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and others, and now you are casting your | Having permission and having argued a

spells over me." But Socrates, bland and tactful, soon smoothes the ruffled feathers, and later we hear, "I feel somehow that I like what you are saying."

"And I, Meno, like what I am saying. Some things I have said of which I am altogether confident, but that we shall be better and braver and less helpless if we think that we ought to enquire, than we should have been if we had indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and no use in searching after what we know not, that is a theme upon which I am ready to fight in word and deed to the utmost of my power." Again he says: "A man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chances of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong, acting the part of a good man or a bad. And still again, "Now I am persuaded of the truth of these things, and I consider how I shall present my soul whole and undefiled before the Judge in that day. Renouncing the honors at which the world aims, I desire only to know the truth, and to live as well as I can; and, when the time comes, to die, and, to the utmost of my power, I exhort all other men to do the same.' In the Symposium,

"Where none were sad and few were dull
And each one said his best,
And beauty was most beautiful
With vanity at rest"—

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we find this homely picture of a Socrates, the honored guest. Here the wise physician and Aristophanes discourse bravely of Love. Agathon, the tragic poet, tells of the young god who lords it over all, is stronger than death,

"Gives peace on earth and calms the stormy deep

Who stills the waves and makes the sufferer sleep."

At last Socrates declares himself struck dumb by so much eloquence. "For I, in my simplicity, imagined that the topics of praise should be true, and I felt quite proud, and thought that I could speak as well as another. Whereas, I see now, that the intention was to attribute to Love every species of greatness and glory, whether belonging to him or not. Farewell then to such a strain, for that is not my way of praising; no, indeed, I cannot attain to that. But, if you like to hear the truth about Love, I am ready to speak in my own manner.”

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bit, he goes on to rehearse what he had learned from Diotima of Mantineia, who was a wise woman in this and many other branches of knowledge. "What then is Love?" I asked; "is he mortal?" No." "What then?" Neither mortal nor immortal, but a mean between them." "What is he then, Diotima?" "He is a great spirit, mediating between the gods and men, the child of plenty and poverty. And as his parentage is, so also are his fortunes. In the first place, he is always poor, and anything but tender and fair, as the many imagine him; and he is hard-featured and squalid, and has no shoes, nor a house to dwell in; on the bare earth he lies, under the open heaven, in the streets, or at the doors of houses, taking his rest; and, like his mother, he is always in distress. Like his father, too, whom he also partly resembles, he is always plotting against the fair and good; he is bold, enterprising, strong, a hunter of men, always at some intrigue or other. Keen in the pursuit of wisdom, and never wanting resources; a philosopher at all times, terrible as an enchanter, sorcerer, sophist; for as he is neither mortal nor immortal, he is alive and flourishing at one moment when he is in plenty, and dead at another moment, and again alive by reason of his father's nature. But that which is always flowing in is always flowing out, and so he is never in want and never in wealth, and he is also in a mean between ignorance and knowledge."

Socrates could see a joke as well as make one, and and he, at least, must have smiled over the exquisite contrast between Agathon's tender young god of Love, who dwelt among the flowers, and the tough old satyr whom Alcibiades berates, and praises, and crowns. Other contrasts we think we see both between the rhetoric of the poet and the words of Socrates; also, between the Socrates whom Alcibiades knew, and the great one whose noble speech expresses to us the royal man whose art is truth-for many other brave words did he speak among the men of Athens. As for example, to Callicles: "O, my friend, I want you to see that the noble and the good may possibly be something different from saving and being saved, and that he who is truly a man ought not to care about living a certain time; he knows that none can escape the day of destiny,

and therefore he is not fond of life; he leaves all that with God, and considers in what way he can best spend his appointed time;" and then, "Wherever a man's place is, whether the place which he has chosen, or that in which he has been placed by a commander, there he ought to remain in the hour of danger; he should not think of death nor of anything but disgrace; and this, O, men of Athens, is a true saying."

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But we can only dip a cup into the sparkling fountain and drink and go on, we cannot hope to exhaust the fountain, nor carry away with us the well itself." The clouds gather about our hero, and we see him next before the judges-not pleading for his life, but summing up for posterity the principles upon which he has lived and is willing to die. Every one should read his defence, for, as was said of Seneca, "No truer words could have been spoken by one who knew God than were spoken by this man to whom the true religion was unknown." Read too, the long talks with his friends while he waited in prison, until the sunset of the last day came, the cup was drunk, and Sleep gently laid the noble Socrates in the arms of his brother, Death. But oblivion scatters no poppies over him. And, thus, Plato has built a monument to his friend out of his own brave words and deeds. The Statesman, the Laws, and even the Republic, Plato's greatest works, are, I have to own, beyond my woman's wit, and I gladly take shelter under the ample cloak of Carlyle, who frankly owns that he cannot read Plato.

