WHEN a celebrated writer was asked how he acquired his style he replied that in his early college days it was his practice to read the best authors and then from memory try to reproduce what he had read in the exact language and style of the author. After learning the style of one writer in this way he would take up another and study and reproduce his vocabulary and his style.

Webster memorized the great orations of the world's orators and sought to reproduce them, using as many of their words and phrases as he possibly could in his own conpositions. An oration delivered at the age

of nineteen in his home town was criticised by the older citizens as being a series of quotations ingeniously arranged from the masterpieces of oratory.-Midland Schools.

THE SPANKING of boys redounds to their good. No man has a greater love for children than I, and it is this love which I bear them that prompts the desire to save them from themselves. Most boys are good boys, but every class in the public school has its bad boys. Reproof has no more effect than water on a duck's back.

You cannot control a naturally obstinate boy unless he knows there is some force behind the orders directed against him. A good spanking will serve to make him avoid infractions of the school rules, because a boy will dodge not only the pain of the punishment but the humiliation that it entails.

I advocate spanking only as a last resort. I do not believe in slapping boys over the palm of the hand with a rattan. There are delicate nerves and fibres in the hand that are likely to sustain permanent injury. The ideal punishment is a strip of rubber hose from which the rubber covering has been removed, leaving a canvas and composition back. This is light enough to warrant its use and there will be no injury. At the

same time it carries an unmistakable sting that will last from five to fifteen minutes, The proper way to apply it is to place a boy across desk with his face down and let it land with medium force on the part of the body easiest to reach under the circumstances.-Prof. Lyman A. Best, Brooklyn, N. Y.

ARITHMETIC is one of the fundamental branches of the elementary school curriculum. The present tendency in arithmetical pedagogy is to minimize the culture value and to emphasize the practical value of number training. This tendency arises from the demand for greater accuracy, more skill, and increased rapidity, with less form, less rote method, less unimportant, irrational, cumbersome and complex work in computation. To accomplish these ends, however, it is not necessary to destroy the pedagogical importance of arithmetic. fact, simpler methods and simpler processes will give the mind greater freedom, and will not only result in more ease in the solution of mechanical problems, but will also develop minds capable of grappling with everyday problems. Thought building should not be submerged by figure building.

In

The art of doing should precede the mastery of the science of numbers, but it should not supplant it altogether, otherwise pupils become mere mechanical machines. Pupils should be taught to analyze problems not only for their immediate use, but to train their minds to cope with the perplexing conditions that confront them in life, and thus help them to reach speedier conclusions. They will thus be given greater power of observation, attention, perception, conception, judgment, reason. Therefore, in teaching arithmetic both ends should be kept in view.-Supt. Chas. F. Foos, Reading, Pa.

I SHOULD say that the abandonment of reading as a separate study, and with it the present composite readers is practicable. History and geography in very simple form, yet of coherent and progressive content, should be introduced also into the earlier grades, even the first. Reading would then be taught in connection with them, and with nature study and literature. In some public schools reading by the children of their own compositions has been found to have advantages over text-books in the first two or three grades, although textbooks were not given up. This should meet with considerable favor, because if geography and nature are ever to become successful in the lowest grades, they must become mainly the working over of class and individual observations at first hand. This would insure to the reading of written exercises a prominent place in reading work of the lowest grades.-H. A. Peterson in Education.

REFERRING to newspapers again, I have seen in them, within the last few days, such expressions as the following: "They act

like they were trying to make trouble," "Every one are interested in this matter," "I did not think he was that old." And, most for almost, loose for lose, concensus for consensus, avocation for vocation, lead for led, are found very frequently. And we often see such expressions as "from where," or "from whence," both of which "Where" is never a noun; and "whence" requires no preposition. Apt is another word that is often misused, as when one says, "He is apt to lose his way," or as the old lady said to her boy, "Yes, you may go swimming, but you must not go near the water, 'cause you are so apt to git drownded."

are wrong.

Now these are common errors, and teachers should take great pains to save their pupils from them. Perhaps it might be well to have a list of them permanently on the blackboard for a time, and have an occasional drill upon them till the children are thoroughly fortified against them. And it would be well to use the dictionary for a thorough study of the words apt, likely and liable, till the pupils are fully taught as to the exact meaning and use of each.-School and Home Education.

