social life is well known. The duty of the schools to increase the sources of happiness by developing a taste for good literature, is not so well understood. Teach a man to read, and you widen his horizon and his aspirations. He sees new phases of life, and longs to realize them for himself and his family. If his reading fixes his eye upon luxuries which cannot be purchased with his earnings, he will grow dissatisfied, and the discontent may ripen into strikes and mob violence. The ability to read, instead of producing this result, should increase the sum of human happiness, by multiplying the possible sources of enjoyment. The application of steam to the printing press has brought the great dailies within the reach of everybody's purse, and has cheapened the works of standard authors to such an extent that a choice collection of classic authors is possible in every home. He who reads may associate with men of wit and genius, when these are at their best, and may choose his company from the authors of every age and clime. Here the rich man has no vantage ground over the tiller of the soil or the toiler with the hand. More expensive binding the former may have; of the real essence of the book he can enjoy no more than any other intelligent reader. Indeed, in one respect, the man who eats his bread in the sweet of his brow, has the advantage over those engaged in a profession. The lawyer, the physician, the clergyman, exhaust their mental energy in professional duties; when evening comes they must seek rest and recreation in physical exertion, in a change of occupation. The laborer, on the other hand, can find rest and an agreeable change at the close of the day in literary pursuits, in the study of art or of some branch of science. Whilst our colleges are training a generation that grows wild with delight over football and other athletic sports, that, too often, talks and thinks of nothing except the heroes and the vicissitudes of the last game, the public schools, by their improved methods of teaching reading, are striving to educate a younger generation of boys and girls whose taste for good literature, and knowledge of good books, will bring the future toilers of the land to the front in point of culture, and yield them sources of enjoyment more enduring than the luxuries by which the idle rich now seek to dispel their ennui.

The schools are subject to the law of

| historical development. As the world's life changes and advances they must change and advance. Things that are merits in one age become defects in the next. "There can be no doubt," says Phillips Brooks, that many studies have been introduced legitimately, for reasons which were temporary, and then have remained like ghosts haunting our schools, long after their living necessity had died away." It is the part of wisdom to view, with single eye, the defects that should be abolished in order that progress may be made. On the other hand, it were pessimistic folly to ignore the encouraging outlook for the future. When the first appropriation ($75,000). for free schools was made, a debt of over twenty-three millions rested upon the Commonwealth. Not a few predicted "bankrupcy from this new form of extravagance. The debt has been paid; the expenses of a great war have been met; the annual appropriation has been raised to five and a half millions. That due for the year ending June 5th was almost paid on November 1, and the State Treasury had deposits in the different banks amounting to over six and a half millions of dollars available to meet other obligations. Although the yearly expenditure for the public schools has reached the enormous sum of over sixteen million dollars, no sane man dreams of repudia tion or bankruptcy. The blessings of the common school system reach well-nigh every home in the State. Private and parochial schools must do very excellent work, or resign all claim upon public patronage. In Shakspeare's drama there are children except the princely lad in "King John," whose eyes are to be put out by hot irons. To-day not only is childhood in literature, but a special literature has been created to open children's eyes to the glories and advantages of their environment. An era has dawned in which everybody believes in some system of education; if not that by which he was brought up, very probably its opposite. Parents everywhere desire for their children an education superior to that which they themselves enjoyed, and are denying themselves many comforts for the attainment of this end. Moreover, a class of experts has sprung up who study educational questions with indomitable enthusiasm and with painstaking thoroughAlexander shed tears because there were no more worlds to conquer;

ness.

no

the teacher has no occasion to weep because there are no more fields to be explored, no realms remaining for future achievement. Fortunately, some things in pedagogy have been settled forever; others deserve the careful study and the thorough investigation to which they are subjected by our inquisitive age. The home and the forum, the church and the State, the poet and the sage, the reformer and the statesman, have learned to appreciate the value of childhood and the importance of education. The very air of the closing decade of the nineteenth century is redolent of progress; the outlook is full of promise; the future is radiant with hope.

NATHAN C. SCHAEFFER.
Supt. Public Instruction.

LATITUDE AND LONGITUDE.

A REVIEW IN GEOGRAPHY.

