But the reader who has never been a teacher will very probably object, that some of our most illustrious public men have come direct from the homespun-clad class of the people,--and he may, perhaps, even find a noted scholar or two whose parents were masters of the English alphabet, but of no other.
It is not fair to pit a few chosen families against the great multitude of those who are continually working their way up into the intellectual classes.

The results which are habitually reached by hereditary training are occasionally brought about without it.

There are natural filters as well as artificial ones; and though the great rivers are commonly more or less turbid, if you will look long enough, you may find a spring that sparkles as no water does which drips through your apparatus of sands and sponges.

So there are families which refine themselves into intellectual aptitude without having had much opportunity for intellectual acquirements.

A series of felicitous crosses develops an improved strain of blood, and reaches its maximum perfection at last in the large uncombed youth who goes to college and startles the hereditary class-leaders by striding past them all.