mazes of ignorance to the light of intelligent life. Pleased with the rattle of the nursery, tickled, perchance, with the Kindergarten straws, with pleased fancy he comes now to the blocks, the buttons, the cards of the schoolroom. He takes them, he handles them, he counts them -combines, piles, takes down, separates, and arrangeslearning his ones, his twos, and threes by short and progressive steps. He learns, too, their names, and, in due time, the signs, the figures, and how to make them, till they become as familiar as his own face in the glass, and he has no more need to count them than to count his eyes or his ears. He may, perchance, vary his slate-work by little circles and triangles and squares, getting not only his addition, subtraction, and multiplication, but the alphabet of his geometry, too, before he knows that there is such a science as either. Nor would it be amiss sometimes to deck his slate with his attempts at men and dogs and birds, singly or in company, taking on drawing also as one of his unconscious arts. What squads and companies of those rude slate-soldiers have I drawn and drilled and slaughtered while sitting upon that boardbench in the old country school-house beneath the hill when I was thought to be bowing devoutly over my sums!

When this first year's work has been now well digested and assimilated, and become as much a part of his mental nature as his last year's dinner has of his physical, how naturally falls in that short-hand way of crowning the tens by putting them in the second place, in the kingrow, as it were-the only royal way of learning! How these regal tens may lead their humble units during the second year of assimilation and growth! Little use have we here for those long lines and towering columns of figures, as much beyond and above the pupil's mental as

(at Conway, rass!")

mass!

his physical grasp. And why waste much time or strength at all on numbers higher than millions? They meet all the requirements of ninety-nine in a hundred of our busy men except in speaking of the national debt, and the naming of that conveys no meaning or impression save a general sense of greatness and vagueness. What opportunities here as we advance to tempt the new-fledged souls to a trial of their powers-to give them a chance themselves to observe, to think, to do!

If the old district school, whose glories are sung about as often and long as those of our mothers' pies, had any superior merit it surely was not in its methods of instruction, but in letting us alone to do our sums at our own sweet will. Yet in recalling those glad days we all forget the old rhymes:

Multiplication is vexation;

Division is as bad;

The rule of three doth puzzle me,

And fractions make me mad.

Not all happiness and courtesy even then, as is attested by the usual last-day refrain:

Good-by, scholars; good-by, school;

Good-by, master, and you're an old fool.

But we may well imitate more often the old way of letting pupils do for themselves. Rainy days are the days for fishing, and why not, after one of those bright "apple showers" of the later autumn, cut a few of those apples into halves and quarters ? A boy can count the number of halves as easily as that of wholes, and perhaps he may devise a way of writing to designate the halves and quarters. None but very young parents name the child before his birth. Without rule or direction let him

find out how many square inches in one face of his slate, perhaps by marking it off as a checker-board and counting the squares; or, may be, by a higher flight, counting the rows and the number in a row; the duller ones aided, perhaps, by asking them how many panes in a window. Let him compute how many yards of plain carpeting will cover the platform or the floor, making his own measurements; how many of figured carpeting. He who succeeds will need to learn no rule. He has already learned in the doing, and in a manner that shall remain. Let him draw the diagonal, dividing into two equal parts, and by a little observation and thought he has more of a triangle than is usually obtained from that old confusing demonstration in the geometry. Do something to quicken his dull nature, or, rather, to guide his restless, eager, longing nature into a thoughtful, persistent, and useful channel, and get rid of that everlasting, never-ending working of identical problems under some given rulethat burden and bane of so many school-rooms.

Of course, the whole country is not yet subdued and possessed, but, following this pioneer work under skillful guidance, comes the steady tramp of the trained battalions, with ordnance and camp equipage, with stout hearts and strong arms, resistless, instead of becoming entangled in impenetrable jungles and mired in the morasses of the wilderness—their supply-wagons converted into an ambulance train for the sick and disabled, the tattered banners of the surviving few, if victorious at last, raised by feeble hands over a hospital of invalids.

Especially is geography open to this intelligent work, affording opportunity for careful observation, from which is derived rich food for thought and reflection, leading to useful and educating action. In the school-room itself, with its rows of desks; the building, with its halls and

rooms to be measured and planned; the adjoining streets, their width, and the length of the blocks; the presentation of the district on the slate or the vertical blackboard -may be found the most important elements of the study. By the use of the sphere the cause of day and night may be easily comprehended, but not yet the seasons, with the long days of summer and the long nights of winter. Knowing the circumference of the earth and its revolution in twenty-four hours, the pupil may himself determine how much passes under the sun in an hour or minute, and the difference in time between here and New York or San Francisco, and perhaps why the equator and its parallels and the meridians were devised. Possibly the county with its towns in outline would not be amiss, and the State with its chief features and towns. The crayon should be as familiar to his hand as the musket to the soldier's.

Let him see how rivers are made, like the Mississippi and its majestic confluent, and the broad delta at its mouth. In the higher grade, when he shall read in "Evangeline," for instance, "How the mighty father of waters seizes the hills in his hands, and drags them down to the ocean," he will see the difference between the scientist and the poet; or, perhaps, how the poet must be himself a man of science; nay, rather a painter, a philosopher, a moralist, a linguist, as well, often seeing things beyond the scientist's ken, evolving systems and deducing lessons of which he never dreamed. What vistas of delight might open before the pupil at every step, his only sorrow being that the time was so short!

The motive, the prime purpose of the public school, as may be seen from its origin and history, is intellectual culture; and a sad day for the people, as well as for the schools, would it be if this purpose should be essentially

changed, and they primarily devoted to the training of the laboring classes for their several vocations. From this intellectual culture the ingenuity and versatility of the American workman has become almost proverbial. He may not be in some departments so perfect a machine, but he is more of a thinking man. Half a century ago, when the bulk of the population were farmers and mechanics, and their children were in the district school for three months in the summer and three in the winter till twelve or fourteen years of age, following with a term or two at the academy or select school, their studies interspersed with the various labors of the farm and the home, there was no thought or need of aught else. For the professional few there was the college, affording a little more Latin and Greek, but much less of science, than the present high-school. But the decided and rapid determination, within the last twenty years especially, of the young blood of the country to the large cities and towns-those centers of modern life-has changed the conditions, and, with all our talk of the new education, it would not be strange if we should seem to lag behind the marvelous movement of our civilization; if, in short, as to meeting the requirements of the times, the old district school should be found fully in line with the schools of to-day with all their improvements. The merits of the district school were little, but the demands were less, while ideal perfection would be counted among the shortcomings of to-day. It is not in any lack of sympathy with the activities of the hour that we are in fault. The tendency to business is too strong already, but largely to those branches that are commercial and speculative instead of to the farm and the workshop.

The frenzied cries and shoutings of the exchange deafen the ears of our youth to the calmer "call of in