The present indifference of a large class of American citizens to the character of the men who are chosen to administer the government is fraught with great danger to the republic. Every republic is supposed to be ruled by its representative men. Now there is a wide difference between the representative American and the average American. The representa

tive American is he who embodies in himself, in a large measure, the ideals of all Americans. He is the average American and much more. We are accustomed to speak of Lincoln as a representative American, and of Gladstone as a representative Englishman. The common people heard and followed them gladly. They could give expression to, and make real, what the common people were 'imly conscious of but could not utter. Napoleon was a representative Frenchman of his time, until he ceased to be a Frenchman and became merely Bonaparte in his supreme regard for his personal aggrandizement and control. Pericles was a representative Greek. Every Greek saw himself written large in Pericles.

One of the candidates for the great office of president of these United States told the people recently that the president was simply their "hired man." This would degrade him below even the average man.

What would have been the fate of the struggle for independence if Washington had been only a hired man. He had to think and act for the people and often against their expressed desires. The same was true of Lincoln. Woe to this country when those chosen to rule it are only fit to be the hired men of the people.

We have been suffering for many years from the misconception that our best representatives are the average men. It is even now publicly proclaimed that the average man knows more about finance and the financial needs of the country than the most experienced and most eminent financier, and that the opinion of the latter shall count for nothing when the former feels moved to

concealed from the wise and prudent and are revealed unto babes, but are national finance and statesmanship matters of this sort?

Never before has the need of proper education in the schools, high and low, been more apparent than it is at this time. What this country needs more than anything else is that its citizens shall love high thinking and just and honorable living. What would be dishonorable for the individual is dishonorable for the nation. The nation is a single organism. It has its head, its heart, its hands, and its feet. But in matters of the spirit, and the state is one of these, the head cannot say to the foot nor the foot to the head, "I have no need of thee." It was the wolves that counseled the sheep, in the fable, to discharge the faithful shepherd dogs, who harried them. sometimes, but who saved them from their enemies. It seems at this date that the sheep are about to discharge. their guardians. That the majority are innocent sheep, will not restrain the hungry wolves from satisfying their appetite.

When politics are merely a battle between the ins and the outs, and there is no question at issue that touches the prosperity of the citizen or the honor and perpetuity of the nation, we hold that an educational journal may well ignore political campaigns, and confine itself to the advancement of patriotism and good citizenship. But when issues like the present arise, or like that which arose thirty-six years ago, the educational journal that does not give its influence to maintain the honor, good order, and prosperity of the nation, does not believe as we do. Elsewhere we have urged that it is the function of the school to teach the pupils to live. They must live in a state of some kind, and education is not indifferent to the kind. Patriotism urges every citizen to protect his country from the foes within as well as from those without.

The Aborigines of America. The investigations that have been going on recently among a tribe of Indians known by the name of Kwakiults, and living in the north of Vancover's Island, is of special interest because it throws a beam of light upon the inquiry concern. ing the original inhabitants of this continent. The Kwakiults give strong evidence, drawn from their customs, language, and traditions, that they are the descendants of a very primitive stock. Among their traditions is one that their ancestors came in the beginning from the continent of Asia, across the neck of land that joined the two continents at that time.

This tradition, which is sustained by a very strong probability that the two continents were once so united, carries us back far into the dim past, and furnishes strong proof that the aborigines of America came from the old world, if indeed we need proof to establish an opinion that has the strongest probability to sustain it. That this continent was originally stocked by the overflow of Asia, or by tramps from that continent, is a contingency as much to be expected as that the overflow of a teacup is to be found in the saucer below, and if we find traces of tea in the saucer, who doubts that it came from the drippings of the cup; and we may justly inquire, where else could it come from? In the same way, it is just as natural and rational to believe that the primitive inhabitants of America came from the overflow of Asia; and the inquiry is just as pertinent, where else could they have come from? It would require a good deal of scientific mysticism or incredulity to doubt a conclusion that bears its own assurance on its very face. Common sense is sometimes more reliable than scientific mysticism. If we admit the unity of the human race, and that Asia is the cradle of it (and perhaps that is the

only point in dispute), then we may ask with the fullest assurance, where else did the tribes of this continent come from if not from the family cradle? There can be no other source. It is strange that it should ever have been doubted.

It appears from the physiognomy and general contour of the Kwakiults that they are not of the Mongolian stock, and this would show that although the Mongolian Tartar had inhabited eastern Asia during so many ages of the past, he is not the primitive stock of that region. This conclusion agrees with the traditions of the Chinese, for they have a legend that they drove out a people before them, as they entered the country, and the tribe they drove out was probably the ancestors of the Kwakiults.

