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school, widening the scope of the teacher's horizon as well as the mother's. The teacher knows much better how to deal with a child if she knows the mother. Many of the requirements made of the child at school will be better understood if the mother comes into the building, makes the acquaintance of the teacher and familiarizes herself with the school environment of her child. President Roosevelt, in a recent speech, said, "There is no force in the community to-day so vital, so strong, so influential in making the future citizen as our public schools." This, we who are in the field realize, but how much stronger and more influential, if we take into partnership the parents, for in a way, we are not only strengthening the future generation, but the present, by oiling up the machinery, and bringing, into active touch with the present educational needs, the parents, the majority of whom undoubtedly have become rusty since their school days. They live again their school life with their children; how surprised and interested they are to find the improvements which have been made in methods of instruction, and what a surplus of advantages their children have to-day, over the advantages in their day. "Elementary education is nothing else but a supreme return to the truest and simplest form of educational art, the education of the home," said Pestalozzi. There was a time when "Child Study" was followed to such an extent that there was not much left of the child; he was analyzed nearly to his intellectual death, and the term child study became a great bug-a-boo, but to-day we take the type, the individual and one must even then use discretion, and see that what applies to the type cannot be applied to all.

In the book, "Pedagogues and Parents," Mrs. Wilson, in reviewing and discussing at length the report of the Committee of Ten, expresses regret that no Committee of Parents was asked to co-operate. There

is much that might be said concerning this but the time seems hardly ripe for such a step. While we may have many parents capable as far as education is concerned, we have few however, who have given thought and study to educational results, and methods. Mrs. Wilson also asks the question, "Can the highest ideals of childculture possibly be attained without the complementary wisdom of school and home?" and answers that she does not think it can. When parents begin to ask such questions it is time to act. The success of such co-operation can best be illustrated by stating briefly our own personal experience. Our school is not one of the larger ones, 13 teachers and a registration of between five and six hundred pupils. October 28, 1904, the faculty sent invitations to all the mothers to attend a tea, from 3 to 5, music, refreshments and a social chat. One hundred and fifty responded to our invitation which we considered a remarkably good showing. During the program, it was suggested that we form an association for mutual benefit. This had been talked over with the teachers and one or two mothers previously. All who wished to join such an association were invited to leave their name and address in a book which could be found at the desk. It may surprise you to know that nearly one hundred names were left. November 11th, a meeting was called, when we organized, electing one of the mothers chairman and a teacher as secretary, a mother as treasurer and a mother as chairman of the program committee. It was decided at this meeting to take the name Parent-Teachers' Association, so that we might include the fathers. Annual dues of 25 cents were decided upon, to meet expenses of entertainment only. On November 18th we held an evening meeting for the fathers, when a stereopticon lecture was given. On December 10th, we held our Xmas sale, the mothers taking an active part, the result was that we cleared

$200. More than the money value of this sale was the fact that parents, pupils and teachers were all working for one common interest, creating a spirit of good fellowship not to be reached in any other way, at least none to my knowledge and present experience. We held afternoon meetings, January 18th and March 22d, having music and an interesting speaker each time, also refreshments. February 10th we had another evening meeting. On account of a fire in our building on April 1st, we did not meet again until Autumn. On October 25th we had an enthusiastic meeting. All were greatly interested to note the improvements made during the summer vacation. At this meeting it was decided to engage Miss Susan F. Chase of the Buffalo Normal School to give a course of six lectures on the "Study of the Child." Last year we gave our Christmas sale November 25th, making $300. The spirit and atmosphere of the whole affair was delightful. The mothers offering to do all they could and working most enthusiastically with the teachers; we all enjoyed it. It certainly is the very best way to get acquainted and throw off all formality. From this fund From this fund we paid Miss Chase $50 for the lectures, giving them free to all paid up members

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of our association. Outsiders are invited to pay a nominal price.

It may interest you to know the topics:
The Child and the Adult,

Education of the Nervous System,
Habit, an Enemy or Ally,
Suggestion as a Factor in Education,
Happiness as an Art,

Thinking, Feeling, Willing, the harmo

nious whole.

Two or three evening lectures are held during the season so that the fathers may attend. While there are always in every undertaking, opportunities for improvement, still we feel amply repaid. It has done us all good and we notice greater interest in every feature of our school. I should advise, however, that the principal keep the guiding hand, not accepting office, but tactfully managing all. It has been said that we have a good class of mothers to assist us. That may all be, but I find unless there is some incentive to induce mothers to visit the school, they seldom come. I question, however, if there is any district where at least one or two may not be found who will act under leadership. Consider the good to the mothers with few advantages far greater in proportion even than to those who have had superior advantages.