But there are some fine and beautfiul things scattered through these dialogues which no one could fail to understand; for instance, when young Socrates says, "There is nothing I like better, Cephalus, than conversing with aged men like yourself; for I regard them as travelers who have gone a journey which I too may have to go, and of whom I ought to inquire, whether the way is smooth and easy, or rugged and difficult And this is a question which I should like to ask. of you who have arrived at that time which the poets call the 'threshold of old age.' Is life harder towards the end, or what report do you give of it?" will tell you, Socrates," he said, "what my own feeling is. Old men flock together; they are birds of a feather, as the proverb says; and at our meetings the tale of my acquaintance commonly is-I

"I

cannot eat, I cannot drink; the pleasures of youth and love are fled away; there was a good time once, but that is gone and now life is no longer life. Some of them lament over the slights which are put upon them by their relations, and then they tell you plaintively of how many evils old age is the cause. Bnt I do not believe, Socrates, that the blame is where they say; for if old age were the cause, I too, being old, and every other old man, could have felt the same. This, however, is not my own experience, nor that of others whom I have known. How well I remember the aged poet, Sophocles, when in answer to the question, 'How does love suit with age, Sophocles: are you still the man you were?' Peace,' he replied, 'most gladly have I escaped that, and I feel as if I had escaped from a mad and furious master.' That saying of his has often come into my mind since, and seems to me still as good as at the time when I heard him. For certainly old age has a great sense of calm and freedom; when the passions relax their hold, then, as Sophocles says, you have escaped from the control, not of one master only, but of many. And of these regrets, as well as of the complaint about relations, Socrates, the cause is to be sought, not in men's ages, but in their characters and tempers; for he who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but he who is of an opposite disposition will find youth and age equally a burden."

This is pithy: "As soon as a man has a livelihood he should practice a virtue." And here is a bit of nineteenth century realism: "Did you never observe the narrow intelligence flashing from the keen eye of a clever rogue? How eager he is, how clearly his paltry soul sees the way to his end; he is the reverse of blind, but his keen eyesight is taken into the service of evil, and he is dangerous in proportion to his intelligence." Of immortality: "The whole period of threescore years and ten is surely but a little thing in comparison with eternity." "Say rather, nothing," he replied. "And should one immortal being seriously think of this little space rather than of the whole?" "Yes," he said, "I think that he should. But what do you mean?" "Are you not aware," I said, "that the soul is immortal and imperishable?"

He looked at me in astonishment, and

said, "No, indeed; but do you mean to say that you are able to prove that?"

"Yes," I said, "I ought to be able, and you too, for there is no difficulty."

"My counsel is that we hold fast to the heavenly way, and follow after justice and virtue always, considering that the soul is immortal and able to endure every sort of good and every sort of evil. Thus shall we live dear to one another and to the gods, bath while remaining here and when, like conquerors in the games who go round to gather gifts, we receive our reward."

And so Plato piled up these marvelous books, until finally the strong years conquered him, and he fell asleep with the pen in his hand, and his work entered into the life of the world.-Educator.

EDUCATION OF GIRLS.

AN OLD STUDY IN NEW COLORS.

TH

BY M. V. E. CABELL.

HE contrast between the temperament which goes eagerly forward to meet the light wherever it may seem to shine, to welcome progress at whatever cost; and that which looks longingly back upon the joys and sorrows of a familiar past, which clings to old ideals, and is slow to abandon old habits of thought and resulting habits of action, is perhaps more sharply defined than ever before. And the conservative force springing from this conflict between those who long to hear and to adopt each new thing, and those who would prove all things by the light of experience, is the greatest safeguard vouchsafed to human society.

