in the township. Valuable improvements are being made on the school buildings of Grove City and Clarkesville.

NORTHAMPTON-Supt. Hoch: There is a marked improvement noticeable in the several respects of sanitary arrangements, planting of trees, fences around grounds, etc. The Directors of Bangor have made great improvements in their school grounds. Pen Argyl is erecting a four room building, which will be one of the finest in the county.

NORTHUMBERLAND-Supt. Bloom: In Northumberland the school term has been increased to ten months, and two teachers added to the corps. The high school room has been furnished with new single desks. The sanitary con. dition of the building has also received attention. In Mt. Carmel township a two room building was erected during vacation and occupied at the beginning of the term. The rooms are com. modious and well-furnished. In Coal township two large rooms have been added to the Springfield building. These rooms will also be furnished with patent furniture, single desks, and the necessary appliances. Both are neat, sub. stantial buildings, and reflect credit upon the community and members of the several boards. In Mt. Carmel boro' a number of changes have been made in classification. As a result, the primary grades are not crowded and teachers have greater opportunities for the accomplishment of good results. All text-books, slates, etc., used in the first, second, and third grades, are now furnished by the board; and all text-books in branches added to the course during the last two years. In Point township the term has been lengthened to eight months. The schools have been in session about six weeks, and the enrollment and average attendance is nearly equal to that of the winter months of last year. The attendance of the schools visited to date and the character of the work done by the teacher, with few exceptions, are very encouraging.

PERRY-Supt. Aumiller: Three townshipsToboyne. Rye and Penn-have increased the school term, Greenwood district purchased the "Caxton School Charts." A new school has been organized in Duncannon; it is held in one of the rooms of the Odd Fellows' Building. The Newport school building will henceforth be heated by steam; the boiler and radiators cost a considerable sum of money but there will be a saving in the end. A dead-lock in the New Buffalo Boro' Board has thus far (Oct. 1st) prevented the election of a teacher. From present indications I think "Columbus Day" will be very generally observed. Preparations therefor are now being made in many schools. I issued a circular intended to stimuulate teachers in the matter.

SNYDER-Supt. Herman: West Perry furnished its four houses with patent furniture; and Penn, Franklin, West Beaver and Adams, one each. Perry furnishes free text-books. A course of study is about to be introduced into all the schools of the county.

TIOGA-Supt. Raesly: On Saturday, Oct. 1st, the teachers of Charleston, Delmar and Wellsboro held their first Local Institute for the pres

ent school year in the High School building at Wellsboro. About eighty teachers and direc. tors were in attendance. The exercises were unusually interesting. Instruction was given by ex Co. Supt. M. F. Cass, of Elkland, Prof. A. F. Stauffer, of Wellsboro, and the County Superintendent. Owing to the prevalence of diphtheria in some localities, several of the graded schools were unable to begin at the appointed time, although, with the exception of the Antrim schools, they are now all in session. The graded schools generally, and many of the ungraded schools, will celebrate "Columbus Day." During the summer about 200 dictionaries were placed in the schools of the county, In most of the districts the term has been increased, yet, with only a few notable exceptions, there has not been a corresponding increase in salaries.

BETHLEHEM-Supt. Farquhar: The average enrollment of pupils during September for each teacher was thirty seven. The two most important events of the month were, first, the laying of the corner stone of the Helen Stadiger Borhek Memorial Chapel of the Moravian Col. lege and Theological Seminary; and second, the dedication of Comenius Hall, the main building of the same College and Seminary. On the latter occasion, President E. D. War. field, of Lafayette College, delivered a scholarly address on "The Continuity of Truth."

The

BRISTOL-Supt. Booz: The outlook for the year is favorable. Preparations are being made for the observance of Columbus Day. official programme will be used, followed by reading by pupils and addresses by citizens.

Our

CHAMBERSBURG-Supt. Hockenberry: We enter upon the work of another year with bright prospects of more than ordinary success. corps of thirty-four teachers is above the average in successful teaching experience, while our twelve directors give special attention to all the duties of their office. About $2,000 was spent in repairs and new furniture for one of our buildings.

