"As a fact, my children," said Mr. Oseba, "many countries on the upper crust are filled with educated dunces, who are mentally deformed by over-cramming, and who are inspired by the hopes of living on 'sheepskin'; but as Zelania has practically no rich or leisured class, the basic idea of school-day training is to fit the rising generation, not for ornamental, but for practical service.
"Zelania, as a capstone of her educational edifice, has a university, which was instituted by Act of Parliament in 1874, not for the purpose of teaching, but for encouraging a liberal education. This university is an examining, scholarship-awarding, and degree-granting institution, and the responsibility for the success of university work rest mainly with the four affiliated teaching colleges, which have a curricula in science, arts, medicine, law, mining, engineering and agriculture.
"Then there are industrial schools, schools for the blind, deaf, and dumb, which, taken all in all, constitute a splendid system, all being carried on at heavy expense to the State. But the general high character of the people, their usual bearing and manners, the average moral tone, and absence, in the main, of coarseness and vulgarity, tell strongly for the merits of the educational system of the country, as well as for the natural and social influences that mould society."
With the next phase of Zelanian life, according to the notes of Leo Bergin, Oseba was deeply impressed and pleased, for he said:--
"As might be expected, my children, in a land so blessed by Nature, occupied by so noble a race, and ruled by such incomparably wise and generous laws, the word 'pauper' is not found in Zelanian statistics, and the 'criminals,' considering the newness of the country, are few indeed."
Speaking of the character of crime, Oseba said:--
"Vice and virtue, my children, are largely questions of sensation. The actions of men that produce disagreeable sensations--immediate or remote--we call vices, while the opposite we call virtues. We are the product of experience. Vice is the guide board to virtue--the danger signal. Without vice there would be no definition for virtue.
"But taste has much to do in guiding a people. The Zelanians have a taste for knowledge, but they have other tastes. The Christian Outeroos are thirsty, and the Zelanians are Outeroos. Strange, but in a single year there were over 7,000 of these noble Zelanians arrested for their earnest efforts to satisfy this peculiar infatuation. This seems incredible, for while there are several persons in Zelania who are never known to be thirsty, there are about 7,000,000 gallons of beer used annually in filling the 'alimentary canal' of the Zelanians. Just why, with so goodly a supply, with so short a distance, both in time and space, between drinks, this peculiar sensation should turn the heads of men, is not very clear.