behavior, can be brought down to the comprehension of the youngest scholars.

The Bible, in the hands of a pious and devoted teacher, will do more than half a cord of cherry rulers, or a whole swamp of thrifty birches. "Here," taking up the sacred volume, "here is God's book. It is just as binding in the school house, as it is in the family and I ask no more of you, than it requires. You must not swear, you must not steal, you must not lie. I will give you chapter and verse for it. You must honor and obey your parents, for the Bible requires it, and it is right; and if you do, you will as a matter of course cheerfully conform to the laws of the school. You must have no angry disputes no quarrels among yourselves. I give the golden rule for it : All things whatsoever ye would, that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.'" This is a mere glance at the use which I think every teacher is bound to make of the Scripture in the government of his school.. believe that if instructors were a great deal more familiar with the Bible than they are, and a great deal more in the habit of appealing to it, they would find some warning, some command, some prohibition, some tender appeal, some tender example, or some touching historical incident, applicable to every case of reproof, or discipline, that can arise in the government of even the largest school.

WRITTEN LAWS AND REGULATIONS.

Any system of school government, drawn out in full upon paper, must, if I am not very much mistaken, cause a teacher infinite embarrassment in the administration. I very much doubt whether a school was ever well governed upon this plan. Twenty cases will occur in a day, where the teacher has trammelled himself with written enactments and penalties, that will give him a vast deal of needless trouble. If he was only at liberty to exercise his discretion, in view of all the circumstances, as the cases actually arise, he would get on very well; but there is the law, posted up and staring him in the face, and what can he do but execute it, even when his judgment tells him, it were better either to forgive the offender, or punish him in some other way. No two cases of roguery or perverseness in a hundred, though all coming under the same general law, are exactly alike. However it may be elsewhere, I am perfectly convinced, that the fewer and more simple the laws are in our primary schools, the easier will they be governed.

but it is never kept in sight. It is only sent for when all othIn the best governed schools not only is the rod rarely used, er means have failed. In such a case, as much should be citations should be suspended. The culprit should be brought made of the preparations as possible. All the studies and reout and arraigned. A handful of well chosen sprouts should be brought in and toughened in the fire, especially if he be stout and stubborn, and then used with great coolness and discretion. One such scene will do more to deter from transgression than a thousand blows dealt out, as they sometimes are, in a passion, or where milder means would answer a great deal better.

PARENTAL CO-OPERATION IN THE GOVERNMENT OF SCHOOLS.

I have only to add that no school can be well regulated and mittees. If what the teacher does in the school-room is coungoverned, without the co-operation of parents and school-comteracted at home; if parents, when a child is punished, take faction in the ears of the whole district, it is in vain for any part with him against the master, and proclaim their dissatishave been broken up and ruined, just in this way. Some unone to think of going on for a single hour. Many schools governed and overgrown scholar just entering his teens, and is punished. He goes home with a grevious complaint. His belonging to an influential family refuses to obey the laws and father entertains it, and his mother cannot have her Tommy abused so. The flame spreads, and the teacher is either driven away, or leaves in disgust. How true is it, in this case, as If I were to advise one of my own sons, on this head, I well as a thousand others, that "one sinner destroys much should say, "When you open your school, make it your first good." We have seen it and mourned over it. Tommy is business to assign every child his place and to establish per-jection, whether at home or at school; and if he is not actunow prepared to resist every attempt to bring him into subfect order in the school room. No matter about the studies or recitations the first day. You will want most of the time ally ruined, no thanks to his parents for saving him. Extreme for expressing your views, and for telling the school what you of school and using all his influence to displace the teacher. cruelty would certainly justify a parent in taking his child out expect and shall require. As you proceed, notice the first de- But in none save extreme cases is it safe to interfere. It viation from the general course which you have marked out, and let the child understand that you are quite in earnest, and paralyzes the arm of necessary discipline at once; and withmean to insist on implicit obedience. In this way, out government what is any school good for? There are line upon line, and precept upon precept," for a very few some cases in which the recreant scholar is too old to be subdays, and it will be effectual with nine tenths of your schol-jected to corporal punishment; and then it is the duty of the ars. And even where it is not, I advise you to forbear threat-committee to come to the teacher's aid, exclude the rebel at ening,' as much as possible. It is rarely the safest and best once from the enjoyment of privileges upon which he has so wantonly trampled. way to tell a boy, "If you do that again, I will punish you so and so;" for when the offence is repeated, there may be mitigating circumstances, which will make you regret that you did not reserve the right of varying the punishment. Rather let him understand that you are determined to be obeyed at all hazards; and that you intend to follow him up, with all the severity which the attainment of the end requires. But if you threaten a specific punishment, be sure to execute. You cannot flinch, without virtually giving up your authority, and making yourself infinite trouble.

