stacle. It is not so among us. There are countries, as is the case in Peru and Bolivia, where the savage tribe is incorporated in the society of Christians, with his tent instead of a house, with his language opposed to the spread of the sphere of knowledge, with his ordinary dress scarcely covering his original nakedness, and destitute of all the means which civilization has put into the hands of man for his improvement and well-being. In other countries, such as Chili and the Argentine Republic, the savage, the original inhabitant of these territories, by the labors of three centuries has been domesticated, detached from the tribe, and mingling with the society of European origin, has acquired their language, their customs, and the first rudiments of culture; but in exchange, he has transmitted to our masses many of his defects, much of his old character, and many of his customs. From the American Indians we have derived the rancho, without doors, without furniture, uncleanly, without division into apartments, and of necessity without decorum or dignity in the family, who are huddled together in confused mixture within a contracted space, where they eat, sleep, live, work, and satisfy all their wants. From the old savage come the propensity to steal and to cheat, which appears innate in our lower classes, and the cruel appetites which barbarism had developed.

The

That piece of cloth which covers the untidiness of the dress and creates a partition wall between educated society and the populace -the poncho-is of savage origin. There is no poncho in the United States, and all men are equal, because the European dresscivilized, cleanly, Christian, in fact-is common to all classes. chiripá is again another piece of cloth which the savages have taught the Christian to wear, thus debasing him to their own condition and exterior appearance, instead of themselves adopting our customs. I have seen a division of savage Indians, highway robbers, in the province of Santa Fé, formed by the side of divisions of Christian cavalry, and by nothing even in the dress of the riders, or in the trappings of the horses, could I at first sight distinguish those who were of European origin from those who came from the forest.

These remnants of barbarism, these semi-savage appearances, produce social and industrial results which are fatal to society in general and embarrass or are even destructive to progress, substituting sometimes in the government and administration of public affairs the native violence for civilized right, savage cruelty for Christian humanity, robbery and pillage on the highway for the guarantees of property. The immobility of our working classes proceeds from the same origin; their almost repugnance to the en

joyments and conveniences of civilized life, their regardlessness of acquisition, their want of aspiration for a better condition, their rosistance to the adoption of better modes of labor, and better and fuller dress. To that cause, also, may be traced the indifference with which educated society sees these relicts of a rude past perpetuated, inadequate to our present situation, pregnant with danger to the future in some places, fruitful in terrible lessons in others, unproductive of wealth and well-being every where, and a permanent obstacle to the increase and prosperity of the nation which honors with the name of citizens these stationary beings, rebels to culture, without aptitude for intelligent labor, and without discipline for the political life which our institutions impose upon us.

The schoolmaster, cast in the midst of our country population, will for a long time be there like the guard of a telegraph, with his arms crossed in the midst of the desert. His mission is to carry to the extremities the intellectual life which moves in the center. His task is to sow every year in ungrateful soil, in danger of seeing the seed trampled under the horses' feet, with the hope that a grain or two, fallen in a sheltered place, may spring up. The child, educated with so much care, will return to the bosom of the family and to the rancho, where the uncleanliness, the disdainful indifference of the father, and the rudeness of the mother, will entirely destroy or will at least weaken the impressions that have been made. The very atmosphere in which he lives, the costumes he sees, the backwardness which surrounds him, the very aspect of objects, of the house, of the plough, the manner of reaping, the social relations, all will conspire to weaken the germ of better ideas which he receives at school. The indifference of the authorities, the want of encouragement, the indifference of the parents, will carry to the very school monotony and disenchantment.

But let us begin the work and follow its progress step by step. One hundred children are gathered under the direction of a schoolmaster. The simple fact of each one's leaving the narrow circle of the family and breaking from the influence of the ordinary routine of life, and of their reunion in groups under a recognized authority, implants in the mind the first ideas and consequent laws of association; it becomes necessary to obey, to act, not as hitherto in conformity to the inspiration of individual caprice, but in virtue of something like duty, according to a controlling method, under an authority like a government, for an end beyond the present time. Here you already have morality inculcated, rude nature subjected, a mos moris, a discipline of habit. There begins to be custom, a