CHESTER-Supt. Foster: The national flag floats over all the school buildings of the city. The children collected funds for the purchase of flags, the School Board furnished the poles.

COLUMBIA - Supt. Hoffman: Our schools opened September 1st, with the largest enrollment in the history of the town. A new school of the secondary grade has been organized. Quite elaborate arrangements are being made for the celebration of Columbus Day,

HAZLE TWP. (Luzerne Co.)— Supt. Jones: Our school board appointed Miss Maggie Lawlor, of Shenandoah, special teacher in music. She will give a lesson of a half hour at least once a week, in each school. Grammar and Primary teachers, desiring to advance themselves, will also be given an opportunity to receive musical instruction.

HUNTINGDON-Supt. Shimmell: We made no changes in text books this summer. We introduced a few historical charts, which serve as a valuable aid in teaching the territorial development of the United States. We have abandoned the use of books in the teaching of drawing, using nothing but blank paper. Our new

teacher of drawing, Miss E. L. Rust, of Massachusetts, had an experience of six years in the public schools before she took the course in drawing, and is therefore thoroughly at home without drawing books. In the High School, Grammar and Intermediate schools, she does all the teaching herself; in the Primary and Secondary grades, one lesson a week, the teachers in charge giving three under her supervision. There is no nonsense in our course. I think it is all educational and practical.

LEBANON-Supt. Boyer: With the exception of geographies and physiologies, the text-books are furnished free. A new four-room schoolhouse is being built in the Sixth ward; it will likely be ready for occupancy before the end of the year.

LOCK HAVEN Supt. Robb: We are just completing a very fine eight room building in the Second Ward. It has all the modern improvements, and will be an ornament to the city. New slate blackboards have been put into eight school rooms. The board intends to adopt free text-books. We have this year put into the schools free geographies and grammars; next year we will have others.

MAHANOY CITY-Supt. Miller: Our schools open with two additional primary schools this year. Our buildings have been repaired and the grounds fixed up. We have put International Dictionaries into the schools.

MAHANOY TWP. (Schuylkill Co.) - Supt. Noonan: Our schools opened Sept. 12th, for a term of nine months. The Directors have wisely decided to furnish pupils with pens, lead and slate pencils, and all kinds of paper that may be needed. Fifteen copies of Webster's International Dictionary have been placed in

THE

the schools, together with one hundred copies of Eggleston's First Book in American History, two hundred Monroe's Primary Readers, and Blaisdell's Physiology for Little Folks. An order has also been placed for fifteen sets of outline maps, and other needed material. It gives me pleasure to report this progress on the part of our Directors, especially as it is the first instance of a purchase of text-books, etc., made by this district.

NEW BRIGHTON--Supt. Richey: Our Board raised the salaries of all the teachers from $4 to $10 per month; appropriated $100 for books for the library; and furnished all language books, physiologies, pens, ink, practice tablets, examination paper, language tablets, etc., free to the pupils. They have also erected one of the finest school buildings in the State. We expect to move into it during the holidays. Four members of our graduating class are now in college; one entered the Sophomore class of Western University, Allegheny, Pa.

NEW CASTLE-Supt. Bullock: The schools had been in session nine days, when the Board of Health ordered all pupils to be vaccinated, as small-pox had appeared. This led the School Board to close the schools two weeks, after which we opened again, but with poor attendance. The corps of teachers remains nearly the same as last year. Our buildings are all in first-class condition.

WEST CHESTER-Supt. Jones: The salaries of nearly all the teachers have been increased, so that the lowest is now $45 per month. Dr. J. T. Rothrock, the eminent botanist from the University of Pennsylvania, has been engaged to speak to the pupils on Arbor Day. The | schools are full, and the attendance excellent.