Is the university education worth while? During the past five years there has been a steadily widening call for trained men of the special schools and colleges. Last year was a record breaker. Some of the technical institutions had not graduates enough to supply the demands of industry, commerce and education. The president of one of our great universities complains that business threatens to bankrupt his teaching staff. The manufacturers are after the best students and are paying large salaries. Politics is another competitor. The present administration is using more college men than any other in the country's history.

President Eliot of Harvard and others have observed that the western states are outstripping the east in matters educational. One reason given is that the west is more ready to spend large sums of money. For instance, St. Louis appropriates $6 on $1,000 of valuation for school pur poses, twice as much as is spent in Boston. The west is getting better schools; it has colleges which surpass in size and achievement any in the

east. It gets the best teachers and educators the east can provide, then it gives them unlimited resources with which to work. It provides salary inducements that draw the best and brightest and most resourceful men and women into educational work.

Mr. Rockefeller has made another large gift from his enormous fortune to educational uses. This time, the gift is not limited by denominational lines nor to a single institution. He has put $10,000,000 in the hands of the general education board, of which Robert C. Ogden is chairman, with liberty to use the income in any way which he may see fit, to promote a comprehensive system of higher education in the United States. This gift supplements the recent ten-million-dollar gift of Mr. Carnegie for a pension fund for college professors, and with the large liberty of use accorded to the board which is to administer it, it cannot fail to be of great benefit to many institutions whose opportunities of good are far in advance of their means for using them. The general education board has done a splendid

work, chiefly in the South, during the two or three years since it was chartered. Mr. Rockefeller helped it, at the outset, with a gift of $1,000,000. His latest gift will admit of the extension of the board's work in the North and West as well as in the South.

At the American Institute of Instruction held at Portland, Maine, in July, the following_officers were elected: President, Walter E. Ranger, Montpelier, Vt.; secretary, William C. Crawford, Boston; treasurer, Alvin F. Pease, Malden, Mass.; assistant secretary, Payson Smith, Auburn, Me.; assistant treasurer, Nathan L. Bishop, Norwich, Conn.; vice-presidents: Maine, W. E. Russell, Gorham; Elizabeth Hall, Lewiston; George C. Purington, Farmington; New Hampshire, C. W. Bickford, Manchester; Henry C. Morrison, Concord; M. C. Smart, Littleton; Vermont, B. E. Merriam, Bellows Falls; John L. Alger, Saxtons River; O. D. Mathewson, Barre; Massachusetts, Sarah L. Arnold, Boston; Walter P. Beckwith, Salem; J. G. Edgerly, Fitchburg; Rhode Island, Valentine Almy, Cranston; H. W. Lull, Newport; Joseph E. Mowry, Providence; Connecticut, G. A. Stuart, New Britain; A. D. Call, Hartford; Anna D. Pollard, Southington; New York, Mary S. Snow, Brooklyn; and the usual list of counsellors and standing committees.

The total enrollment at the N. E. A., was 20,941. New York State led with 7,968 members. Illinois followed with 2,774. Ohio had 1,555; New Jersey, 1.526; Missouri, 1,336; Pennsylvania, 774. Massachusetts had only 122, while Nebraska sent 316 and Georgia 204.

Georgia. As the result of the increased appropriation for public schools during 1905, it is expected that in most counties the school term will be lengthened from five to six months, and in some of the counties in addition to this, increased salaries will be paid the school teachers.

The State Board of Education has adopted a resolution urging county boards of education all over the State, wherever it is practicable, to increase the length of the school term in proportion to the increase in funds. The direct appropriation to public schools was increased by the last legislature from $800,000 to $1,000,000, and besides this, there have been increases in several other sources of school money. As a result, the apportionment of school money through the State school commissioner's office, this year, will be about eight and one-half per cent. greater than for 1904. The State Board of Education is composed of Governor Terrell, State School Commissioner W. B. Merritt, Comptroller-General W. A. Wright, Attorney-General John C. Hart and Secretary of State Philip Cook.