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A Study of the Idylls of the King

H. A. DAVIDSON

III. LANCELOT AND ELAINE

O one of Tennyson's Idylls is richer in poetic beauty than the story of "Lancelot and Elaine," and it is little wonder that it seemed to the committee a suitable choice for students in secondary schools. The deeds and adventures of the poem are those of young persons: The lily maid is at the hour of the dawning of love; Lavaine and Sir Torre are youths thirsting for adventures and achievement; even the older knights, Lancelot, Sir Gawain, Arthur himself, are in the years of lusty manhood most admired and emulated of youth; and what is the tournament but the game of war, entered by those in whom the blood yet runs hot, and played in the presence of beauty, for love and lady fair! The season, also, is the midmost time of leafage and bloom, and the poem is full of pictures set in surroundings truly idyllic, while here and there are brief, perfect descriptive passages, each one of which might well inspire the brush of the painter.

Nor is any poem of Tennyson's richer in phrases that linger in the memory, in expressions of rare and significant beauty, or in lines pregnant with meaning,-"The myriad cricket of the mead;"... "rapt by all the sweet and sudden passion of youth toward greatness in its elder;"..." Obedience is the courtesy due to kings."-Nevertheless, no one of the Idylls selected for use in secondary schools presents so many difficult problems as this one. The suitability of the narrative for the young is apparent, not real. The central figure of the tale, Elaine, is but a love sick maiden, however winsome or pure. Naturally, school boys find little that attracts them in her story, and even girls, at an age when love's *Copyrighted, 1906, by H. A. Davidson

Nor is it

young dream is scarcely more than a mirage in the distance, often fail to sympathize with a passion so hopeless, for a knight, in age, already far beyond the days of youthful sport or love. Again, if the poem be read or studied with care, the story is full of tragic import the meaning of which can be clear only in the light of experiences beyond the years of children. easy for the teacher to read the Idyll with her class as a tale that is told, leaving the young mind to select and fashion for itself a story of beauty and innocence, while passing lightly over other parts of narrative the meaning of which experience does not yet reveal. Black and white intermingle; it was the sion of Lancelot that withheld him from loving the maid that loved him, and Guinevere's jealousy runs with sinister meaning through the tale to the end. Again, the content of the poem, in its deeper meaning, in its subtlety of thought and analysis, transcends the understanding of the child. The experiences and passions recorded, the situations described, the thought suggested, require in the student a thoughtful habit of mind, fine perception, and a nature well-seasoned.

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What, then is the task of the instructor in teaching this Idyll in the secondary school? We must admit, in advance, the impossibility of giving the young reader an adequate understanding of its full meaning and must content ourselves with such results as may be gained by study of different parts, of detail, adornment, and of the continued story of the Round Table. Boys and girls, alike, may read in “Lancelot and Elaine" of the further fortunes of Arthur and his knights, Various stories

may be assigned for presentation, either in narrative, or in outline. This will involve a rapid preliminary reading of the Idyll as suggested in the study of "Gareth and Lynette." The story of Arthur, The story of Lancelot, The story of Lavaine, should be assigned to boys; the stories of Elaine, and of the queen, (unless omitted), to girls. In the outline of the story of Arthur it should be noted in passing, that a part of the incidents narrated in this Idyll are chronologically earlier than other parts of the story given in Idylls already read. Character studies may be assigned in the same manner, for each character appearing in the Idyll.

For these, descriptions of appearance or of traits, should be quoted in Tennyson's own apt phrases, with references, by lines. Expressions of opinion and criticism, on the other hand, should be original. Afterward, "Lancelot and Elaine" may be read, or studied, in the manner suggested for "Gareth and Lynette." If the outlines If the outlines of the stories of Arthur, Lancelot, etc. are allowed to remain on the board, the parts appearing in the story of Elaine,

which is the sequence followed in the Idyll, will fall into place as the reading progresses, and the pupil will receive, without technical instruction, an important lesson in the arrangement of narrative composition.

