We lived in South Brooklyn, near to old No. 13, the Degraw Street Public School. To that I was sent, and there got all the education I was ever fated to have at any school, except the school of life and experience.
I attended for some years, and even now I cannot recall without a smile the absurd incompetency of every one connected with the institution and their utter ignorance of the art of imparting knowledge to children.
At home I had picked up that grand art of reading, and went to school to learn the other two R's, with any trifle that I might come across floating around promiscuously.
I certainly hope our much-lauded public schools are conducted on better lines now than then; if not, they are frauds from the foundation. The instruction in No. 13 was so lax and radically bad that the whole governing body and the principal ought to have been sent to the penitentiary on the charge of false pretense for drawing their salaries and giving nothing in return. And yet I remember when examination day came, instead of the committee investigating the progress of the pupils, it usually turned into a mere hallelujah chorus upon our "grand public school system."
