whom the school is thus made as attractive as the home! In all schools there are pupils who are strong in certain branches and weak in others. Sometimes a boy who is deficient in one study, is kept back on that account and loses valuable time because he can not be promoted with his classmates. Supt. James M. Coughlin of WilkesBarre proposes to remedy this difficulty by uniting grammar grades C, B and A (6th, 7th and 8th years) into one school, giving each teacher her special branches and allowing greater flexibility in the classification. Certain pupils may thus recite in a more advanced class in Arithmetic and in a less advanced class in Grammar. Those who are weak in Spelling may be organized into a special class for extra drill. In this way the children will not be treated as if they existed for a rigid system of grading, but their welfare will shape the classification. This will not only save valuable time, but also help to keep up the interest in study. BISHOP KEANE ON THE ENDS OF TEACHING. T the Educational Congress recently held in Chicago, four days were spent in studying educational methods. Bishop Keane, President of the Catholic University of America, Washington, D. C., delivered an address on the last evening, in which he pointed out that methods of teaching are always shaped and moulded by the ends aimed at. The address was terse, clear, forceful, and very suggestive. The following summary of its leading points deserves the perusal of all earnest teachers: A right understanding of methods presupposes a right understanding of the ends aimed at. What then are the ends to be aimed at in education? Socrates found it was easier to ask such a question than to have it answered satisfactorily; yet every intelligent educator ought to have a correct answer to this question. Various answers to it may, however, be expected. First: Some may say that the end of education is to impart information. Then its method would be to drill the memory, and to store it with typical facts. But mankind recognizes that education must have a more practical end than merely to stock the mind with information. Second: Hence, it will be answered, the end of education is to fit for the struggle of life; or, still more practically, to fit to make a living, to take one's part in the industrial and economic life of the world. The method then would be to give a good acquaintance with the three R's, and even some manual training; and, for one who is to be in the ranks of capital, acquaintance with the scientific branches connected with his branch of industry. Now, all this is, indeed, indispensable; but all over the world to-day a loud cry is going up from all classes, declaring that human life means more than this, and that therefore education must have higher and broader ends. Third: Then some will say that the end of education is to make man acquainted with all his rights and duties, and fit him to fill his place in human society. The method then would add training in social and political matters; also in physiology and hygiene; also the cultivation of a public spirit aiding to better social conditions. Again, all this is important, and even indispensable; but Professor Ingram shows in his Compendium of Political Economy that all this is insufficient without a philosophy of Altruism which will be Divine in its authority-in a word, without the teaching and influence of religion. Fourth Some protest against this, and say that the cure for all the ills of humanity is to be found in the advance of science. Then the method would be to train man for scientific research, and for the advancement of the "Cosmic Evolution." But Huxley has lately acknowledged (in his Romanes lecture at Oxford last May) that science and the Cosmic Evolution do not suffice for the needs of human life, because they do not imply the survival of the best, and because they have no room for ethical principles. Hence the discussion lately had in Philadelphia as to the best means of introducing ethical teaching in the schools; a discussion, however, so clouded and unsatisfactory that it would sadden the heart not only of a Christian, but even of Socrates. Socrates and Professor Ingram are right. Science calls for philosophy, and philosophy for religion. Three great books are open before man: The book of Nature, the book of Humanity, the book of Divinity. The end and aim of education is to give an acquaintance with each of the three. The method is indicated by the end. In elementary education knowledge in each of these three books will be very rudimentary, but it must comprise the fundamental and essential. As education rises acquaintance with each of the three books must grow more complete; otherwise, man's intellectual development will be one-sided and his life will topple over. Life must be balanced by the three; they are the tripod on which life and all its relations can stand immovable. It would be well to have a Socrates always in our midst, and it is to this that his questioning would surely lead us. MERCERSBURG COLLEGE. season of this is a fine disciplinarian, and under his management high hopes are entained for the future of "Mercersburg." The opening exercises were held in the church. The Board of Regents and the students marched thither from the college building. The address upon this interesting occasion was by the Rev. Ellis W. Kremer of Harrisburg, a member of the last class graduated from the Theological Seminary before its removal to Lancaster in 1871. In the issue for September 14th of the Chambersburg Valley Spirit we find a very interesting sketch of the history of the