"give

Demand nothing but what the best good of your school requires. Make your views, wishes and determinations known to every scholar, with the reasons of them. Carry every thing with a steady hand. Nip every encroachment upon your authority in the bud. Never suffer yourself to be teased into an indulgence which your better judgment would withhold. In all ordinary cases, let your words " drop as the honey-comb." Be consistent and uniform in your whole administration. What you require or forbid to-day, require or forbid to-morrow. Be strictly impartial in your government. Be just as exact with the children of the rich as of the poor,

NUMBER OF SCHOLARS IN ONE SCHOOL.

A school of forty is quite large enough for one teacher. I should never wish to have the number exceed thirty where my own children are educated, though I have sometimes had more than twice that number myself, and am fully aware, that some teachers can do better justice to seventy or eighty, than others can to five and twenty. A very small school, on the other hand is not apt to be profitable. The children need more excitement than they are likely to feel, where there are not more than three or four in a class. Or perhaps the fault may be in the teacher; the stimulus not being sufficient to call his energies into vigorous action. But no district ought ever to crowd sixty or seventy scholars, of all ages and both sexes, into one school room. It is impossible for any teacher to take care of so many, and "divide to every one his portion in due season. Nor is it at all necessary to impose such a burden. Let the school be divided. Call in the aid of a well qualified female teacher, according to the plan already suggested, and furnish her with a convenient room for the instruction of the younger classes.

SCHOLARS SHOULD BE SENT EARLY, PUNCTUALLY, AND REGULAR-
LY TO SCHOOL.

It is the habit of some parents to keep their children at home a week, or two, after the school opens. Just let them look at the subject in its true light. How can a child be expected to commence his studies with all that interest which is so essential to rapid improvement, when the class has been going on for a number of days, perhaps weeks before he came in? Let the parent simply ask himself, what would be the effect upon my feelings, if in setting out upon a long journey, I were detained till my friends had got the start of a hundred miles? Every one knows with how much more pleasure and success we prosecute any undertaking, in connection with others, when we commence upon equal terms, than when we labor all the while under the discouragement of being behind. Children much more than adults, are creatures of sympathy-of instinctive emulation. They love to start and go on together, and lose a great deal when they are kept out of school at the beginning of the term. Shall I be told, that I am not at all aware, how difficult it is for the poor to keep up with the revolutions of the seasons, and have their children in readiness, when the schools open? But I am quite aware of it. I happen to know all about it; and I know too what can be done where the parents of very limited means view the subject right, and are stimulated to corresponding efforts. Another point of great importance is, to have every scholar in his seat, at the opening of the school both morning and afternoon, it is a common and a just complaint, with teachers, in scattered districts, and I believe I may add in populous villages, also, that a considerable number of the children are late at school, especially in short and cold mornings. They come in, "stringing along," as our grand mothers used to say, and half frozen, after the school is begun, to the great annoyance of the teacher, and the very serious interruption of all his arrangements for the day. It is ten o'clock before he can get the classes filled up, and every thing quiet and settled for study and recitations. Thus an hour in a day is nearly lost to the whole school, by the tardiness of a few. This, in all ordinary cases, is inexcusable. No parent has a right in this way, to abridge the privileges of his more punctual neighbors, to say nothing of the loss which his own children experience.

Regular attendance from day to day through the season, is another thing quite essential to the improvement of the scholar, and the highest perfection of our common school system. Some children are kept out a third, or one quarter of the time, without their parents ever dreaming of the irreparable loss growing out of this irregularity. It is admitted, indeed, that the boy cannot be expected to learn quite so much as if he had no interruptions; but the great diminution of interest in the studies, which these interruptions occasion, is rarely taken into the account. How can any one who is broken off his books, and is away from his class, two or three days in a week, keep up that attention and ardor, without which, rapid advances are never made, in any stage or branch of education? Where the circumstances of a family are such, that a child cannot possibly be spared more than half the winter, it is far more profitable to keep him at his studies regularly, while he does go, than to send him irregularly through the

whole season.

can be at all profitable for children under the age of twelve. If not otherwise actively employed, they want at least three months to play and grow in-not all at once but in three or four vacations. Some will say, this is losing too much precious time; but do they consider that the physical part of a child's education is no less essential than the intellectual part? How little can the most gifted and well furnished mind accomplish, in a feeble and sickly body; and feeble the body certainly will be, if you shut it up all, or nearly all, the year, in a crowded school-room.

