when it is set before us in the many folds of a long word. When a man steals and we call it defalcation,' we are at a loss to know if it is a blunder or a crime. If he does not tell the truth and we are told that it is a case of prevarication it takes us some time to know just what we should think of it. No man will ever cheat himself into wrong-doing, nor will he be at a loss to judge of others if he thinks and speaks of acts in clear, crisp English terms. It is a good rule when one is at a loss to know if an act is right or wrong to write it down in short straight-out English.'

A

VALEDICTORY ADDRESS.

|

lips that tell the sweet, sad, infinite pain of parting in language more eloquent than any words that poet ever penned. Not such our parting here to day. No breaking heart, no quivering lip, eloquent of pain, may here be seen, but flowers and garlands, music and holiday attire, smiling faces and words of congratulation are on every hand. The major strain of the music to-day is gladness; yet through it all there is ever present that here and now we sunder old ties runs the sweet minor of a tender pain, for the thought and turn away from familiar associations. It is something of what the poet sings in the "Song of the

Maiden:"

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean;
Tears from the depths of some divine despair-
Rise in the heart and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn fields
And thinking of the days that are no more.

To-day we turn away from the old paths and into the new. The past is behind us. Let us tread these paths with hopeful hearts, with honest purpose, with earnest zeal, with unhasting, unresting diligence. Let us not forget that he only is strong who is strong within, whose heart is great, whose self-poised soul is little moved by shifting circumstance. He only can be careless of the coming fate whose soul is calm in the strength of a noble faith and a lofty purpose. Tennyson has expressed this thought in the perfect song of Enid :

Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel and lower the proud;
Turn thy wild wheel through sunshine, storm and cloud :
Thy wheel and thee we neither love nor hate.
Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel with smile or frown;
With that wild wheel we go not up or down:
Our hoard is little but our hearts are great.

MONG the recent valedictory addresses that have come under our notice we give the following as embodying certain thoughts which it were well to ponder "all the year round" rather than but once a year: Gentlemen of the Board of Directors: Did we fail, as pupils passing from the schools, to tender to you and through you to the generous public whom you represent, our kind regards and grateful thanks for opportunities enjoyed in these schools, the programme of this interesting occasion would lack its fitting close. To your official supervision we gratefully ascribe our late beautiful surroundings, and the many facilities afforded in our recent course of study. To-day we sever the ties of personal identity with the public schools under your care, but, as those who own their benefits, we here pledge ourselves ever to advocate their merits, and to support all measures that shall both keep them what they are, and make them better than they are. In the name of my classmates I thank you for all your watchful interest and guardian care. With grateful hearts, we bid farewell! you Gentlemen and Ladies, Our Teachers: One of the most pleasing as well as most profitable relations of life may exist between learner and instructor. To the former especially is this relation susceptible of immense good. For much that we are and more that With thoughts like these engaging our minds, and we may be, if our lives be wisely spent, the meed of thanks must ever be yours. Under your fostering with the hopes which they inspire warming our care our mental vision has been broadened, our intel-hearts, we say the solemn parting word-Farewell! lectual vigor quickened, our moral purpose strengthened. Careless we have been, thoughtless and foolish

Smile, and we sinile, the lords of many lands;
Frown and we smile, the lords of our own hands;
For man is man and master of his fate.
Turn, turn thy wheel above the staring crowd;
Thy wheel and thou are shadows in the cloud;
Thy wheel and thee we neither love nor hate.

With abiding faith in God and in our own integrity of purpose, then, let us go forward into the future that awaits us. Let us but "live pure, speak true, right wrong, and follow the King"-the Christ, the King-and the end is assured from the beginning. Earth has in all its ages nothing better to show than a life thus worthily lived.