Mercersburg schools and of the men that made them famous: Rev. Dr. Frederick A. Rauch, a German scholar and theologian of extraordinary attainments, died thirty-five, THE reopening of the fall has extended w whose at the early age of this that it wherever the German Reformed Church is known, and the influence of whose famous teachers has gone far beyond into other faiths and the world at large, marks a new era in its history. The college building has been much improved. Nothing has been left undone by the new President, Dr. Wm. M. Irvine, to make the place attractive and comfortable. The school will be conducted as a firstclass academy during the coming two years. Nine-tenths of the unsatisfactory work done in the American colleges today arises from the fact that students have entered them poorly prepared, and are thereby handicapped throughout the entire course. This school will, be modeled in good measure after the plan pursued in New England academies such as Phillips-Exeter and Phillips-Andover. Boys will be prepared for entering any college which they may select. On the present roll there are represented as many as seven religious denominations. These students are preparing to enter one or another of some five or six colleges, which serves to show the breadth of base upon which the course is built. introduced this science to the attention of American students, and won for its author a wide reputation among the scholars of the world; Rev. Drs. John W. Nevin and Philip Schaff, the latter of whom is still living, and both names widely honored in the Christian world for profound scholarship and great service to the cause of religion; Rev. Drs. Henry Harbaugh, Thos. G. Apple, E. E. Higbee, P. S. Davis, G. W. Aughinbaugh, Profs. Wm. M. Nevin, Jacob B. Kershner, Jos. H. Kershner, John B. Kieffer, and others. It is, indeed, a goodly list of noble names. Among them there is one so familiar in the schools of Pennsylvania that we know the following reference to himself and his work here, will be read with interest by thousands. Says the writer: "Of the teachers and professors of Mercersburg College, Dr. Higbee stands forth pre-eminently as the most shining star in the galaxy of splendid instructors with which that institution was favored from 1868 to 1880. No one who has not been one of his pupils can form any adequate idea of the fullness of learning that was his, or of the ease and grace with which he imparted it to others. He was at home in every branch and department of learning. At one instant he might be solving or demonstrating the most abstruse problem in the higher mathematics, and in the next breath quoting a passage from the ancient classics. All the realms of knowl Dr. Irvine is a man of fine scholarship and great energy. He was born at Bedford, Pa., where he attended the public schools for six years; after which he spent three years at the Phillips-Exeter Academy, four years at Princeton College, and three years at the Reformed Theological Seminary, always conspic-edge seemed to be his, and when his ideas. uous for scholarship, oratorical and literary ability, and with a record still more remarkable in the field of athletics. He leaped forth clothed in language most simple, yet often so sublime, the student sat in worshipful adoration of his master. His indomitable energy, his unbounded enthusiasm, infused themselves into his pupils, and that which in other hands was common and stale in his became endowed with beauty and freshness." Another writer in the Valley Spirit talks pleasantly of old-time college days as follows: "Together we visited almost every nook and corner of the old place, and there was scarcely a pause made in our rounds that did not suggest some interesting reminiscence to my companion, the orator of the day, who related them to me in a delightful manner. But it was while standing in the old rooms formerly occupied by him and some of his fellow-students that he warmed up to the recollections of the past. Here,' said he, 'is the finest room in all the building-the only room from which you get a perfect view of Mt. Parnell, and from this other window, Arbutus Hills and the Seminary Woods.' I reminded him that the beautiful woods had long since disappeared before the woodman's axe. Apparently Apparently not caring to realize the fact, he continued: 'Seated at this window, I often played chess with Dr. Higbee, who was at the window yonder,' pointing to the house fifty yards or more across the campus. And then he related to me how at first by a wire from one window to the other, and afterward by a code of signals, they communicated the moves to each other. ** flute and reading music from a card stuck into the toe of his boot, as an improvised music rack. He was known as a farsighted man, and I have little doubt that he saw more of my book than I would have cared to show him. But I never asked him about it." TEACHERS AT THE FAIR. O no class of visitors have the almost Tono Columbian "Once more upon the front porch, I espied the path which students were wont to take as a short way to the college buildings at the other side of town. There was the very tree under which I had stopped one day on my way to Greek recitation, to compare my lesson in Homer with a few leaves of a 'pony' that one of my fellow students had very considerately loaned me. I had no reason to suppose that any one was near at hand to molest me in this new and rather doubtful way of preparing a lesson in Greek. Ere long, however, I was startled by a step in the grass, and a familiar voice that said in passing, "Taking the near cut, are you?' and as I looked