for discussion part of one period a week, much practical knowledge of grammar and use of words is gained. Here is a sample:

which the following illustrate:

(1) Concord of verb and subject, as

"he don't"-"you was"-"I says,” etc.;

(2) Past tense for past participle and vice versa, as

(3)

"I done it"-"I've saw you"-and similar mistakes with verbs like begin, run, come, eat, freeze, ring;

Double negative, as

"I don't know nothing";

(4) Wrong adjective agreement, as

"these kind," etc.;

(5) Cases of nouns and pronouns, as

"him and me went"-"that's him";

(6) Agreement of pronoun and antecedent, as

"if every one does their work";

(7) Adjective for adverb, as

"she sings beautiful,”

Slang words are placed upon the board; so are vulgarisms. like "firstly, everywheres, illy, lesser, light-complected, muchly, sort of, unbeknown, disremember, enthuse, had ought, hain't." The school at large has become critical of pronounciation, and the boys have much fun tripping each other up on mistakes. The common mispronounciations are sorted out and grouped somewhat as follows:

(1) Sounding silent letters, as

sword, often, towards, hasten, chestnut, epistle, apostle; (2) Inserting an extra sound, as

acrosst, umberella, athaletics, attackeded, drowneded; (3) Last syllable wrong, as

hunderd, childern;

(4) Sounds omitted, as

goin', hist'ry, gover'ment, pome (poem), len'th, lib'ry, (library), fam❜ly, gran'father, ev'ning, sevʼral;

(5) Accent wrong, as

exquisite, ali'as, ad'ult, incomparable, mischev'ious;

(6) Vowel quantity wrong, as

palm, calm, psalm;

(7) Wrong sound for vowel, as

fer, git, jest, agenst;

(8) Wrong sound for consonants, as

ax (acts), ast (asked), chimley (chimney).

(9) Failure to pronounce h, as in

where, what, why, when, whither, whether;

As far as subjects are concerned, any topical recitation can be turned into one-minute talks by asking the student to address the class. Twenty-five students can give as many talks in forty minutes, each of which would be equivalent to a onepage theme. Paraphrases, anecdotes, reports of outside reading, personal incidents can be given; the resourceful teacher can use a hundred things that bear on the work. It is an excellent review to call for comparisons, contrasts, and summaries.

All students should make a special effort to increase vocabulary by using a pocket dictionary and keeping a daily record of new words. After study of some classic it is a good plan for each student to arrange alphabetically all the words that are difficult. After each letter additional space can be left where the words

of other students may be added. Review definitions and you have valuable work in etymology. A class that can acquire ten new words a day, will have fifty in a week, and in a month two hundred.

It is surprising how quickly students will detect errors in misused words, if interest has once been aroused. Speaking of a lecturer, one boy said disdainfully, "He said preventative where he meant preventive." Many grown up people confuse except with accept, wander with wonder, sewage with sewerage and immigrant with emigrant. Such words should be discussed rereatedly. The following list was gathered by the students themselves:

statue, statute; consul, council, counsel; angle, angel; perspective, prospective; quite, quiet; acceptance, acceptation; access, accession; allusion, delusion, illusion; avocation, vocation; completion, completeness; observation, observance; proposal, proposition; solicitude, solicitation; secreting, secretion; deprecate, depreciate; affect, effect; construe, construct; partly, partially; continual, continous; human, humane; healthy, healthful; latest, last; pitiable, pitiful; dispense, dispense with; contemptuously, contemptibly, creditably, credibly; persecute, prosecute; prescribe, proscribe; incredulous, incredible; suspect, expect; resort, recourse, resource; requisite, requisition; secede, succeed; empire, umpire; adherence, adhesion; compliment, complement; conscience, consciousness; deceit, deception; esteem, estimate; identity, identification; organism, organization; prominence, predominence; allay, ally; reprehend, apprehend; wait on, wait for; beside, besides; practical, practicable; deadly, deathly; propose, purpose; argue, augur; aye, ay; womanly, womanish; childish, childlike; dominate, domineer; eliminate, elicit.

In connection with this word work, throughout the year the students gather synonyms and look up the difference in meaning in such words as average and ordinary, dumb and stupid, character and reputation, custom and habit, invention and discovery, lot and number, majority and plurality, learn and teach, among and between, in and into, farther and further, future and subsequent, enough and sufficient, etc.

In the older classes, propose interesting vital questions for discussion, line the students up on sides and let them thrash it

out. It will teach practical knowledge of argument. Give a student a chance to win converts to a cause and he will develop a facility and effectiveness that are surprising. It is a wonderfully good thing to force a student to form an opinion and then back that opinion up. Too many people are negative. Why not convert the class into a meeting with the teacher as chairman ? Then the speakers have a chance to acquire ease in parliamentary procedure-addressing the teacher and members of the class before speaking, and also seeking permission for voluntary speaking by simply addressing the chair. By use of tact the teacher can draw all the pupils into the discussion. Teach them to use the rhetorical devices so effective in oratory. Encourage them to think out figures of speech, periodic and balanced sentence structure, interrogation, abundant illustration and repetition for effect. An analysis of Lincoln's Gettysburg speech will show the use of these.

Biographical material, like Thayer's Turning Points in Successful Careers and Men who Win or Hubbard's Little Journeys, offer condensed and interesting information for reports. With the older students let these be from three to five minutes long. Instruction in note-taking is given in connection with these longer talks.

One-minute talks before the class have been found helpful in the various English classes, as well as in the literary societies of the school. We firmly believe that such systematic oral composition used in connection with written work throughout the course, can do much toward giving American school boys the correctness and the effectiveness that the English, the French, and the German school boys attain.

The Commercial High School Curriculum

RAYMOND G. LAIRD, HIGH SCHOOL OF COMMERce, boston, MASS.

W

HILE many other departments of education have turned the search-light of investigation upon their courses of study and upon the methods of teaching, and while they have sought by every possible means to learn and adopt the best ideas of the schools of this country, and have gone into all the foreign schools that are worthy of emulation, in search of matter and method, the commercial educators have not stood entirely still, though at times their progress has been so slow that none but enthusiasts could detect any headway.

Begun at a time when the apprenticeship plan was in vogue, the deliberate demands were fully met when the youth spent several years in the transitional period between taking down shutters and sweeping out the store to the time when he might appear back of the counter as salesman. The school of experience was the only one in which it seemed the future man of affairs could secure any part of an efficient training.

The requirements of the counting-room began to make a positive demand, and experiment proved that the training that could be secured in a school made it possible to greatly reduce the term of apprenticeship for clerks and bookkeepers, and, frequently, to entirely dispense with it. The young man, with the training of the school started at once well up on the steps, and with more than a self-supporting salary, as against the old plan wherein the lad gave his services for several years for little or no money, or his anxious parent paid a yearly sum for the floor space occupied during the process of learning.

Schools that trained for clerical positions were given names ranging from commercial institute to business university, depending for the fervor of the term upon the imagination of the proprietors, or selected on the basis of whether their need for money was mild or extreme. Several of the very best of the private schools have shown decidedly good taste in reducing the extravagant form of name, though we may yet frequently judge the lack