PRIMARY DEPARTMENT.

This Department is Edited by MRS. SARAH E. TARNEY-CAMPBELL, late of the State Normal School

A NUMBER LESSON-THE FIGURE REPRESENTATION FOR TEN.

When the children came in at the close of recess, those just finishing their first year found a pile of sticks upon each desk. As soon as all were quiet she turned to the class in the second year and very quickly and quietly made an assignment of busy work in number. Just before recess the class had a lesson on various relations in the number 15, and at recess the teacher had put upon the board: 5+5+5=? 15-5 ? 15-5-3=? 5+5+?=15. She now asked them to picture these problems on their slates, using pansies. She did not leave the class until every child was at work. This was her way of insuring work on the part of the school that had a study period while the other was reciting. She turned to the first-year class.

She told them to count the sticks on their desks. They did so, and answers came from a number, "I have ten sticks." She asked if they could tell her in any other way what they had, and, remembering what had been done in previous lessons, said, "I have ten ones, or ten one sticks." It was evident that her first point had been to have them think "ten ones."

She then gave each child little rubber band and asked him to put it around his sticks. She again asked what they had, and again they told her ten sticks, or ten ones, or ten one sticks. She asked them if there was no difference be tween what they had now and what they had at first. They insisted the number was the same, and, of course, the teacher admitted there was the same number of sticks now as before, but wanted to know if they saw the sticks now as they did at first. They said they did not, as now they saw them tied up, and before they saw them separately. By skillful questioning she led them to see the point clearly that they now saw them as one ten, or a ten, and before they had looked at them or thought of them as ten ones.

It was clear that the second point she wished to reach was to have them think one ten as a one thing made up of ten

ones.

The teacher then asked them what they made on their slates and on the board to stand for seven ones. One child put the figure "7" on the board. She asked what they made to stand for eight ones and nine ones. The figures "8" and "9" were placed upon the board. This was review.

She again asked how many sticks each one had, and was answered, "ten sticks" and "one ten sticks;" but she told them to think of the bundle, and not of the separate sticks. She asked how many ones they had besides the bundle of one ten. They had none. Then, telling them to be sure and remember that their bundle was a one ten, she asked for volunteers to put something upon the board to show this one ten. The fig ure "1" alone was put upon the board.

The questions were to find out how to tell when a figure “1” stands for a one (or ones) and when it stands for a ten. The children soon saw that the "1" they used to represent a ten could not be distinguished from a "1" used to represent a one. They saw the necessity for some other feature in writing numbers to distinguish the ones from the tens. They were now ready for the really advance point in the lesson.

The teacher referred again to the bundle of sticks on each desk, and again asked how many ones they had besides their bundles. They said they had no ones besides what they had put in their bundles. She then asked them to put something on the board to represent the no ones they had outside of bundles. Several children were asked who said they did not know what kind of a mark to make to stand for no ones. Finally there was one child who placed 0 upon the board. This was new to most of the class, and some time was taken in the children's representing their no ones.

As soon as

The next thing was the representation of the one ten, and to put it with the no ones to show they belong together and mean the no ones and one ten each of us has. The "1" was placed in all manner of positions around the "0." the teacher saw it was mostly guess work with them she told them that this one (10) is right. Then they saw the "1" is on the left side of the "0," or that its place to show tens is just at the left of ones. This was talked over fully and clearly, and then "10" was made by the entire class on their slates. Then each child made the "10" large and laid the bundles on the "1"

to show that the one at the left of the naught stood for the ten.

The lesson was very clearly cut, each particular point standing out prominently. There was but one advance point in the lesson, but everyone grasped that one point.

Frequently the representation for eleven (11) is taken before that for ten (10). It is probably somewhat easier to take eleven first, as no new symbol is used, the naught in the ten being new. But if the symbol for eleven were taken, the steps are really the same as those in this lesson for ten.

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE-JUNE 15.

You have heard stories of men who have done great things. We talked about John Brown, who did so much for the negro slaves, and who was finally hanged. We had the story of Abraham Lincoln, who was once President of the United States. He it was who asked for men ready to go to war and die if necessary to preserve our Union.