daily habit of work, of directing action to an end. It is said of mathematics that they discipline the reason; the schools, simply for their requiring attendance at fixed hours and with a determined object, become a means of discipline to the passions in the germ and in their unfolding. The children can not shout here when they please, nor laugh, nor run, nor fight, nor eat. Such social life leaves its traces upon the mind and upon the future customs of him who is to be a man. The statistics of every country have proved this fact without its being recognized. To know how to read even badly, without having made use of reading as a means of instruc tion, has been found to be a preservative against crime, the number of crimes among this class of men being relatively less than among the mass, who are altogether destitute of the first rudiments of knowledge. What influence could this sterile beginning of instruction have on the morality of the individual? None! It is the school. Reading is usually only learned in school, and it is the school that brings the appetites under control, educates the mind, subordinates the passions, and domesticates the man. The school brings into contact men in the germ, and compels them to associate day after day without anger. The instinct of a boy leads him to seek a quarrel with another boy of his own age and strength whom he meets in the street; but the daily habit of seeing one hundred boys in the school under the same conditions, takes away this hostile feeling, and the quarrelsome spirit of the natural man, which at a later day would be translated into stabbing and homicide, is suffocated or softened at its source. On the other hand, the soul makes use of material organs for its functions, and is enabled by practice to strengthen and perfect itself. The weak yearling is converted into the strong and powerful ox by means of the exercise of its muscles. The memory, the judgment, and the power of perceiving analogies and contrasts, become refined and expand with the smallest exercise of the mind. Learning to read, solely as an exercise of the mental faculties, without its application to the ends of reading, causes a revolution in the mind of the child, improves him, expands him. Hundreds of men have begun a study and spontaneously abandoned it, and lost what they had learned; have gone through a course of studies and afterwards forgotten all or nearly all that they had read; or have studied Latin alone, and that badly, (and for the purposes of life, for the acquirement of any other than professional knowledge, an acquaintance with Latin is like knowing the Guichua dialect for the purposes of commerce,) and nevertheless it is an established fact that these men who have abandoned study, these Latin students, have a clearer mind than those who have

"But you

studied nothing. Being once in a gathering of men who wished to learn to read, our attention was attracted by the appearance of a young man, wrapped up, as the others, in his poncho. know how to read and write perfectly," I said to him. Had he answered me that he did not, I should have felt the unpleasant sensations which are experienced when we see opposite signs to those which are natural, as when a man laughs without moving the muscles of his face. He in fact knew how to read and write with a considerable degree of perfection. We afterwards saw two brothers, identical in features, tone of voice, height, and complexion. Feature by feature they were as identical as twins; but comparing the expression of their features, they were two distinct beings; the one appeared as if he might be the steward of the other's house. One had received a complete education by contact with high society, while the other had remained confined to the occupations of the country. The employment of the understanding transforms the features of the human face, lightens it up, and gives it dignity and grace even when in repose.

Should the school, therefore, produce no other results than to exercise at an early age the faculties of the mind, somewhat subordinating the passions, it would be the means of changing in a single generation the industrial capacity of the mass, as well as its morality and habits. It is proved beyond doubt that in workshops to know how to read is the cause of producing more and better work. It may be a matter of conjecture how this result is produced; but the manufacturer does not deceive himself; the women who do not know how to read earn, for instance, ten cents per day; those who know how to read, thirty; and she who has taught to read, forty— employed in the same kind of labor.

But the modern school, such as it may be in Chili, does not confine itself in its possible results to those mysterious and imperceptible first rudiments of civilization. Let us undertake this work with a feeling of the certainty of success, and with the means already tested, and the mighty effects will very soon be felt. We already have the teacher; bring him, then, the scholars. Reading is no longer a punishment for the child, nor a torment of years of apprenticeship. The Spanish, next to the Italian, is the most easily read on account of the simplicity of its orthography. The most severe logic governs its writing. It is written the same as it is pronounced; it is pronounced as it is written. The elementary book descends to the limited capacity of the child, to lead him by degrees and insensibly to the books of men. There is no struggling with routine; routine has given way before experience.

We want, however, the school-house, the spacious, commodious, and well-ventilated building. What structure is that to be seen yonder with white and raised front and elegant outline? It is the town school-house, under the roof of which the present generation has spent three or four years. When this generation shall have become full men and women, the rancho will have disappeared, one by one, and the cheerful fireside will shine instead. The most pleasant recollections of our infancy are associated with this pretty and spacious building, with the cheerful and comfortable fireplace. How can such associations be broken?

But where is the book that shall be used after the child has learned to read, the book to lead him through life? This book will not be long in coming. Agriculture needs books; the art of war needs books; cattle-raising requires books; the school requires books; and our religion needs books, that we may not depend on oral tradition alone for the preservation of our faith. Let us teach reading in all its branches and under all possible forms, to make it fruitful;-geography, arithmetic, linear drawing, for all are but reading, or a form of reading-and in this way we may change the whole face and future of our country, and substitute, instead of the Promancanian Spanish and Araucanian Indian, unfitted for progress, a people able to follow all modern industrial pursuits on its onward rapid march. The steamers, beating the waters of our rivers and coasts, are a foreign production; the stuffs in which we are clothed are no work of ours; the railroad, advancing to the very foot of our Cordilleras, is not the product of our brains. The auxiliary agencies adopted for the propagation of common schools are accusing our impotency and nothingness, because they are all foreign importations. These are but the simple overflowing of the overfull channels of other lands, that begins to invade slowly our own homes, our streets, and fields. Let us then teach reading, so that our people may read the wonders of the railroad, of the telegraph, and of those steamers that are proclaiming, like Nature itself, the glory of God. Like God's creation, those marvelous inventions of men go on proclaiming, throughout the world, the power and glory of those nations who have been elevated above the rest by mental culture, and by endowing their children with the means of enjoying the benefit of the accumulated knowledge and experience of mankind.

Such is the schoolmaster's work. An humble but lofty taskhumble enough not to be forgotten by those who perform so beneficent ministryship. They are the unpretending instrument of wondrous transformations!