longer narrations and more quickly spoken, but nothing could suppress the delighted eagerness of all the little sixyear-olds to have a new story read to them, all stretching out their hands. and waving them with excitement at the teacher's bare suggestion; and the keen joyous look of the faces as they listened to the reading and then to the narration was a pleasure to see.

Let us take a few of the answers by the younger children. A boy of nine thus describes a journey from an English port:

Let us get on a ship at Liverpool. The ship has for days been getting ready. Stowed away are coal, merchandise, luggage, and, lastly, the mail-bags. Gangways are pulled in, steam is up, we are ready to start. Amid shouts we are gliding away. We stop at Queenstown in Ireland. Then we steam across the Atlantic soon we feel a change in the weather, we are nearing the coast of Newfoundland, all about here we see many boats.

Another boy of seven describes how Ulysses discovered Achilles when he was in hiding dressed as a girl:

Ulysses had a plan how to find out Achilles. He blackened his eyebrows and blackened his beard and made himself look like a Phoenician merchant. He went into the courtyard of King Lycomedes with his pack on his back; when the children heard him coming they ran out and watched him undo his pack. Some got a blouse, others a bracelet, and another a frock, and at the bottom lay a sword, and Achilles said, 'This is for me.' Then Ulysses said, 'You are Achilles.'

Note, please, that some weeks had elapsed since he had had this read to him.

The youngest children dictate most of their answers, but here is one written in copy-book round-hand by a little fellow of six, describing an Arab tent:

When the Arab makes his tent he divides it into two parts, it is made of a lot of poles. They put a woolen carpet down the middle. One part is for the women and the other

William the Red or William Rufus was the son of William the Conqueror, who left him the crown of England. The Norman Barons did not want William, they would rather have had Robert, because they thought he would let them do as they liked. The English people liked William best, because he had lived in England ever since he was a little boy of six, and he could talk English. He promised them more liberty and that he would not let the Norman Barons oppress them if they would fight for him. He forgot all about his promises when he had won the battle. He was not a good king, and nobody was sorry when he died. He was killed when he was hunting in the New Forest. Walter Tyrrel ran away, so some people said he had killed the king.

My next is the description by a little boy of eight of a Burne-Jones picture:

King Cophetua has fallen in love with a beggar maiden and he has put her on the throne, although she is only sitting on the edge. [If you know the picture you will know what a genuine touch that is.] She looks very beautiful. King Cophetua sits down below on a step so that he can look up at her beautiful face. She has a ragged and old dress on, at the back there is a window and you can see the city. On a balcony there are two childern looking at a book.

The following is by a girl of twelve at another of the Bradford schools (for the answers I am reading to you are from five of the eight different schools I have visited, all in the Bradford area):

our

My favorite scene from As You Like It. Duke Frederick speaks and says to Rosalind, 'Mistress, dispatch you from Court,' 'Me, uncle?' 'You, cousin.' 'If in ten days you are not twenty miles from our Court you diest for it.' 'My liege, hear me speak.' It was Celia who spoke to her father, the Duke. 'Rosalind and I have played, learned, and rose together, but when I was young I did not value her as much as I do now.' 'Celia, she robs you of your name.' 'Well, if she does, we shall not part; if Rosalind is banished pronounce that word on me, my liege.' 'Rosalind, get you away from our Court.' Rosalind speaks and says, 'What misdeeds have I done?' 'You are your father's daughter, there's enough.' Then Duke Frederick goes out. Rosalind says, 'Whither shall we go?' 'Into the Forest of Arden, to seek your father.' 'What perils may befall us there.' 'My father will have to seek another heir, for I shall be with you.' Rosalind says, 'Let me be dressed as a man.' 'Very well,' said Celia. 'What shall I be called? Nothing but Ganymede, and what will you be called?' 'Aliena shall I be called.' 'Well, our names are settled. Shall we not try to steal the Clown out of your father's Court, he will accompany us on the way.' 'He will go the wide world with me,' said Celia. 'Let us get our jewels together and go.' Celia and Rosalind then get ready to go on their journey.

One great and beneficent feature of these schools I am speaking of is, that there is never anywhere, from top to bottom of the school, any sense of boredom or feeling that any kind of work is drudgery: the thousands of pages which the older children devour in a year are read by them quietly in school; that is their education, and they thus teach themselves, for the books, chosen carefully for each subject, are, as one of the head teachers puts it, 'the source of the children's information, and by means of them they are trained to read

and think for themselves, the teacher's work being to test their grasp of what they have read, to explain where explanation is needed, to encourage, inspire, and keep up enthusiasm, to help the weaker ones and keep an eye on the lazy ones and answer questions on the work in hand.' From this it is evident that quite a large class can be handled with ease. One of the teachers assured me that a class of forty-five did not present the slightest difficulty.