But while I plead for a liberal allowance of time for relaxation and play, in a system of popular education, and am fully convinced that much more is lost than can be gained by having the vacations very short and infrequent, I am aware that there is in most of the rural districts, if not in the towns and villages, a prevailing tendency to the opposite extreme. Both the winter and the summer schools are too short; the former being not much, if any, over three months, and the latter about four. This is allowing quite too much time for play, and for loosing what has been acquired in one school before the other opens. While a vacation of a month just gives the mind time to unbend and recover its elasticity, doubling or trebling the indulgence dissipates and unfits it for close application. Indeed, few parents, I believe, will deny that something like nine months schooling in twelve, is desirable, wherever it can be afforded. But how many are there, with large young families to educate, whose first and main question at every school meeting is, how far will the public money go? and who are ready to vote down any motion which would take even a small sum out of their own pockets, to keep the school-master or school-mistress, a month or two longer. Now if any thing in the world is "penny wise and pound foolish," here we have it. It is pitiful, it is infinitely pitiful; and yet, there are thousands of promising children, in New England and New York, even, who have more vacation every year than term-time, or in other words who are kept out of school one half or two thirds of the year, because their parents are too penurious or too shiftless to pay a few shillings for their

tuition.

For the Journal.
THE HOUSE I LIVE IN. No. 3, CONCLUDED.
By Dr. Wm. A. Alcott.

STRUCTURE, USES, AND ABUSES OF THE SKIN.
Now if the structure of the papillæ of the true skin, every
where, is what I have described, and if these papillæ are as nu-
merous, on every part of the body-though, undoubtedly,
smaller-as on the balls of the fingers, is it not true that the
skin is a curious organ? I believe that by this time every
reader thinks so.

You will also believe with me that the skin is an organ which should be properly educated and taken care of. To educate it properly, is to allow it, from the earliest infancy, to perform the work for which God, its maker, designed it. But this it cannot well do, unless it is kept free, soft, clean and of a right temperature. Hence the importance of keeping the body neither too cold nor too hot. Hence, also, the importance of frequent bathing-warm or cold-and of a loose dress. If In farming districts, it is quite common, I believe, for fa- we suffer dirt to remain long on the skin, it must impede the thers to take out their older sons from the school a month or performance of its various offices. In like manner if our perhaps more, before it closes. They want them in their barns clothes compress the skin any where, at least long at a time, it and woodyards, so as to get every thing out of the way, be- may produce mischief. The skin will best perform its office fore the warm season opens. I do not deny but that this cut-in those climates where little if any clothing is required, proting a lad short in his studies, may sometimes be necessary; vided due attention is paid to bathing; and hence, perhaps, but it is exceedingly to be regretted, and where he is making one reason why bathing is so common in such countries, and good proficiency, he ought to be continued, as long as be can possibly be spared. It is better to cultivate a little less land, than to hinder him from getting at least a thorough common education.

VACATIONS.

School teachers cannot be confined all the year. They must have seasons of relaxation to go abroad and take the air, and visit their friends, and recruit their jaded energies, both of body and mind. Still more do young scholars need frequent vacations.

I do not think more than nine months schooling in a year

why it is even made a religious duty. I say it will best perform its office in those climates; but by great care and attention it may be made to act pretty regularly and effectually in almost any climate whatever, especially in one no farther north than our own. However, the worse the climate in which we live, the greater the error in the early education of our skins, the worse our present habits, and the more severe our sufferings as the consequences of these habits-in the form of colds, asthmas, eruptive diseases, chronic diarrhoeas, fever and consumption-the greater and inore pressing is the necessity of our doing all we can to have our skins in a healthy state. Some persons seem to make the contrary conclusion; and be

cause they cannot "be perfect," or at least cannot be so immediately, they seem to justify themselves in indolence--in doing far less than they might do. But such persons are either a little wanting in conscientiousness, or else they have not rightly studied their own nature and the volume of eternal truth, and the solemn obligation which devolves on us to glory God in our bodies as well as in our spirits, since both are alike his, and

should be alike devoted to his most reasonable service.