HE following letter from a late number

TH

of the New York Tribune presents a point or two worth considering. Our schools ought to do more for the tens of thousands of poor, friendless children who are growing up to curse society with idleness, vice and crime.

at times, as though life were a never-ending holiday WHERE OUR SCHOOLS ARE WEAK! in which toil should have no part-and we have found you now patient, now severe, but always friends tried and true. As we say the parting word, it is with a tender sadness that speaks only in the tones of personal affection. May your influence for good in shaping the characters, influencing the thoughts, and moulding the lives of your pupils grow on with added years in ever-increasing fullness. Our hearts can frame no better wish. We bid you an earnest farewell! Classmates: The time has come to speak the formal word that sometimes means so much and sometimes nothing. Good-byes are said when hearts are breaking-when love looks its last through streaming eyes upon the form beloved. Farewells are now and then exchanged in hand-clasps that thrill when other chords of memory have trembled away into silence; in looks of love that angel faces wear; in quivering

A friend, who was a looker-on in the city, expressed a wish to visit some of our schools, or to speak more largely, "educational institutions!" Of course I should soon betray that the friend was a woman, for I never knew a man, unless it was directly in his line of business, in some way, who cared enough to make these things a study even for a day.

We went first to a Ragged" or "Industrial

School," a set of weary, worn looking children, learn- | the trustees have the offer of a new kind, from a new ing the rudiments merely; given a dinner of the publisher, they discard all the old ones." plainest, which was luxury compared with the food "But, why?" at home; and taught also sewing in the afternoon. This is the ordinary course; in some they are in addition taught to scrub and clean properly, to cook just a trifle, to wash dishes clean, to lay a table decently, to make a bed, to sweep and dust a room without raising more dust than is carried away. It was a good thing, and was the product of private charity, and hard work on the part of ladies.

FREE PLAN IN OTHER STATES.

object, broadening present school facilities with immense advantage to children and large saving of expense to parents."

My three former reports have contained abundant evidence of the success and popularity of the plan of free books in other states. They have conclusively proved that this plan is no longer an experiment. They show that text-books have been entirely free in the public schools of the city of New York for more than forty years; that they have been so furnished in Newark, N. J., for twenty-five years; in Patterson, N. J., ever since the schools were organized; in Lew-duced in the rural districts with equal advantage." istown, Mune, for five years; in Fall River, Mass., for four years; in Bath, Maine, for eight years; in Batavia, Ill., for ten years; and that for years books have been free in some hundreds of districts in Kansas. Of the numerous other localities, not specially designated in former reports, where free books have been approved and adopted, I will mention only Philadelphia, from which the reply to my circular letter of inquiry was received too late for insertion in the report for last year. The secretary of the school board informed me last spring, that in that city, text-books "are supplied to all;" that they have "always been supplied to pupils;" that they are supplied at least one-third cheaper than they can be purchased by pupils;" that the result is a larger attendance;" that the plan is " 'very satisfactory;" and that the cost "averages $1 per pupil per annum, including all schools, high and normal." Accompanying the answer was a printed "list of books and stationery furnished to the public schools of the city of Philadelphia, with the prices annexed."

Hon. E. H. Apgar, now and for many years past the efficient superintendent of New Jersey, says: "There is no reason why the purchase of books should not be met by a common tax, as well as that incurred for erecting school houses, hiring teachers, or purchasing fuel. The custom is common in the cities, and there is no reason why it cannot be intro

The following extracts from recent educational reports indicate a wide-spread and growing conviction among the best educational authorities, that in the free plan now in successful operation in Wisconsin, is to be found the best practicable solution of the troublesome text-book question.

Hon. John Fraser, superintendent of public instruction of Kansas, says in his report for 1875: "If text-books are owned by a school district, uniformity of books can be secured, in that district, without any trouble; and classes can be formed at the opening of the school, and pupils, on entering, can be classified, without any waste of time arising from the negligence or unwillingness of parents or guardians to furnish text-books. *** According to the report of the past year, 338 school districts own their textbooks. *** Having conversed with many persons belonging to districts that own their text-books, I have learned from them that the plan works acceptably where it has been fairly tried."