WHAT

/HAT is latitude? Meaning of the word? How is it reckoned? From what? What two kinds? How can you tell whether a place is in north or south latitude? Latitude of any place on the Equator? Latitude of any place on the Tropic of Cancer? Arctic Circle? Antarctic Circle? Tropic of Capricorn? Latitude of the North Pole? South Pole? Of a place exactly half way between the North and South Poles? What do we call this place? (Equator.) What city is situated nearly in latitude o° (Quito.) What state boundary is half way between the Equator and the North Pole? What parallel bounds it? Are there any other such instances in the United States? Latitude of a place half way between the Equator and the South Pole? Name all the large cities in Eastern and Western Hemispheres on or very near the 40th parallel of North latitude. What is the length of a degree of latitude at the Equator? (in miles.) Do the degrees of latitude vary in length? If so, why? If not, why not? Where is the longest degree of latitude? Meaning of the expression "high latitudes ?"

When a

ship is sailing away from the Equator, or as the sailors say, is "making latitude,' is it sailing along a parallel, or a meridian? What circles, then, measure latitude? What circles bound off, or separate degrees of latitude from each other? What are meridians? What are paral

lels? Name some of the most important. Give numbers of some important ones. Latitude of Boston? (Any city in child's own state.) Latitude of your town? If a ship could sail directly north from the Equator over a distance equal to 120°, in what latitude would it be? A ship was wrecked in latitude 10° south, longitude 10° west: near what land was it? Is there any place which has no latitude? How many degrees of north latitude? Of south latitude? How many altogether? What is the greatest number of degrees of latitude any two places may be from each other? Name two such places. How far apart may two places be and yet be in the same latitude? Name two such places. Where is the centre of a parallel of latitude? Why must we know both the latitude and longitude of a place in order to describe its position exactly?

What is longitude? Meaning of the word? How is it reckoned? What kinds? How do you know when a place is in east longitude? How do you know when it is in west longitude? What are meridians? Longitude is reckoned from what place? How is it reckoned? How many prime meridians? Which prime meridian is most commonly used? If the prime meridian were extended around the earth, what would the other half be named or numbered? How many meridians marked 180°? How can you tell, then, whether it is the 180th meridian of east or west longitude? Longitude of any place on the prime meridian? In what degree of longitude is the North Pole? The South Pole? Name a city situated nearly in longitude o A group of islands so situated. Name all the important cities in longitude 80 east: 70 west. (Others may be given.) Length of degree of longitude at the Equator? Do the degrees of longitude vary? If so, why? Where is the longest degree of longitude? The shortest? How long is the shortest degree of longitude? When a ship is "making longitude" is it sailing along a meridian or a parallel? What circles, then, measure longitude? What circles bound off, or separate degrees of longitude from each other? Longitude of Boston? Longitude of your own town? If a ship sails directly west from prime meridian, over a space equal to 200°, in what longitude is it? Is there any place that has no longitude? All longitudes? Where must a place be to have no latitude or longitude? Why?

How many degrees of east longitude? Of west longitude? How many degrees of longitude would one have to pass over to circumnavigate the globe? Are there as many degrees in a small as in a great circle? Explain why? Is a degree of longitude longer or shorter on the Tropic of Cancer or Equator? Why? What is the greatest number of degrees of longitude any two places may be distant from each other? How far apart may two places be and yet be in the same longitude? Where is the centre of a meridian of longitude? Use of latitude and longitude?-Fopular Educator.

LINDLEY MURRAY.

HE WAS BORN IN LANCASTER COUNTY OVER A CENTURY AGO.

THER

HERE was probably no writer for young persons more widely read, painfully studied and generally unpopular in the early part of this century than Lindley Murray, and it was the opinion of schoolboys of that time that he had conceived and written his English Grammar especially to torture them. He was regarded as a cross, obstinate and very disagreeable man. But the truth is that he was generous, affectionate and funloving, and took up the study of grammar after he had made a career in another pursuit, and one in which grammar was regarded as of small consquence-that of

a merchant. There lives in New York today a gentleman who, when he was a lad, heard some interesting anecdotes about Lindley Murray, entirely different from those which have described him as a hard grammarian.

It is generally supposed that Murray was an Englishman, but that was because he wrote his grammars in England, and they were published there. He was in fact an American, born on the banks of Swatara creek, in what was then Lancaster county, but which is now within the limits of Dauphin county, in the year 1745. Afterward his father bought a farm in what was then the suburbs of New York city, and gave the name to what in these later days is regarded as the most aristocratic locality in New York, Murray Hill.

Lindley Murray's father bought the farm for a few hundred dollars. One lot upon it which was recently sold for $150,

ooo was part of Mr. Murray's cow-yard. It was only fifty feet front. And on what was the Murray farm there now live men whose aggregate wealth is nearly one billion dollars.

