prose and poetry which embody a life of high endeavor and secret worship!

It is from the men and women bred on American soil that the fittest words come for the spiritual enrichment of American. youth. I believe heartily in the advantage of enlarging one's horizon by taking in other climes and other ages, but first let us make sure of that great expansive power which lies close at hand. I am sure there never was a time or country when national education, under the guidance of national art and thought, was so possible as in America to-day. The organization of schools is practically complete; statutes and public sentiment have carried it so far that an era of criticism has set in. Meanwhile, we have now for the first time a perspective of national literature. The rise of new men and new methods was needed to give the requisite fulness to our conception of the art of the older school; and as we move away from the dividing line of 1861, we are more clearly cognizant of that body of humane letters which was then inherently fixed, but needed the vista of a score of years to become defined and clearly marked to our

eyes.

We are not so much concerned to discriminate the work of the older Americans as we are ready to accept the men themselves, with their well-recognized personality. The process of sifting goes on silently, but however it may gradually set the mark of approbation on this or that particular production, it is not likely that the group of men will be much enlarged or diminished. Any list made now of what, for lack of a better word, we may call standard American authors would inevitably contain certain names, unless the maker of the list were possessed of some paradoxical humor. The majority vote in the long run determines the sway of literary rulers and governors. Just because there are a few authors who have an incontestable position in America, we may and ought to turn to them for the foundation of a love and knowledge of pure literature, and my plea is that whatever else is done in the way of reading in our common schools, these authors should command the chief and first attention; that school courses should be arranged so as to give them a definite place, just as our American school geographies give the United States in detail, and follow with rapid study of Europe, Asia and Africa, and just as United States history has the preference in order over European history and ancient history.

The real point of practical reform, however, is not in the preference of American authors to English, but in the careful concentration of the minds of boys and girls upon standard American literature, in opposition to a dissipation over a desultory and mechanical acquaintance with scraps from a variety of sources, good, bad, and indifferent. In a previous article on Nursery Classics in School, I argued that there was a true economy in substituting the great books of that portion of the world's literature, which represents the childhood of the world's mind for the thin, quickly forgotten, feeble imaginations of insignificant bookmakers. There is an equally noble economy in engaging the child's mind, when it is passing out of an immature state into one of rational, intelligent appropriation of literature, upon such carefully chosen classic work as shall invigorate and deepen it. There is plenty of vagrancy in reading; the public libraries and cheap papers are abundantly able to satisfy the truant; but it ought to be recognized once for all that the schools are to train the mind into appreciation of literature, not to amuse it with idle diversion. To this end, the simplest and most direct method is to place before boys and girls for their regular task in reading, not scraps from this and that author, duly paragraphed and numbered, but a wisely-selected series of works by men whom their country honors, and who have made their country worth living in.

I do not

The continuous reading of a classic is in itself a liberal education; the fragmentary reading of commonplace lessons in minor morals, such as make up much of our reading-books, is a pitiful waste of the growing mental powers. Even were our reading, books composed of choice selections from the highest literature, they would still miss the very great advantage which follows upon the steady growth of acquaintance with a sustained piece of literary art. insist, of course, that Evangeline should be read at one session of the school, though it would be excedingly helpful in training the powers of the mind if, after this poem had been read day by day for a few weeks, it were to be taken up first in its separate thirds, and then in an entire reading. What I claim is that the boy or girl who has read Evangeline through steadily has acquired a certain power in appropriating literature which is not to be had by reading a collection of minor poems-the power of longsustained attention and interest.

If we could substitute a full course of

wholesome, strong American literature is large enough to make it possible to keep boys and girls upon it from the time when they begin to recognize the element of authorship until they leave school, and it is varied and flexible enough to give employment to the mind in all its stages of development. Moreover, this literature is interesting, and is allied with interesting concerns; half the hard places are overcome by the willing mind, and the boy who stumbles over some jejune lesson in his reading-book will run over a bit of genuine prose from Irving, which the school-book maker with his calipers pronounces too hard.

At the same time, with American literature for the great body of reading in our common schools, there will be the further advantage that just when the boy or girl was beginning to appreciate the personal element in books, to associate the author with what the author said, the teacher would be able to satisfy and stimulate an honorable curiosity. The increasing attention paid to authors' birthdays illustrates the instinctive demand from the school that the authors thus commemorated should be part and parcel of the school life. An immense store of fresh and delightful material is at the command of teachers, for use in illustrating the works of the greater American authors; and that part of the school course which is devoted to reading may thus be enriched and vitalized in a hundred ways, to the manifest enlargement of the mind of the pupil.