HE "Pennsylvania Chautauquan and Chris tian Culture" is the new name under which the October number of the official organ of the Pennsylvania Chautauqua, which heretofore was Christian Culture, comes upon our table. Besides a new name it also has taken upon itself a new form, being a handsome quarto of thirty-two pages, every one of which is filled with interesting reading matter. Henceforth it is to be a magazine "devoted to the interests of higher popular education," and as such, of course, will appeal especially to the teachers of the State. In the number before us there is given the prospectus of the correspondence work that is to be carried on in the Collegiate Department of the Chautauqua. Six courses are outlined, each consisting of not less than ten branches of study. Persons may take up any number of branches, at a cost of only $2.00 per quarter for each branch. Any one can thus take a very complete and thorough course of study in English Literature, or in the Theory and History of Art and Music, studying under the direction of specialists in each branch, at a nominal cost and without leaving home. It is

a plan which we believe will commend itself heartily to teachers, who are always on the alert for means of self-improvement.

In its book department, we notice, it highly commends a volume to which we also would call attention, and which we see noticed in many papers, namely, the fourth volume of selections from the Journal of that eccentric genius, Henry D. Thoreau. The volume is entitled Autumn, and is uniform with the rest of the same author's works published by Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston. We have on several occasions spoken of Thoreau as one of the freshest and most stimulating of writers. He was the pioneer of that popular class of writers who have sprung up in recent years, the head of whom to-day probably is John Burroughs. For freshness, originality, and nearness to nature's heart, however, none of them has yet approached this master of them all. The present volume is full of the very atmosphere of autumn, its varying moods, its very life and soul. It is as invigorating as a walk in the fall woods. Appearing almost simultaneously with it, and from the same press, is another

book of the same general class, Prof. Bradford Torrey's The Footpath Way. This is a bird book, such an one as only Prof. Torrey or Mrs. Olive Thorne Miller can write, not a dry treatise on ornithology by any means, but a lively book about living birds, dealing not with their anatomy and physiology, but with their ways of living, their house keeping, their courting, nestbuilding, rearing of their young, and doing so in a manner so entertaining and charming that by the time we are through with the book we know more about birds than any ornithology published would have given us, and yet we have only been reading for entertainment! It is just such books as this one that our young people ought to be induced to read, and that should be on the shelves of all our school libraries.

*

It was a stroke of genius, almost, that impelled the compiler of The Schoolmaster in Literature to give us such a volume as the one just issued under that title from the press of the American Book Company. And it was rare good fortune that secured Dr. Eggleston to write the introduction to it; for it alone is worth the price of the volume. As to the contents and purpose of the volume itself, we can do no better than quote Dr. Eggleston's own words: "If the delight of the intelligent reader were the only purpose in view, hardly anything could be better than such a compilation as the present one, showing the part played by the schoolmaster in the literature of diverse ages and of different nations. * * * * Here we have the schoolmaster under many lights, and literature in widely varying moods. As a means of cultivating a taste for literature and a discriminating taste in literature, I know of no better collection than this, particularly for the use of teachers, whose relish is certain to be quickened by professional interest in the subject." But that is not all. The volume is full of instruction. It may almost be called a comparative study of the science of teaching from concrete examples. For it brings before us no less than twenty one specimens of the genus Schoolmaster as depicted by the pens of the representarive literary masters of the ceturies, from old Roger Ascham in the XVI century to D'Arcy Thompson in the XIX century. It is a wonderful array; but all the more conspicuous on that account is the absence of the name of one of the greatest teachers of them all, John Amos Comenius. Hamlet with the great Dane omitted!

