EDITORIAL.

W

E notice that State Superintendent Massey, of Virginia, recent. ly repeated the favorite "chestnut," that all the great men in the Republic are born in the country. In this the good superintendent is under the same delusion that seems to possess the majority of congressional worthies from his own section and the new portions of the west, beyond the Mississippi, that the old-time rural life of the country is still the dominating power in the Republic and is the great reliance of the nation for preserving the integrity and purity of Republican institutions. It was true half a century ago, that the "weight of the meeting" was located on the farms, and the few cities that deserved the name, even in the old north-east, were dependent on the open country for their supply of fresh human material. When Horace Mann began his educational crusade, certainly, outside a few favored cities, the facilities for popular education were but little better in the towns than in the rural districts, and a bright, energetic boy, coming up from the back-woods, found no formidable rivalry among the city youth. But, certainly to-day, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi north of the old Mason and Dixon line, things are not as they used to be. Especially, since the close of the civil war, the mighty social revolution that is bringing in the modern type of urban civilization has gone on with a rapidity that even the people of those great states have not realized. Today, every considerable city and prosperous village, in at least twenty American states, is an educational center for a greater or less extended district; in itself a proper university, in which every child has a better chance for an all-round training in school, church, society and productive industry than the children of a wealthy family half a century ago. Meanwhile, even in New England, the drain of the young progressive people from the rural dis tricts to the towns has steadily lowered the quality of the rural population, leaving behind the old and unenterprising of the "native" people and pushing in a lower class to take the places of the absent. As a result, a good family now, in the open country, is generally compelled either to educate its children in a school a generation behind the times, or send them away from home at large expense.

So, when the country boy or girl now a days goes up to the city or industrial center, full of the idea of rural essential superiority, the twain find themselves confronted with the solid column of city young people, trained especially for the uses of the new order of affairs;

their " corners cut at every step. The more enterprising and capable avail themselves of the great machinery of education provided by the various philanthropic associations, public night schools, free reading rooms, lectures and churches and, often as otherwise, owe their final success to this training acquired in the city. Meanwhile, the towns are all the time lifting up from the social basement story multitudes of children, by the great elevator of the public school, graduating them on a higher plain than their old surroundings and sending them forth to occupy positions of trust and profit all over the country.

These facts may as well be taken to heart by two classes of people, who now are engaged in the hopeless operation of "butting their heads " against modern civilization. The first class is the great number of excellent city people, including the literary guild, social reformers, etc., who are warning and entreating young America to keep away from the city, as if it were loaded with dynamite and ready to go off when jarred by the blundering footstep of a "country bumpkin" of either sex. As far as the ordinary temptations of youth are concerned, our great cities are now, beyond question, a safer place of residence, for all save the evil-disposed, than the little hamlet, and small villages developed by the railroads and local industries through the open country. These places are invariably the headquarters of the "offcolor" population of large neighborhoods, without police, and set the type for a general "free and easy" style of manners and habits, out of which comes a ghastly wreck of character. The slums of the great city are as surely recruited from this break-down of youthful virtue in the open country as from home production. It is not Boston, but the whole of Eastern New England and Canada that fills the lower regions of that metropolis with thousands of unfortunates, fleeing to cover their shame or crime. The advice that should be given to our country cousins, if they wish to keep their children at home is to "awake out of their sleep," cast away the fond delusion that Young America will be content to live a generation behind the times, improve their schools and churches, cultivate a more attractive and refined social life; and make especially the country village what it could be made by the expenditure of half the energy and brains now given to building up the cities. The late Superintendent Dickinson of Massachusetts, by his twenty years' work at the improvement of the country schools of the state, has done more to arrest the rush to the city and reconcile progressive young families to rural life than this entire crowd of solemn declaimers, wealthy ladies, feather-weight poets and half-baked journalists, who, comfortably ensconced in city opportunities and luxuries, for themselves and their children, are making the air vocal with

the laudation of "rural felicity" for the benefit of ambitious country youth.

