those first inarticulate incoherencies are molded into the sustained melody and eloquence of a Milton or a Pitt. It is this, too, by which he becomes familiar with the little world of his nursery, and learns to discriminate between the objects around him, and-by recalling his previous ineffectual grasps-to know that the moon is beyond his reach; to judge of distance by sight and sound; to compass his first exultant stumble from the chair to his mother's outstretched hand, and convert it into the stride of a Hercules, or the bound of an Apollo; which, in short, saves us all from a perpetual babyhood of ignorance and imbecility, forever beginning and never advancing; gathering the sweet and sparkling drops of life into the bottomless bucket of forgetfulness, from which no draughts can ever be drained of strength or hope. Yet, not alone does memory give power or wisdom; it accumulates material, but never selects or constructs; it heaps up rubbish as readily as it fills treasures; it records errors and sorrows as well as successes and joys, but of itself teaches neither how to avoid the one nor to secure and increase the other. And in the various branches of our school-work, what are the things to be memorized; under what conditions, and by what means the memory may best secure the desired results, and how its resources may be most wisely and securely invested, and by what guardianship made most available for the future life and progress of their pupils, may well command the frequent and earnest thought of every teacher. The average child of six years already upon entering school has, in greater or less completeness, his little vocabulary, sufficient for the needs of his daily life. He has seen the dog, the tree, the bird, has heard and remembered the sounds which we call names, has associated " with them the utterances, which we designate by "barks" and grows" and "sings," and has laid them one by one away within easy reach in his memory. He has noted the motion of the lip when others have pronounced the words, and one by one by many an effort has himself mastered the wondrous art, which he has practiced with ever-new delight, till now, almost without a conscious effort, as if by intuition, the words talk themselves. To him a word is a word, a simple utterance, is what he says, which he has never analyzed, never thought about, and he knows no more why this or that sound stands for this or that thing, or act, than—we ourselves. How he has loved to live and learn! Like the lambs in their pastures, life has been to him a joy. He has talked and laughed and run and climbed, winning ever some new word, some wisdom, some power, and always some new happiness; and now, in the glad pride of his little heart, he has come to school. He is a scholar; he is going to learn to read. Those objects, those acts, and those feelings, for which he has learned the sounds, he is now to see represented by marks, by printed, written characters. The primer, the volume, the wisdom, the poetry, the eloquence of the ages are to be opened and revealed to him, and why should he not be proud and glad? His first twenty, or forty, or two hundred words are to be memorized, learned as simple words, mere arbitrary characters for simple sounds, as wholes and not yet in their parts, one or two to-day, and the others to-morrow and the next day; he is to learn to know them, to make them, and so familiarly, by seeing, by speaking, and by writing, that the character shall always suggest the sound, the sound the character, all unconsciously, as he has already associated the sound and the object or act. A different thing, as he soon finds, from chasing butterflies and making mud-pies, is this filling his slate with words, only to erase them and fill it again—that modern refinement and combination of pillory and thumb-screw. The lively, eager attention, the first requisite and condition of memorizing, soon gives place to dull and painful listlessness, if not to revolt and lawlessness, since now the second condition of memory, frequent repetition, has been carried to a nauseating satiety. Now must the ingenuity, the art, the power of the teacher, like the voice of the Master to the sinking Peter, appear or he perishes. Instead of the frequent repetition, the word must be wrought into sentences alive with a new meaning. The object must be at hand, the picture presented, the perception called into exercise, the little story told and repeated, the interest awakened. As we know of matter only through force, and of force only through matter, so in these early days of school life must the thing and the word become forever associated by constant practice. Dull repetition must give place to pleasing variety; the words of yesterday wrought into the lessons of to-day and to-morrow; the new words of to-day pointed out, written, talked about before commencing the lesson, or as an introduction. Thus, instead of being a stumbling-block in the path of his reading, now will the new word glisten like a new coin among its dingy companions, and its easy mastery on the new page fill him with the pride, the happiness of a conqueror. But the storing of the memory with accumulations of forms and facts is of little use, unless they can be at once and with ease reproduced and wrought into new creations, with different effects and for other purposes. The pupil with his learning must be always using his acquisitions. He must be led to talk and talk correctly. Very early in his school life does he form those habits that never leave him, even by prayer and fasting. Those little errors that we learned in childhood, even now after beating them down for a score or two of years, in some careless moment will start up as fresh and strong as if they had never known defeat. Here in the early grade is determined whether in his utterance he shall be clear, open, distinct, articulate, correct, or go through grammar and high school, perchance through college and university, with hang-dog air and incoherent mutterings. Here, by question and answer, by recital and story, before he can yet busy himself with the printed or written page, he should become familiar with the common forms of speech-man, men, children, child, am, is, are, a, an— not by rule or definition, but by use in all the variety of their combinations. These are for permanent use; forms that are always used, and by all, and their correct use is all memory and habit-habit so strong and confirmed that the effort escapes detection. It should be made ere long so thoroughly a part of himself that he would no more think of saying "we is," "I done it," " he has went," "them books," than of putting his food into his ears. But no definition; nothing of "sentence, asking sentence, telling sentence"; no "action words, naming words, relation words"; no rules. It should yet be all use. He who talks by rule never talks well. With true culture words come as the winds come, and we hear the sound thereof. Memory quickened by association with some object or purpose, enlivened by variety and novelty, made reproductive by new applications requiring ingenuity and skill on the pupil's part, is the chief reliance and hope of the lower grades. This is the receptive period, when the underlying material for future upbuilding is to be secured. It is the curious, the observing period, when all is still fresh and new, when the child's thought is ever on the wing from flower to flower, from sweet to sweet-ever bearing, too, like the bee from blossom to blossom, the fertilizing dust that shall make them all hereafter richer of flower and fruit; the period, too, when all objects quickly pall upon the sense. The fixity of thought, the close observation and comparison, the nice analysis, the weighing and balancing of reasons and probabilities, which are the delight of the trained intellect, play a small part in his young life. His purposes are as fleeting as his laughter or his tears; there is no place in his nature for mere routine. The memorized rules and definitions have to him no meaning, and to force them upon him is but to send him blindfold into a field of rich and rare products, whose pathways he has not yet learned, and whose beauties he has not yet seen; or to lead him painfully and sadly by the hand, when with the bandage removed— The stream, the wood, the earth, the skies, As in a gallery of pictured landscapes there is in each the mead, the hill, the tree, the stream, with a touch of human or animal life, but always in different combination, with varied relations, so should the monotony of dull repetition on the printed page be relieved. The words that are recited and written to-day should be woven and wreathed into other figures and expressions to-morrow; and thus repetition, one of the most efficient means for memory's aid, invested with all the charm of novelty. Twenty minutes a day with young pupils will often |