That the education which children receive by Miss Mason's method is an extraordinarily good one will be admitted by all who know it, and I claim that the discovery of the fact that the child mind, of whatever class in life, is not only capable of receiving, but delights in receiving from the earliest years an enormous quantity of food of the best kind, and is well able to assimilate it, is a discovery which for farreaching effects may well take rank with Marconi's marvelous discovery of wireless telegraphy. In each case the power was there all the time, had men only known it.

If asked to sum up the results which are claimed for this method, we should say that they are, first of all, an improved school attendance, the children are so anxious not to miss the chance of some new knowledge; also, a lifting of the tone of the school, and a multiplication of interests for the children, to whom it opens so many doors, a greatly increased intelligence, a power of close attention, a command of language, and a facility in expressing their thoughts.

The habit of absolute attention, which the method of reading or giving an explanation only once soon sets up, is useful in all departments of life, and the cultivated mind power or intelligence shows itself in the ability to carry out instructions with precision in work of every kind. Also, I think that too

much stress can hardly be laid on the undoubted fact that the children are able to, and do, form high ideals of character and conduct drawn from the literature on which they have been nourished. And it was a most satisfactory thing to hear the unanimous opinion of all the teachers, that great and rapid progress was being made in every way; and they all said that they would none of them go back to the old method on any consideration whatever. Indeed, it was obvious, as one of the head teachers expressed it, that by this method, 'children of twelve will have read many good books, and, when left at school till fourteen, will be far in advance of the children in other elementary schools, and will have read a mass of good literature which will enable them to live clean, useful, and intelligent lives after school.' That I look on as real education. For the child taught on this system, as Mrs. John Buchan happily puts it in the October number of the Parents' Review, 1917, 'starts life with a ready-made library of good books and a love of reading them, which is like wearing chain armor against the vicissitudes of life.'

I must not omit to mention that the objection which is generally made to the introduction of the new method is the expense of the books. On this subject Miss Mason says that the initial cost, £20, for 150 pupils, is but 2s. 6d. a head. The cost was found at Bradford to be the highest in the first year, but less during the next three, so that over a period of four years the average cost per annum will probably be below the present annual allowance of 28. 3d. for books in most Council Schools. The children buy the cheap but wellprinted editions of Shakespeare's plays and the poets for twopence and threepence, and also the fifteen-penny edition of the Waverley Novels for their The Cornhill Magazine

own; and the head teacher at one of the schools stated that the boys in the lower form, who were using the new method, bought five times as many books to take home as the boys in the upper form who were taught on the old method. More than a hundred boys bought a copy of As You Like It, and several bought Guy Mannering.

The Education Director's report on five schools in Gloucestershire, which only began the method last year, says that 'it was quite plain that the children had plunged into the wealth of books with a whole-hearted enjoyment'; and the 'girls of eleven had so gained in command of words and facility of expression that they were writing three or four times as much as they would have done before the change, and were using a vocabulary which they never would have used at all.' He adds, 'I was greatly impressed by what I saw.' Not only in Yorkshire, then, is the method promising splendid results.

You will have noticed that I have said nothing about punishments. It is one of the best features of the Montessori method that punishment is no part of the child's education. Should a child be particularly tiresome, the plan, as I understood it, was to put that tiresome child in the corner, and tell it that it was not quite well, but that if it kept quiet, it would soon be better. The child soon says, 'I am quite well now,' and comes out of the corner. Under Miss Mason's method, with the keen pleasure which the children take in their lessons, you can see that there will be little need of punishment; and as the examinations are used for tests, and not for class-lists, we get back to the dictum of the old Chinaman, a follower of Confucius, who, writing in the fifth century B.C., declared that 'rewards and punishments are the lowest form of education.'

I

It was nearly midnight by the clock, but it was still broad daylight, and if there had been no clouds and no hills to the northward, the sun would have still been visible skimming along the top of the horizon. The 'white nights,' as the Russians call them, are not conducive to sleep, although in the mornings the inclination is more marked. Anyhow, there was no apparent intention of going to bed displayed by the small group of officers who were sitting in a circle round a fire in the wardroom of one of H.M. ships: they were discussing what appeared to them at the time a most important question.

