Imagens da página
PDF
ePub

town and city having no free public library, one copy, to be kept at the office of the clerk of said city or town; to each member of the present (1870) Legislature, and to each officer and reporter, one copy; to the State library, ten copies, to be used for making exchanges for the public documents of other states."

INSTRUCTION IN DRAWING. The following act was passed by the Legislature of Massachusetts at its last session:

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives, in General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:

SEC. 1. The first section of chapter thirty-eight of the General Statutes is hereby amended so as to include drawing among the branches of learning which are, by said section, required to be taught in the public schools.

SEC. 2. Any city or town may, and every city and town having more than ten thousand inhabitants shall, annually make provisions for giving free instruction in Industrial or Mechanical Drawing to persons over fifteen years of age, either in day or evening schools, under the direction of the school committee. SEC. 3. This act shall take effect upon its passage.

ESTELL'S PROGRAMME CLOCK. We were shown at Thompson, Bigelow & Brown's, twenty-five and twenty-nine Cornhill, a handsome school-room clock, with an ingenious contrivance by which it may be made to strike at any desired intervals. It may be arranged for the whole day; and once arranged will require no changing. No matter how irregular the programme of exercises, the clock will give the signal for the commencement and close of each. The price is but fifteen dollars, hardly more than would be paid for any good timekeeper. It is manufactured by Hadley Brothers, Chicago.

A NEW FEMALE COLLEGE. The will of Mr. John Simmons, a citizen of Boston lately deceased, contains a bequest for founding and establishing in that city "an institution to be called the Simmons Female College, for the purpose of teaching medicine, music, drawing, designing, telegraphy and other branches of art, science and industry best calculated to enable the scholars to acquire an independent livelihood."

The whole endowment amounts to one million four hundred thousand dollars. The net income must be accumulated till it reaches the sum of five hundred thousand dollars. Thismay then be spent at the discretion of the trustees in the purchase of land and in suitable buildings and structures thereon for the college, and in the purchase of suitable furniture and apparatus for the same. This expenditure may be commenced by the trustees as soon as the accumulations reach the ammount of three hundred thousand dollars, and they may apply so much as they may see fit of the net rents and income thereafter accruing to the payment of the expenses of instruction and other current expenses of the college.

BOSTON LATIN SCHOOL. The Special Committee on High School instruction recommended in their report to the Boston School Board some important changes in the organization of this school, and a new course of study. Their report was substantially adopted by the Board. The school will therefore be organized upon the new plan and the proposed course of study pursued as far as circumstances will allow. To complete the full change will of course require years. The school will now be taught by a head-master and as many masters as will

allow one instructor for every thirty scholars. A special teacher will be appointed for each of the modern languages taught, and special instruction provided in drawing, music, and gymnastics. Candidates for admission must be at least twelve years old; must be able to read English correctly and fluently, to spell all words of common occurrence, and to write well and readily from dictation; must understand Mental Arithmetic, the simple rules of written Arithmetic, with reduction and fractions, both vulgar and decimal; must be able to explain the terms most used in Geography and to state the leading facts; and must have a sufficient knowledge of English Grammar to parse common prose.

The school will be divided into six classes, and the studies pursued in each will be as follows:

[ocr errors]

Sixth Class.. Harkness's Latin Grammar (Rudiments); Harkness's Latin Reader; Viri Romæ ; Fables of Phaedrus; Scott, Goldsmith, Campbell, Wordsworth, Cowper, Tennyson, Leigh Hunt; Ancient History of the East; Review of General Geography; Geography of Asia; Arithmetic reviewed and completed, Eaton's Arithmetic, Crittenden's Calculations; Elementary Algebra through Simple Equations, one unknown quantity; Ray's Elementary Algebra; Zoology; Drawing; Penmanship; Music; Gymnastics.

Fifth Class. Nepos; Elian, Extracts; Justin; Old English Ballads; Sterne, Mrs. Thrale, Beattie, Cowper, Hawthorne, Tennyson, Longfellow, Morris ; Hazlitt; History of Ancient Greece; Geography of Europe and Africa; Otto's French Grammar, first part with exercises; Elementary Algebra, to the Binomial Theorem, Ray; Geology (winter); Botany (spring and summer), Dana and Gray, with specimens; Drawing; Music; Gymnastics.

Fourth Class.Cæsar, De Bello Gallico; Ovid, Metamorphoses; Quintus Curtius; Virgil, Eneid I. II. — Cicero, De Amicitia; De Senectute; Greek Grammar (Rudiments); Greek Lessons; Xenophon, Anabasis begun; Lucian, Dialogues; Plutarch, one life; Gray, Addison, Moore, Burns, Irving, Bryant, Hood, Hawthorne, Shelley, Rogers; History of Ancient Rome; Revision of Geography of Asia, Europe and Africa; Geography of America and Oceanica; Le Grand Pere, with applications of Syntax; Exercises in translating and writing, from a French treatise on Natural Science; Plane Geometry; Chauvenet's Elementary Geometry; Geology and Botany, as in previous year; Drawing; Music, Gymnastics.

