This is
the meaning, therefore, of that somewhat ambitious programme common to
most of these large institutions, at which we sometimes smile, perhaps
unwisely or uncharitably.
We shall take it for granted that the routine of instruction went on at
the Apollinean Institute much as it does in other schools of the same
class. People, young or old, are wonderfully different, if we contrast
extremes in pairs. They approach much nearer, if we take them in groups
of twenty. Take two separate hundreds as they come, without choosing,
and you get the gamut of human character in both so completely that you
can strike many chords in each which shall be in perfect unison with
corresponding ones in the other. If we go a step farther, and compare
the population of two villages of the same race and region, there is such
a regularly graduated distribution and parallelism of character, that it
seems as if Nature must turn out human beings in sets like chessmen.
It must be confessed that the position in which Mr. Bernard now found
himself had a pleasing danger about it which might well justify all the
fears entertained on his account by more experienced friends, when they
learned that he was engaged in a Young Ladies' Seminary.
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