provement along that line. While we come to this office new and untried, we come with a full determination to do all in our power to make the schools of Franklin county better than ever before. GREENE-Supt. Iams: Graduation has proved a success in our county. It has become the highest ideal of the younger pupils, and they look forward to the time of their own graduation as the supreme event of their school-life. HUNTINGDON-Supt. Rudy: Several districts have already decided to have a seven months term next year, while others will have eight months. Mt. Union will build a needed extension, and will have another school. Several new houses will be built. LEBANON-Supt. Snoke: The examinations have all been held. Nearly all our teachers are engaged for next year. With a few exceptions the best available material has been employed. North and South Lebanon, Londonderry and N. Cornwall have lengthened the school-term. This gives us more than the minimum term in all the districts except six. In a few districts salaries have been increased. We have now no districts paying less than $40 per month for first-class teaching? LEHIGH-Supt. Rupp: We have held several public examinations. All were attended by two or more directors excepting at Catasauqua, where no director was present. At Coopersburg, Hanover, Emaus, and Slatington all the directors were present. In all the districts a general interest is manifested in the examinations. JUNIATA Supt. Marshall: There appears to be a desire on the part of the directors to increase the effectiveness of the public schools; quite a number of districts have increased the salaries of their teachers, and are supplying the schools with necessary apparatus. This, with free text-books, is sufficient inducement for teachers and superintendent to enter upon their work with a determination to make this the most successful school-year in our history. NORTHAMPTON-Supt. Hoch: Two new school districts have been formed, Wind Gap and Tatamy. There seems a general disposition to advance teachers' salaries, provide new furniture, free books and apparatus, and to extend the school term. Lehigh will add another month and intends to put in new books. Palmer added another month, and adopted free books. Plainfield has added another month and increased the salary to $55 per month; Washington also added another month. Many teachers attended the Normal school during the spring term and are passing very creditable examinations. Some teachers who had ceased studying and were doing poor work in the school-room, were rejected. NORTHUMBERLAND-Supt. Shipman: Several districts are about erecting new schoolhouses, viz, Delaware, E. Sunbury, and Lower Augusta. A number of districts are preparing to put into their school-rooms new and improved furniture. Two examinations were held during the month-at Watsontown and at Trevorton. They were well attended by school officers and citi zens. MIFFLIN Supt. Cooper: I have made a special effort to get the directors to give timely consideration to the adoption of free text-books and supplies, using the three county papers for the purpose. Roland Thompson, esq., of Milroy, prepared also a communication giving the experience of Armagh Township in the matter. The article contained valuable information as to the number, cost, and necessary arrangements for the proper care of books and supplies. WARREN Supt. Putman: We held examinations for the Uniform Graduation Course in each township April 29th. There were about 275 in the class, and the work done was instructive as to the needs to our schools. The course has awakened much interest and bids fair to be of great benefit to the schools. The teachers will be more fully informed in regard to the working of the plan during the coming year, and considerable improvement will undoubtedly be effected. ALLENTOWN-Supt. Raub: The High School commencement was held June 27th, when nine boys and twenty-four girls rereived the diplomas granted by the institution. BRISTOL Supt. Booz: The commencement exercises of the class of '93, numbering seven, were held on the evening of June 30. Schools closed July 3d. All the old teachers were re-appointed. Some of the salaries were advanced. HAZLE TWP., (Luzerne Co.).—Supt. Mulhall The School Board has decided to build a new single school-house in what is known as the Diamond Addition, lying close to the city of Hazleton. An extra school will also be opened at Harleigh, where, for a number of years past, but one teacher has been employed. In company with the directors I visited the different buildings throughout the township for the purpose of noting what repairs are needed. With but few exceptions they were found to be in good condi tion. MAHANOY TWP., (Schuylkill Co.).—Supt. Noonan: Our schools closed June 2d, after a successful term of nine months. Nearly all the old corps of teachers have been reappointed. The Board has decided upon the erection of three new buildings, to cost upwards of $5500. MILTON-Supt. Goho: At our commencement, on the evening of May 29th, nine graduates were granted diplomas, five boys and four girls. The opera house was crowded to its utmost capacity. The exercises passed off pleasantly and successfully. Dr. G. G. Groff, of Bucknell University, made the address to the class. Germany, 'city musicians.' When they became too numerous to live all together, and the members of this family were scattered abroad, they resolved to meet once a year, on a stated day, with a view to maintaining a sort of patriarchal bond of union. This custom was kept up until nearly the middle of the eighteenth century, and oftentimes more than a 100 persons bearing the name of Bach-men, women, and children-were to be seen assembled. In the family are reckoned twenty-nine eminent musicians, MUSICAL HEREDITY.-Heredity shows itself more markedly, it would seem, in the arts than in the sciences. Taking music we find some remarkable instances. The Bach family, which took its rise about 1550 and became extinct in 1800, presents an unbroken series of musicians for nearly two centuries. The head of the family was a baker of Presburg, his two sons were the first who were musicians by profession. Their descendants "overran Thuringia, Saxony, and Franconia," says Papillon. "They were all organists, church singers, or what is called in land twenty-eight of a lower grade." Rossini's family often played music at fairs; Beethoven's father and grandfather were musicians; Mozart's father was Capellmeister to the Bishop of Saltzburg.