Third Class. - Latin Prosody; Virgil, Æneid III., IV., V., — Eclogues; Cicero, Archias, Marcellus; Sallust, Catiline; Horace, a few odes; Terence, Andria, Adelphi. Homer, Iliad: Isocrates, Panegyric, Athens; Plutarch, Morals (one part), Lucian, Art of Writing History; Milton, Pope, Irving, Thomson, Collins, Prescott, Coleridge, Keats, Burke, Wordsworth, Holmes, Tyndall. History of the Middle Ages, from the fifth century to the fourteenth; Physical and Political Geography of Europe in minute detail; French Comedy; Translation; Recitation; Writing French; Exercises in translating and writing from French Scientific Treatise; Krauss's German Grammar with Exercises in German; Pure Algebra begun; Algebraic Doctrine of Logarithms; Loomis's Algebra; Bremiker's Logarithmic Tables; Plane Trigonometry begun; Chauvenet's Trigonometry; a French Treatise on Physical Philosophy and Mechanics; Drawing; Music (optional); Gymnastics.

Second Class.-Latin Verses; Virgil, Æneid VI., VII., VIII., — Passage from the Georgics; Cicero; Verres, Catiline, Dream of Scipio; Horace, Odes, Epodes, Epistles; Tacitus, Agricola ; Livy, one book; Quintilian; Greek Prosody Homer, Iliad; Euripides, Alcestis; Demosthenes, Olynthiacs, Philippics; Plato, Crito, Apologia; Milton, Pope, Dryden, Spencer, Thackeray, Lamb, Tennyson, Lowell, Whittier, Ruskin, Shakspeare; History of the Middle Ages, and of Modern Times, from the fourteenth century to the middle of the seventeenth. Physical and political geography of Asia, Africa, America, Oceanica, in minute detail; Racine, Cornejlle, Molière, Rousseau; French Essay; Conversation in French; Krauss's Grammar, with German Reader; Plane Trigonometry finished, with applications; Chauvenet's Solid Geometry; Chauvenet's Elementary Geometry; Physics; Mechanics; Astronomy (French Treatise); Drawing; Music (optional); Gymnastics.

First Class. Virgil, Parts of Eneid; Cicero, De Republicâ; Tacitus, Annals; Livy; Horace continued, with Ars Poetica; Plautus; Lucretius, Extracts; Greek Verses; Homer, Odyssey; Thucydides, first book; Demosthenes, Philippics, De Coronâ; Sophocles, Edipus, Aristophanes, Birds, Clouds; Macaulay, Junius, Emerson, Marvell, George Herbert, Byron, Carlyle, Robert Hall, Channing, Ben Jonson, Bacon, Shakspeare; Modern History, from the accession of Louis; the Fourteenth of France; Geography reviewed; Geography in relation to climate, soil, manufactures, commerce; Cosmography; French, as in previous year, a French Historical, or Scientific author; German prose writers and poetry, Spherical Trigonometry; Chauvenet's Trigonometry; Review of Trigonometric Formulæ, Higher Algebra, etc.; Loomis's Algebra; Chemistry; Astronomy; Music (optional); Gymnastics.

MISCELLANEOUS.

THE salaries of principals of first-class schools in St. Louis have all bee n fixed at $2,000, irrespective of sex. Two ladies have their salaries raised from $1,400 to $2,000 by this action of the Board of Education. Good for St. Louis. "You are very stupid, Thomas," said a young country teacher to a little boy, eight years old. "You are a little donkey; do you know how they cure donkeys of their stupidity?" They feed them better, and kick them less," said

the arch little urchin.

66

THE New York World announces, with great gravity, that "the British House of Lords has officially decided that a man cannot marry his widow's sister!"

A GRAY-HEADED scholar in the night-schools of Richmond, says he is sixty years old by old mas'r's count, but he didn't 'low that he was born till 1865. He is a smart boy and has got into Long Division, and reads in the Fourth Reader.

A PROBLEM.

The Athenæum says, "Recent returns show that thirty per cent. of the population of France can neither read nor write, while more than seventy per cent. can read but cannot write." What per cent. can write?

ONE of Dr. Lyman Beecher's daughters used to say that she had three rules to guide her in copying her father's MSS.: If a letter was dotted, it was n't I; if a letter was crossed, it was n't T; and if a word began with a capital letter, it did n't begin a sentence.