But the spread of the human family over the continents is as easily accounted for as the spread of unconfined water over a plane surface, for the flow in either case is in accordance with natural laws and influences. There is an unrest in human nature that nothing will ever quiet, and under its influence society is moved like the bosom of the ocean, now tossed into billows, now into grand rolling swells, and often into those mighty currents that everywhere traverse its surface.

These grand current movements of meu are what might be called the migratory habit, and the propensity is so strong, that it needs only a slight incentive to start it, and when once started this movement is like that of accumulated waters, it becomes irresistible, and among savage hordes, violent and destructive. The mighty movements of the Tartar and Scythian hordes, early in the christian era, are a recent and remarkable illustration of this migratory unrest of savage tribes. Who can doubt that under the influence of this mighty unrest the conti

But there are other minor motives that urge men to move, among others is the negative one, among savages, of having nothing to leave behind them; for such tribes can move easily. Then there is the predatory movement, which is a favorite pastime among savages, and this movement has often been the means of driving the weaker races of men before the aggressions of the stronger. The act of fleeing for refuge and safety has taken many a tribe of people into the nooks, corners, and fastnesses of the earth. The "green spot ahead" has often taken men away from comfortable homes into far off lands. Large hunting expeditions in the primitive days, when the earth was a vast hunting ground, took men far away from home, and the tidings brought back of the "green spots," took many people away from the center. Thus it is easy to see how America must have been settled at an early day by the overflow of

Asia.

But there is one puzzling question. These migrations must have been just as natural in ante-diluvian days as in postdiluvian days. How could the continent of America escape being occupied by the longevious children of Adam, and especially of wandering Cain? The children of Cain would naturally seek an adjacent continent, as they fled before the face of men. The puzzling question is this, if America was inhabited by the wandering antediluvians, or if the continent was visited and occupied by occasional hunting or exploring parties, and if in connection with this it is true, that the great deluge was only a local disturbance, involving only western Asia and adjacent lands, as scientists now fully believe, and indeed have demonstrated, then it must be certain that the inhabitants of America could not have been drowned by the waters of the deluge. What became of them? May we not have the relics of some antediluvian people now on this

PROF. FELIX QUILL, Woodlawn, Ill.

N.E.A. Notes.

Buffalo's convention weather was only excelled by Buffalo's hospitality. They recalled our visit to San Francisco.

It was a pedagogical convention par excellence. More of the best of the teaching class than ever assembled at any similar meeting.

Geo. H. Martin, one of the six assistant superintendents of Boston, represented the supervisory force of that city. Mr. Martin is a large enough man in both intellect and heart to represent to their honor a constituency many times larger than the superintending force of Boston, but the convention missed Seaver, and Metcalf, and Miss Arnold, and the rest, just the same. Massachusetts, "the

mother of the free school and the center of all educational progress in the past," thronged the convention to the number of three score and ten, possibly four score!

It was a convention of teachers and not a mob of excursionists. The commodious rooms in which the meetings were held were all full. There were 10,000 teachers in Buffalo.

The superintending force of the Chicago schools was represented by Supt. A. G. Lane, and assistants E. C. Delano, Mrs. Ella F. Young, A. R. Sabin, and Alfred Kirk. Of course County Superintendent O. T. Bright was there, and he is about as much of an influence in the Chicago schools as he was before he became county superintendent.

New York City schools were represented by six of the assistant superintendents! This is a new thing under the

Educa

sun. Solomon was mistaken. tional America extends a hearty welcome to educational New York, and prays that having put her hand to the plow she will not turn back; rejoicing more over the one sinner that repenteth than over the ninety and nine that need no repentance. These representatives were Assistant Superintendents Farrell, Schaufler, Gunnison, Poland, Marble, and Meleney. We recognize several of these as having come in with the recent educational renaissance in that city.

Dr. Frank McMurry and Superintendent Emerson won golden opinions even from the free silverites of Colorado and the other mountain states. These opin ions are the only thing golden that Bros. Gove and Baker do not place in the category of the "crime of 1873." But the universal verdict of the visitors was that these gentlemen were pure gold worth 1. to 32 in any silver mine in the Rocky Mountains, or in any of the markets of the world.