Lindley Murray was put in a counting house when he was a boy, and he was the leader of all boyish sports. There was a creek in the lower part of New York which is now the site of a great banking house. It was then twenty-one feet wide, and Murray was the only youth who was able to make a running jump and clear that creek. But he jumped one time too many, and injured his leg so that he became lame and remained so until his death.

As he grew older he became a very good merchant, and when the Revolutionary war broke out he was worth quite a little fortune. It is said that he was not very patriotic. At all events he went to live upon a farm on Long Island, and stayed there very quietly until the war

was over.

At one time Murray thought he would like to become a lawyer, so he entered a lawyer's office and there found a young student who was a quiet and solemn-faced fellow, who did not share Murray's love of fun. Nevertheless, a close friendship sprang up between them which lasted many years, and when afterward Murray met in London the American Ambassador who had been sent to represent the young Republic, there was a most cordial greeting between them, for the Minister was none other than his old associate in the law office, and his name was John Jay.

One afternoon Lindley Murray went out to the college commons, where he heard a great meeting was to be held in behalf of the patriot cause, and was astonished to see a boy only seventeen years of age stand before that throng and deliver a powerful speech in favor of resisting King George. It seemed amazing that this little fellow, for he was very short, as well as young, was able to speak as he did. Murray made his acquaintance afterward and found him full of zeal for revolution. The two were friends for many years, and when Murray's first grammar was published he sent a copy to this young fellow, who had become famous, and wrote to him that the book was not sent because he thought his friend had need of it, but as an acknowledgment of the value which this man's writings and speeches had been to him in preparing it.

And Alexander Hamilton, for it was he, was greatly pleased to get that book.

Lindley Murray went to England not because he was disappointed with the success of Washington, but because the physicians told him that he could not live in the climate of New York. They recommended a place where the winters were not so severe nor the summers so enervating.

So he decided to settle in Yorkshire, England, and, having a comfortable fortune and plenty of time on his hands, he began to study the grammar of the English language to occupy his mind. It was this inspiration which led to the writing of his grammar, and, though school children found the book very hard to comprehend, it gave its author great fame.

The sales of his grammars were enormous, but not quite so great as were the sales of Noah Webster's spelling book, which was published about the same time. More copies of that book have been sold than of any other book published in the English language, excepting the Bible.

A curious thing happened to Mr. Murray, and that was that he gained another fortune by the sale of his books, although when he began to write them he had no idea that they would bring him any great pecuniary return, an experience the opposite of that of most persons who write books. They often expect much and get but little beyond the satisfaction of having made the book.-Lancaster Inquirer Institute Supplement.

THE GRAMMAR OF LIFE.

LON

BY BENJ. F. TAYLOR.

ONG time ago, some day this month -you and I should remember exactly -a man was born, whose name has been to the juvenile world 'a household word;' sometimes a word of terror, but now, as I remember it, a word to conjure with; to wave up scenes and forms long faded and crumbled. LINDLEY MURRAY! Did you ever hear of him? And do you not remember his little book, that like another "little book," was "bitter," and never sweet at all? And don't you recollect how firmly it was bound, Old Ironsides that it was, and what was on the fly-leaf-John, or James, or David

Somebody, "his book," and that Lochiel-like couplet:

Steal not this book, my honest friend, For fear the gallows shall be your end. And who printed it, "H & E. Phinney," and the year 1800 and something?

Shut your eyes now, and you can see every page of that old Grammar; just where the noun began, and the "verb to be," and Syntax, with its terrible code of twenty-two, exactly twenty-two rules.

And how, like quarter horses, we plunged through the moods and tenses of the verb "Love!" Who has forgotten, or who ever can forget, how it went, and we went? "I love, loved, have loved, had loved, shall or will love, shall have loved." On we darted, through the cans, and the coulds, and the mights, of the potential, and the mysterious contingencies of the subjunctive, till we rounded to on the trio of participles that brought up the rear of this marvelous cavalcade of deeds, probable and possible, present, past and future, in the great art and action of loving.

And then when we came to prepositions, how they puzzled you-how they puzzled us all! Don't you remember the definition? Right hand page, four lines from the top, just before conjunctions, on the threshold of Syntax?

Thus it ran: "Prepositions are words used to connect words, and show the relation between them;" or, to give little Joe Miller's, or some other little fellow's version, "Pep'sition word used c'nect words show 'lation 'tween 'em." Showed "relation" did they? And what relation? Blood relation or relation by marriage? And so we puzzled and pondered, and passed it over, and learned "the list," that went like a flock of sheep over a wall, "of, to, for, by, with,

in."