HORACE GREELEY's handwriting is rather puzzling to the uninitiated. A Pennsylvania lecture committee received from him the following reply to an invitation to lecture:

Dear Sir: I am vaccinnated and yawning at Ishmael; he surely is not fishing shad all the while at Sims's; but I wrote a line to fetch her forth; deception is thus underrated viciously if Idaho fails. Carrot promises to wait. Perhaps spirits are needed entirely; my bow, Bores.

According to the Watchman, Mr. Greeley wrote to a gentleman in Illinois as follows:

Dear Sir:-I am over-worked and growing old. I shall be sixty next Feb. 3. On the whole, it seems I must decline to lecture henceforth, except in this immediate vicinity, if I do at all. I cannot promise to visit Illinois on that errand - certainly not now.

He soon after received the following reply:

[ocr errors]

Dear Sir: Your acceptance to lecture before our Association next winter came to hand this morning. Your penmanship not being the plainest, it took some time to translate it; but we succeeded, and would say your time —" 3d of February," and terms, "$60" are entirely satisfactory. As you suggest, we may be able to get you other engagements in this immediate vicinity; if so, we will advise you.

ACCORDING to the New York Telegram, William B. Astor is worth $50,000,000; A. T. Stewart, $40,000,000; Cornelius Vanderbilt, $30,000,000; Daniel Drew, $6,000,000; George Law, $6,000,000; Aug. Belmont, $5,000,000; Samuel N. Pike, $7,000,000; James Fiske, Jr., $6,000,000; James Lennox, $5,000,000. We will add that neither of the above made his fortune by school-keeping.

LITERAL ANSWERS.- A lady noticed a boy sprinkling salt on the sidewalk to take off the ice, and remarked to a friend, pointing to the salt: — "Now that's benevolence."

"No it ain't," said the boy, somewhat indignant, "it's salt."

So when a lady asked her servant girl if the hired man cleaned off the snow with alacrity, she replied:

"No, ma'am, he used a shovel."

A STORY is told of a Cambridge Professor in England who was asked to call on a friend in London, an address being given him in a certain square. Some time afterwards the Professor was asked by his friend why he had not been to see him, and his answer was, "I did come, but there was some mistake; you told me you lived in a square, and I found myself in a parallelogram, and so I went away again."

MR. E., says the Illinois Teacher, is one of a class of teachers that think they must teach their "pony" class, as they call their smallest pupils, a list of

[ocr errors]

things that they cannot now understand, such as the names of the capitals of the United States and Illinois, of the first and last Presidents of our country, of the Governor of Illinois, of the Discoverer of America, etc., etc. To-day he asked a little boy "Who discovered America?" "John M. Palmer,” said the little fellow, promptly. "No," said Mr. E.," Christopher Columbus." Christopher Columbus," repeated the young hopeful. "What is the capital of the United States?" "John M. Palmer." "No, Washington." "Washington," was the echo. "Who assassinated Abraham Lincoln ?" "John M. Palmer." "No, Wilkes Booth." "Wilkes Booth," said the urchin. of Illinois ?" "John M. Palmer." "That's right," said Mr. E.; and an expression of satisfaction rested upon the countenances of the teacher and the pupil.

"Who is Governor

A PICTURE in a Holland church-The Sacrifice of Isaac-represents Abraham on the point of accomplishing the solemn act of infanticide with a musket. This was equalled in this country some years ago by a popular magazine which, in a picture of the giving of the law to Moses, represented a neat post-and-rail fence running along the base of Mt. Sinai.

Ir is astonishing how small a sum will square individual accounts, if it can only be set in motion. If our delinquent subscribers will take the hint from the following and start the ball, we promise to push it on:

By some means or other it happened in one of our business offices that the office boy owed one of the clerks three cents, and the clerk owed the cashier two cents, and the cashier owed the office boy two cents. One day last week the office boy having a cent in his pocket concluded to diminish his debt, and therefore handed the nickel over to the clerk, who, in turn paid half of his debt by giving the coin to the cashier. The latter handed the cent back to the office boy, remarking, "Now I only owe you one cent." The office boy again passed the cent to the clerk, who passed it to the cashier, who passed it back to the office boy, and the latter individual squared all accounts paying it to the clerk, thereby discharging his entire debt. Thus it may be seen how great the benefit derived from even a small payment.

BOOK NOTICES.

A TREATISE ON ANALYTIC GEOMETRY, ETC. By George H. Howison, M.A. Cincinnati: Wilson, Hinkle & Co. We have read a considerable distance into this work with a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction, for we find it marked by unusual clearness, precision and elegance of statement and demonstration. Taking the parts we have read, as specimens of the whole, and looking through the Table of Contents,-which, by the way, is prepared with great fulness of detail, and hence may be used with ease and profit by those who desire to use the book merely for occasional reference, we have no hesitation in recommending its introduction wherever the higher mathematics are taught. To any one who wants to study analytic geometry without a teacher, we may safely say that it would be very hard to find a work better adapted to his purpose.

« AnteriorContinuar »