In his last report (1876) Mr. Fraser says: "I still believe this plan to be the best solution of the question of text-book uniformity, at the least expense to the people."

reduced from three dollars to from seventy-five cents to one dollar for each child, it cannot be regarded as an experiment. From the mass of testimony added, I have no doubt that this plan would increase the attendance and efficiency of the schools."

And prefacing several pages of my last year's report, reprinted in his own, Dr. Carr says: "The following extracts from the last report of the superintendent of public instruction in Wisconsin exhibit the present status of the free text-book question. May not the right to choose, purchase, and own their text-books, under proper restrictions, on the part of trustees and boards of education, thus recognizing the right and capacity of the people for self government, be a solution of our present text-book dilemma ?"

Hon. Ezra S. Carr, superintendent of public instruction of California, says, in the last biennial school report of that state: "No subject has attracted greater attention from the educators of the country during the past two years, or has been more generally recommended, than that of supplying free text-books to the public schools. Having been successfully tried forty years in the city of New York, thirty in New Jersey, eight in the state of Illinois, from five to ten Says Hon. Warren Johnson, late state superintend-in many eastern cities, where the cost of books has been ent of schools of Maine, in one of his reports: "At first thought it would seem that sufficient provisions have been made for the education of all our youth, when the school-house and the teacher, shelter and tuition, had been freely granted at public expense. The pupil, however, can accomplish but little without books-his tools. To furnish these at private expense proves in many instances a hardship, particularly to poor parents with large families, and more especially to the itinerant laboring class. To lighten this burden, some states have established regulations by which the same series or editions of text-books should be used throughout the limits of the state. This plan has not invariably been successful. Within a few years it has occurred to some of our most intelligent communities that the burden can be entirely lifted from the classes indicated by furnishing books at public expense, precisely as school shelter and tuiThe advantages of this plan were alluded to in my last report, and the experience of the city of Bath was brought in testimony as presented in the report of Supt. S. F. Dike. I am pleased to call the attention of school officers to this important feature again this year, by presenting the following communication from Thomas Tash, Esq., superintendent of schools, city of Lewiston. The plan is equally desirable and possible in all our towns, and, it seems to me, would be readily adopted by our people, if school | officers would clearly present the same for their consideration at the annual town meetings. By reference to section 6, school laws, it will appear that sufficient authority is given towns to accomplish this desirable

tion are.

"How

Hon. Chas. S. Smart, state commissioner of common schools of Ohio, in his report for 1876, says: many of these children out of the public schools, or irregular in attendance, are out or irregular because their parents are unable to buy the books required, I am unable to say. There can be no doubt that many of the independent poor prefer to let their children stay out of school rather than accept the charity offered to the indigent by the board of education. We have a public school system wise, beneficial, extending to all, the rich and the poor alike, the privileges of a common school education, and any influence or interest within the system, or extraneous to it, which excludes, or tends to exclude, any child of school age, rich or poor, white or black, from the privileges of this education, intended to be free, is in antagonism with the interests of the public, and should be frowned

down by popular sentiment, or restrained by legis- | lation."

And best of all, Superintendent Wickersham, of Pennsylvania, whose ability and large experience make his opinion peculiarly valuable, gives his unqualified endorsement to the free plan, in his last annual report, some advance pages of which I have received. He says: "On the whole there seems to be no better way of treating this subject of text-books, thau for boards of directors to furnish them as they do school apparatus and appliances, free to all pupils attending the schools. This plan has several very obvious advan tages: it lessens the cost of the books one-third, if not one-half; it secures perfect uniformity of books in each school district, and, consequently, complete classification of the schools; it saves the expense of purchasing new books upon changing residence from one district to another; it does away with the invidious distinction that is apt to prevail among the pupils of a school where some procure books at the public expense, and others provide them at their own; and it enables teachers to advance their classes when prepared, and to introduce new studies, without meeting the difficulties usually thrown in their way when additional books are to be purchased. These are important advantages." After answering objections, he adds: "Philadelphia has furnished books to the schools, with other supplies, for many years, and all the leading school men of the city approve of the plan. Books are also furnished free in a considerable number of school districts in different parts of the state, and in them all, so far as is known, the plan meets with general appro val. The same is true of many places that might be named outside of the state. As it is somewhat doubtful whether the law, as it now stands, gives school boards the legal right to purchase books to be furnished free to all the pupils in the schools under their control, I recommend the passage of a law, allowing them to use their discretion in the matter."