Ten school libraries have been donated to be given as rewards to those counties whose schools take themost interest in Arbor day.

Massachusetts.-Everett B. Durfee has been elected superintendent to succeed William C. Bates, who becomes superintendent at Cambridge. The salary is $3,000. Mr. Durfee was graduated from Brown university in 1884.

F. K. Congdon, of Addison, N. Y., has been elected superintendent at Northampton to succeed Schuyler F. Herron, who goes to Mexico to take the superintendency of the English speak

ing schools of that city. Mr. Congdon is a graduate of Syracuse university, classical course, with the degrees of A. B. and A. M. He was assistant in the Bradford, Pa. high school for two years, principal in the Wayland, N. Y., high school for three years, supervising principal for three years in the Canistota, N. Y., schools, and superintendent at Addison, N. Y., for three years.

Minnesota.-The educational institutions of Minnesota and the citizens of that state generally, especially those who are interested in higher education, are greatly rejoiced by reason of the fact that the Minnesota legislature has freed these institutions from the domination of the board of control and has put them back under the exclusive management of the several boards of regents. The single board of control idea for educational institutions was tried in Minnesota and speedily proved a failure. The board sought to apply the rigid economic principles which had been applied with success in the management of the penitentiaries, insane asylums and other similar institutions to the State university and other schools, and as a result these institutions were crippled, there was constant friction and discontent, and if the system had been continued Minnesota would have lost some of the best educators it has within its borders.

Mississippi. The total school population of Mississippi is 403,647, of whom 210,766 are colored and 192,881 are white. The total average attendance during the season of 1903-04 was 233,175a little more than one-half the children of school age, and the proportion of the races held good. Of white children the average attendance was The 115,079, and of colored children 118,096. number of teachers employed was 8,922, of whom 5,524 were white and 3,398 were colored. The average monthly salary of the white teacher was $33.85 and of the colored teacher $19.69. The average number of days taught was 90.09, a little over three months. The average expenditure per capita of children in attendance was $15.44 for whites and $6.27 for negroes. The number of applicants examined by the state board for teachers' certificates was during the last year 9,787, of whom 4,392 were white and 5,395 were colored.

North Carolina.-State Superintendent of Public Instruction J. Y. Joyner says that probably the most important educational act passed by the last legislature was the amendment to section 37, of the new school law. This regulates the studies to be taught in the public schools and the examination and the certification of the teachers. The act limits the instruction in public schools employing one teacher to spelling, reading, writing, arithmetic, drawing, language, composition, English grammar, geography, constitution and history of the United States and North Carolina, elements of agriculture, oral instruction in elementary physiology and hygiene, the nature and effects of alcoholic drinks and narcotics. Then for schools employing more than one teacher there are added elements of civil government and such other studies as the State board of education may prescribe. The purpose of this, Superintendent Joyner says, is to emphasize thoroughness in essential branches and prevent their neglect.

Vermont.-Hon. Mason S. Stone succeeds Hon. Walter E. Ranger as State Superintendent of Schools.

Wisconsin.-The Milwaukee school board has adopted a plan which includes the grading of the teachers according to proficiency and an increase of salary on the basis of experienced proficiency. The grading of the teachers by the principal and superintendent, and of the principals by the superintendent and his assistant, classifies them as excellent, good, fair, poor. Only those

who are excellent or good get the advance in salary. The increase is $50 for those who have been in service from six to nine years, $100 for those from nine to twelve years and $150 for those above twelve years of service. This makes the salary of the proficient teachers of twelve years' experience, $750, instead of $600; sixth grade, $800; seventh grade, $850; eighth grade, $950. The principals get the same increase for the same length of service.

NEW N. E. A. OFFICERS

The N. E. A. elected the following officers at the Asbury Park meeting for the ensuing year: President, Nathan C. Schaeffer, of Pennsylvania; first vice-president, William H. Maxwell, New York city; second vice-president, Miss N. Cropsey, of Indiana; third vice-president, J. H. Hinemon, Arkansas; secretary, Irwin Shepard, of Winona, Minn.; treasurer, J. A. Wilkinson, of Kansas.

