The
stream of life that flows into the school is composed of elements from
all countries, languages, and conditions. In this are Greeks and
barbarians, Jews and Gentiles, saints and sinners, the washed and the
unwashed, the ignorant, the high, the low, the depraved, the weak, and
the strong.
=Life-giving properties.=--The stream that issues from the school is the
very antithesis of all this. Instead of all these heterogeneous
elements, the stream when it comes from the school is composed wholly of
Americans. A hundred flags may be seen in the stream that enters the
school, but the stream that flows out from the school bears only the
American flag. The school has often been called the melting-pot, in
which the many nationalities are fused; but it is far more than that.
True, somehow and somewhere in the school process these elements have
been made to coalesce, but that is not the only change that is wrought.
The volume of life that issues from the school is the same as that which
enters, barring the leakage, but the resultant stream is far more potent
in life-giving properties because of its passage through the school.
=Changes wrought.=--When we see the stream entering the filtration-plant
polluted with impurities and then coming forth clear and wholesome, we
know that something happened to that stream in transit. Similarly, when
we see the stream of life entering the school as a mere aggregation of
more or less discordant elements and then coming forth in a virtually
unified homogeny, we know that something has happened to that stream in
its progress through the school.
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