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which take whole tribes away for the celebration often lasting three months,-these festivities to endure; the fishing season and the hunting season and the berry season, which each, in turn, takes the entire family to the woods or to the shore, where they remain till sufficient supply has been secured-these seasons, when the schoolhouse is near emptied, must be and are patiently met. Nevertheless the missionary, the parochial teacher, and the government teacher, each has added his little effort to move the great wheel of life of the native, and the wheel has been jarred loose from its rut and started rolling.

True, a great many are still living as their forefathers lived but many are not, and none can tell how vast a number have new ideas of life and new thoughts. There are two institutions that must be mentioned because of the remarkable visible results of their work. The first is the Presbyterian Mission at Sitka, and the second, Mr. Wm. Duncan's settlement at Metlakahtla.

The mission was founded by the Presbyterian Board in 1880. There is a regular day school, but the boys are also taught shoemaking, carpentry, cabinet work, painting, plumbing, engineering, and boat making. The girls learn cooking in the best possible way, by assisting in the regular kitchen. Besides cooking they are taught sewing and all kinds of housework.

Being curious to know how much of this training was practically used after the children left the school, I inquired of Mr. Kelley who was superintendent of the mission for fifteen years, and was told that many of the children who come for only a year or two return to the ways of their fathers, seemingly forgetful of all they had seen, but of those who take the entire course of five years seventy per cent adopt a civilized life and are as successful as any other young people. An interesting illustration is found in the case of a half dozen boys who came here from Shakan. They took the entire course and then returned to their people. There had been no missionaries among them, no teachers; witchcraft was still believed in with all its attendant horrors. These boys went back to their own people. With their own hands they built a church. In their own crude way they lived the new life.

To-day

-four years since their return-these natives of Shakan have given up witchcraft and their old customs. One captain, who has visited them for years, says they are a changed people.

The story of the settlement at Metlakahtla reads like a fairy tale, or like the tales of the days of the intense apostolic spirit. It would be too long a story for this paper, to tell of Mr. Duncan's years of faithful work at Metlakahtla in British territory; of the settlement of frame houses, stores, mills, and factories, the natives had built under his supervision; of the unjust treatment he received from those of his own race; of the grant of an island which he secured from the United States Government; of the abandonment of the old town, and the settlement of some thousand natives in this new and free home; of the present prosperous, wealthy, civilized, and moral town of Metlakahtla with its stores, factory, and cannery, all owned and managed by natives; with its school and church; with its native population living in peace and fast learning how men and women should live to be good citizens.

This town, the result of one man's will and energy, reveals characteristics of the natives which are going to make their progress more rapid and marked than that of most uncivilized races. The native is a trustful man and easily influenced. He also has the greatest respect for law, for that which is ordained. If he is at all interested he learns quickly. He is possessed of almost infinite patience, continuing his pursuit till he secures what he wants. It is not so much the great change in the natives as a whole that reveals their status, as the remarkable change where even a little work has been done among them.

Here in Sitka is a settlement called "The Cottages," where nineteen native families live a civilized life with all the accessories of pianos, sewing machines, baby - carriages, gold watches, and carpets. Even in "The Ranch," where the rest of the Thlingets are gathered, they live in two-story frame houses, and wear American clothes.

Considering all these conditions, for both native and white man, I feel I do not speak too enthusiastically when I say that nowhere in all our broad American dominion are there such

opportunities for growth and culture. Not the culture arising from reading Greek, Latin, and Browning, but that resulting from a busy life beset with difficulties and deprivation, combined with the enthusiasm and courage from association with strong people accomplishing things. Nor will there be any corner of that dominion where growth and progress will be more marked and positive than in this corner-Alaska.

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A Meeting

ISABEL R. HUNTER

A spell o'erhung the summer shade,
The meadows breathed expectancy,
As light-foot Will, of dreamy eye,
Alone by Avon's sedges strayed.

When lo! from out a glen there came
A shining damsel crown'd with green,
Of motions light, and yet a queen,
Who gazed at him and spoke his name.