up, Dr. Higbee had passed by and was on his way toward the college. It has been an open question to me to this day whether his words 'near cut' referred to my way of reaching the recitation room or of learning the lesson. However, the doubt was thrown a little against me a few days later when I visited Dr. Higbee's study and found him playing the Exposition come with a deeper feeling of relief from the monotony of plodding routine nor with a greater uplifting of the soul's immortal longings than to the teachers of the United States. As invited guests, or in their own excursion trains, or as individual passengers, they flocked thither during the months of June, July and August by tens of thousands, to take in with throbbing heart, keen scrutiny, and kindling imagination, the splendor of this peerless epitome of six thousand years of the world's history, gathered into one clustering object lesson so diversified and vast that it eclipses beyond comparison all former exhibitions for the realistic or ideal entertainment and instruction of mankind. The informing and educating influences of this vast summer school are so immense and so potential that it is a great misfortune that all the teachers of the continent could not have been there; and, as youthful impressions are so vivid and enduring, we could wish, fervently wish, that all the students in our colleges and seminaries of learning, and all the pupils in our public high schools, could have been there also. It would have been to many of them more than a "cycle in Cathay," arousing higher intellectual aspirations, perhaps kindling an ambition to enter the lists in the world of achievement, not only to do but to outdo all that former generations have accomplished, thus adding to the world's welfare and hastening the dawn of predicted millennial glory. To the mass of mere sight-seers the Exposition, transcendant though it be in its multiplied attractions, is merely a spectacle and little more; but to men of thought and women of culture-among whom are many engaged in the instruction of youth-it has a deeper significance and more enlightened and enduring influence. To them the exhibits present themselves as the products of educated | mind, in which unlettered ignorance has little part. Behind the products and the factors which created them they search for the generic events which, in the providence of God, have led up to these latest and most wonderful developments near the close of this nineteenth century of the Christian era. They discover, by close scrutiny into history for the leading events of our modern civilization, that (1) the translation of the Scriptures into the common tongue, and (2) the invention of the mariners' compass, seem to be the chief of those controlling events. The one asserted the right of man to all the knowledge within the scope of his faculties and the bounds of his duties; the other opened up the whole world to the light of that knowledge. In the light of the great rapidity with which in this age we develop results from causes, and adapt means to ends, we sometimes forget how far back in history we must look for the moving springs of action that change the destiny of nations, and in the course of time transform the civilization of the ages. We generally find that they made no noise at the time and attracted comparatively little attention, yet in the slow evolution of the centuries they became a transforming power that changed the world's history and lifted the human race into light and life and freedom never before dreamed of. The Columbian Exposition and the rational, constitutional liberty-civil and religious-which we enjoy, are the latest exponents and fruitage of the underlying principles which came to the surface more than 400 years ago, and made the daring voyages of Columbus possible and the civilization of to-day inevitable. Under the quickening incentive of what they have taken in at the World's Fair, if our ambitious teachers thirsting for knowledge will, for their own satisfaction as well as for the benefit of their pupils, study the philosophy of history and the meaning of its strange panorama of events, they will find the skeleton of dates and dynasties, battles and bombardments, soon clothe itself with flesh and blood, and become instinct with moving life. The soul of things once felt and seen must widen the mental horizon, making dry husks luminous and radiant with a meaning they never before possessed. From this high vantage ground teachers will find themselves masters of the situa tion, and useful to their classes in history as never before. Following up this line of study we think they will find the really great events which distinguished the close of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries to be: 1. The discovery of the New World; 2. The general introduction of the art of printing; and 3. The right of individual knowledge. The last of these is much the greatest and most influential, the first two being merely auxiliary, but essential. But together they paved the way for this prophetic age when "many run to and fro and knowledge is increased." Looked upon in this light especially, the all too brief sojourn in the Enchanted Land at Chicago will mean assured gain to our teachers in the way of intellectual growth and an enlarging mental horizon. 