would not, that I do." Then, when the imperious impulse of the moment has passed away and we reflect in silence upon our day's doing and misdoing, how we long for the sympathy and patient tenderness of the friend who knows our naughtiness and yet trusts our better nature! Blessed be the teacher to whom the power of such faith is granted. Through such abiding belief in the better nature of the boys shall they be kept from evil and helped to attain the good.-N. E. Journal of Education. THE ELEMENT OF PLEASURE IN EDUCATION. I AM aware that I may be here reminded of the necessity of rendering instruction agreeable to youth, and of Tasso's infusion of honey into the medicine of the child; but an age in which children are taught the driest of doctrines by the insinuating method of instructive games has little reason to dread the consequences of study being rendered too serious or severe. The history of The history of England is now reduced to a game of cards, the problems of mathematics to puzzles and riddles, and the doctrines of arithmetic may, we are assured, be sufficiently acquired by spending a few hours a week at a new and complicated edition of the royal game of the Goose. There wants but one step further, and the Creed and the Ten Commandments may be taught in the same manner, without the necessity of the grave face, deliberate tone of recital, and devout attention, hitherto exacted from the well-governed childhood of this realm. It may in the meantime be subject of serious consideration whether those who are accustomed to acquire instruction only through the medium of amusement may not be brought to reject that which approaches under the aspect of study; whether those who learn history by the cards may not be led to prefer the means to the end; and whether, were we to teach religion in the way of sport, our pupils may not be induced thereby to make sport of religion.-Waverley. This is what Sir Walter Scott says in connection with his criticism of the desultory system under which young Waverly was trained. It touches a question which has two sides, neither of which contains all the truth; and the great novelist, like many who have lived after him, found difficulty in seeing and expressing the whole truth, on so large a subject, from one point of view. There is and ought to be a large element of pleasure in education. There is also, and ought to be, a large measure of downright hard work, amounting often to wearisome and painful striving. It is not implied that pleasure and work are always necessarily separate and opposed. A right-minded person often finds highest enjoyment in earnest work. But it seems to be Nature's plan to put into the life of children a large element of mere amusement or play, and teachers of little ones are not usually slow to take a hint from this. It seems also to be Nature's plan to steady and sober, in time, the playful tendencies of childhood, by the more earnest and serious work of life, and teachers of every grade should keep this in mind; the great burden of their effort should lie in this direction. 44 The There is little danger of children growing up lacking in capacity for amusement; but the danger of their growing up without large capacity for hard work is imminent and great. Multitudes do so grow up, and the responsibility rests upon their parents and teachers. case is well put by a recent writer in these words: The power to think for one's self has too little standing in the schools; and we do not insist enough upon the appreciation of the worth of school work. Too often we try to wheedle our children into knowledge. We disguise the name of work, mask thought, and invent schemes for making education easy and pleasant, We give fanciful names to branches of study, make play with object lessons, and illustrate all things. To make education amusing, an easy road without toil, is to train up a race of men and women who will shirk work and shun whatever is disagreeable to them. There is no substitute, in either home or school, for hard work. If we are to have a properly trained people, we must teach the value of work and overcome the indifference of children to ignorance. The hero of Waverley was permitted, under an old and indulgent tutor, in great measure to learn as he pleased, what he pleased and when he pleased. He was "permitted to read only for the gratification of his desire for amuse ment," not realizing that he was "losing | forever the opportunity of acquiring habits of firm and assiduous application -of gaining the art of controlling, directing, and concentrating the powers of his mind for earnest investigation." He sought books and teachers only so long as they afforded him amusement, and the effect upon his character, happiness, and usefulness was anything but salutary. This is the extreme in one direction. It does not follow that the best results are obtained by going to the opposite extreme. It is not necessary to put into a child's training as much as possible that is distasteful and repulsive. Work at home and at school should be made as attractive as possible, without any attempt to present it under the false guise of play. The best service we can render a child is to teach him to work cheerfully and earnestly, and to love work. "It is to render him a very poor service to accustom him to regard everything as play." Wise parents and teachers will seek the golden mean. As Compayre well says, the legitimate desire to make study agreeable, to sweeten the toil of the child, ought not to make us forget the necessity of effort.