Rightly or wrongly, the acceptability or nonacceptability of the philsophy of Evolution has, to the general reader, seemed to depend upon the ethical part of it. He has, therefore, been patiently waiting for the appearance of those volumes of Mr. Spencer's "Synthetic Philosophy," which should treat of this part. About a year ago one part of the second volume of The Principles of Ethics appeared, entitled "Justice." And now, in spite of the author's impaired health, he has succeeded in finishing Vol. I of his Ethics, which has just been pub. lished by Messrs. D. Appleton & Co., of New York. And yet it would scarcely be fair to jud ge his ethical system as a whole from this part of it; for Mr. Spencer truly says in his

preface: "The divisions at present rublished will leave, on nearly all minds, a very erroneous impression respecting the general tone of evolutionary ethics. In its full scope, the moral system to be set forth unites sternness with kindness; but thus far attention has been drawn almost wholly to the sternness. Extreme misapprehensions and gross misstatements have hence resulted Nevertheless, the volume is one every student of philosophy should have; and one, moreover, that will well repay careful study, whether one agree with it or not. We sincerely hope the heroic author will soon be able to finish the second volume of his Ethics, and the remaining volume of his Sociology, which will complete the most all-embracing system of philosophy ever wrought out by the mind of man, and in some respects the most influential and important work of the nineteenth century.

In her way Mrs. Kate Douglas Wiggin is a philosopher, too, and one whose philosophy we should like to see put into practice by teachers and parents, especially that part of it at least which relates to the training and government of children, as she has charmingly set it forth in her latest volume, under the title of Children's Rights, published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston. In all her writings Mrs. Wiggin has really written fully as much for grown people as for children, though ostensibly addressing only the latter; but in this volume she writes directly to and for parents, and all others having the training of children, especially little children. There are two chapters that we should especially like to put into the hands of all teachers and school directors, namely, the ones on "The Relation of the Kindergarten to the Public School," and on "Other People's Children." The entire volume is an admirable one, and written with all the grace and freshness which characterize all her work.

Another volume, from the same publishers, which has greatly interested us is An American Missionary in Japan, by the Rev. M. L. Gordon, M. D. It gives an account by one of the actors of that wonderful regeneration that has been going on in Japan since the introduction of Christianity, and really is an account of the progress of Christianity in that country from the beginning.

Lovers of historical romance will be glad to know that Mr. Edwin Lassetter Bynner, the author of Agnes Surriage, and The Begum's Daughter, has written another novel dealing with one of the most interesting periods of American history. Zachary Phips introduces us to some very interesting details of the Blennerhasset conspiracy, and the War of 1812, and makes us personally acquainted with men like Jackson, Aaron Burr, Mr. and Mrs. Blennerhasset, Capt. Isaac Hull, and other prominent actors in those stirring times. It is well written, and seems to be historically accurate.

page is sheet music size and the music well printed. Price, 60 cents. Address F. Trifet, Boston, Mass., for this valuable book.

CATHCART'S LITERARY READER: A Manual of English Literature. By Geo. R. Cathcart, with portraits. New York: American Book Co. 12mo., PP. 541. Price $1.15.

A very excellent manual, containing a number of improvements over the former edition of the same work, among the rest an introductory chapter of Definitions and Outline of Study, a general revision, and numerous additions. The selections from the writings of the leading authors from the earliest period to the present are judiciously made, and are introduced by brief biographical sketches of the various authors. We have again and again insisted that reading should be a literary exercise, and this end is attained by the use of such a book as this. If we had any fault to find, it would be that it is too compre. hensive too many authors are included to do justice to the few greatest and best.

TREES OF THE NORTHERN UNITED States: Their Study, Description and Determination. For the use of Schools and Private Students. By Austin C. Apgar, New York: American Book Co., 12mo. pp. 224, $1.00.

This is not a botanical text book, nor is it meant as a substitute for one; but can very advantageously be used in connection with one, as supplementary to it. At the same time, it can be used quite independently. It does not presuppose any acquaintance with the science of Botany. We believe that its use in our schools would do more than almost anything else to further the cause of Arbor Day, and Forestry in general, making the scholars personally acquainted, as it were, with our trees, and so giving them a more di rect interest in their care and culture. Its instructions for the proper study, accurate description, and determination of trees are practical, and of a nature to interest the student in the work. At the same time they will be found to be a great help in the training of the powers of criginal observation. We commend the book to our teachers.

