OME years ago my family had a cook whose taste in newspapers always caused us some astonishShe was a woman in the middle fifties and belonged to what, on the Continent, would be called the peasant class. She had been born and brought up in rustic surroundings and her education had been so scanty as to have been almost non-existent. She could read quite well, but she wrote with much difficulty, and I remember that the grocery lists she made out were always undertaken in a somewhat martyr spirit. Nevertheless, her favorite reading was the London "Times," and this solemn and stately journal she read religiously every evening. If, by any chance, the family forgot to give it to her-which was seldom-she never failed to ask if she might have it; and she would carefully collect the scattered sections and carry them off to the kitchen to read till bedtime. In the morning she would frequently comment on the news and articles, clearly proving that she had done more than merely glance at the headlines.

I repeat that this cook of ours, judged by no matter what standard, was essentially uneducated. She was just literate, but that is all. She knew no Latin, French, German,

civics, biology, rhetoric, psychology, history, literature, chemistry or any other of the numerous subjects that form the curriculum of modern schools under the system of free and compulsory education. She had no "background" except a thatched cottage and the fields and meadows of her childhood and the domestic service of her adult days. Yet, for all that, she took pleasure in reading a newspaper which makes no concession of any kind to sensationalism or cheap-mindedness, whose articles are all written in grave and dignified English and whose range and treatment of news is frequently described as insufferably dull by those accustomed to and liking melodrama in their papers. In a word this rustic peasant woman was able to appreciate a newspaper that is produced for the well-educated and that is notoriously shunned by those who are educated without being well-educated.

Now, this cook of ours had nieces who had risen in the world. They had been subjected to the system of free and compulsory education. They had learned a little French, a little science, a little history, a little geography, a little botany, a little literature, a little grammar-without however being able to put it to practical

use in their own speech-a little, indeed, of almost everything. One of these girls had herself become a teacher. Another was a dressmaker; and the third was a stenographer. But they could not, or would not, read the London "Times" and the mere mention that their aunt found pleasure in it never failed to arouse loud sniggers of contemptuous amusement on their part.

No. These three young ladies read one or the other of the two tabloids that came down to the country from London. They were educated. They knew what was what-as they used to put it. The "Daily Mirror" or the "Daily Sketch" for them! And their speech differed no less from that of their aunt than did their choice in reading matter. The aunt spoke an honest rural English, racy and not without a certain rude dignity. Thè nieces the educated nieces-spoke a language that was indescribable in its vulgarity of accent and idiom. The aunt wore sober durable clothes that made no attempt to follow the fashion. The nieces-the educated nieces-wore trashy garments that they believed to be indistinguishable from the creations of the great Paris houses. Even the trained dressmaker could not be induced to admire any frocks that were not over-trimmed with more or less gaudy decorations. I remember that once I gave her a French dress to copy in another color. She looked at it with cold disapproval and finally remarked "If they can't make anything more tasty than that in Paris, I think it's high time that us English dressmakers learned them how. Why, that there dress hasn't got no trimmings at all!"

The enigma of what free and compulsory education had done for our cook's nieces exercised my mind a good deal. The girls had received infinitely more schooling than their aunt. There was no question at all about that. As their father's position improved, they had, indeed, even attended higher grade schools where fees were demanded, and they were exceedingly proud of the fact. They were perfectly satisfied with their education and felt a certain amount of pity for their aunt who had only been instructed in a miserable little rural school and had never had a chance to learn English literature, French, mathematics, history, botany, science, the piano and all the rest of the wide range of subjects into which they themselves had delved. The aunt, all but illiterate, was not vulgar in the least. But the nieces-the educated nieces-were hopelessly vulgar and cheap-minded. How was one to explain the phenomenon?

I could not explain it; but one day, while canvassing voters in a political election, I chanced to talk with a young man whose views proved that he too had been struck by the same broad phenomenon. I had called on him one wet evening and his wife had invited me into the sitting-room to discuss things with her husband. The young man was a pottery craftsman and I found him sitting at a table reading Ruskin by the light of an oil lamp. I looked at his bookshelves. I saw on them volumes of Ruskin, Carlyle, William Morris and Tennyson. Speaking correctly, but with the strong accent of his native county, he began to talk to me.

"I started out as a Socialist," he

said, "but I'm voting Tory this time. You see, I'm getting disillusioned. I'm beginning to realize that there can be no heaven on this side of the grave, whatever there may be on the other side. The problem that has had most weight in making me change sides is the question of mass education. It is absurd to speak of mass education. The two words cancel each other, at least so far as the system is understood and applied to-day."

I asked him to explain himself; and as I did so the mental picture of our cook and her three nieces hovered before me.

"It's something like this. If there had been a system of free and compulsory education in the Middle Ages, or even up to the eighteenth century, great things might have resulted. In those days the population was comparatively small and the setting of life was a thousand times more beautiful than it is to-day. But how can you educate millions of people who are compelled to live their lives under the vulgarizing influence of a machine civilization? You have education pulling one way and the twentieth century setting of life pulling the other way. How can education be expected to win? It can only win if the environment is favorable. Who can pretend that an environment of smoke-stacks, corrugated iron roofs, tenements, cheap cinemas, cut-throat business competition and all the rest of it is favorable to the aims of education?"

"But," I protested, "with more education, could not this setting, which I agree is detestable, be modified?"