THE MEMBRANES.

under the skin which is of this sort. It is called cellular mem

You have now formed a pretty accurate idea of the mean ing of the word membrane, as we use it in books of anatomy and physiology. The skin, as has been seen, is a membrane, but it seems to be triple; i. e. made up of three membranes. Membranes may be thinner or thicker; some of them are exceedingly thin indeed. There is a mass of membrane directly brane, because it consists of a great number of little cells, which give it almost a honey-comb appearance. Some have considered it a part of the skin, and have regarded it as a fourth layer. But sometimes, too, a membrane is very thick. Thus the cuticle, the outside layer of the skin, is as thick, almost, as sole leather, on the heels of people who go barefooted a great deal. The film, too, which connects the toes of webfooted birds, as the goose, and of the limbs of the bat and flying squirrel, (called wings,) are membranes of great strength

and thickness.

The skin really ought to be washed in water, warm or cold, every day. No one, in any event, should omit to wash it thoroughly several times a week. And there are parts of it which must be washed--for to neglect it would be downright slovenliness--at least once a day; and if our employments are of such a kind as will much expose particular portions of our bodies, it may be needful to wash these portions of the system several times a day. Such are the hands and sometimes the face and the feet. One sect of the Jews made it a rule, 1 believe, to wash their hands before every meal. Nor was it these frequent washings, in themselves considered, for which the There is a vast amount of membrane in the human body. Saviour reproved them; but only their folly in not taking so The surface of the body, in a middle-sized man has been usumuch pains to keep clean their minds and souls, as they did ally estimated at fifteen square feet; equal in extent to a table their hands and faces and cups and platters. I like to see five feet long and three wide. Then the same sort of mempeople and no doubt the Saviour of mankind approved of it-brane, only thinner, which lines the lungs is thought be about keep their hands and faces clean by washing them, at least, as often as they come to their meals, or lay aside their employments to converse with their visiters, or their other friends. Some parts of the hands and face, however, require more attention than others. I have seen those-and among them not a few children and youth at our common schools-who, though they washed their hands and face before breakfast, or at least made the pretence of doing so, were yet far from being clean. Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well, says an old maxim; and if washing our hands and faces is worth doing at all, is not that, too, worth doing well? But do we wash ourselves well when we do little more than just moisten a little our noses, cheeks and chin, and just touch the tips of our fingers? Do not the mouth, and eyes, and nose; and ears, and neck, require particular and careful attention? Do not the nails, also, and the wrists, and the spaces between the fingers?

I sometimes speak of old maxims; and there is an old maxim which I wish to bring in here. It is that prevention is better than cure. To cure an evil, or to remove it after it has arisen, is to do well; but to prevent it, so that there will be no necessity for curing it, is to do better. This hint is especially important to the young in the habit of personal cleanliness. Prevention here is better than cure; a great deal better. Do not neglect to wash often; but it is still more important to prevent by proper care, the need of much washing. A proper and timely use of the pocket-handkerchief will save you a great deal of trouble; but a proper degree of pains to avoid daubing your hands with ink and other impurities, will save you from much more, because ink is exceedingly difficult to remove. There is one thing to be especially remembered in this place, which is, that he who takes much pains to keep his hands and face clean while he is young, will speedily form a habit of keeping them clean, so that it will cost him no pains, or at most very little.

One thing more still. They who form the early habit of keeping the hands and face clean, are, at the same time, forming the important habit of keeping their clothes clean. This is a habit of no small importance. For to say nothing of the fact that dirty clothes tend to render our skins dirty, is it not a matter of some consequence to be able to save our friends the trouble of washing for us, as much as we can? They who love their neighbors as the scripture directs, and especially they who love their female friends-their mothers and sisters -as they ought to love them, will rejoice as much, or almost as much, when they can save them labor and trouble, as when they can save labor to themselves.

