=Contrasts.=—­In this, he speaks but the simple truth.  In the grocery he has comfort while, in the Vatican, he is in bondage.  His ignorance of art, architecture, history, and literature reduces him to thralldom in any place that exemplifies these.  In the grocery he has comfort because he can have a share in the small talk and gossip that obtain there.  His companions speak his language and he feels himself to be one of them.  Were they, by any chance, to begin a discussion of history he would feel himself ostracized and would leave them to their own devices.  If they would retain him as a companion they must keep within his range of interests and thinking.  To go outside his small circle is to offer an affront.  He cannot speak the language of history, or science, or art, and so experiences a feeling of discomfort in any presence where this language is spoken.

=History.=—­In this concrete illustration we find ample justification for the teaching of history in the schools.  History is one of the large strands in the web of life, and to neglect this study is to deny to the pupil one of the elements of freedom.  It is not easy to conceive a situation that lacks the element of history in one or another of its phases or manifestations.  Whether the pupil travels, or embarks upon a professional life, or associates, in any relation, with cultivated people, he will find a knowledge of history not only a convenience but a real necessity, if he is to escape the feeling of thralldom.  The utilitarian value of school studies has been much exploited, and that phase is not to be neglected; but we need to go further in estimating the influence of any study.  We need to inquire not only how a knowledge of the study will aid the pupil in his work, but also how it will contribute to his life.

=Restricted concepts.=—­We lustily proclaim our country to be the land of the free, but our notion of freedom is much restricted.  In the popular conception freedom has reference to the body.  A man can walk the streets without molestation and can vote his sentiments at the polls, but he may not be able to take a day’s ride about Concord and Lexington with any appreciable sense of freedom.  He may walk about the Congressional Library and feel himself in prison.  He may desert a lecture for the saloon in the interests of his own comfort.  He may find the livery stable more congenial than the drawing-room.  His body may experience a sort of freedom while his mind and spirit are held fast in the shackles of ignorance.  A Burroughs, an Edison, a Thoreau, might have his feet in the stocks and still have more freedom than such a man as this.  He walks about amid historic scenes with his spiritual eyes blindfolded, and that condition of mind precludes freedom.