The Collegiate Institute took in raw material and turned out teachers, more teachers than anything.

The teachers taught, chiefly in rural districts where they could save money, and with the money they saved changed themselves into doctors, Fellows of the University, mining engineers.

The Collegiate Institute was a potential melting-pot: you went in as your simple opportunities had made you; how you shaped coming out depended upon what was hidden in the core of you.

You could not in any case be the same as your father before you; education in a new country is too powerful a stimulant for that, working upon material too plastic and too hypothetical; it is not yet a normal force, with an operation to be reckoned on with confidence.

It is indeed the touchstone for character in a new people, for character acquired as apart from that inherited; it sometimes reveals surprises.