These remarks in closing this lesson, are especially intended for pupils at schools, at least if there are any to whom they apply. And I have seen such individuals of both sexes. I have seen not only boys but girls who were in the daily habit of getting ink, &c. on their hands, their paper, their books and their clothes. You would never see them with clean hands, and almost as rarely with clean faces, or necks, or clean clothes. Let such beware of the power and influence and strength and consequences of bad early habits.

from extremity to extremity, must be equal to ten or twelve equally extensive. Again, the lining of the intestinal canal square feet. Lastly all the parts in the human body, which open to the air, or which have any communication with the air, in any way whatever, as the ears, eyes, &c. are lined in a similar manner. Of these last there may be three or four square feet. In short, the amount of this sort of membrane alone, in the human body cannot be less than about fifty square feet; equal to a table, or plane, seven feet, or more, square. All the membrane of which I have been now speaking, consisting chiefly in three great divisions of about fifteen feet each, is called the mucous membrane. Whenever, therefore, you read in any book about mucous membrane, you may be sure it is some portion of what I have been describing to you. But fifty square feet of membrane is but a very small part of the whole amount of membrane in the human body; it seems but little more than a beginning. Indeed I cannot tell you how many square feet of membrane there is in a person; it may be that there are several thousand; probably there are. I think there are some thousands of feet of the cellular membrane alone; of which the greater part is as fine as the finest gauze. The skin itself, as you will remember, is triple; so that there are really forty-five feet of that, instead of fifteen.

If you wish to be healthy, you must take pains to keep this One thing I wish to tell you about the mucous membrane. membrane-the whole of it-in good condition. Young people, as well as older ones, often fail in this matter. This membrane should be kept cool, clean, and free from irritation. Thus air too hot, or abounding in dust, injures the mucous membrane of the lungs, and too much heat and dust injure greatly, (as I have told you elsewhere,) the skin. Thus, too, irritating substances, as green apples, or any other green fruit, or chalk, or clay, or slate pencils-all of which some young people eat- should be avoided as likely to irritate the mucous chief. But I must tell you more of this at some other time. membrane which lines the intestinal canal, and do great mis

The following communication is from one who has had more than thirteen years experience as a teacher in Reading and Speaking, not only to young men and ladies in our higher institutions of learning, but to teachers of common schools, who wished to make themselves more useful in this branch of instruction. It will be followed by others and we can safely commend them to the careful attention of teachers and scholars. No. 1.

READING.

MR. EDITOR-I sympathize with you cordially in your desire to see every child in our common schools made an intelligent and accomplished reader, and if you still think that the results of my observation and experience can lead to improved methods of teaching in this department, I shall cheerfully comply with your request to communicate a series of articles on the subject.

"apt to teach." The writer has known great success attend this plan in a primary school on the monitorial plan, and a dis tinguished and successful professional teacher of elocution, who likewise fills with great ability the situation of principal of a large monitorial free school in another town from the former, informed him that the plan of mutual instruction answers admirably well in this department.

It is not perhaps generally known by the public at large, or by school teachers, that elocution is universally taught, by regular teachers in this art, by example on their part and imitation on the part of the pupil. They follow in this respect precisely the same method as instructers in instrumental and vocal music. The general impression is that reading can alone be taught by rules and directions, with little or no exemplification by the living voice of the teacher. True, the teacher ocBut the moment the teacher faithfully attempts to instruct casionally reads a verse or paragraph without producing or in the mode we are considering, his own reading will begin expecting any considerable effort on the part of the class to im- to improve. It will even improve more than that of his puitate his superior manner of reading. The writer made the pils. It is surprising to witness how much more forcible and same mistake in the outset of his experience. But with Walk- varied the tones of a teacher become by being compelled to er's Grammar of Elocution, one of the best practical as well as set an example that shall correct the faults and rouse the amtheoretical works on the subject, he found that the most intel-bition of his scholars. He is to be sure liable to grow less ligent scholars of a classical school could not read the exam- simple and easy in his manner, just as writing-masters are ples according to the directions although they are given in im- apt to have a stiff hand, but this consequence may be avoided, mediate connection and are in the main exceedingly apposite. and if it follows, will injure the teacher far more than the But persevering effort and inquiry into the reasons of failure pupil. soon led to a different method.

The first direction then which I should give to teachers of common schools, is to teach the youngest scholars WHOLLY BY EXAMPLE, and to depend PRINCIPALLY on example in assisting

the more advanced.

Such directions have been given before; and teachers will generally assent to their propriety. But those who give them and those who practise on them but occasionally, seem not to be aware of the great importance of this rule when followed out with sufficient care and perseverance.

This mode of teaching reading, (or rather this teaching of reading by the master, for this may be said to be the only mode by which much instruction can be given in this branch,) has a happy effect in a school from the life and animation and pleasure with which it causes the exercise to be performed. The scholars have their minds aroused from listlessness and recalled from wandering by the animated tones and forcible emphasis of the teacher. So great indeed is the animation produced by the intellectual stimulus of reading or speaking, if it rises to eloquence, that the teacher will often be under the necessity of using a much stricter discipline than would be necessary where there is nothing but the necessity of "keeping the place," to prevent the pupils from being languid and listless to any degree whatever.