-Home and School. KNOWLEDGE NOT POWER. WHAT BY JENKIN L. JONES. is WHAT is knowledge? It certainly is not an acquaintance with mere facts. Knowledge does not come from the dictionary or the encyclopedia. To know the names or even the color and forms of all birds in this neighborhood will not make of you an ornithologist; to know all the notes in the gamut or even to be able to read them in their combination on the musical staff does not make a musician of you. To know the bird you must know its relation to other birds, its habits throughout the year, what it feeds upon, where it nests and where it spends its winter. To know morals you must know the Ten Commandments in their relation to life, how they apply to conduct on the playground, in the school, in the home, in business. Knowledge is ordered information. Bread and milk are not strength. They become strength only when digested. So the facts of life are only the material out of which knowledge is made. Knowledge is always the combination of the fact and the thought. The more facts and thinking combine, the more knowledge is acquired. What is knowledge, then? It is not memory. It is not familiarity with facts. It is not observation. It is not even experience. It is all these put to soak in the human mind. It is all these digested by the human brain. So we put facts into the thought-hoppers of boys and girls. They are ground in the thinking mill of life and they come out as knowledge, ideas which can be baked into the bread of wisdom. This gives strength, gives purpose, and makes for power. GOOD MEMORY WORK: IV. MAN once described to me an inter esting scene witnessed by him in. some eastern churches. It was a great building, thronged with thousands of worshipers-pilgrims who had gathered from many distant places, to be present at these services. The great building was shrouded in darkness, but each person of all the thousand present held in one hand an unlighted candle. One tiny candle was burning, sending its timid beam of light out into the darkness feebly, like the faint ray of some far-off star. It deepened and intensified rather than relieved the gloom. At a given signal, every candle was to be lighted as quickly as possible from the one already burning. The signal was given. dozen hands reached forth instantly and caught the light from the one tiny source. These almost instantly passed it on to dozens and hundreds and thousands more. In an incredibly brief space of time the flame flashed across that great audience, the thousands of candles were blazing, and that immense building seemed to be one surging sea of light. Α What an object lesson? What a picture of what this world is, of what it may become! Why is not the light which flashed out from Bethlehem and from Calvary so long ago not burning now in every heart, the whole wide world around? "Ye are the light of the world," said Christ. Let that light shine. Let its fire kindle upon the next heart and that upon the next-and also flash on and on until every hamlet and village and city and state and nation and continent, and the whole world, shall be bright with the radiance of Him whose "life is the light of men."-Christian Work. "You may not at once discover in popular literature an agency by which large masses of people are swayed," says John Monteith in an article in Education on "Literature and the People," but you you will recognize in it a power that has deeply affected yourself. This effect has been caused when in the leisure hour you have sat down with well-known, popular authors, such as Bunyan, Defoe, Addison, Burns, Scott, Dickens, Hawthorne, Longfellow. The instruments of this power have been some very old forms of words, the authors of which are unknownnursery songs, fairy tales, ballads, the Arabian Nights, the stories of Troy and Achilles; and of the authors named, such books and pieces as Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson Crusoe, Sir Roger de Coverley, Auld Lang Syne, Curiosity Shop, The Scarlet Letter, and The Village Blacksmith. While reading these pieces of literature, or any others of the same class, you have been conscious of a pleasure arising partly from the subjects treated, and partly from the forms of expression; but under the glow of feeling experienced, when engaged in the reading these features were blended-they are naturally blended-and you never separated them for separate study, for why should you? "An influence that plays so important a part in the making of individual character and nations, and in promoting social health and happiness, an influence so natural in its origin and popular adaptation, must, like sunlight and rain, belong to all. It is equally true that literature is necessary to all. It may not be long hence when it will be generally acknowledged that to all human beings, in all conditions of life, beauty is as necessary as bread. "If literature is to do its appointed work in the world, it must be universal and democratic. To confine it to a class is to kill the soul of it. No more is it to be limited to any particular period of a single life. It rocks the cradle and is the staff of the old man. It has no school age and it never takes a diploma of graduation, for it is always fresh, green and growing. The spirit of it is pure benevolence. It is the Round Table of universal brotherhood. The knights who sit around it are in every house and every school." The selections here given were com mitted to memory to be recited and written on the dates here named by the pupils of the Boys' High School of Lancaster: NOBILITY. True worth is in being, not seeming- We get back our mete as we measure- The bush for the robin and wren; The heart of its ills to beguile, That nothing's so sacred as honor, We cannot make bargains for blisses, Nor gaining of great nor of small, As we would be done by, is all. A GOOD STRONG HEART. There is is one respect in which men differ, and that is in strength and capacity of heart; so that some men are distinguished by the fact that, in all calamities, in all trials, they gather out of their hearts the resources of a new and better life. It is just like a perpetual spring within them. If one form of contemplated good perishes, if one hope drops away, if one resource fails, down they go, down into their hearts again, and call up something else. A great strong heart is never overcome. It finds its resources, and falls back into its own possibilities. It is sad to find a man who says, "I have no heart;" to see a forlorn creature