第182章

That is certainly the wisest way for nine men out of ten --and probably for all ten. Indeed, one reason why the great body of our people accomplish so much more in a given time than those of any other country, and why the average American working-man ``catches on'' and ``gits thar'' more certainly and quickly than a man of the same sort in any other country (and careful comparison between various other countries and our own has shown that this is the case), is that a much larger proportion of our people do not stupefy themselves with stimulants.

In what I have said above I have had in view the problem as it really stands: namely, the existence of a very large number of people who WILL have stimulants of some kind. In such cases common sense would seem to dictate that, in the case of those who persist in using distilled liquors, something ought to be done to substitute those which are pure for those which are absolutely poisonous and maddening; and, in the case of those who merely seek a mild stimulant, to substitute for distilled liquors light fermented beverages; and, in the case of those who seek merely recreation after toil, to substitute for beverages which contain alcohol, light beverages like coffee, tea, and chocolate.

This is a long digression, but liberavi animam meam, and now I return to my main subject.

The American commissioners were treated with great kindness by the French authorities. There were exceedingly interesting receptions by various ministers, and at these one met the men best worth knowing in France:

the men famous in science, literature, and art, who redeem France from the disgrace heaped upon her by the wretched creatures who most noisily represent her through sensational newspapers.

Of the men who impressed me most was Henri Martin, the eminent historian. He discussed with me the history of France in a way which aroused many new trains of thought. Jules Simon, eminent both as a scholar and a statesman, did much for me. On one occasion he took me about Paris, showing me places of special interest connected with the more striking scenes of the Revolutionary period; on another, he went with me to the distribution of prizes at the French Academy--a most striking scene;and on still another he piloted me through his beautiful library, pointing out various volumes in which were embedded bullets which the communards had fired through his windows from the roof of the Madeleine just opposite.

Another interesting experience was a breakfast with the eminent chemist Sainte-Claire Deville, at which I met Pasteur, who afterward took me through his laboratories, where he was then making some of his most important experiments. In one part of his domain there were cages containing dogs, and on my asking about them he said that he was beginning a course of experiments bearing on the causes and cure of hydrophobia. Nothing could be more simple and modest than this announcement of one of the most fruitful investigations ever made.

Visits to various institutions of learning interested me much, among these a second visit to the Agricultural College at Grignon and the wonderful Conservatoire des Arts et Mtiers, which gave me new ideas for the similar departments at Cornell, and a morning at the cole Normale, where I saw altogether the best teaching of a Latin classic that I have ever known. As I heard Professor Desjardins discussing with his class one of Cicero's letters in the light of modern monuments in the Louvre and of recent archaeological discoveries, I longed to be a boy again.

Among the statesmen whom I met at that time in France, a strong impression was made upon me by one who had played a leading part in the early days of Napoleon III, but who was at this time living in retirement, M. Drouyn de Lhuys. He had won distinction as minister of foreign affairs, but, having retired from politics, had given himself up in his old age to various good enterprises, among these, to the great Reform School at Mettray.

This he urged me to visit, and, although it was at a considerable distance from Paris, I took his advice, and was much interested in it. The school seemed to me well deserving thorough study by all especially interested in the problem of crime in our own country.

There is in France a system under which, when any young man is evidently going all wrong,--squandering his patrimony and bringing his family into disgrace,--a family council can be called, with power to place the wayward youth under restraint; and here, in one part of the Mettray establishment, were rooms in which such youths were detained in accordance with the requests of family councils.

It appeared that some had derived benefit from these detentions, for there were shown me one or two letters from them: one, indeed, written by a young man on the bottom of a drawer, and intended for the eye of his successor in the apartment, which was the most contrite yet manly appeal I have ever read.

Another man of great eminence whom I met in those days was Thiers. I was taken by an old admirer of his to his famous house in the Place St. Georges, and there found him, in the midst of his devotees, receiving homage.

He said but little, and that little was commonplace; but I was not especially disappointed: my opinion of him was made up long before, and time has but confirmed it. The more I have considered his doings as minister or parliamentarian, and the more I have read his works, whether his political pamphlet known as the ``History of the French Revolution,'' which did so much to arouse sterile civil struggles, or his ``History of the Consulate and of the Empire,'' which did so much to revive the Napoleonic legend, or his speeches under the constitutional monarchy of Louis Philippe, under the Republic, and under the Second Empire, which did so much to promote confusion and anarchy, the less I admire him. He seems to me eminently an architect of ruin.