Diversities of American Life

few years ago a tournament was organized in the North between several colleges for competition in oratory and scholarship; it had a couple of contests and then died of inanition and want of public interest.

During the period I am speaking of there has been an enormous advance in technical education, resulting in the establishment of splendid special schools, essential to the development of our national resources; a growth of the popular idea that education should be practical,--that is, such an education as can be immediately applied to earning a living and acquiring wealth speedily,--and an increasing extension of the elective system in colleges,--based almost solely on the notion, having in view, of course, the practical education, that the inclinations of a young man of eighteen are a better guide as to what is best for his mental development and equipment for life than all the experience of his predecessors.

In this period, which you will note is more distinguished by the desire for the accumulatio