Beside the study of the Idylls as narrative, suggestions for which have been given in a preceding number, there is another rich field of study open to the student, in the literary qualities and poetic beauty of these poems. It is true that this study would tax the best trained powers and the finest minds in schools of advanced study, but there is also an elementary study of aesthetic qualities which will quicken the understanding of young minds and cultivate in them an appreciation of beautiful forms of thought or expression. The remainder of this paper will be given to this difficult subject. Appreciation of complex and subtle

beauty such as characterizes Tennyson's verse, depends in some degree upon perception of the elements which unite to produce the quality or effect thus named, but the untrained student is peculiarly averse to the sort of application in which it is necessary to hold the judgment in suspense while qualities, admirable or otherwise, are noted in their relation to each other, and opinion results, as it were, from many conflicting impressions; the young must therefore miss much of the rich and mingled beauty of expression and of thought in these poems. If, however, the instructor be thoroughly trained and has given special study to her subject she may be able to guide her class to better purpose than appears in immediate results. If she selects such topics, passages, or threads running through the Idylls, as are, in reality, elements of the larger theme and structure of the series, her work will set young minds in the right direction and, later, the understanding of the more mature student will catch from the remembered teaching of the preparatory school a wider significance than was revealed to the intelligence of the child. Happy is the fortune of the young when the mind passes from one period of instruction to the next, easily and naturally, finding little to revise, or to cast aside.

"Lancelot and Elaine" especially invites. this kind of study and the topics that come to mind are numerous, but it is impossible here, to do more than select one as an illustration which may suggest others. It is sometimes said that "Lancelot and Elaine" is the most idyllic of the Idylls. If this be not true, the poem is still full of pictures in words, and of bits of description which in a few phrases carry the imagination far afield,-the wild wave, "green glimmering toward the summit;" the "poplars with their noise of falling showers," the vine clad oriel; "the pictured wall."-There is here an opportunity to fix in the mind of the pupil the difference

between the idyllic picture which is essential to the progress of the narrative and those bits of description that serve merely as setting, background, or accompaniment, of the tale. The words idyll, or idyllic, as signifying a type of poem, or a poetic quality, should be avoided in the secondary school. The meaning connoted by these terms is most composite and difficult of definition. The teacher herself, if without special advanced training, may be pardoned for hesitation or uncertainty in these distinctions. Everyone who reads, however, may select from the narrative those exquisite descriptions which, like the picture of the artist, have an organization and arrangement of detail significant in meaning. The material is that of the artist; the meaning is an essential element in the narrative. Such a picture is the one in which the maid of Astolat stands by the gate, her bright hair blown about her face, such another is the description of Elaine appearing before Lancelot in the early morning while he thought, "he had not dreamed she was so beautiful." This passage might might be reckoned a bit of pure description, the morning light, the face of the maid, innocent and fair as an opening blossom, rapt with the love that was her doom, were it not that the moment is of significance in three lives. Elaine gazes on the face of her knight as if it were a god's and thereafter would choose death rather than let her love decline on any other than God's best and greatest. Lancelot, seeing her so sweet and true, realizes for a moment that such a love as hers might have brought him happiness and "noble issue, sons born. to the glory of his name and fame." Here, also, the rumor that stirred such bitter pain in the heart of the queen took its rise, in the acceptance by Lancelot of the sleeve embroidered with pearls.

The order of selection for this study should be, first, pictures which form

a part of the narrative; secondly, pictures which, if painted, would involve some composition or arrangement of parts, namely, of King Arthur at the tournament, or of Lancelot in the cave; and thirdly, descriptions which may be called studies, for instance, of the faintly shadowed track winding up to where the towers of Astolat showed against the western sky.

Written descriptions of scenes or studies will aid greatly in defining the quality and use of the word-pictures; these descriptions should take the form of imaginative memoranda for an artist who is to illustrate the text, and details merely suggested or implied in the poem, should be fully specified in the directions. Incidentally, this sort of composition will define an essential difference between description in words and description with pencil or brush. When the significance of the picture is an important element in the story this should be suggested and all directions should aim at an arrangement of detail in the portrayal that will emphasize the meaning. For other pictures, the writer of directions should simply define the dominant note or purpose in the description; in descriptions which are little pictures by the way, the inquiry must be for the impression the poet wished to convey; for in Tennyson's verse each bit holds some intimate relation to the whole poem.

The only study of these beautiful poems which it is posible to carry out in the time at command may seem defective and limited in scope; but, even so, rich treasures await reader or student, and the task of the hour should yield such profit and pleasure that memory of it, lingering on until mature years, will, in the end, lead the student to read anew, with ripened understanding and deeper insight, the poems which in childhood were no more than beautiful tales of far away and unreal adventures.

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