You remember, too, the thousands and thousands of men who answered this call, and many, many of them never came home, but were buried on Southern battlefields. It was on the 30th of May we had memorial exercises in their honor.

But there are other ways of serving one's country than by being President or by shouldering a gun and marching to war against its enemies, and I am going to tell you of one of these to-day.

When Abraham Lincoln was a little boy, living in Kentucky, a little baby girl came to bless the home of Mr. and Mrs. Beecher in Connecticut, and they called her Harriet. Harriet's home had more comforts and was much more pleasant than was the Lincoln cabin in Kentucky. Harriet was so much like all other children that there is very little said about her. She played the same games and went to the same schools the other children attended. Really, if you were to go to the old schoolhouse where Harriet went, you would think you could not possibly sit on those benches without backs and so high your feet could not touch the floor. The old log house and great fireplace and small windows did not look very much like the pleasant room we are in to-day. Har

riet always went to church; I suppose she liked to go, and then her father himself was the minister.

When Harriet was a little girl very little was said about slavery. People thought nothing could be done with it, and there was no use thinking and worrying over it. Quite a good many people thought it was wrong, but there were so many more who did not think about it at all or who thought it was right that it really did seem as if there should always be slavery in the Southern States. Harriet's parents were among the few people who thought slavery was wrong.

When she became a woman she made what then seemed a very long journey out "West." She went to Cincinnati, (). Cincinnati is just across the Ohio river from Kentucky, and there were a great many people in Kentucky at that time who kept slaves, so Harriet continually saw more or less of slaves and slave masters. She visited friends in Kentucky, and there she saw how they lived and worked, how they amused themselves, and how dreadfully they were punished by their masters when they wished to do so.

Years went by and Harriet married a gentleman in Cincinnati by the name of Stowe. All these years slaves were escaping from masters in the South and going North to Canada, where they could be free. Very many of them went through Ohio, and Harriet, now Mrs. Stowe, often kept them over night, gave them food, clothing and money to help them on their way. There was a law passed in Ohio that said that anyone who did this for a slave could be arrested, put in jail and fined. But Mrs. Stowe and her husband continued to help them anyway.

About this time Mrs. Stowe (we will not call her Harriet any longer) took a trip down the river on a boat on which some slave traders had negroes. There was one young colored woman who was sold to work on a plantation in Louisiana. She had with her her little ten months' old baby boy. She did not know she was going so far South, but had been told she was going a few miles only to work with her husband. When she found that she and her baby might never see her husband again she cried as if her heart would break, and it was only the threat of the slave trader that finally made her stop. In an hour or two the trader came back to her and

told her he had sold her baby, and in the morning she would have to give him up. But in the morning neither woman nor baby could be found on the boat, and one old colored slave said he was wakened in the night by a woman with a baby walking past him. He saw her go to the edge of the boat and jump over. He heard the fall into the water, and that was all.

Mrs. Stowe never forgot the incident, and she could never speak of it without tears. She saw many such things as these, and her husband and brother at midnight hitched up their horses and helped a poor negro woman and little boy to reach a place of safety, as her master was after her to take her back.

Many people thought very little of all these occurrences, or only shook their heads and said they could not be helped. About this time a man in Cincinnati started to print a paper showing how wrong all these things were. One night his office was broken into, the printing presses destroyed and the type thrown into the river. The people said it would offend their friends in the South to say harsh things about the system of slavery, so nothing must be said.

Finally Mrs. Stowe moved back East, and all the dreadful things she knew and had seen she could not forget. But it was several years before she did anything. She had several children, one a little baby, and what do you think she could do? The gentleman who had had his printing presses and type destroyed in Cincinnati went to Washington, and was there conducting a paper against slavery. Mrs. Stowe wrote him that she thought of writing a story of slavery, telling the dreadful things she knew about it. He asked her to allow him to print it in his paper, which she did. The story was a long one, and ran through a great many papers. called "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

It was

Then a man who made books asked to put the whole story into a book. This was done, and within three years three hundred thousand were sold. Then it was translated into a great many languages, and has been sold in all parts of the world.

The story is a very, very long one, and I cannot tell it to you But Uncle Tom was a slave-a faithful, honest, relig

now.