THE SLOYD SYSTEM OF WOOD WORKING By B. B. Hoffman, New York: American Book Co., 12m0, pp. 242, $1.00.

Working in wood is so pleasant an occupation, and admits of the exercise of so much ingenuity and originality, that we do not wonder at its growing popularity. The chief danger seems to be now that it may degenerate into a mere "fad." This can perhaps in no way be better avoided than by teaching it systematically and scientifically. And it is conceded that there is no better system than the one so clearly explained and taught in this little volume. Its chief use and end, however, is the training of the senses to accurate observation, and of the eye and hand to prompt, deft, and skillful co-operation. Besides fully describing the Sloyd system, the volume also gives a brief historical sketch of the manual idea.

WALTER GRAHAM, STATESMAN. An American Ro mance. By homas Whitsou. 12m0 Pp. 602. Lancaster, Pa.: Fulton Publishing Company.

"To the young people of my country who are anxious to know something of the true inwardness of the historic period through which their parents have lived; and who are willing to examine, to some extent, the details of the great political system which makes up our government.—as well as to all those who will study facts only when they are labelled

fiction," these are the words of dedication with which the author introduces his book to the reader, and they fairly represent both his story and its purpose. It is a plain, unvarnished tale, without display of rhetoric, that will be enjoved in very many quiet homes where much of the life it depicts is not unfamiliar. It deals also with the experiences of political life, with the era of the civil war, and with that period of uncertainty, political struggle and excitement which preceded the outbreak of the rebellion, thus making it a historical novel of unusual interest, which merits a place among the books read at home and by the more advanced pupils in the schools. We commend it to teachers and all interested in the history of the times which it describes.

HIGH SCHOOL ALGFBRA, Embracing a Complete Course for High Schools and Academies. By Wm. J. Milne. New York: American Book Co. 12mo, pp. 376. $1.00.

We need not dwell upon the excellencies of this work. Many teac ers of Algebra are acquainted with the same author's "Inductive Algebra;" and this is virtually the same, with numerous important additions and improvements. It, therefore, has all the features that serve to make the latter such a favorite, and a number of new ones in addition, which will, if anything, increase its usefulness and popularity.

SIX BOOKS OF THE NEID OF Virgil. By Wm. R. Harper and Frank J. Miller. Nw York: American Buk Co. 12mo, ph. 461. $1.25.

An excellent text-book of Virgil, critic lly edited, judiciously elucidated in Notes that are not too full and yet truly helpful, especially with the unusually good maps and fine illustrations. The introduction fully explains the Inductive Method of studying Virgil, which is essentially the same as that for which Dr. Harper's Hebrew and Greek text books have be come so famous. It is truly astonishing what results can be accomplished, and in how short a time, by this method. The historical and critical introduction is exceedingly full and valuable.

OF ETIQUETTE: An Answer to the Fiddle. When? Where? How? By Agnes H. Morton. Philadel phia: Penn Publishing Co. 18mo. pp. 203. For those who care to study the intricacies of social etiquette, this pretty little volume will be a welcome addition to the literature of the subject. We are happy to say that it is a good deal more sen. sible than most books of this class.

THE BEGINNER'S AMERICAN HISTORY. By D. H. Montgomery. Boston: Ginn & Co. 12mo., pp. 234. Illustrated.

An admirable little volume designed to be introductory to the author's popular "Leading Facts of American History;" it treats the subject biographically, as it were, making some prominent historical character the centre of the narrative of each chapter's events.

METHODS OF INSTRUCTION AND ORGANIZATION OF THE SCHOOLS OF GERMANY. For the Use of American Teachers and Normal Schools.

By

John T. Frince. Boston: Lee & Shepard. 12mo., pp. 237.

This book gives such a general idea of the organ. ization of the schools of Germany, and of their general working, as will certainly be helpful and sug gestive to the teachers of this country, who are not yet beyond learning from the work of others. Aside from its instruction, the book is an interesting one.