They were all dressed in naval uniform, representatives of various ranks, from a commander to a clerk; but if the same group had been assembled in July, 1914, very few would have been in uniform. One had returned post haste from a farm in British Columbia, one had been a land agent in England, one had come from the gold mines in South Africa, several had been officers in various lines of Steamship Companies, and the Law and the Joint Stock Banks had supplied one or two of the others with a means of livelihood.

The conversation had rather drifted away from the point under discussion, tending to become frivolous, and the Commander was beginning to look rather harassed and worried.

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'It's all very well for you fellows to joke about it,' he said, "but I wish to Heaven you would pull yourselves together and help me to make out some answer to this telegram. I got it yesterday morning, and it's high time I sent an answer. Several of you are supposed to be agricultural experts, and I don't believe you know the first thing about it, or, if you do, you conceal it wonderfully well.'

'I've rather forgotten what the telegram said,' remarked the Canadian. 'Read it out again, Clerk, and we'll try and help to make up some sort of a reply; but I wish to repeat once more that I know nothing about either sheep or cattle

'I thought you owned a farm in B. C.' said one of the younger members of the R.N.R. in rather a surprised voice.

'Perhaps I do, but that does n't say that I farm it. Maybe I was keeping it to sell to some young idiot from England who knew less about farming than I did.' And the Canadian looked rather pointedly at the last speaker.

'I'll read out the telegram,' said the Clerk. He took up the paper lying by his side and read as follows: 'From the Admiralty, dated two days ago. My Number so-and-so.

'Report by telegram whether there is suitable accommodation for pasturing livestock at Forsakenskie for the use of H.M. ships during the summer months. State whether sheep or cattle, or both, should be

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sent, and in what numbers, and whether hay can be purchased locally.'

'Surely we ought to be able to make up an answer to that,' said the land agent, and I call it a very reasonable and sensible telegram to get from their lordships: shows how we're progressing as a nation when the Admiralty know that cattle eat hay without first referring to the Board of Agriculture.'

"The Admiralty are pretty hot stuff in these days,' remarked the Chief. 'I suppose you heard about their threeword telegram to the poor old Nonesuch last winter, when they had opened about their last case of provisions, and telegraphed to say they had run out of fresh water altogether, and had n't enough coal left to distill?'

'No, what was that, Chief?' said several voices.

The answer was, 'Snow will melt.' 'I wish to goodness you would n't start these interruptions, Chief,' said the Commander irritably; we shall never get on. Now let's take the telegram bit by bit and write down an answer to each part, and then we can form it up into an intelligible reply. First of all, is there suitable pasturage or not?

'You ought to be able to say that without any hesitation,' he added glaring at the land agent, ‘after dragging me all round the country this afternoon on that visit of inspection.'

'My dear old chap,' said the land agent rather scornfully, 'the less said about that walk to-day the better. Apart from the fact that there was at least six inches of snow still left on the ground, I could n't induce you to move out of the first Lap house you came to, though what the attraction was I could n't see.'

'I was trying to buy furs,' said the Commander, and it was obviously useless to walk about looking for pasturage in all that snow. Anyhow, we saw

a lot of reindeer, and they must eat something, so write down, Clerk. Your Number so-and-so, mine so-andso. There is ample pasturage for livestock in the summer: stop!"

'I would n't say ample,' said the Canadian cautiously.

'I would n't say pasturage,' said the land agent. 'Reindeer eat moss.'

'I would n't say live-stock,' said the Chief; 'that means sheep and cattle.'

'I would n't say there is ample in the summer,' said the Clerk. 'I should say, there will be.'

'I should say, I hope there will be,' remarked one of the more pessimistic of the R.N.R. lieutenants. 'We don't know for certain that the snow will ever go, and it's June now.'

'What the devil is the good of my suggesting anything if you are all going to pull it to pieces in this way?' said the Commander irritably. 'Let's have a little more constructive, not destructive, criticism- especially from you, Clerk,' he added rather fiercely.

'I am sorry, sir,' said the Clerk, 'but shall I rewrite the sentence to fall in line with the suggestions these other officers have made?'

'Yes, go on,' said the Commander.

After several minutes' delay the Clerk read out, "There will probably be food for animals in the autumn.'

'Cross that out,' said the Commander angrily. I am not asked for an expression of opinion, but for a statement of fact. Write down, "I am informed there is ample pasturage for stock in the summer.'

'Who informed you?' demanded the land agent rather anxiously. 'Don't say I did and try and blame me when they all die of hunger.'

'I told you, did n't I, that I was asking that Lap about it this afternoon when I was up in the village - or anyhow, if I did n't tell you, I was.'