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of intemperance and its allied vices and free our young men and women from its terrible thralldom. Yes, we are educating our boys and girls because we want them to love truth for truth's sake.

ESSENTIAL FOR HAPPINESS

In the third place we educate because we believe that it is essential to the greatest happiness. While it is true that the savage does not want to be civilized, that the drunkard does not want to leave his cup, and that the ignorant man often resists the effort to educate his children, this does not prove an argument against the proposition, for none of these can know what change in experience a change of state would bring about. Some few writers have objected to civilizing the savage on the ground that he is happier in his savage condition. So the child is happy in its childish state, but who would exchange his maturer mental condition of later years for his mental condition in childhood? Persons in whom bodily development has taken place without corresponding mental development are objects of pity to everybody. Education is not the only requisite to happiness, but it is one of them. It makes man the heir of all the ages. It makes him the connecting link between the cold senseless Iclod on the one hand and the divine creative mind on the other.

It is inconceivable that man should have been created in order to make him spend his life in misery. So, too, it is abhorrent to every sense of justice that he should be endowed with the possibility of progress and development and that its unfolding would leave him in an unhappier state than before. The universe without man would be foolish. Man without a mind capable of such development that it will add to the joys of existence would be senseless.

The world is seeking happiness. It is seeking it along many lines, some of which spell ruin and despair. Education. seeks to set the world right by pointing out the fact that real, lasting happiness can only be attained by right living. I need hardly point out that I am using the term education in the sense in which we usually think of it and not in that broader sense in which it is sometimes employed, and which may mean neglect as well.

Joyful, honest service to God and man, right living, conformity to the laws of the Divine Creator in being and becoming in our physical, mental, moral and spiritual natures, and the attainment of the greatest happiness possible for each. individual-these are the great purposes that we have in view in the work of education.

The Wind

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

I saw you toss the kites on high
And blow the birds about the sky;
And all around I heard you pass,
Like ladies' skirts across the grass-
O wind, a-blowing all day long,
O wind, that sings so loud a song!

I saw the different things you did,
But always you yourself you hid.
I felt you push, I heard you call,
I could not see yourself at all-
O wind, a-blowing all day long,
O wind, that sings so loud a song!

O you that are so strong and cold
O blower, are you young or old?
Are you a beast of field or tree,
Or just a stronger child than me?
O wind, a-blowing all day long,
O wind, that sings so loud a song!

The Opportunity of the Teacher

ELIZABETH WESLYN TIMLOW, PRINCIPAL GLOVERSIDE SCHOOL, MONTCLAIR, N. J.

THR

'HREE hundred years ago, a chattering, laughing group of young artists passing one day along an obscure street in lovely Florence. One of them, tall, lean, and sinewy, his keen eager eyes seeing all things, suddenly darted into a small stone-cutter's yard, where lay, half buried in the rubbish, a long neglected block of marble. Regardless of his holiday attire, he at once fell to work on it, clearing away its filth and striving to lift it from the slime and mire where it lay. His companions, astonished, asked him what he was doing and what he wanted of that worthless piece of rock that had been lying there for years.

"There is an angel in the stone and I must get it out," was the reply of Michael Angelo.

He had it removed to his studio, and, with two years of patient toil, he let the angel out. What to others was but an unsightly mass of stone, to his educated eye was the buried glory of art; he discovered at once what might be made of it. A mason would have put it in a wall; a cartman would have used it for filling and grading the street; but the artist transformed it into a creation of exquisite beauty for ages to come.

Such an artist is, or should be, the true teacher. The object of education is sometimes said to be the ability to adjust one's self to one's environment; it is, rather, to develop the ability to change the environment at one's will-to forward the progress of the world.

It was said of a certain famous fisherman that all he needed to catch a fish was a little damp spot and straightway he landed a trout. It is certainly a miracle,

what a teacher who is born to her profession can do with the most unpromising material. material. In the well-conducted school, practically everything, mental, and moral and physical, must be dealt with; its province is not only the development of the mind but of the body; not only of strength but of grace; not only the inner but the outer. Our girls must be trained in manner and carriage; they must be taught the inestimable value of a low voice and refined intonation. Can these details of accent, courtesy, posture, consideration for others, thoughtfulness, all that go to make up gentle breeding, be left entirely to the home? There must be the strongest co-operation on the part of home and school; nothing can be risked in these critical times, and our girls need every safeguard; it will be hard for them at the best to keep their feet firm in the rush and swirl of the ideas of the day. Towards all this must their school discipline tend.

