should be taught to express the sense, to give the exact meaning. In no other way can this be taught than through study on the part of the pupils. They must read and think. Posture. Pupils should be taught how to stand, and they should not be allowed to utter a word until they assume a position to give full force to their utterance; they should not be allowed to appear awkward. Do not allow your pupils to mumble words, smother sounds and destroy the sense of a passage. The position should be perfectly easy, natural and graceful; the posture should indicate the sentence to be spoken. Insist that your pupils always take an easy, graceful position in reading or speaking. It is important to know how to breathe properly. It Breath. is well to exercise the lungs before beginning to read. The power of the reader or speaker consists in having perfect control of his breathing, so as to utter his words in the proper and most effective manner. It is only when you have perfect control of the breathing that, you can give full expression to words and sentences. Let me caution you against placing dependence upon Caution. rules of inflection of the voice given in reading books. All that you need is fully to understand the thought; when you have the thought fully, you will know all about inflection of the voice. If a person cannot translate what he reads into his own language, he most assuredly does not understand it. If you cannot bring out in your own language the full meaning of the lesson, you are not the one to teach, and you should either adopt some other work, or go through a rigid course of training. A great deal of teaching in reading is a positive injury to schools, and all because the teacher does not know how to teach. "Practice makes perfect"; rapidity and correctness are attained only through frequent repetition. No one ever arrives at distinction by sitting with arms folded; you must be willing to think, to exercise, to labor. It is not an easy thing to become a good reader, it is acquired only through practice-continual practice. There is no other way than through practice. The following rules are taken from "Kidd's Elocution". They should be carefully studied and practised: First.-Understand well what is read. Second. See to it that pupils never read without fulfilling the conditions of proper position and posture. Make them take the position God intended them to take; train, not teach; there is a difference between the two. Third.-Insist upon frequent and natural breathing. Good breathing is essential to health. Fourth.-Reach the heart of the pupil. This is done by interesting them, by making them understand what they read. Fifth.-Cultivate a perfectly easy, distinct and natural voice, avoid all labored efforts; let the voice come out full. Let pronunciation be correct, inflection natural; give the best models, but never rules. Make pupils repeat the pronunciation of words they are in the habit of mis-pronouncing. Modulation and intonation should be varied but always natural. Sixth.-Have your pupils speak with naturalness. If the subject be understood anyone will speak naturally. Train them to speak by the highest standard they possess. Seventh.-Be in earnest. If the pupil has not an earnest manner, it proves that he does not understand his subject. Necessary conditions. Teacher, whatever else you may teach, do not consider the reading exercise an unimportant one. Teach and train the pupils to be readers. It is the art of arts, and in it are the germs of growth and development. We read in the Bible at the eighth chapter of Nehemiah, eighth verse, how they used to read in the olden times : "So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading." There are three kinds of reading that are often confounded; mechanical reading, intelligent reading, and intellectual reading. Mechanical reading, per se, is no reading at all; it is but a form of voice training. It may include pronunciation, articulation, enunciation, inflection, tone pause, harmony, rhythm, and emphasis. A child may learn every one of these, in a foreign language,-learn them to perfection, if he be well drilled in them by means of directions and imitation, and yet not understand one word of what he reads while he gives them. An intelligent reader is one who understands what he reads, who takes in the authors thought. There are various degrees of intelligent reading. One person takes in the meaning vaguely, anothor more clearly, another quite clearly and definitely. It is not possible for a young child to be more than an intelligent reader, but the power should come to him as he grows older. Yet how many adults there are that do never get beyond the child's power of reading. Take, for instance, the well-informed man who never will be wise; he is emi nently an intelligent reader, but there is no hope for him that he will ever become an intellectual reader. Intellectual reading is not only a taking in, clearly and definitely, of the author's meaning, but it is also a ready recognition of the relation of that meaning, a prompt assimilation of it, and a consequent growth. This is the kind of reading that reigns in the student's den and the philosopher's study. That man who has the original power, or the acquired habit,-which is often more than an equivalent for the original power,to grasp readily and clearly the meaning of what he reads, is always one whom all others envy. And yet this power, valuable beyond calculation, may be given to every child in our schools, if we can but find the right way to secure it for him. The question then is: How shall we train our children so that they shall become not only intelligent but intellectual readers ?-so that they shall become not only intellectual silent readers, but also accomplished oral readers? Reading a thought process. By assigning to the lesson in voice-training all those exercises which pertain to voice-culture and discipline of the organs, which drill in pronunciation and a consideration of emphasis and pauses, illustrated by mistakes taken from yesterday's lesson and difficulties in to-day's, we shall relieve the reading lesson proper of the necessity of taking note of all that machinery which produces effect, and leave the teacher and class time and opportunity to study the thought the passage contains, and to give it a free and natural expression. Let it be understood by the class as well as the teacher, that the reading lesson should be a clear, clean-cut process of thought carried on to expression, and should not be interrupted by continued, trival and harrassing corrections. What is more painful than to see a child rise in his class, full of the thought the passage contains, confident of his power to give it good expression, his eye a-kindle and his cheeks aglow, and then to see him suddenly brought to a blank standstill by a dozen upraised hands and snapping fingers, because, forsooth, he has omitted an "a," a "the," or mis-called some simple word he knew quite well, or skipped some useless comma? Where such practices are allowed, the reading lesson becomes a mere game in pronunciation, and a correct handling of the voice according to rules. Such games are good to make the children keen-sighted, quickthoughted, and correct; but their place is not in the reading-lesson, and if we keep them there we shall go on forever teaching only words, words, words. Let us have first the thought, then the expression, and last and least, mechanical defects. Better that the thought should be full-born, and clothed in garments with here and there a rent, than that it should be stillborn and the garments without a flaw. As in language the thought is the root of which the word is the blossom, so in reading, an understanding of the author's meaning is the root of which oral reading is the blossom. If, then, we find our blossoms defective, it behooves us to look to the condition of the roots. But what method will help us here? How can we make sure that a child understands what he reads? Children imitate so easily, and habit counterfeits nature so closely, how can we be sure that we are not |