who says, "I have no power to struggle any more;" but as long as there is no blight or taint, the power, the possibility of the man is left. There was our gifted Prescott, who died so suddenly the other day. See how that physical calamity which occurred to him in his early years would have affected seme men. They would have crouched literally by the wayside of life; and if they had had that man's powers, they would have made their calamity an excuse for a life of idleness and waste. How was it with him? He fell back into his own great and noble heart, and out of it he brought up new life, which became to him a strength and power, that perhaps he never would have exhibited, had not that misfortune Our little systems have their day; They have their day and cease to be: happened to him. But for that he might Forgive my grief for one removed, indeed have been a scholar, or, much worse, a politician: but the twilight of almost total blindness having tallen upon him, he called up those powers, and concentrated them upon the great and noble work of history; and, when building up this historical structure, just as an archi tect builds up a great cathedral, like that of Cologne, standing forth majestic and glorious, he profited by the very calamity that excluded him from other pursuits and aims. Yea, and with a still nobler spirit, when others lamented his calamity and sought to condole with him in his misfortune, he sang songs in the night, and spoke noble words of cheer and encouragement. No, it was not out of the intellect, but out of a noble and faithful heart, that streamed forth that beautiful life, which made this man one of the glorious stars in the constellation of our literature.-E. H. Chapin. Jan'y 2. IN MEMORIAM. Strong Son of God, immortal Love, Thou wilt not leave us in the dust: Thou madest man, he knows not why; He thinks he was not made to die; And thou hast made him: thou art just. Thou seemest human and divine, The highest, holiest manhood, thou: Our wills are ours, we know not how; Our wills are ours, to make them thine. Thy creature, whom I found so fair. CATO'S SOLILOQUY. It must be so.-Plato, thou reasonest well: Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror Eternity!-thou pleasing, dreadful thought! The wide, the unbounded prospect lies before me; for Cæsar. am weary of conjectures, this must end them. Thus am I doubly armed. My death and life, The wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds. BETTER THAN GOLD. Better than grandeur, better than gold, Of the sons of toil when their labors close; Better than gold is a thinking mind, Better than gold is a peaceful home, NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. Not many generations ago, where you now sit, encircled with all that exalts and embellishes civilized life, the rank thistle nodded in the wind, and the wild fox dug his hole unscared. Here lived and loved another race of beings. Beneath the same sun that rolls over your head, the Indian hunter pursued the panting deer; gazing on the same moon that smiles for you, the Indian hunter wooed his dusky mate. Here the wigwam blaze beamed on the tender and helpless, the council fire glared on the wise and daring. Now, they dipped their noble limbs in your sedgy lakes; and now, they paddled the light canoe along your rocky shores. Here they warred; the echoing whoop, the bloody grapple, the defying deathsong, all were here; and when the tigerstrife was over, here curled the smoke of peace. Here, too, they worshiped; and from many a dark bosom went up a fervent prayer to the Great Spirit. He had not written his laws for them on tables of stone, but he had traced them on the tables of their hearts. The poor child of Nature knew not the God of Revelation, but the God of the Universe he acknowledged in everything around him. He beheld him in the star that sank in beauty behind his lonely dwelling; in the sacred orb that flamed on him from his mid-day throne; in the flower that snapped in the morning breeze; in the lofty pine that defied a thousand whirlwinds; in the timid warbler that never left its native grove; in the fearless eagle whose untired pinion was wet in clouds; in the worm that crawled at his feet; and in his own matchless form, glowing with a spark of that light to whose mysterious source he bent in humble, though blind adoration. And all this has passed away. Across the ocean came a pilgrim bark, bearing the seeds of life and death. The former were sown for you; the latter sprang up in the path of the simple native. Two hundred years have changed the character of a great continent, and blotted forever from its face a whole peculiar people Art has usurped the bowers of nature, and the anointed children of education have been too powerful for the tribes of the ignorant. Here and there a stricken few remain; but how unlike their bold, untamable progenitors! The Indian of falcon glance and lion bearing, the theme of the touching ballad, the hero of the pathetic tale, is gone! And his degraded offspring crawls upon the soil where he walked in majesry, to remind us how miserable is man, when the foot of the conqueror is on his neck. As a race, they have withered from the land. Their arrows are broken, their springs are dried up, their cabins are in the dust. Their council fire has long since gone out on the shore, and their war-cry is fast fading to the untrodden West. Slowly and sadly they climb the distant mountains, and read their doom in the setting sun. They are shrinking before the mighty tide which is pressing them away; they must soon hear the roar of the last wave which will settle over them forever. Ages hence, the inquisitive white man, as he stands by some growing city, will ponder on the structure of their disturbed remains, and wonder to what manner of persons they belonged. They will live only in the songs and chronicles of their exterminators. these be faithful to their rude virtues as men, and pay due tribute to their unhappy fate as a people. Jan'y 16. Let Charles Sprague. |