Then chanted she an echoing song,
A song of streams and summits blest,
And as he heard there filled his breast
A sudden fire that leaped and sung.

"Oh dweller on the deathless hill

That shines serene 'neath Southern skies,
Why pourest thou thine ecstasies
Above the ears of roving Will?”

Said she, "Beloved, where'er thou art
There shall my song and presence be,
For all my spirit burns for thee."
He caught her to his glowing heart.

"Oh death, delay mine hour," cried he.
She raised her eyes and blessed brow
And said, "Of death why pratest thou,
For death assails not thee and me."

IX*

German Education

PROFESSOR M. D. LEARNED, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

T

HE beginnings of the modern system of education in Germany are to be sought in the monastic schools of the eighth century, in the monasteries founded by Boniface in the second quarter of the century, Fritzlar, Büraburg, Hildesheim, Eichstädt, Fulda ; in the nunneries of the same period, Tauberbishofsheim, Kitzingen, Ochsenfurt, and in the Upper German monasteries of St. Gall and Reichenau, and particularly in the educational reforms of Charles the Great. This new education which came in with Roman Christianity was for the Germans an exotic, and grafted upon an ancient Germanic culture, antedating our historical records. This old Germanic culture was an element with which the new institutions from the south had a long and bitter struggle for supremacy. While the early Germanic races had nothing which could properly be called schools, they did possess a form of cultural transmission, both tenacious and effective. The family and the clan were folk-units with their distinct political, social and religious institutions. It is not difficult to reconstruct, even from the scanty remains of this old culture, the old Germanic methods of teaching or perpetuating their time-honored traditions, manners and customs. In these primitive times the chief shared with his retainers the pride of ancestry, the triumphs and defeats of war, the solemn and festive observance of religious rites, and the crude forms of literature and art. It was in the great hall when the cup went round and the gleemen sang that the high and lofty inspirations were imparted, which fired the breasts of the Germanic heroes with loyalty to their divinities, their ancestors and their chief, and

*This article, originally intended for the March number, was unavoidably delayed until now. We have preserved the numbering noted in our original announcement of the series.-EDS. EDUCATION.

with an unquenchable zeal for fresh exploits. It would be impossible to explain the highly developed forms of poetic art found in the later fragmentary epic lays of the early Germans, such as the Hildebrand Lay" and in "Widsith," "Waldere," "Beowolf" and the "Heliand," without assuming a traditional poetic art and a keenly intelligent appreciation of this art among these early Germans. Side by side with the idealism of this old poetry, went the realism of primitive Germanic life, that strenuous education for the bitter realities of the war-play, such as throwing the hammer, hurling the spear, running, leaping, wrestling and wielding the sword. All exercises which were prototypes of our scarcely less strenuous modern sports couched under the euphuistic name of "physical education."

The monastic schools of the eighth century grew up under the fostering care of the church. The immediate purpose of these schools was to teach novitiates the mysteries of the new religion and prepare them for the sacraments and service of the church. Thus sprang up the "cloister schools." It soon became necessary to establish schools in connection with the larger churches or cathedrals for the special training of diocesan clergy. These were the so-called "cathedral schools" (Domschulen). The subjects taught in the cloister schools were singing, reading, writing, grammar, chiefly of the church Latin, and calendar reckoning or calculating the feast days (computus). In these schools there were two classes of pupils ; those preparing for orders (interni), and those intending to enter secular occupations (externi).

In the cathedral or clergy schools a more advanced curriculum was pursued, including the seven liberal arts in two separate groups :

1. Artes sermonicales (grammar, rhetoric, dialectics) constituting the trivium of the Middle Ages.

2. Artes reales (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music) making up the quadrivium of the Middle Ages.

These seven liberal arts were, in the language of Alcuin, the great Anglo-Saxon preceptor of Germany in the reign of Charles the Great, the "seven pillars " upon which the edifice of theology was to be reared.

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