The young man looked at me

sharply and said, "How?" I remained silent, for I could not tell him. He continued:

"It's here to stay for some time yet. The trouble is that mass education plus the twentieth century setting of life spell vulgarity. Mass education is abolishing the rustic and substituting the vulgarian. Now, which do you prefer: a buxom, redcheeked country girl, who knows almost nothing of book-learning, but a good deal about nature, or a palefaced, scraggy waitress, who's had some schooling, reads the serials in the picture papers, dresses in shoddy silks and satins, and believes herself superior to her mother who was a country girl? All that mass education has done is to put certain things within the reach of millions who, without it, would never have known of them, or at any rate, would never have indulged in them. You know, it takes a good deal of education of a very fine and high type plus a good environment to make a man appreciate restraint, sobriety and truth. Do you see any signs of an appreciation of sober beauty or restrained taste in the mass-educated millions? You do not. You only see an appreciation of the sensational, the maudlin, the gaudy. Rustics," the young man added, "have never indulged in the sensational, the maudlin or the gaudy. Rustics are often gross, but they are almost never vulgar—until they go to school."

The young man's eulogy of the unlettered rustic reminded me that great novelists have frequently made heroic figures of peasant men and women, but none, so far as I know, have turned to the modern factory or semieducated toilers to find ma

terial for beautiful and dignified characters. Knut Hamsun, in his "Growth of the Soil," gave the world an immortal picture of the dignity and nobility of peasant life. Thomas Hardy has done for the English rustics what Hamsun did for the Norwegian. The French novelist, René Bazin, in "La terre qui meurt" and other novels, has shown us something similar in French rustic life. Contrast with the simple and touching figures created by these authors the semieducated specimens who people the novels of Mr. Sinclair Lewis. Mr. Lewis's characters have been to school; they have learned not only to read and write, but they have been instructed at huge public expense in a score of other branches of learning as well. Can one truthfully say that these characters, for all their education, are either dignified or agreeable? I fear that one cannot. If it be urged that Mr. Lewis takes a deliberately spiteful view of his characters-most people allow that he is positively photographic then turn to the characters depicted by any of the other modern novelists who deal with what are called the masses, to the novels or short stories of Miss Edna Ferber or Miss Fanny Hurst, for example. These characters, I suppose, are the products of modern free and compulsory education and possibly of even two generations of it. But do they really seem to be so very much better for it? Are they indeed the superiors of the unlettered rustics, using the word "superior" in any sense that one may wish? Perhaps they are; but if so, it would seem as if the particular type of education they have received had taught them, among a

I think that it was Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler who once said that the irreducible minimum of a good education is a thorough knowledge of one's own tongue. Many admirable judges have commented on the good speech of peasants. SainteBeuve's "All peasants have style" is a frequently quoted pronouncement. De Quincey fancied that he could explain the pure speech of aristocracies by the fact that it was learned from the lips of peasant nurses-the source, according to his own judgment, of Anatole France's beautiful French. And the American Burroughs was no less enthusiastic in his praise of the simple, unvulgarized language of rustics. When I lived in Europe I was frequently struck by the remarkable style of letters written by peasants under the strain of great emotion-letters bearing upon some crime of love and jealousy and subsequently published in the newspapers. Almost all of them seemed to possess a real literary quality, so simple, so utterly unvulgarized was the expression. But the children of the men who are able to express themselves in this way have gone to school and drifted to the cities. Their letters will be written in another tongue, revolting in its combination of cheap smartness and glib commonness. How could it be otherwise when their very teachers so frequently murder the mother tongue? At the last annual conference of the Normal School and Teachers' College Section of the New York Society for the Experimental Study of Education,

Miss Emma Johnson, Principal of the Maxwell Training School for Teachers, commented in strong terms on the speech deficiencies of teachers and actually urged that an examination on speech be given to all candidates for admission to training schools. "Teacher-training faculties," she remarked, as quoted in the "New York Times," "are finding among their students startling evidence of deficient social training.' If good speech be indeed the irreducible minimum of a good education, it is an ironical condition of affairs under which the poor, much-pitied rustic makes a better showing than the "educated" teacher whose task it is to instruct the children of the rustic.

I asked a moment ago in what way or on what count the mass-educated characters of certain modern novelists were superior to the rustics of other novelists. Apparently not in speech, since so many authorities insist in regarding rustic speech as unvulgarized. And in real life, in addition to the speech test, there is another test of superiority-again interpreting that word in any manner that one may wish-that is no less significant. I mean the question of amusements and recreations.

the famous country dances, many of them so charming that, as curiosities, they have lingered on to the present day. When I was very small, the May Day dances were still done at my home, and every year on the first of the month, a white-clad queen and troops of little children made merry around the great beribboned May-pole. But the place became prosperous. Great brick factories were built, then schools. The people became too "educated" for such picturesque pleasures as May-pole dancing. So the May-pole disappeared and is seen no more. Then, again, there were the rustic songs and games that were sometimes almost like little acted plays in which action matched words. These, too, have died away, although many of the old folk-songs have been collected by zealous music-lovers and now find a place in printed volumes of rustic music. The charm and quaint melodies of these old songs have made a strong appeal to a large number of musicians.

What has taken the place of these old dances, these old songs? I think that it is more merciful to modern mass education as now understood to draw a veil over the sight of the Black Bottom and to stop the ears from the sound of "Yes, We Have No Bananas."

The movies are a modern amusement which find high favor with the mass-educated. Now, a veritable tempest of controversy has raged for years over the problem of the curious pictures presented to the public by the cinematograph magnates, who have sworn that they themselves are not responsible for the "moronical" qualities of their