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flights of stairs; or a larger space of ground could be taken and lower buildings erected, the class rooms of which could be reached without difficulty by any child whose heart was more or less seriously affected, and also be more readily emptied in case of fire." Elevators most assuredly should be provided in those school buildings which exceed three stories in height. Even if a young child does not suffer from heart trouble, it cannot be said to be in any way conducive to its good health to toil up and down five flights of stairs two or three times in a day. The alternative plan suggested by Dr. Feeney, that more land should be taken and lower buildings erected is not practicable, on account of the scarcity of land and the consequent expense, but the cost of elevators would be comparatively so small that in the interests of the rising generation they should be installed forthwith.-Pediatrics.

We must enrich the teacher. How shall we enrich childlife when we are content with the teacher of narrow horizon and empty larder? It is absolutely essential that the teacher should be a person of broad, enriched, and enriching culture. The early educetion of a child requires the master mind far more than does any subsequent period of his life. The child's teacher must be a person of great personality. One hour of association with a great personality is worth a week of ordinary schoolroom grind. The teacher must have specific training for the work. Scholarship is much; personality with scholarship is more; but scholarship with personality and specific training is everything.-Superintendent P. W. Search.

Baked bread is good and sufficient for the day, but seed corn should not be ground.-Goethe.

AMONG THE BOOKS.

The Education of Children, by Montaigne. Selected, translated and annotated by L. E. Rector, Ph.D. International Education Series, D. Appleton & Co., New York and Chicago, 1899. 191 pages.

Montaigne lived three hundred years ago, but Dr. Rector has done great service in translating these well-selected notes on "The Education of Children." The prime significance of Montaigne's work lies in the consistent protest he constantly made against the pedantry of his day. This protest against pedantry is just as apropos to-day as it was then. The argument of Montaigne could scarcely be made more forceful, even after this lapse of years. Dr. W. T. Harris, in the editorial preface of this book, voices the creed of Montaigne in these trenchant words: "The accumulation of knowledge that is not systematized in itself nor applied to the solution of practical problems is to be shunned. The display of such knowledge is pedantry. An undigested accumulations of scraps of learning is not of practical use. It never helps the scholar to think nor enables him to act nor to guide the action of others."

Montaigne, as do all other educational reformers, not only attacks the methods of education which do not develop the pupil's self-activity, but he goes to the extreme of condemning books and learning in and of themselves. Still, he was right in maintaining that education ought to teach the pupil how to escape the slavery to books and the bondage to authority and custom; and yet we must remember, at the same time, that in its very beginnings education consists in the pupil's learning what others have taught. But there always have been teachers and there are now teachers, socalled, that never take their pupils beyond this initial process of getting words of others without mastering the meaning of these words. Though Montaigne is at times confused as to what is really valuable in education, he is indeed. at all times an excellent tonic against pedantry. His maxims are always an excellent corrective against useless knowledge. Likewise, in the same vein Montaigne maintains, with right, that no learning is of use to us except that which we make our own. Says he: "I have no use for this mendicant knowledge," implying that while we may be

come learned by other men's reading, we can never become wise but by our own wisdom.

"Who in his own concern's not wise,

That man's wisdom, I despise."

Montaigne is suggestive to any reader and richly so to a reader interested in educational work. Dr. Rector clearly establishes the debt of Locke and Rousseau to Montaigne. Montaigne had the keen vision of the inspired prophet. In his educational creed he provides for much that is thought to be decidedly modern-e. g., the study of children, individual rather than class instruction, importance of physical training, inculcation of patriotism, training for practical life, making school life pleasant, use of motor side in education.

Dr. Rector has in this gem of a book given us an excellent translation of well-selected portions of Montaigne's writings. The Appletons have placed teachers under additional obligations by publishing such an excellent and suggestive work.

Docas, the Indian Boy of Santa Clara, by Genevra Sisson Snedden. D. C. Heath & Co., Boston and Chicago. 150 pp. 35 cts.

This is the most interesting book of stories of Indian life that we have ever read. The stories cluster round the life of an Indian boy-Docas-and were originally written to serve as reading material for the children in the University School connected with the Department of Education at the Leland Stanford Jr. University. The authoress has placed a much larger audience of children in her debt by presenting this group of stories in book form. The games, amusements and occupations, as well as the home-life of the Indian boy, are related in a charming and graphic manner. There is not one of the forty stories that contains a single line that is the least uninteresting. There are more than twenty illustrations, each one of which stands in direct relation to the text of the story. We are glad to commend this book most highly for both home and supplementary reading.

All lovers of animals will welcome two new books from the Macmillan Company. "Diomed," the story of a dog, and "Jess," the story of a horse, as they might be briefly described. Both books show an intimate knowledge of the ways and habits of animals, and have in addition the nar

rative charm which makes books of this kind appeal to the heart of the reader as well as live in his imagination.

A History of England for High Schools and Academies has been written by Professors Katharine Coman and Elizabeth K. Kendall, of Wellesley College, and will be published in October by the Macmillan Company. The authors have kept in view the history requirement recently adopted by several leading colleges and universities, and their chief aim has been to emphasize the physical environment afforded by the British Isles, the race traits of the peoples that have occupied the land, the methods by which they have wrought out industrial prosperity and the measures by which they have attained self-government, all of which are essential to an adequate understanding of the growth of the English nation. Within the limits imposed by text-book dimensions, they have endeavored to bring out these phases of the national life. Maps, depicting every important geographical change, add much to the practical value of the book.

Professor Edwin Herbert Lewis follows up his "First Book in Writing English" and his "Introduction to the Study of Literature" with a series of "Manuals of English Composition," the first of which is announced for immediate publication by the Macmillan Company. It differs from most similar books in several respects. It teaches sentence analysis as merely a means by which the student may name what he has instinctively written; thus, it presents in an organic way all the grammar needed in the eighth and ninth grades. It aims to secure spontaneity by a series of very short first drafts, in which the student need consider no detail of sentence-structure or punctuation. It aims to secure some degree of care by a system of revision, by which the student examines previous compositions. Thus the student is benefited by becoming his own critic, and the instructor is saved a large part of the fruitless labor of marginal corrections. The book consists of 170 exercises, each short enough for a daily task. The literary illustrations from which the student reaches inductions are the residuum of a winnowing process performed by students themselves. The First Manual can be used with younger students than those for whom the author's "First Book in Writing English" was designed, or with students of the same age.

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