The scramble for office has entirely ceased in the N.E. A. For a member to seek an office is the surest way to insure his remaining a private in the ranks. But this does not mean that the convention nominates and elects its own officers. It is the few who have their hands on the throttle of the engine that determine who shall run the machine. All are satisfied to have them do this so long as they choose representative men and women as managers. But should they revert to the practice of seeking to exalt those who cannot honor the office, they will hear from the pews. from the pews. All republican institutions desire to follow the lead of its representative men, but the N. E.A. insist that its officers shall not be of the class that it can regard only as its "hired men." When the people come to regard its president as a "hired man," it will not be long before some master will come to regard them as his subjects. They only are worthy of a free government

who seek their best men to administer it.

Quartet

The Chicago Principals' charmed all with their concord of sweet sounds. And it seems that they are

reason to be proud of the ability with which they performed the duties assigned to them.

Little Rhody sent twenty-six delegates to the Buffalo meeting. But Massachusetts sent seventy-eight, or three to one. Little Rhody must bestir herself.

The teachers of Buffalo and their friends, as well as the daily press, gave to the convention a royal welcome, and supported it in every way open to them.

Texas was there in the persons of many distinguished representatives, Superintendent Sutton was a member of the Board of Instruction of the Summer School of Pedagogy, organized by Dr. Frank McMurry.

forms than they once be popular. Musical place, but it is not a A little of it will

their beautiful thought would nonsense has its very prominent one. go a long way.

Where was Indiana at the Buffalo meeting? No report that we have seen makes mention of any representative from that state. She has long been one of the livest educational states in the Union. There is no state in which pedagogic knowledge and intelligence is more generally diffused among all classes of teach

Later.-Indiana has been heard from. Returns came in rather late, but they count on the right side. President Swain is in charge of the college section next year, and Mary Nicholson is state director. About 150 teachers from Indiana were in attendance. This won't

quite do. Why, even Massachusetts, sent about eighty.

A Suggestion by Bishop Vincent. Let us experiment. We may not reproduce for the day school the general features of the International Sundayschool system, but there might be an attempt in that direction in some little country town, full of what you call "impracticable" people, but people with a measure of imagination, and with a good degree of common sense and enterprise, a town where all the really influential people agree to cultivate good-will, and to do their best for the education of everybody, a town where ministers are on good terms, and where the public school believes in advanced methods.

Suppose an ingenious and enterprising school principal, in the Utopian village I have spoken of, should make up his mind. to conduct an ideal foreign tour, using thirty minutes of the morning meeting in the high-school hall for that purpose, the advanced grades of the grammar school joining in this pleasant device. One term of the school year is devoted to an ideal "journey to Greece." Think what might be done by committees of pupils appointed to report on the best, most direct, and cheapest route; the steamship lines, the continental railways, the time required for the journey, the preparations to be made in advance, the sights to be seen en route,--in the British Museum, for example, where the class could study the Elgin marbles, and other treasures that England, in her characteristic way, has transported from Athens. to London. Then there might be committees on "Modern Life in Athens," the

"Greek Words of To-day in Shops and Street Speech," the "Excursions" to be made to the Acropolis, the Areopagus, the Pnyx, Hymettus, and Lycabettus, to Eleusis, to Pentelicus, and Marathon; "Costumes and Customs of the Present Time," "Railway" leading from Athens. to Corinth, and the museums,--the National and Schliemann's. But this list of topics is endless, and the eager endeavor of committees to make their reports, and the delight of the pupils in hearing them, would be a wonderful stimulus to study.

One morning a real Greek daily paper from Athens is exhibited to the school, sent for by one of the boys of the Greek class. What a demand would be created in the village for books on Europe, and especially modern Greece, histories and hand books and books of travel! The little home libraries are ransacked, and the village booksellers begin ordering books about Greece. But, better than all, the families are stirred up. Pictures are brought out,-photographs, processgravures, steel-plate engravings, woodcuts, representations of the Parthenon, the temple of Theseus, busts of Socrates, Euripides, and Pericles. Where are the foreign tourists in the town whose eyes have really seen what young imaginations are now trying to see? Here is a merchant who once visited Athens, and here is an old sailor who remembers well the day his ship cast anchor at the Piræus, when he saw the ruins of Acroplis shining in the morning sun. One man is in demand, the minister who returned six months ago from the Levant! Art portfolios multiply in the town. The women's clubs discuss Greek art. In two months the town knows something about Felton and Grote, Mrs. Jameson and Mahaffy and Dr. Schliemann, and a score of authors besides. The table-talk is affected by it. Everybody learns something about English words of every-day use that are derived from the Greek, old stories from the Greek mythologies, jokes from Aristophanes and other humorists