Nowhere is this conservative element more needed than in the broad fields of education. No one could have taken part in the proceedings of the recent Educational Congress in Chicago without feeling more deeply than before its sessions, the immense importance of the questions involved in its discussions, and the vast unsettling of old, received ideas. That upon the education of the children of our race depend its destinies was generally conceded; but in the methods by which the end was to be attained, broad, far-reaching, and truly astonishing differences of opinion were expressed by the most experienced. Upon the supreme importance of primary and elementary

education all seemed agreed, but it was in precisely these fields that the greatest tendency to experiment and innovation made itself felt. Listening to the eager and eloquent utterances of teachers and thinkers, the hearer might almost feel that the foundations of his educational belief had been assailed. The attacks upon the modest and time-honored branches, familiarly known as the three "Rs," seemed to suggest the idea that a child might learn to read by intuition, to write by instinct, and that the science of numbers was, if anything, an obstacle to early development of mind.

One earnest and forceful appeal, set off by every ornament of oratory, was made again and again. "We must teach our children to think," cried one enthusiastic speaker. "Teach us and our children to think," reiterated another, himself an advanced thinker in certain perilous fields. "Substitute literature, science, mechanical training, music, natural history, for the belittling branches of reading, writing and ciphering, and let us set ourselves early to the task of teaching our little ones to think."

With the fullest appreciation of the noble motives underlying these demonstrations, and with great respect for the ability of those announcing these views, the question obtrudes itself whether or not this be really the task of the educator. Is he not adding an unnecessary, a selfassumed burthen to the heavy responsi bilities imposed by his great profession? To the impassioned declaration: We must teach our children-our very babies -to think, comes down the ages the response: "That is not thy task; that work is done for thee, thy child thinks already; thou canst not control his thoughts." thoughts." No tyrant on his throne, no teacher in his chair, can prevent the child from thinking. The work of the educator is to provide with fitting material the machinery which God has set in motion and endowed with every conceivable faculty. The child will think, and it will grow; giye it food for the body and sound knowledge for the mind, and train its marvelous powers to useful exertion. Almost as milk is the natural food for the babe, so are these rudimentary branches, thus freely contemned, the simplest and easiest means of acquiring mental nourishment that can be brought within the grasp of the child.

The method of accomplishing this may

vary.

All educational methods must adapt themselves, or be adapted, to the conditions of the individual; but the shortest, easiest, most direct, are presumably the best. Appeal in teaching to both the eye and the ear; train the voice to express what the other faculties have grasped, and one great step towards the acquisition of useful knowledge will have been assured. It is in no invidious sense that the suggestion is made that in the Educational and Literary Congresses in July, there were among the distinguished ladies and gentlemen therein assembled a sufficient number unable to so read their own able papers as to impress an audience to sufficiently emphasize the urgent importance of the first of the insignificant "R's." These discussions, so fruitful in good

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sweet nature, her most beautiful work
upon the earth. The low, soft voice,
"that excellent thing in woman;" the
gentle manner, the tender sympathy; the
innate love of whatsoever things are pure,
honest and of good report; the patient
fortitude; the keen perceptions, the ab-
horrence of evil, with pity for the evil-
doer; these, and many other gracious
traits recounted in ancient lore, form the
true crown of womanhood, and must be
tenderly fostered, in this restless age, by
those who would rear as a blessing to
herself and to mankind—

A perfect woman-nobly planned
To warn, to comfort, and command.
The Interior.

BY JAMES J. GREENOUGH.

HE lack of clearness in the few ideas

THE

words, and it is to be hoped in valuable DEFECTS IN MODERN TEACHING. results, bore broadly upon the enlarged horizon and increasing responsibilities of woman. Since the stone which, it is claimed, the builders have long rejected, is now become "the head of the corner,' since woman is to be builded into every portion of the social structure-possibly even into the political temple of her native land-it concerns those to whose care her finer nature is entrusted, to give heed that she is "polished," even according to the ideal of the ancient sage, whose views may be found perhaps to lie as near the root of the matter as those of the latest theorist upon the possibilities awaiting the fair and gentle companion of man.

If her influence is, indeed, to purify and regenerate the crying corruptions of the times, woman must be kept pure and true. While her bright mind is trained to logical thought and her brain stored with the facts of science and history, forming the basis whereon the lines of true progress must rest, her moral instincts must be developed into laws, and her generous impulses made to ripen into the better fruitage of activities practically useful, through the family, to the world.

