Page:Essays on the Higher Education.djvu/88

with that long and patient training in prescribed studies which does so much for the German student in the secondary stage of his education. Indeed, there is so much flexibility and versatility in the present character of the American boy, and so much lack of stable institutions which have to do with education, that it is not possible to pronounce with confidence upon the question what his typical national characteristics will prove to be. At present it may be said that if the average pupil in this country is bright, enterprising, and inquiring, and is ready with a commendable reliance upon his own resources to skip from branch to branch on the tree of learning, and to pluck at an incredible variety of the flowers of knowledge in a short space of time, we are not so sure that he possesses certain other equally desirable qualities. These are the staying qualities,—the patience, endurance, and steady industry on which scholarship depends.