And who has forgotten those queer contrivances of conjunctions, that connected and didn't connect; and what a God-send the interjection was, in the midst of the fog, with its oh! ah! and alas! Often had we employed it, we understood, felt, appreciated it.

Then the wonderful process they called "Parsing"-wonder if they do it yet? when we used to take couplets from the prince of English rhyme, and, a row of little cannibals that we were, there we stood beneath the unwinking optics of our teacher, and "transposed," alias mutilated, "paraphrased," alias butch

ered, and everything but devoured, his immortal lines! Do you not recollect how we disposed of

In spite of pride, in erring reason's spite, One truth is clear-whatever is, is right? After much science and little sense, the light used to burst upon our bedazzled intellects, about once a winter, that Pope meant to say, and did say, "whatever is right, is right!" Do they dream in the grave? Does the bard sleep peaceful yet?

And where's the boy that sat next, in the grammar class? And the brighteyed girl, that used to whisper the answer so softly to us, and save our juvenile palms many an acquaintance with the oaken ferule-where is she? Does she whisper hope and happiness to anybody still? Are her eyes as bright, and her steps as light as of old? Or has Death, that great bailiff, closed her eyes and set a seal upon her lips? Who knows? Who can tell?

as

And the old schoolmaster, gray long ago as we can remember "-gray before that-does he teach Grammar still? Is his step as firm, and his eye as steellike gray as it was wont to be then?

And the ancient schoolma'am, old Miss E., who lived in the yellow house next to the village green, and taught us spelling and etymology; she too is conjured up by the spell of "Old Murray," and we see her looking over those spec

tacles, as she used to do when she meant to be "awful." One day she "put out" celibacy, and though 'twas the name of her lonely state-poor old lady!--that circumstance didn't let her into the pronunciation, and "sillybossy," for so she gave it, threw the class into convulsions. Great was her wrath on that memorable day. Two of us were imprisoned beneath the stairs; two were sentenced to stand upon one foot, one held in extended hand Walker's Dictionary-decidedly a great work was that dictionary; and a lad who was desperately "afraid of the girls, was set between a bouncing brace of them. But it wouldn't do. "Sillybossy" would not down, and smothered sounds, chokings, outright laughter, broke forth from every corner, around the perplexed and angry schoolma'am.

Years have fled; the tenant of the old yellow house is doubtless borne away, and "the places that once knew her shall know her no more for ever."

So much for "Old Murray" and the memories it has awakened; and beauti

fied by time, I can almost wish myself back again, in the midst of the days when Murray was a terror, and his pages a mystery.

But why didn't "the master" hint, sometimes, that we should never be done with the tenses until we were done with time? That the world is full of them? That the world is made of them? That for the sturdy, iron present tense, full of facts and figures, knocks and knowledge, we must look among the men in middlelife-the diggers and workers of the world; the men who, of all others, have discovered, for the very first time, at forty or forty-five, that the present tense is now; that in the shop, the store, the warehouse, the field-on docks and decks, the real living present reigns supreme? That, for the bright golden, joyous future-full of the tones of silver bells and beating hearts, merry tongues and merry feet, you must look in our swarming schools, peep beneath little soft blankets in cradles at firesides, or examine small bundles of white dimity? That we should find the future astride of a rocking-horse, lullabying a wax baby, flying kites, trundling hoops, or blowing pennywhistles? Why didn't he tell us or did he leave that for the poets?—that they who wear the silver livery of Time; that linger trembingly amid the din and jar of life; whose voices, like a falling fountain, are not musical as of old; that they are the melancholy past?

Why didn't he teach us--or did he leave that for the preachers?-that "cold obstruction" claims all times for its own:

glowing action, the present; hope, the future; and memory, the past?

"One pluperfect!" Ah! we have had that to unlearn since. "One future!" Who does not thank God that, in this world of ours, there are a myriad?

"I shall be," and "I might have been!" The former the music of youth, sweet as the sound of silver bells, fresh as

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn; the latter, the plaint of age, the dirge of hope, the inscription for a tomb. The one trembles upon thin, pale lips, parched with "life's fitful fever;" the other swells from strong, young hearts, hearts, to lips rounded and dewy, with the sweetness of hope and the fullness of strength. The one is timed by a heart that flutters, intermits, flutters and wears out; while that of the other beats right on, in the bold, stern march of life.