The difficult problem presented, therefore, to the modern educator of the American girl, is to so combine the pure gold transmitted from the crucibles of the Past with the metals and compositions poured from the shafts and shops of the Present, that his charge may be fitted for the broad sphere ever widening around her, without sacrificing those charms and graces which are heaven's choicest gifts and woman's surest means of accomplishing, through the development of her own

which a boy does have is due to a dangerous tendency in our educational methods, a tendency to make everything easy. Kindergarten methods, which are necessary when a child is incapable of long-continued mental strain and all work must be in the form of play, have influenced the later school work. Clear, exact reasoning, and accurate, careful expression of thought cannot be got by any system which tries to make work into play. Thirty years ago teachers heard recitations from a text-book, and did very little teaching. This method had many great disadvantages, but it had one advantage-the child had to think for himself, or he learned little, and had to express himself in recitation, or he had no credit. The method was dull, it was dry, and the cause of many tears to the unfortunate pupil. There was nothing inspiring, and nothing to awaken the child's love for the subject studied. In the reaction from this barbarous method we have been carried too far, and now, in the effort to awaken interest, to make the work pleasant, we are tempted to do too much teaching. The children are now helped so much that without the stimulation of a teacher's questions and assistance their minds refuse to work. The thinking is too often done by the teacher, and only reflected by the class. Such methods make the child's thoughts vague and indistinct. This is particularly noticeable in arithmetic classes, where ex

planations have to be made over and over again. Here the average boy is very loose in his reasoning. Exact expression or the saying of just what he means is almost impossible to him at first, and can be secured only by constant correction and care on the part of the teacher. When questioned, and made to see that what he said was not clear, the boy is surprised that what he said was not what he really meant. He has the idea, but it is so vague that he does not notice how different an idea was conveyed by the words he used.

After a careful explanation of some experiment in physics, I have repeatedly asked the class if they understood it, and have been told by each boy in turn that he did, only to find that the majority were incapable of describing the processes and reasoning intelligently. Generally the Generally the boy ends with some such statement as this: "I understand it, but I can't express it." The truth is that all our teaching now is directed toward making the boy understand; but much of it stops there, and does not require him to explain his understanding to others.

Each of us can call to mind times when he wished to talk over a matter with some one else, not to get new light or advice, but to straighten out his own ideas by expressing them. This outward expression boys used to be practised in under a recitation system of instruction, but now lose under a lecture system. Here the preparatory schools are at fault, and we can stem the tide of illiteracy somewhat by requiring more reciting in all subjects rather than by giving more work in English.

He

The third difficulty which meets a boy in efforts to write, comes from the fact that he is more accustomed to receive information through the ear than throngh the eye. He is read to and talked to, but is not made to read enough himself. does not accustom himself to comprehension at the sight of printed words. When he starts to write, the words are not as real to him on paper as they are when he speaks them or hears them spoken. For this reason, boys use forms of expression in writing which they would never use in conversation. Frequently boys come to me, after studying a lesson in a textbook, with a complaint that they do not understand this or that, but go away perfectly satisfied if I explain it in the exact words of the text-book. They under

stand the sound and comprehend it, but they do not take in the sense from the printed page. This failure to read enough is also largely responsible for increasingly bad spelling. To correct this difficulty, children should be made to read as early as possible, and to read much aloud. It is dull and uninteresting to the person read to, but the reader is gaining a necessary power to help in all later study and writing.-Atlantic Monthly.

REMEMBER IN SPEAKING.

To speak in chest tones.

To pronounce vowel sounds correctly. To say, "It was I" and "He went with me.'

To speak distinctly, but softly and slowly.

To give each syllable its proper value or length.

For an inferior to say "sir" or "madam" in speaking to a superior.

To say "memorandum" in the singular and "memoranda" in the plural.

To pronounce the letter 'r" in words where it occurs, in "arm," girl," "rubber."

To avoid coarseness and rudeness of speech and language and harsh laughter. To lower the voice and speak slowly when one wishes to enforce one's authority.

To train children carefully to read aloud, both for the sake of the voice and the pronunciation.

To avoid the over-delicacy of language and affectation of precision which belong to persons of narrow culture.

To pronounce in English fashion the names of foreign places and persons which have become Anglicized, as Paris, Vienna, Napoleon.

To say "sir" or "madam" if one have occasion to address a stranger, using the word "madam" for a single as well as for a married lady.

To pronounce correctly, studying not only the dictionary but the language of living speakers who are entitled to speak with authority.

To teach children to say, "Yes, mother" (or father), and "No, mother," and to say "Yes, sir" (or madam), to old people or to those who adhere to the old ways of speech.

To remember that slang is unmeaning as well as inelegant, and that words like

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