The San Francisco call., 1896-10-04
City Life Contains
Wisdom for the
Dullest
Bill Boards, Art Signs
!, and Street Orators
Are Lessons
for All

Have you ever considered the educa-
tional chances of life in this City? Not
those inclosed by the four walls of
schoolhouse-tho ose deem less than may
be found in the country, where individ-
ualism has not quite disappeared-but
those found in outside life, and which
may be enjoyed alike by gamin and
prince. ] say may be enjoyed, purposely,
instead of are enjoyed alike, because,
given the same opportunities and two
people, one will make better use of them
than will the other. Very likely the
gamin will see more than the prince.
We all have seen men with little schoI-
arly education who show more practical
knowledge of life than an erudite profes-
sor. One of these may break every rule of
syntax while telling of some new machine
or process, but he will convey his mean
Ing straight to the understanding. There
are men who never had to do hard labor
in their lives who can tell how everything
is made, from a cream cheese to moni-
tor, and all because they have taken the
education which is all about US.
Let rs suppose boy can read; most
boys can; if they were not allowed the
two years at school which ought TO ac-
complish that, they would learn like Sam
Welier's father and Maggie from the signs.
Those same signs and advertisements are
very good primers, terse and trenchant,
and about the things we all use and see.
The illustrations are not always the most
chaste, neither are those in the books
open 10 the scholar; there never has been
found way to pass through life without
coming into contact with the sin and the
sadness of life.
Right here the difference in dispositions
will show itself While some will gaze
entranced on dancing girls who forgot to
dress and devour certain pink papers,
others will look long at the pictured ami
mails on the circus poster. and still others
will spell out the news on the bulletin.
boards. Without cent one can keep
abreast with the times by means of these
boards and the philanthropically spread
out paper below; and without price he
may sit in comfortable room and read
the most expensive magazines of the day
an education in themselves.
Pictures are everywhere, good and bad,
and one may learn, as one must anyway
by an inward sense which pictures are
worth more than glance. A wonderful
art gallery is free one day in each month
TO whoever will climb the hill, and art
stores all over the City hang out their
choicest wares to feast the eyes of the
passing crowd.
The windows of a great store are lesson
to many who have had average opportuni-
ties. The delicately clad ladies and dainty
children therein snow how the other fiftieth
of the world lives, and though the figures are
palpable shams the street boy learns early
that the real creatures are often no less a
sham, and minus the clothes would be as
common. The windows show, too, how
the interior of a mansion looks and what
beautiful useless things go to make room.
They show the things needful, the things
beautiful and the things neither one nor
the other, but fashionable-the books be-
ing read and the people being talked
about. It would seem that student of
windows might be dropped into marble
halls without showing awe or awkward
ness.
There are speakers for every subject;
there are many lessons to learn and others
to unlearn listening to public speakers
and corner orators. 1t seems to me that
the very lampposts have been educated
during this campaign. In more serious
vein there are learned lecturers whose lore
is free. No one clean, however poor,
would be turned away from university
extension lecture or from the Academy of
Sciences. And take this last as an edu-
cator-how long might one study there,
growing more and more fascinated all the
time?