The departmental officers are as follows:

Manual training-President, Frank M. Leavitt, of Boston, Mass.; vice-president, Charles R. Bates, of Port Deposit, Md.; secretary, Oscar McMurray, Chicago.

Business section-President, Dr. H. M. Rowe, Baltimore; vice-president, James T. Young, Philadelphia; second vice-president, W. H. Wagner, Los Angeles, Cal.; secretary, H. G. Healey, New York city.

Department of science instruction-President, H. A. Sonten, Omaha; vice-president, Irving O. Palmer, Newtonville, Mass.; secretary, E. R. Whitney, Binghamton, N. Y.

Library department-President, J. N. Wilkinson, Emporia, Kan.; vice-president, Edward White Faillard, New York; secretary, Miss Grace Salisbury, White Water, Wis.

Physical education department-President, Dr. E. Herman Arnold, New Haven, Conn.; vicepresident, Dr. Rebecca Stonewood, Washington, D. C.; secretary, Miss May Long, Mason City, Ia.

Kindergarten department-President, Mary C. May, Salt Lake City; vice-president, Elmer E. Brown, Berkeley, Cal.; secretary, May Murray, Springfield, Mass.

Department of secondary education-President, E. W. Lyttle, Albany, N. Y.; first vice-president, Wilson Ferrand, Newark, N. J.; second vicepresident, Edward Twitmeyer, Beldingham, Wash.; secretary, Philo M. Buck, St. Louis.

Department of elementary education-President, Mrs. Alice W. Cooley.

PRIZES FOR TEACHERS

The announcement is made by the National Educational Association of two prizes of $200 and $100 for the best forms of school report adaptable to the large city, the small city, and state superintendents. This is the first step in an attempt to enlist the co-operation of teachers in every part of the country in a concerted movement for better methods of reporting school expenses and educational results. The other is made through the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, by Mrs. Emily D. Williamson, who for a generation has been intimately connected with every manner of educational and social work in New Jersey.

Competitors may obtain information by addressing R. Fulton Cutting, president, 105 East Twenty-second street, New York city.

IN THE FOREIGN FIELD Lack of Elementary Education in Russia Reform in Russia, according to the editor of the Osvobojdenie, is more likely to come as the result of a great war than in the natural order of things. The disastrous Crimean war, he points out, made the liberation of the serfs a national necessity, and this great measure led to others of a liberal character, so that the period which followed became an era of progress and improve. ment. Aside from political reform, liberal Russians agree that the fundamental need of the nation is elementary education. The economic condition of the peasantry, admittedly bad, is attributed to illiteracy and the special restrictions which ignorance and degradation appear to justify. Recognizing that Russia's strength is in her peasantry, the St. Petersburg Novosti asks what the nation is doing to-day for the cause of the education of the masses who produce her wealth, defend and extend her dominion, and fight to maintain her prestige and supremacy in far-off territory. The latest statistics of elementary education are those of 1900, which the paper elaborately analyzes. We condense the survey as follows:

There are 84.500 elementary schools in the country. The total cost of their maintenance at present is 50,000,000 roubles (about $27,000,000). Of this amount the zemstvos (the provincial assemblies, which contain representatives of the peasantry) contribute 23 per cent., though they exist and operate in less than half of the provinces of the empire. The imperial treasury gives 20.7 per cent. The remainder is made up by appropriations of the municipal and rural governments and by gifts, bequests, etc.

The number of pupils in the elementary schools is 4,500,000, and the girls constitute about onefourth of this number. So far as the male pupils are concerned, the school population represents one-twentieth of the whole male population. Of the female population, only 1 out of 54 attends school.

Considerable progress has been made, however, since 1885. At that time the showing was much less favorable. Half of the recruits, for example, are illiterate to-day; twenty years ago only 20 per cent. of the recruits were able to read and write in any manner whatever.

Adopting a territorial test, Russia is much more backward than other Western nations in the matter of education. She has but one school for every 222 square versts of territory. Even in the most advanced parts of the empire, in the governments of St. Petersburg, Moscow, etc., there is but one school in every 24 square versts of territory. In thousands of instances children have to walk from 8 to 12 miles a day in going to and returning from school. And the school term coincides with the coldest and severest weather.