utterly unostentatious, and free from arrogance of wisdom, the very type of man which you should ever hold up to your students as an example of what industry and patient research may accomplish. As a teacher, he may have tortured some of you, who long ago were his pupils, by exacting of your memory the names, volumes, densities and relative orbits of the planets of the solar system, but must have delighted you by an explanation of Kepler's simple laws, in accordance with which the force of gravity holds each planet in its proper place. Even now, think of the brain work which for ages must have preceded the discovery by Kepler of these few principles out of the millions of plausible speculations derived from the

senses.

I feel sure there must be men in this audience who first learned from Professor Henry that the air we breathe is composed of several gases, any one of which is deadly poison, yet mingled together they give health and strength to the body and elasticity to the mind; that heat pervades all matter, converts water into steam, the great motive power of machinery and yet a little more this steam becomes an explosive gas, rending bolts and bars asunder, and spreading destruction round about. How beautiful were his thoughts and words when treating of the harmonies of sound and of light, and still more as he penetrated deeper and deeper into the mysteries of the then new science of electricity. Of all men he seemed most inspired with the feeling, “Nearer, my God, to Thee." He knew that all science emanates from the Creator, and is governed by universal and unchangeable law, and that man is freely invited to seek and discover. Quietly, in his modest study here at Princeton, he developed, by known methods, electricity in quantities so limited that he could bridle it and handle it to his use. He knew that hardened steel would become a permanent magnet by a certain use of the electric current, and noticed that soft iron was only a magnet whilst the current was continuous, but instantly lost its power when the current was broken. Here was discovery! Here was new knowledge never before attained by the strongest

DR. HENRY, THE SCIENTIST.
URING the late commencement of Prince-intellects of bygone ages. The simple horse shoes

DUR

ton College, an address was delivered by General Wm. T. Sherman. He spoke at some length of the life and character of the late Joseph Henry, who at one time held a professor's chair at Princeton. The soldier speaks of the scientist in a way that does credit alike to his head and his heart. Men talk flippantly of the atheism of science, of the "conflict between science and religion,' -and the result of such studies does now and then seem to be skepticism for weak or illbalanced minds. But amid this noisy clamor of tongues, how grand it is to see the foremost scientist of them all lift his head venerable in wisdom above the chattering crowd, and say with a quiet mien and voice of calm: "Give place! God rules and there are secrets of being which man cannot fathom." The following is an abstract of Gen. Sherman's re

marks:

You once had here, as a member of your Faculty Professor Joseph Henry, a man of gentle demeanor,

surrounded by insulated wire, through which could be passed at will a current of electricity, became a magnet, attracting with force and certainty another piece of iron, but on breaking the circuit its whole nature changed and its power of attraction ceased. could be utilized in machinery, and was in truth and Here was a power to produce reciprocal motion that fact the magnetic telegraph which has revolutionized the world, has delivered messages of business and affection at every man's door, and now carries information and thought around the belt of this globe with a speed that Shakespeare's genius could only compass by the aid of imaginary fairies.

Not his the nature to profit by this discovery. All was freely given by him to the world without price and without favor. Others reaped the pecuniary reward, but to him and his be the glory and the fame. volume in the transcendent series of developments in Important as was this discovery, it only opened a new the science of galvanic electricity, which now measures time and longitude, the velocity of projectiles, records the transit of stars, and has become as necesprinter's type. In all this progress Professor Henry sary in our daily business transactions as the pen or took a prominent part.

When I pause to contemplate the purity of his character, the precision and grandeur of his knowl