The objection is sometimes made to this general scheme that the slow development of the mind requires the books for reading to be carefully graded, and a great deal of very minute attention has been given to securing an easy, natural, and progressive grade. It is, of course, apparent that a boy who has mastered only easy combinations of words cannot at once be set to reading Thoreau's Wild Apples, however keen may be his interest in practical experiments upon the subject of Thoreau's paper. Grading is necessary, and it is entirely possible to apply the principle to American classics for schools. Not literature made to order to suit certain states of the juvenile mind, but those parts of existing literature selected in a wise adjustment of means to end,—that is the solution of the problem of gradation. If Hawthorne's Wonder-Book is too hard, there are still simpler examples of Haw

The American classics have little by little been making their way into schools, edging themselves in sometimes under the awkward title of Supplementary Reading, and there can be no doubt that every year will see them more securely intrenched. It is noticeable that the movement in this direction is corrective of a somewhat recent condition, and encouragement may be drawn from the comparatively short life of the graded reading-books. Men in middle life remember when these books first came into vogue; before that time the reading-books were made up of selections from standard English literature. Many a person has grateful recollection of these earlier books for the stimulus which they gave to a liking for fine literature, and certain passages in Shakespeare probably owe their celebrity less to the stage and less to the popularity of the plays in which they occur, than to the fact that they have been read and delivered by millions of school-children. But with the great expansion of the school system, and especially with the rapid growth of cities, the organization of schools became a prime consideration, and with this organization came a rapid development of school-books on the side which most readily appeals to the systematizing and mechanical mind. Reading-books were finely graded, and to secure this supreme good of gradation the individuality of literature was subordinated. That was used which was most convenient and lent itself most readily to the all-important end of easy gradation.

We have gone quite far enough in the mechanical development of the common-school system. What we most need is the breath of life, and reading offers the noblest means for receiving and imparting the breath of life. The tendency of our schools is always toward an assimilation of the common life of the country, and there is no danger

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that they will not be practical enough. Arithmetic passes into the making out of bills and the calculation of interest. ing gravitates toward business forms. graphy points to commercial enterprises. Reading finds its end in a Sunday newspaper. But the common life of the country has also its heroic, its ideal temper, and it is the business of those who have to do with schools to see to it that this side is not neglected. This requires thought, adaptation of means to ends, organization. To secure a just equilibrium, we need to use the great power of reading, and apply it to what is noble and inspiriting. The spiritual element in education in our common schools will be found to lie in reserve in literature, and, as I believe, most effectively in American literature.

Think for a moment of that great, silent, resistless power for good which might at this moment be lifting the youth of the country, were the hours for reading in school expended upon the undying, life-giving books! Think of the substantial growth of a generous Americanism, were the boys and girls to be fed from the fresh springs of American literature! It would be no narrow provincialism into which they would. emerge. The windows in Longfellow's mind look to the east, and the children who have entered into possession of his wealth travel far. Bryant's flight carries one through upper air, over broad champaigns. The lover of Emerson has learned to get a far vision. The companion of Thoreau finds Concord suddenly become the centre of a very wide horizon. Irving has annexed Spain to America. Hawthorne has nationalized the gods of Greece and given an atmosphere to New England. Whittier has translated the Hebrew Scriptures into the American dialect. Lowell gives the American boy an academy without cutting down a stick of timber in the grove, or disturbing the birds. Holmes supplies that hickory which makes one careless of the crackling of thorns. Franklin makes the America of a past generation a part of the great world, before treaties had bound the floating States into formal connection with

venerable nations.

What is all this, indeed, but saying that the rich inheritance which we have is no local ten-acre lot, but a part of the undivided estate of humanity? Universality, cosmopolitanism,-these are fine words, but no man ever secured the freedom of the universe who did not first pay taxes and vote iu his own village.-Atlantic Monthly.

THE CINCINNATI SCHOOLS.

THE Cincinnati School Board has for years been unique in its organization. The schools have been managed largely through "local trustees." These local trustees were elected for each school district, and had in their hands the power to appoint all teachers in their respective districts, and also to supervise the schools. This local committee could put in any teacher or put out any teacher without consulting the Superintendent of schools, the principal of the district, or the general board of education. It also outranked the principal in the details of management, and the principal was responsible to this committee rather than to the Superintendent or the general board.

