Accomplishments

With the exception of music, accomplishments

form no part of the feminine course of study. The teachers were of the ordinary

schoolmistress type, but looked intelligent, patient, and painstaking. I

noticed, both among boys and girls, the curious indifference with which the

presence of strangers was regarded. In any English school, the sudden entry of

a group of foreigners, who were treated as visitors of distinction, would have

caused any amount of whispering and nudging amongst the boys, and of giggling

and glancing amidst the girls. But here the scholars of both sexes appeared to

pay no attention to the interruption of their lessons, and went on quietly and

stolidly with their tasks, just as if nothing exceptional had happened. The

oldest girls class I visited consisted of pupils between fifteen and seventeen,

who were going through an examination in the history of the Crusades. There

were some fifty girls in this classroom, and at the age of sweet seventeen it

is difficult for any girl not to have some charm of look or manner. I was told

by one of the teachers that the girls were very anxious to get on at school, as

the successful pupils were in great demand as wives for the officers of the

Bulgarian army. If so, I trust I may say, without lack of courtesy, that the

Bulgarian officers display a preference for intellectual as compared with

physical charms, which is not common amongst military men in other countries.

Altogether, the system of instruction

imparted at the public schools seem to me very sound and very efficient.

Extremely insubordinate

The only complaint I heard from the

professors was that the boys were at times extremely insubordinate and

difficult to manage, and that if they did not like a teacher, they would pay no

attention to his teaching. Only two or three years ago there was a barring out

at the boys school in Philippopolis. The masters were forcibly excluded from

the building, and, on trying to force their way in, were driven back by their

pupils, armed with sticks and knives. Order was not restored until the services

of the troops had been called into requisition. The masters attributed these

acts of insubordination partly to want of tact in some of the then professors,

and still more to the bad influence of the local newspapers, which had filled

the boys heads with all sorts of crude, Socialist, and Nihilist ideas.