for higher, finer, more delicate relations; especially for such as arise out of society.  We are, therefore, obliged to give our pupils an outward cultivation.  It is indispensable, it is necessary, and it may be really valuable, if we do not overstep the proper measure in it.  Only it is so easy, while one is proposing to cultivate the children for a wider circle, to drive them out into the indefinite, without keeping before our eyes the real requisites of the inner nature.  Here lies the problem which more or less must be either solved or blundered over by all educators.

“Many things, with which we furnish our scholars at the school, do not please me; because experience tells me of how little service they are likely to be in after-life.  How much is in a little while stripped off; how much at once committed to oblivion, as soon as the young lady finds herself in the position of a housewife or a mother!