Any school man will see at a glance that such a plan must prove utterly destructive to any adequate system of supervision. Under such an arrangement it was impossible that the Superintendent should be much more than a "figure-head."

When the Hon. E. E. White took charge of these schools last year and began to study their working, these defects were impressed upon him, and he has recently made a report to the board calling attention to needed changes. It is not necessary to say that the report caused a sensation, neither is it necessary to say that the strength of his position could not be gainsaid, and that the board is to be reorganized in accordance with his suggestions.

And furthermore, the Legislature has taken up the matter and passed a law taking from these local school boards the power to appoint teachers, and giving it to the superintendent, subject only to the approval of the board. According to this law the school board can reject a teacher nominated by the Superintendent, but can not put in a teacher that the Superintendent does not first name. This is as it should be; if the Superintendent is held responsible for the efficiency of the school, he should have the right to select his own teachers. This has been the custom in Indianapolis for many years, and should be the custom everywhere. school board that wishes to do the best thing possible by the schools, will at once concede that a competent superintendent is better qualified to select and assign teachers than any school board, as such, can possibly be. There is only one possible objection to allowing Superintendents the privilege of nominating their own teachers, and that is, it is hard on those members of school boards.

Any

who are there chiefly that they may provide places for their daughters, their sisters, "their cousins and their aunts."

If we were so disposed we could name several towns and cities in Indiana that need reforming in this respect just as much as did Cincinnati. Indiana School Journal.

BY WAY OF SUGGESTION.

KEE

EEP the school room warm, neat, and cheerful. If the walls are dingy, go to the director and offer to paper them if he will furnish the paper. Get some one in the district to help you, and hang the paper on Saturday. Do not take "no" for an answer. Be determined, and you will succeed.

2. Gather together some good pictures. Heliotype reproductions of the works of the greatest artists can be obtained for twentyfive cents to $1 apiece; also steel engravings of great American authors. Send for catalogue and price list to Prang & Co., Chicago, or Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston, Mass. You can get them neatly framed for twenty-five cents each. Pay for them out of your first month's salary. They will then be your own, and you can take them whereever you go. But if the children will unite and buy them for the school, that will be better for them. But have some good pictures on your papered walls. Be determined, and you will succeed.

3. Be kind, amiable, and active in trying to make the school a pleasant and happy place. Keep full of the spirit of helpfulness and love for the children.

4. Seat your pupils so that the orderly ones will help the disorderly ones. It is much more important to regard this than to follow the rule of seating in classes. Put the mischievous pupil in good company. Good habits are catching as well as bad

ones.

5. Have regular and definite work for each pupil every hour in the day. Arrange the programme so that he will always have something to do.

6. Combine your classes in writing, spelling, drawing, and geography as much as possible, so as to make as few classes as the school will admit of.

7. Go to some printer's office and get a lot of slips of pasteboard with lists of the letters of the alphabet printed on them; cut these up into square bits with one letter on each square. Get also a lot of shoe-pegs from the shoemaker. Supply every one of

the beginners with a number of these to use in spelling out his reading lesson on his desk, or in working out his number lesson. Have each child bring two little boxes to keep his supply of letters and pegs in. Every child must have a slate and pencil also. Be determined, and you will succeed. 8. Be always on time, not only in beginning and closing the sessions, but in beginning and closing all exercises. Have a time for everything and everything on time.

9. Be at the school-house early in the morning. You can then tidy things up and be ready with a cheerful "good morning" for all who conie. Be determined, and you will succeed.

10. Be well prepared for every lesson you are to teach. Know it so well that you will not have to study your lesson in the class. You cannot teach what you do not know; and if you do not teach well you may be sure that you will have trouble in governing your school. There are no rules for the good government of the school if the teacher cannot teach well. Teaching and governing cannot be separated.

ΤΗ

Illinois School Journal.

RUTLEDGE INSTITUTE.

ADDRESS OF HON. H. C. HICKOK.

'HE corner-stone of Rutledge Institute of Morton, Delaware county, Pa., was laid with appropriate ceremonies, on Saturday, May 14th. The building will cost about $8000, making it the most expensive public school building in the county. The First Regiment band was present and opened the programme at 4 p. m. Hon. H. C. Hickok, ex-State Superintendent of Public Instruction in Pennsylvania, made the formal address upon this interesting occasion.