The greatest chaos prevails in the control and management of the elementary schools. They are subject to no fewer than 9 different departments. The ministry of education manages about half of the schools. The synod controls 42,000 schools, with, however, a comparatively small number of pupils-1,600,000. On the other hand, the number of pupils in the schools controlled by the ministry of education is 2,100,000.

For the present, friends of popular education ask that the imperial government appropriate as much for the public schools as is contributed by the zemstvos, local bodies, and private benevolence together-about 33,000,000 roubles. This, it is said, is more essential than the encouragement of manufactures by protective duties and the development of the Manchurian "sphere of interest."-Translation made for The Literary Digest.

AMONG THE COLLEGES

Exercises celebrating the installation of Edmund Janes James as president of the University of Illinois will be held at Urbana, Ill., October 18 and 19.

The Cornell forestry case, which involves 30,000 acres of timber land in the Adirondacks, was recently decided against Cornell in favor of the members of the Association of Residents of Upper Saranac Lake. As far back as 1901 the association took action in the courts to deprive the university of this land, and to annul a contract between the college and the Brooklyn Cooperage Co., under which the latter has been cutting timber on the tract. When the university secured possession of the land, through an appropriation by the legislature, it allowed the Brooklyn Cooperage Co., to cut the trees from the tract, the object being to replant the ground with seedlings. When the nature of the experiment reached the ears of the residents in the districts they immediately took action to prevent the agreement from being carried out, and as stated above, they have been upheld by the courts.

Prof. H. T. White, for 13 years in charge of mathematics in Northwestern university, has resigned to take a similar position in Vassar college, Poughkeepsie, N. Y.

Prof. Charles Worthen Spencer, A. B., the head of the department of history in Colgate university, for the past ten years, has resigned to accept a preceptorship of history and politics at Princeton, under President Woodrow Wilson's new tutorial system. Professor Spencer is a graduate of Colby college of the class of 1890 and continued his studies for two years at the University of Chicago and one year at Columbia

university. For two years he was instructor in science and ancient history in Hebron academy, Hebron, Me. Since 1895 he has been professor of history at Colgate.

One of the important problems which confront the small college, especially if it is remote from a city of any size, is the lack of inducements which offer means of maintenance to self-supporting students. The opportunities open to students who are obliged to work their way through college are necessarily limited, so that these young men are sometimes forced to select larger institutions, where the chances for earning money, especially in the city colleges, are so much greater. This situation has been met in the right way at Keuka college, an institution located on Keuka lake, which is one of the youngest colleges in New York state, but which is already making gratifying progress. The trustees recently decided to appropriate $25,000 with which to build and equip a grape basket factory, for the express purpose of providing work for students who have to pay their own way. A more sensible plan could hardly have been adopted. The work requires no special training or skill not possessed by the ordinary young man, it does not demand unusual physical strength, it is work which almost anyone would find agreeable, and it pays fairly well. Thousands of grape baskets are used annually in packing the great crop of grapes grown on the shores of the lake, so that the factory has a market for its output right at the college doors. There is every reason to believe that the trustees of Keuka college will find this a very satisfactory investment, and their action shows what the small college can do to utilize the means within its reach to attract a very desirable class of students.

THE SCHOOLS OF NEW YORK STATE}

GREATER NEW YORK

An examination of applicants for licenses to teach certain subjects in high schools of New York City will be held on October 19 and 20.

An examination for license as first assistant in high schools will be held November 23 and 24, to teach biology, economics, history and civics, mathematics, mechanic arts.

An examination of applicants for license No. 1, will be held January 4 and 5, 1906.

An examination of applicants for admission to the Training Schools for Teachers of New York City, will be held January 15-22, 1906.

Detailed information regarding any of the above examinations may be secured by addressing Supt. Wm. H. Maxwell, Park avenue and 59th street, New York City.

STATE TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION The next meeting of the State Teachers Association will be held in the Svracuse high school building, December 27-29. The attempted consolidation with the Academic Principals' Conference did not work. President Boynton characteristically remarked: "the principals backed out."