Carved on an old bit of stonework at Abbotsford at Melrose Abbey, with the date of 1616, is a little legend that runs as follows:

Virtus Rectorem ducemque desiderat:
Vitia sine magistro discuntur.
"Virtue requires a ruler and a guide:
Follies are learned without a teacher."

Not only, then, are the outer graces of girlhood well within the teacher's province, but important moral questions confront us. The school life and the school lessons come but once; life has other lessons to teach us, but this time for preparation never comes again. Here in the schoolroom do we learn our hardest lessons of faithfulness, patience, persever

ance, promptness, cheerful acquiescence -the germs of which must be planted

now or never.

It is well known that the brain reaches its maximum weight by the fifteenth year, though it probably continues to develop, internally, until at least the age of thirty. There comes a time, however, when the brain, like the body, ceases to grow and remains at a standstill. Between forty and fifty, a slow decrease in the weight of the brain takes place. The young brain is vigorous, but much less plastic, after twenty, and it gradually, so to speak, ossifies. Few people, James says, get an entirely new idea into their heads after passing into the thirties, although a structure of almost any height may be built up with materials already gathered on a foundation already laid.

Since nature, then, has decreed that we must fight out the battle of life on the lines of our early choice, here is a world of opportunity for the eager general of the schoolroom. Here in history, in literature, in psychology, in the marvelous laws of the mind, are not merely the day's recitations, the day's marks, but the greater lessons that will be for life. Every shrewd student really knows in her heart that it will not affect the universe ten years hence, if she skims over to-day's Greek, or if she does not solve quite all of the originals in geometry, or is not absolutely sure of all her constructions in Sallust or Cicero. But here comes in the realm of the teacher. The student must be made to feel that not one atom of unfaithfulness can occur without branding the heart; the spirit of unthoroughness that makes it possible for her to skim over the irregular verbs will make it not only possible but probable that some crisis of life will find her shirking the issue on which much depends. Contrariwise, she must be made to know that every knotty problem faithfully

wrestled with and thrown, every tough bit of Latin and Greek struggled with and conquered, gives the character an added strength and fibre to battle with life's sterner issues and come off victor in the strife. If our girls are in the habit of giving up over every little schoolroom difficulty, how will they have persistence and endurance when some black trouble suddenly clouds their summer sky, with no refuge near? Ah! They then have only the protection that we have helped them to forge.

"Habit, a second nature?" cried the Duke of Wellington. "Habit is ten times nature!"

The profound truth of this old saying comes home to no one more than the veteran soldier, who has seen years of drill and discipline end by fashioning many a man over completely. The girl in the schoolroom who has daily inured herself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, even to self-denial in unnecessary things, will stand like a tower when all things rock around her and when her softer fellow pupils are winnowed like chaff. The psychological study of mental conditions is here the most powerful ally of the teacher, who then drives home the lessons we have already mentioned that we are spinning our own fate for good or evil, which is never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar.

The drunken Rip van Winkle, in dear Joe Jefferson's play, you remember, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction, by saying, "We won't count this time!" Well, he may not count it and forgiving Heaven may not count it, but it is being counted, nevertheless, in the relentless. bookkeeping of nature. Down among his nerve centers, the molecules are registering and storing it up against him, ready to weaken his resistance still further next

time the temptation comes. Literally nothing that we do can ever be wiped out. If this had not its good side as well as its bad, if resistance could not be built up as well as weakened, how indeed could we endure life?

Here in the classroom, through history and literature, we must begin to teach our girls the mysterious secret of success -of true success. For how has all real success been gained? By good luck? By accident? These are words that one rarely hears from the lips of the successful man or woman. They know only too well that in this world we get just about what we are willing to pay for. If we would succeed we must have the will to succeed. But does not everybody have this, they may ask? By no means. The majority of people are willing to succeed, which, I assure you, is quite a different matter. It is our province to teach our girls the dignity of work, that the men who have achieved success are the ones who have read, and thought and studied always a little more than was necessary, who have never been content with knowledge merely sufficient for the present need, but who have sought additional knowledge and stored it away for the emergency reserve. We must teach them

the profound truth that it is the superfluous labor that equips a man for everything that counts most in life. The one who, when in doubt does the minimum instead of the maximum quantity, is not the one who will raise the world's standard. Every business man will say that it is the quick eye that sees and the ready

hand that executes some necessary service that yet was not "in the bond," that makes a man invaluable to his employer. Build up this spirit in the schoolroom with the school lessons.