After referring to the difficulty of speaking in the open air and the disturbing influences upon thought and expression of the physical effort to be heard, Mr. Hickok remarked in substance that far more important than solid walls and imposing architecture is the work to be done in these school rooms when they come to be occupied. What shall be the instruction and character-building to go on there year after year from one generation to another? That depends entirely upon whom you will devolve that momentous trust. to it, therefore, that you aim high, and employ only the best qualified and most skillful teachers that you can procure; those who love the teaching art for its own sake, who

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can sympathize with and understand child life and from natural insight and professional training make school attractive to children and make them contented and happy. To that end do not employ teachers upon the "lowest bidder" principle. Look for qualifications first, and when you have found them don't be parsimonious and mean in fixing the salary. Compensate your teachers so that they will work under the inspiration of buoyant hopefulness, and thus aid them to inspire their pupils with enthusiasm also. Buy anything cheap but cheap teaching, for it is the dearest article in the market and yields the poorest return for the money paid. In fact, the money paid for poor teaching is money thrown away-there is nothing to show for it. The dollars and cents supposed to be saved are no gain, it is only the profit of a loss, for what you pay you lose and get no consideration for it. If stunted minds and warped and distorted mental faculties were as plainly visible to the public eye as dwarfed bodies and distorted limbs from physical cruelty, popular indignation would drive incompetent teachers from the field, and anathematize the directors who employed them.

Again, in any properly adjusted system of public schools, the primary school is the post of honor, first in the delicacy and difficulty of the task, and also in its importance in relation to the pupils' future progress. Therefore, assign your most skillful and intelligent teachers to the primary department, and pay them as high a salary as in any other grade. Thus only can you acquit yourselves of your duty to the young immortals whose fate is for the time being in your hands.

The

"The first footfalls of thought in the halls of the soul" should be under the most enlightened and sympathetic guidance. If the first steps be rightly directed the after-progress will be smooth and satisfactory. teacher's professional resources and range of mental vision should be broader and more luminous than the narrow horizon of the textbook; as the sun in the heavens is more luminous and vivifying than the feeble rays of a tallow dip. If I were empowered to organize a primary school and name the instructor, I would select a Louis Agassiz at $5000 a year and consider him cheap at the price. But as the Agassizs are not so numerous as are Delaware shad, and even the prospective borough of Rutledge with all its brilliant expectations is not likely to have that amount to spare for a single teacher, I must ask you to regard this ideal as a forecast of what day, when education, in the fullest,

some

truest meaning of the term, instead of the impoverished thing it now so often is, shall reach the commanding pre-eminence in our social economy to which it is entitled. Such teachers combining the wisdom of Solomon and the simplicity of a child with a heart always near to nature and her exhaustless fascinations, and to childhood with its immortal yearnings, the rising tide of popular intelligence in future years would become an ocean where now it is scarcely a rivulet.

Another thing. I observe with regret that in your plans you have made no provision for at least incidental manual training. This could be done in a new enterprise much easier than in old communities that are slow to change. When the country was new, and the wilderness was to be subdued, reading, writing and ciphering were thought to be all-sufficient for the mass of the people, and were really about all they could find profitable use for in the average vocations of that day, but we have got past all that into the swamp of multitudinous studies, superficial and otherwise, that the educated strong men of half a century ago never dreamed of; and now the times require that we should cut loose in some measure from the over-mastering pedantry and padding of the text books into the better balanced theories of education that take in both muscle and mind. This is a very real world in which we find ourselves and in which we have to do as well as to think; and that education is one-sided and insufficient that does not provide for both contingencies. That wonderful thing, the human hand, that no finite intelligence could have created, needs to be educated, and to have the opportunity to be educated as much as any other of the sovereign faculties and powers with which God has endowed us; and it is already demonstrated that the two lines of education can go forward in harmonious co-operation, each the better for the other. Two hours once a week devoted to this subject would work wonders, and then the feeling would be one of surprise that it was not put into practice long ago. If you drop in at the Hollingsworth school-house, on Locust street, in the rear of the Academy of Music, any Friday afternoon before the school closes for the summer, you will be most favorably impressed by the intelligent activity and skill of the boys and girls (for both sexes are equally represented) in drawing, modelling in clay and wood-carving, and the self-evident advantages of such training. At 17th and Wood streets you will find advanced