VII.

I had Edgar two years, early in his scholastic career, and loved him forever because he once relieved the monotony of "I see a chair," "The chair has four legs," resulting from the demand for the use of the word "chair" in a statement, by this undeniable assertion, “Chairs are no use to horses." He caught up with me on the street lately and told me they'd had lots of fun that morning. "Miss KKgave each of us a rock-some kind of a rock-and some acid. Gee! we didn't do a thing with that acid; nobody knew the old stuff would ruin things and you'd just ought to see the hole in Gertie's apron. Ida, she burnt her fingers, and there aint a cent's worth of varnish on my desk any more." "But what did you do with the acid, besides ruin things?" "Oh, we put some on the rocks, what we didn't spill, and if they fizzled-or didn't fizzle, I forget which— either they was some kind of a rock, she told us what, or else they wasn't. I forget!"

VIII.

This dialogue occurred in my sister's nursery, but I classify it here because Sara is my scholar now. time, she was five years old:

Sara.-"Doffy, I'm going to make a lady out of this little

horse."

Dorothy." But, Sara, you can't make a lady out of a wooden horse!"

Sara. "Yes, I can, too, Doffy. If I pulls the tail off she, and puts a dress on she, won't that make a lady of she?"

IX.

And this is what the mother of a scholar told me: "Der trouble mit little shilderns is, dey don't got no sense!" How does that rank her as a "child student?"

HONORA JACOB.

THE

CLUB DEPARTMENT.

(For Parents' and Teachers' Round Table.)

'HE subject this month is the perplexing one of children's lies. The lie in the young child is never the same despicable, contemptible offense that it is in the adult. It does not reveal the same moral obliquity. The syllabus this month is the one prepared by Miss Harriet A. Marsh of Detroit, and is adapted from that of G. Stanley Hall.

CHILDREN'S LIES.

Do all children lie? Is there any difference in these lies? Do little children always know they are lying? Do older people? Why is this?

Several truthful persons may read the same story, or see the same incident; each will give you a different account of it, yet each will think he is telling the truth. How can you account for this?

Are imaginative children more apt to lie than those who are not? Why? Can little children always distinguish between imagination and reality? Can older people? What treatment is needed under these conditions? Children often think it right to lie for a good motive or to save one they love from punishment; how should these ideas be treated?

Imagination. Some people think that the child's belief in Santa Claus, etc., teaches it to lie. What do you think of this error? [See CHILD-STUDY MONTHLY Editorial, December, 1899.] Is the imagination a stepping-stone to religion? Is it wrong to crush or starve it? Should we not be very careful in guiding it? If each child were taught to observe carefully, and to state these observations accurately, would he become more truthful? How do we teach children to lie?

Does living beyond our means teach children to lie?

The lie in the child is a piece of incipient research. He tries it; if it works he may try it again.

Should a child be punished for lying? How?

This question was recently brought home to me directly by an experience with my own ten-year-old boy. He had been ill upon the sofa, and, in an absent-minded way had traced some crude drawings, evidently illustrating the story of Hiawatha, upon the calcimining on the wall. I called him to me and said, "Stuart, did you do that?" Having positive circumstantial evidence I felt confident of a humble affirmative answer. But no. He looked me straight in the eye and said, "No, sir." I concealed my astonishment as best I could and said: "I always believe you, my boy. I will believe you now. If the whole world would line up and say that Stuart Krohn did make those pictures on the wall I would not believe them, but believe you." He wavered a little and said, with the air of a witness before the grand jury, "Well, anyway, I don't remember anything about it." To this I replied, "I think I can also trust your memory," and went to my office, not returning until late at night, after he had retired. The next morning at break of day he was up engaged at the writing-desk with pen, ink and paper. He would not tell anyone what he was doing nor would he leave his task until completed. When I went into my den an hour or so after breakfast I found a note on my desk written in the formal school-boy style and addressed in sealed envelope to "Mr. William O. Krohn." On opening it I found the following:

DEAR SIR:

Chicago, Ill., March 11, 1900.

I am willing to convess that I scratched those pictures on the wall. I also am willing to take the consequenses.

With haste,

STUART KROHN.

Dear reader, can you wonder that I hold this letter sacred? Can you wonder that I highly prize its manliness? This letter is to me more precious than rubies, yea, more

precious than much fine gold. Punishment? Was I weak in thinking he had been punished enough by his twentyfour hours consciousness of guilt? Was it weak to put my arm round him and say, My boy, I knew all the time, that I could depend upon you."

WILLIAM O. KROHN.

We once knew a school where the teacher was a man of great activity, force and positiveness. All day long he strode about the schoolroom, ordering every detail of the work, praising the diligent, spurring up the indolent, and occasionally jerking the delinquents out of their seats, his voice bellowing thunder and his eyes flashing lightning. At the recitation he was the fountain of wisdom and opinion, and the children were the pitchers to be filled. No one in that school thought of knowing anything or thinking anything that was not known or thought by the teacher. The school ran with the precision and uniformity of a machine, with the teacher's hand on the lever. Neither was there any noise in that school except that made by the teacher. People said this teacher was a "good disciplinarian." He was nothing of the sort. He was a mere driver; aside from his forceful control, the school was entirely undisciplined. The work was not responsive to an awakened motive, but the result of compulsion. There was no true discipline, because there was no self-control.-Pennsylvania School Journal.

What is knowledge, then? It is not memory. 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.-Jenkin Lloyd Jones.

Our Motto.

THE EDUCATIONAL CURRENT.

EDITED BY CLARA KERN BAYLISS.

GIVE

IVE us country clubhouses. In place of the eight or ten schools in each township, with enrollments ranging from six to sixty, each with meager apparatus and library of a halfdozen books, let us have one central graded school, with a building of eight or ten rooms, one of which shall be reading-room for parents as well as children; light the building well; put up sheds for horses and render country-life attractive by making the school the center of intellectual and social life for the community.

In Winnebago
County.

LET us look at the financial phase of the

question a moment. Take the nine districts that have an enrollment of seven or less, with an average attendance of four, we will say. Here are nine teachers in nine different houses with four pupils each. What is the annual cost per child for education? Our estimates will be for the average attendance. Harlem No. 2, enrollment seven, average attendance say five, levied for school purposes last year $175 on an assessed valuation of $38,835. The cost per child was over $35 per year. Harlem No. 9, enrollment six, average attendance say four, levied $200 on a valuation of $31,422. The cost per child was $50 at least. Harlem No. 8, enrollment seven, average attendance say five, levied $230 on a valuation of $23,826; the cost per child about $50 per year. Harlem No. 7, enrollment seven, average attendance five, levied $200 on a valuation of $64,250; the cost about $40 per child. Now, if those four districts could be consolidated there would be one school with an enrollment of 28, average attendance of 20, with classes numbering four or six each, where now