Make the pupils realize, too, the necessity of definite purpose. We older ones know that the great thing in this world is

not so much to know where we stand but where we are going. To reach the highest port we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it—but we must sail and not drift, nor yet lie at anchor. We must leave nothing to chance. Why-pardon the hackneyed example-was Caesar so uniformly victorious? Did he ever go forward unprepared? Did he leave any weak point undefended? Every school girl and boy fervently answers, Never." The magnificent commander was provided for every emergency, armed at every point, and-won.

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"Enough to know of Chance or Luck
The blow we choose to strike is struck."

It is here in the schoolroom again that the teacher finds her opportunity, at the psychological moment, to set before these young minds the necessity of an Ideal. There is no more important step than this; the lives of illustrious men must be studied to see how obstacles are to be overcome, how the heights are gained. The Ideal may embody the energy of a Napoleon, the self-devotion of a Dorothea Dix, the patriotism of a Washington, the

disinterested heroism of a Florence

Nightingale, the iron will of a Cromwell or the simple faithfulness to duty of a Louise Alcott, the humanity of a Howard or the splendid chivalry of a Susan B. Anthony for her sex. The boy or girl who has not had his or her imagination fired by great deeds will not amount to much. Each must fashion for herself the

ideal she is determined to attain. “Hitch your wagon to a star" means only this. But conversely, But conversely, "What thou wouldst be thou must be.”

"That which thou lovest most

E'en that become thou must. Christ's, if thou lovest Christ; Dust, if thou lovest dust."

The Hindoos say, "As a man thinketh, so is he." It is not only for the parent but for the teacher to impress upon our girls that an idle, frivolous, chattering, gossiping girlhood will no more develop into ripe, full, rich womanhood than men can gather grapes of thorn or figs of thistle. Here, again, in the schoolroom, she must learn the high meaning of the every day act and the every day word; the beauty of work, of unselfish, devoted work, with ambition to do the appointed task. There is no royal road to success; our girl must learn that in one way or another we pay the price for all we have and are, yet this insane craving to get something for nothing is gnawing at the very root of modern life. We see it on every side with men demanding a full share of the luxuries of life with a decrease of labor; the steady raising of wages and the shortening of the working hour, until, as Charles Dudley Warner prophesied, when labor gets to be ten dollars a day, the working people will not come at all-"They will send their cards." The president of of America's greatest University has said that it is only the workingman that can afford the luxury of an eight-hour day. As a general rule we all know that the higher we go in the scale of value to the community, the longer the working hours.

Again, our girls learn in the study of psychology that every effect has had a due and adequate cause; in real life, however, because the cause and its effect are often separated as far as the Latin subject and its predicate, youth is sometimes slow to recognize the inevitable connection. Every thing worth having is worth its price in work-and if we apparently get it for nothing, we may be paying the heaviest price of all-the price of our self-respect. It is our place as teachers, no less than it is the duty of parents, to emphasize this with unceasing iteration.

2

Luther Burbank, in a recent article on the Training of the Human Plant, has the following noteworthy thought:

"There is not a single desirable attribute, which lacking in a plant, may not be bred into it. Choose what improvement you wish in a plant, and with crossing, selection and persistence, you can fix this desirable trait irrevocably. Pick out any trait you want in your child, be it honesty, fairness, purity, lovableness, or what not, and with the proper environment, persistence and love, you can fix in your child for all his life, all of these traits."

Is not this startling?

However, we must inculcate the lessons of the girls' responsibility, not only to themselves but to others as well. Not too young is any girl in her teens to learn. the tremendous import of Kant's famous Categorical Imperative: "So act that the reason for your action may be a universal law."

It is considered a legitimate subject for ridicule that when a mother brings her little maid or lad to school for the first time, she is very apt to say, anxiously,

"You will have no trouble with Genevieve if you will try to understand her, but she is so peculiar. She is not a bit like other children."

But while bystanders laugh, the experienced teacher knows that this is exactly true, although possibly not as the mother meant it. No two children are alike, nor do any two need exactly the same treatment. This shy child needs praise and improves under it, but droops under criticism, however kindly. That one needs to have her self-conceit gently pruned. This one is thorough and painstaking and conscientious; she needs restraint, if anything; another is inclined to slight her work and must be taught to go to the root of her subject. This girl has a tendency to be exclusive and to put too much stress on the possession of money or position; she must be shown that brains make the world's masters. Another is careless and

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