-Cornhill. IT is night now, and here is home. Gathered under the quiet roof, elders and children lie, alike at rest. In the midst of a great calm the stars look out from the heavens. The silence is peopled with the past-sorrowful remorse for sins and short-comings, memories of passionate joys and griefs rise out of their graves, both now alike calm and sad. Eyes, as I shut mine, look at me that have long since ceased to shine. The town and the fair landscape sleep under the starlight, wreathed under the Autumn mist. Twinkling among the houses, a light keeps watch here and there, in what may be a sick chamber or two. The clock tolls sweetly in the silent air. Here is night and rest. An awful sense of thanks makes the heart swell and the head bow, as I pass to my room through the sleeping house, and feel as though a hushed blessing were upon it.- Thackeray. T least one-half of the time of the Apulpit and one-half the thought of the church must go not toward religion, but toward the man who must believe it and love it. In our age it is not only the poor child and the ignorant person that must be spoken to and spoken of. There is a higher and an educated class that has been led away from all spirituality. The poor young man who puts his scanty money into drinks and gambling needs indeed advice and persuasion, but there is a large number of youth who have put their hearts into the physical world until they have no soul and no God. They have quit the sanctuary because they have found out the great cheat about a divine creation. The worlds and all their coutents were made by cellular aggregation. These young people can tell us how humanity came and into what a dust heap it is going. Thought is only an action of fluids. You touch a sensitive plant, it will wither. After awhile some plants will have the sense of hearing as well as the sense of touch. The time will come when the roses will not only smell sweet, but they will sing. The apples will see and the oak trees will think. Man is simply in advance of the sensitive plant, A touch affects that plant, a word will send the blood to or from man's cheek. He is an advanced plant, but he cannot avoid his destiny of dust. Such No. 3. is the materialism that is emptying many a soul of all spirituality and of nearly all beauty. The youth who can thus make the universe and who have cut loose from all the power of a Creator may not be yet a vast army, but they are a host too large and too valuable to be lost. They possess, perhaps, a college education. Their number, not immense, may be rapidly increasing. Their studies have for years been almost wholly physical. In the face of all which facts, the pulpit must become the active and enthusiastic champion of man as a divine and exceptional being. It must be remembered that this new generation of skeptics cannot prove that their new theory is true; nor do they hold it without a shadow of doubt. That kind of absolute demonstration cannot come to them. What injures them is a kind of dominant feeling that the universe came out of itself, and that man is only a worm, a fish, a tree, a leaf. But in all these young hearts there is a slumbering soul, half-divined, but deadened by years of boasting science and of a dogmatic, enfeebled sanctuary. In the last thirty years science has been more eloquent than religion. The pulpit has indeed made great advance in some of the denominations, but the advance in scholarship and breadth has not been great enough to make the spiritual world rise up before us an enchanted land. Each age demands its own kind of food. We would all starve upon the mental viands which were placed on the religious table for St. Jerome or Jonathan Edwards. The long catalogue of dogmas does not tempt us. The finding of obscure meanings for obscure texts is a dish which no longer contains any nutriment. What our land needs is a new exaltation of man as the child of a God—a creature of infinite outlook and thrilling mystery. All that pertains to man, his reason, his sentiments, his moral feelings, his taste, his genius, his friendship, his religion, all must be reaffirmed in language that will once more thrill and inspire. The pulpit cannot, indeed, demonstrate any of its spiritual propositions; but it can build up a feeling and a hope which can make materialism doubt its tenets and hush its boastings. All the beauty and impulse are on the side of a spiritual kingdom. Men would love it could they only hear of it the more and the more richly. There is nothing in materialism to be admired or loved. The mind must sink to reach it; the heart to espouse it must first empty itself of all noble affection. It must call the air and water its sisters; it must call the dust its destiny. The heart does not love to do this. A material age must act a long time upon humanity before it can separate the soul from its poetry and its heaven. There is something in man that compels him to look up and to long for a greater world and a greater life. It will take materialization a hundred years to break the human heart. The church having caught economy and temperance and industry, having fought also for man as a divine and spiritual being, must load him with pleasures, but it must spiritualize these until they shall become worthy of a human race, When we think of the bull-fight, the man-fight, the horse-race, the gambler's den, and the saloon, we must conclude with Emerson that life would be endurable were it not for its pleasures. It can stand its labors well enough, and its taxes and its poverty, but under its pleasures it dies. The church must battle for amusements all laughter and joy, but these must be in harmony with a high and great life. It must pluck sackcloth and ashes from the temples, but not to make the forehead brazen. The sackcloth must be withdrawn that roses may find room. He who painted the wings of the humblest insect will not sprinkle ashes upon the soul. The