Average rate in twenty cities and towns, $13.01.

It will be seen, therefore, that the difference between the highest rate of private and public tuition is ($50.00–$21.59) $28.41. Comparing the lowest rates of each, we have ($20.00-$5.81)=$14.19. The difference between the average rate of the twenty places mentioned, and the lowest of private tuition is ($20.00-$13.01)=$6.99 in favor of the public system.

It may therefore be said, without fear of negation, that even in a financial point of view, our public schools pay!

Q. E. D.

ers.

IRREGULARITY OF ATTENDANCE.

THE above is no new subject to pupils, parents, or teachLectures upon education, school officers and instructors, all unite in the assertion that it is a most serious drawback to the usefulness of our schools.

In looking over the report of a superintendent of public schools in one of our cities, the following item was noticed : "School, No. of pupils enrolled, 68. Average attendance, 26!"

Imagine a school of 68 pupils, with an average attendance of about one third!!

There is a school under the supervision of the writer, with a roll of about 200 pupils. Drop in upon two successive days, and you will find it difficult to distinguish the faces you saw the day before. So varying and inconstant is the attendance, that even the teacher, as she informed us, does not know half her pupils!

Formerly, under the old regime, irregularity of attendance

was at a premium. In making out the rate-bills, pupils were charged only for the number of half days they had actually attended! This is still the practice in some of the rural districts, though plainly illegal.

Much has been accomplished towards mitigating the evil, by rules disenrolling those pupils who are absent a certain number of half days in a term. This, however, affects only that class of pupils who prize school privileges, while the class designed to be reached, are only debarred from attending at all, after the first few weeks of a term. Boys who prefer the street to the school-room, take advantage of this regulation to get released from study and discipline. The root of the evil still remains untouched.

How then shall that class of parents be reached, who detain their children from school to "do chores," "run errands,” and to "work in the shops?"

The State furnishes the means of education, because it is for the welfare of the commonwealth that her citizens should be educated. She has a right, then, to require parents to avail themselves of the means she offers. It is plainly the duty of parents to send their children to school. If the State can pass a law, (as she has done,) requiring parents and guardians to send their children and wards to school so many months in the year, she has the right to command that they be sent regularly. It is safe to say that the expenses of the public schools are at least double what they would be, if a regular attendance was enforced by law. The matter becomes, then, one of public economy.

The State having a right to require the regular attendance of the children upon the public schools, she has also the right to enforce such attendance by penalties.

How shall this be done? Thus far, the statutes requiring children to be schooled so many months in the year,

and prohibiting manufactories from employing them more than a certain number of months in the year, have been "void and of no effect." The fact is notorious that thousands of children grow up in our factories, without ever seeing the inside

of a school-house, unless God in his mercy sends a “financial pressure," causing the factories to shut their doors!

In casting about for a plan to rectify the evil of which we are speaking, we should inquire what is the motive that induces parents thus to wrong their children. Plainly, avarice, and a desire for gain. If, then, we make it more for the pecuniary interest of parents to send them to school, than to keep them at home, the evil is at once removed.

Let our legislatures enact a law that our schools shall be absolutely free to all the children of the State. Let books, &c. be furnished to all who are unable to purchase. Let the police in our cities and large towns be instructed to arrest all truants, and loiterers in the streets during school hours. And lastly, let a fine be levied upon every parent and guardian for every half day their children or wards are absent from school, except "for sickness or other extraordinary cause." Let the fine be heavy enough to exceed any wages that the child could earn in the shop or elsewhere. Pass such a law, and enforce it, and our school expenses would be lessened, the standard of sound learning and scholarship elevated, and vice and crime, the inevitable results of truancy and idleness, be greatly lessened and prevented.

We pass laws commanding vaccination for the prevention of a physical disease, why not do the same to do away with a moral one? We prohibit, by special enactment, the farmer to allow certain noxious plants to grow upon his land. Why not forbid parents and guardians to permit the weeds of ignorance and vice to spring up and grow in the mental fields committed to their care and cultivation ?

This article will be condemned by some who read it, as "visionary," and "unpractical." The time will come, however, when dwarfing the minds and bodies of children, by confining them in factories, when they should be at school, will be catalogued and punished with other crimes!

Resident Editor's Department.

THE BIBLE IN SCHOOL.

WE suppose there is not a common school in Connecticut into which the Bible is not freely admitted. We hope there is not one in which it is not daily used, and in which its blessed teachings are not in some measure imparted. But we are constrained to believe that it is not always used with sufficient reverence for it as a sacred volume. In very many schools it is used as a sort of drill-book in reading, and all pupils, without regard to age or advancement, are called upon to take part. Now it is certainly well that all pupils should be required, daily, to give heed to the reading of the Scriptures, but we do not feel that all should be called to participate in the reading. There are portions of every chapter whose words or import may not be comprehended by a child, and hence it often happens that young pupils make very singular and ludicrous blunders, and the power of association is such that many who notice them will never after hear the passages read without being reminded of the errors. Most persons have such associations in connection with certain passages, and sometimes these associations produce most unwelcome sensations.

Our objection to the general use of the Bible, as indicated above, is not that its passages are not good enough for drill exercises, for within the sacred volume we may find some of the choicest examples of every style. But the book is not needed for a drill-book. We have an abundance of good text-books for such purposes, and we believe the Bible should be used only with profound reverence and in connection with appropriate devotional exercises. We would have the Bible read daily in the school-room, and we would have the attention of the entire school given to the reading, but we would not call upon all to take part therein,-except as listeners. The reading should be by the teacher and those scholars

who can read with a becoming degree of freedom and understanding.

We have been induced to allude to this subject because we have frequently heard classes reading in the Bible, in schools, when the whole sense and beauty were marred by the drawling tones and ludicrous blunders of those who had not yet been taught to read. At the fireside or by the mother's knee, the child may be carefully taught to read properly selected passages from the Bible, and their meaning may be explained, but in the school-room or in the presence of numbers, we believe that young pupils may more profitably, for themselves and others, be "hearers," rather than “readers" of the "Word."

THE BEAUTIFUL.

"This world is full of beauty."

NATURE has been very bountiful to "Mother Earth," and, pursue what path we may, it is strewn with her gifts. We do not deny her partiality, for we will not contend that Lapland, with her long, dark night, is equally favored with Italy, the land of sunshine; or that Greenland, the region of icebergs, contrasts favorably with the glorious climate of Brazil! Yet even those places, so seemingly barren, are not entirely destitute of attractions; and the traveler there often finds many beautiful objects.

The poets have, in all ages, sung of the sunny skies of Italy; orators have descanted her praises in the choicest figures of rhetoric; and artists have painted her landscapes in glowing colors; her maidens have been represented as "the daughters of beauty and song," her sons, as inspired with the fire of genius! Yet can we not find beauty and genius in what seem at first less favored climes?

We turn from the dark, bitter night of Lapland with a shudder. Yet there is something beautiful,-even grand,

there.

At one time you stand in almost unbroken darkness, with