All professional teachers of elocution know that a very great proportion of their labor must be spent in breaking up the bad habits of articulation, emphasis, voice and natural play of tones acquired at school and college. These habits begin at a very early age and if fixed in the youngest classes at school, are the most difficult to correct. Those who have attended to this Finally this mode has abundant sanction from experience. subject will have observed, that children fall into these habits The writer is acquainted not only with particular schools and almost as a matter of course, when first they begin to read, un- districts, but towns where a striking and highly gratifying imless they are required to repeat every two or three words, scn- provement has been produced in this way within a few years. tence, or paragraph, as read or pronounced by the teachers. In one of the largest towns in Connecticut the little pupils The monotonous and senseless drawl, so common in our fresh from the primary schools, were a few years ago not at schools and exhibited in the youngest classes, can be entirely all superior in reading to those of country districts, but within prevented. If the teacher is suiliciently thorough he may ten years a complete change has taken place for the better. train them at the earliest stage, so that then and for the rest The teachers have got into the babit of imitating the instrucof their lives they shall read in a natural, forcible and inter-ters of elocution who have been employed in the town. In esting manner. They will indeed as their minds expand and general, primary schools, taught by females, show the most improve in discipline and refinement, be susceptible of constant improvement in this respect. This class of teachers have peimprovement in the higher qualities of delivery, but at no peculiar qualifications for forming good habits among children in riod will they cause the elocutionist months and even years of labor in teaching what should have been taught in early childhood, and in overcoming habits formed at that age and so completely incorporated as to seem like natural peculiarities in their physical and mental constitution.

In urging teachers to adopt this method, the writer has been often met with the objection, that they themselves had too low an opinion of their own reading to depend upon it as a model for their scholars. This is a natural feeling, and at first sight the objection seems proper. But let it be remembered that the teacher can always, if he chooses, set a better example than the utter drawl of a child first learning to read a line of continuous sense; and indeed this is often done by those who never suspect that they can do more. All good instructors in teaching the alphabet take pains to make their little charge name the letters with a short, spirited and articulate enunciation. This sort of pains should be taken with the reading of a child as long as he is in school. The teacher, even if he knows nothing of the principles of elocution, can always find abundance of faults which he can correct by example; and for all but the older scholars, and even for them, unless the school has been previously taught in this way by some one who was a better reader than himself, he can, by taking pains, set an example better upon the whole than they will set one another. He may indeed have many faults in common with his scholars -faults acquired in school, and of which both he and they are equally unconscious, but from his superiority of age and education, he will always be able, if ambitious and faithful, to surpass his scholars and benefit them more than they will benefit themselves or one another.

Not only the teacher's example may be made use of, but that of a scholar who is a good reader and at the same time

this branch. They generally read better themselves in consequence of their clearer and more flexible voices, and their greater liveliness of feeling and quickness of apprehension. They also enter with a more hearty interest into such ideas as most interest a child in the first development of his faculties. Let it not be inferred that these remarks are intended to sanction the opinion so frequently expressed, that rules are of no use in acquiring or communicating the art of reading. On the contrary they are of great use to the teacher, and may be made so to the advanced scholar. The writer will endeavor to give hereafter several particular directions as to the precise mode in which the teacher should make use of his own example, and as to the best manner of introducing scholars from the spelling book to the reading book. He will mention some false rules of reading which are universally received and practised upon in common schools, and which are not only contrary to the precepts and practice of all who write upon or teach elocution, but constitute an exceedingly troublesome obstacle to the improvement of pupils of all ages and conditions. Finally, at the close he will endeavor to give a few simple rules of reading, of easy application, and particularly adapted to the instruction of children. In the mean time, however, he would urge every teacher who reads this article, and who has not tried the method recommended, to commence immediately the breaking up of bad habits and forming good ones among his scholars, by requiring them to imitate his own example on a few words at a time. If he insists upon his scholars repeating their attempts until they succeed in exhibiting a good imitation, he will be surprised and gratified in witnessing their improvement. Those whose habits are bad should not be suffered to read at all except in imitation of their teacher until they have learned to read pretty well.

"south-en, "sitooated, "sussiety, (siety,) "scorchin, "sevral,

"spilers,
springin,
"supprise,