But the most formidable onset on the new civilization is the final combination of the old-time rural life of the country to arrest the oncoming of the new order, now on its irresistible march toward the reconstruction of society in every Christian land. To-day the public life of the Republic is in the throes of a conflict between the old-time ideal of rural American life and the new type of urban civilization. The entire south is still dominated by the ideas and ideals, industrial, social and civic, of a passing generation and is still "solid" on every question that forces an issue between this notion and the new order. The new states, beyond the Mississippi, with large bodies of people "native" and naturalized, are in the same condition. The congressional record is burdened with the declamation of the blatant representatives of this side of the national life, denouncing every thing characteristic of the coming civilization. No day in congress passes without the presentation of a score of bills, any one of which would scuttle the Republic and leave it a stranded ship, or a wrecked stage coach, mired in the slough of a last century's order of human affairs. All the signs of public life point to a coming dissolution of political parties and a re-organization around the question,-"having saved the Union in a great civil war, what sort of a Republic do we propose to make it?" We are only at the beginning of this, the final and radical conflict between the progressive and reactionary forces in American affairs. Sooner or later, every powerful influence in the country that represents an old-time European or primitive American ideal, will "get together," reinforced by the entire crowd of theoretic socialism; spawned in the old world as a natural reaction from the old order, but, here, ready to strike hands with its ancient enemy to fight the irresistible on-going movement of our characteristic American civilization. Now is coming the great opportunity of the educator in American affairs. Every city and village in the land should now become a University; a magazine of munitions; a headquarters of enlistment for the forces of the new civilization. Fifty years ago, only one man in twenty could be spared from the labor to produce the bare necessaries of life for work in the upper story of society. Within our lifetime, one in five can be thus spared. And if "ten righteous men " could save a Sodom, three thousand years ago, surely the twenty in every hundred representatives of upper-story civilization in the United States, to-day, if mindful of their great opportunity and inspired by the "eternal vigilance" which is the price of all good things, may be trusted to "see that the Republic receives no harm."

THE

HE sympathy of the civilized world has gone out to the little kingdom of Greece, smitten, in the midst of political and financial distress, with sudden and awful disaster by earthquake. As if the burdens created by a load of foreign debt and a crippled currency were not enough, the earth has opened and swallowed up whole towns, slaying hundreds and leaving fifty thousand people homeless. Throughout the region of romantic association about Parnassus terror reigns supreme and in Athens the people sleep in boats or carts or wherever else they think themselves best situated for speedy escape from falling debris. The king is reported to be actively engaged, from province to province, in doing all in his power to cheer and aid his afflicted people.

It is most fitting that in this hour of calamity the sympathy of the civilized world, so much of whose civilization has been derived from this very land of Greece, should manifest itself in a practical and substantial way. An appeal has gone out from Professor J. Irving Manatt, LL. D., of Brown University to push a popular subscription the unit of which shall be the Greek drachma (20 cents) for the relief of these unfortunate people. For a single drachma food enough can be bought to support an entire Greek family for a day. How many of us waste more than that every day? Already Brown University has pledged over $350. This is a cause that will appeal with peculiar force to cultivated people everywhere. We hope that it will meet with a generous response especially from those interested in the study of Greek in our schools, academies and colleges. Professor Manatt will receive any contributions that may be sent to him and will see that they are forwarded to our American minister at Athens, Professor Alexander, who will distribute them so as to be of the most practical service.

T is interesting to read, in the Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln,

debate. He characterizes Lincoln as a "kind, amiable gentleman " but desires him to understand that not one of the justices of the Supreme Court, that court which gave the Dred Scot decision— would feel complimented by a comparison with him; that was on the Illinois prairies in Aug., 1858. How little did Douglas, then in his senatorial glory, realize what the future held for his stalwart, greathearted antagonist.

DEPARTMENT OF PROFESSIONAL STUD).

THE TEACHERS' INTERNATIONAL READING CIRCLE. TENTH MONTHLY SYLLABUS OF THE SECOND YEAR.

PREPARED BY DR. CHAS. J. MAJORY, NEWTON, N. J., SECRETARY.

THE

For the use of Correspondence Members.

HE work of the Teachers' International Reading Circle for the second year closes with this syllabus. The written work of correspondence members will be returned to them after the papers upon this syllabus have been received and examined by the Secretary, unless a note accompanies the final papers saying that the member does not care for the return of the monthly written work. In some cases copies may have been retained in order to save the expense of return of papers. Certificates will be issued to all correspondence members whose written work has been found satisfactory. written work upon this year's syllabus should be sent to Newton, N. J., and all correspondence with reference to the work for next year should be addressed to Teachers' International Reading Circle, 1, 3 and 5 Bond St., New York City.

The

For members who have pursued the brief course, the advanced or the complete course of reading for the first and second years, the following series of books will provide the third year's work. New members may take the following as their first course, or they may substitute from the series of the first or second year as desired. It is only necessary that the number of books specified shall be studied in each year's work, though the order of books as regularly given is deemed altogether the best as constituting a fairly graded series. Satisfactory written work must be prepared in accordance with ten monthly syllabi by those who seek the certificates of the International Circle, and such work must be continued through three years to secure the diploma.

COURSE OF READING FOR THIRD YEAR.

I. BRIEF COURSE.

1.

2.

Rousseau's Emile, edited by W. H. Payne.

Text Book in Psychology, by Johann Friedrich Herbart, translated by Margaret K. Smith of the Oswego, N. Y., State Normal School.

3. The Moral Instruction of Children, by Felix Adler.