66 In closing we take a suggestive paragraph from the Philadelphia Ledger of September 23d, in which the writer says: The people who have been to Chicago and those who are yet to go there have certain duties to perform when they get back. The first of these, as they all recognize, is to send everybody to the Fair who can possibly go, between now and November 1st. The second begins where the first is ended. It is for them to show the lesson of the wonderful White City in their intercourse with their home-worlds for the next year or two. They have seen a realized dream of beauty and grace; seen the miracles of science and the marvels of industry, the wonders of art, the variety in unity of the world's people. Joined with the Congresses, the World's Fair represents not only the achievements and the experience, but the hopes and dreams, and (by contrast) some of the wickedness of the human race. is a dictionary with many meanings made clear, an encyclopædia, a vast geography, a history. It is at once stimulating and humanizing. People who have had this bountiful experience must reflect it and distribute it, for seasons to come, upon the majority of the stay-athomes. They must show more than usual courtesy in the breadth of the lesson they have received. They must radiate goodwill for peace and right-doing among their fellows, for they have indeed received a diploma, if not a degree. them has been unrolled, and understandingly, a great vision of what is possible in this world. Not merely of interna It Before tional peace, when armies shall give way to arbitrators, and the wealth of European nations be more evenly distributed for the public profit and pleasure, instead of being massed up into cannons and armed cruisers. They have seen how diverse peoples may be made to contribute to the education of each other, in simplicity, or frugality, or temperance, or in bodily custom fitted to each one's native surroundings. They have seen how even the most widely removed religions can find matter of interest and human sympathy each in the other. They will have learned a great lesson in the courtesy of crowds, consideration, which is our old friend "toleration" in a new form. It is not a little to say that for many people the vague and childlike conceptions of what Heaven will be like have been realized and even enhanced by the visions of the great Exposition. The attitude of the crowd in the Fair grounds towards the individual, and of employés to the crowd, seems also to be a little herald of millennium, which must not expire when the Fair does. Its influences should permeate the government of cities, and of public business wherever the public is served. To do this the individual must radiate it strongly, must emphasize it, must live it, dispensing its spirit for all time to come.' OFFICIAL DEPARTMENT. DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION, Ttificates have been issued to College THE following Permanent Teachers' Cer graduates under the Act of Assembly approved May 10, 1893: I. David J. Waller, Jr., Bloomsburg, Columbia County, issued September 20, 1893, graduate Lafayette College, 1870. 2. Charles D. Thomas, Slatington, Lehigh County, issued September 20, 1893, graduate Heidelberg College, 1889. 3. J. Hiram Schwartz, Allentown, Pa., issued September 20, 1893, graduate Franklin and Marshall Coliege, 1889. INS STATE APPROPRIATION. the Act for the support of the Public Schools, it is provided that warrants for all appropriations for common school purposes shall be issued in amounts designated by the State Treasurer, and whenever he shall notify the Superintendent of Public Instruction in writing that there are sufficient funds in the State Treasury to pay the same." In accordance with this act the State Treasurer began paying at the rate of $150,ooo per week on the first Monday in June, and continued at the same rate up to the week of September 18th, when the amount was increased to $200,000. On account of paying Philadelphia and Pittsburg in part, the former $750,000, and the latter $100,000, he may be said to have paid at the rate of $175,000 per week. The total amount sent out to September 20th is $2,832, 100.77. The State Treasurer no doubt has valid reasons for not allowing the Department of Public Instruction to send out the appropriation in larger amounts. The warrants are issued to the treasurers of the several School Districts in the order in which the annual district reports and the accompanying affidavits and certificates are received at the Department of Public Instruction. This general rule is adhered to so far as it is practicable to do so, and no exception is made except in special cases where there are valid reasons for doing otherwise. The distribution is made upon the basis of the number of taxables returned by the County Commissioners, ascertained at each triennial assessment. The rate per taxable for the school year ending in June, 1892, was $3.455; and for the year ending 1893, it is $3.232. This rate is slightly diminished in counties which contribute to the salaries of Superintendents. The increase in the annual appropriation to five and half millions, made at the last session of the Legislature, will go into effect next year. Since our population is gravitating away from the country districts towards manufacturing centres, some surprising, changes have occurred in the distribution of the appropriation. In Blythe Independent district, Schuylkill county, the return of taxables for 1889 was 51; the appropriation was $174.98. The return of taxables for 1892 is 36, and the appropriation for 1893, which is made upon the basis of this return, is $115.57. The Directors of Schuylkill county have been liberal in the increase of the Superintendent's salary, whereby the rate per taxable for 1892 was reduced to $3.431, and in 1893 to $3.2102. Very marked changes occurred in the following districts: |