church must be like a great literature or a great art, an invitation to man to come up higher. It may study science and love it, but it must run far beyond it and above it. Science is never a measurement of man or of his real world. It is a study of quantity, not of quality. Science says the evening clouds are only banks of wet, cold fog, chilly and chaotic. But the soul that sees them at sunset is not in those banks of fog. It is many miles away, and is in the realin of color and love and thought. The "Angelus' is, in science, only some coarse cloth with most disagreeable grease and pigments spread over it. Put your face up into the green mess and it will soil and sicken you. But we do not intend to get into the grease and stains. We intend to spiritualize the affair. We intend to stand back and see two noble human beings appear and overwhelm us with the sentiments that come and go in the kingdom of love and piety. So materialism says the rose is composed of so many parts of solids and fluids, but we step back from that analysis and say with Anacreon: "Oh, the rose! the rose! the favorite of the gods, the favorite of the summer-time!'' Thus must the church study and love man. It must run far ahead of science, and while materialism is weighing his dust the pulpit must cry out: Oh man! man! the favorite of God!" If materialism wishes to push its face into the oil and pigments of the canvas, let it so act. Religion must take her stand where she can see the human mind and heart painted by a divine artist in marvellous beauty. Who, then, would pause to prate And what were wealth with shame, Ay, what were all days worth, But each day is a link Each is our only day.—Coates Kinney. THE HAND. BY PROF. GEORGE WILSON. N many respects the organ of touch, as embodied in the hand, is the most wonderful of the senses. The organs of the other senses are passive; the organ of touch alone is active. The eye, the ear, and the nostril stand simply open: light, sound and fragrance enter, and we are compelled to hear and to smell; but the hand selects what it shall touch, and touches what it pleases. It puts away from it the things which it dislikes, and beckons towards it the things which it desires; unlike the eye, which must often gaze transfixed at horrible sights from which it cannot turn; and the ear, which cannot escape from the torture of discordant sounds; and the nostril, which cannot protect itself from disagreeable odors. Moreover, the hand cares not only for its own wants, but, when the other organs of the senses are rendered useless, takes their duties upon it. The hand of the blind man goes with him as an eye through the streets, and safely threads for him all the devious way; it looks for him at the faces of his friends, and tells him whose kindly features are gazing on him; it peruses books for him, and quickens the long hours by its silent readings. It ministers as willingly to the deaf; and when the tongue is dumb and the ear stopped, its fingers speak eloquently to the eye, and enable it to discharge the unwonted office of a listener. The organs of all the other senses, also, even in their greatest perfection, are beholden to the hand for the enhancement and the exaltation of their powers. It constructs for the eye a copy of itself, and thus gives it a telescope with which to range among the stars; and by another copy on a slightly different plan, furnishes it with a microscope, and introduces it into a new world of wonders. It constructs for the ear the instruments by which it is educated, and sounds them in its hearing till its powers are trained to the full. It plucks for the nostril the flower which it longs to smell, and distils for it the fragrance which it covets. As for the tongue, if it had not the hand to serve it, it might abdicate its throne as the Lord of Taste. In short, the organ of touch is the minister of its sister senses, and, without any play of words, is the handmaid of them all. And if the hand thus munificently serves the body, not less amply does it give expression to the genius and the wit, the courage and the affection, the will and the power of man. Put a sword into it, and it will fight for him; put a plough into it, and it will till for him; put a harp into it, and it will play for him; put a pencil into it, and it will paint for him; put pen into it, and it will speak for him, plead for him, pray for him. What will it not do? What has it not done? A steam engine is but a larger hand, made to extend its powers by the little hand of man. An electric telegraph is but a long pen for that little hand to write with. All our huge cannons and other weapons of war, with which we so effectually slay our brethren, are only Cain's hand made bigger and stronger and bloodier! What moreover is a ship, a railway, a lighthouse, or a palacewhat, indeed, is a whole city, a whole continent of cities, all the cities of the globe, nay, the very globe itself, in so far as man has changed it, but the work of that giant hand, with which the human race, acting as one mighty man, has executed its will! When I think of all that man and woman's hand has wrought, from the day when Eve put forth her erring hand to pluck the fruit of the forbidden tree, to that dark hour when the pierced hands of the Saviour of the world were nailed to the predicted tree of shame, and of all that human hands have done of good and evil since, I lift up my hand, and gaze at it with wonder and awe. What an instrument for good it is! What an instrument for evil! And all the day long it is never idle. There is no implement which it cannot wield, and it should never in working hours be without one. We unwisely restrict the term handicraftsman, or hand-worker, to the more laborious callings; but it belongs to all honest, earnest men and women, and is a title which each should covet. For the queen's hand there is the sceptre, and for the soldier's hand the sword; for the carpenter's hand the saw, and for the smith's hand the hammer; for the farmer's hand the plough; for the miner's hand the spade; for the sailor's hand the oar; for the painter's hand the brush; for the sculptor's hand the chisel; for the poet's hand the pen; and for woman's hand the |