It seems, however, a little like unchristian benevolence to prejudice the bodily health of a child for the convenience of the parent. That many diseases are engendered in the school-room-to say nothing of deformed spines and contracted chests—is a fact that is beyond denial. Really too little attention has been paid to the physical health and comfort of the child. Parents do their child a great wrong in confining it in the school-room so long a time, when, in reality, the position it often assumes and the air it is compelled to breathe are both detrimental to health. The idea that the child is studying or at work is erroneous. It does not know how to study; and all the time beyond two or three hours that it is required to keep its seat, is worse than wasted. It isn't any wonder at all that the children in our primary schools are usually more noisy than those in other schools, nor that they will amuse themselves by tormenting their neighbors or throwing spitballs at one another. It is n't their natural or normal condition to remain as motionless and stiff as statues. They had far better be at home or in the fields half of the time they are usually required to be in school. It would be more conducive to health, and "going to school" would not be so unpleasant.

Great, however, as is the number of those who fall into the errors, a few of which I have attempted to point out, there are still many noble men and women, teachers and parents, who are waking up to the importance of breaking down all systems that tend to make mere machines or toys of the young. There are many who have been finding out gradually the secret of success. Parents

are waking up to the importance of doing more for their children, and we may yet see the day when children shall not be sent to school to get them out of the way at home. It seems to me that there is a brighter day ahead for us all. I know we are now groping wildly in the dark, but we shall soon be ushered into the light of high noon. But let us not suppose that we are already victorious. We have much to accomplish ere we can rest and let our boat glide with the current.

There are still too many who feel that their whole duty is done when they put the machinery in motion. These must either work according to nature's plain teachings, or they must fail. When nature dictates play to the child, or the cultivation of its perceptive faculties, it is not for these machine-men to put it to the study of the alphabet or abstract definitions. When nature plainly indicates that it is neither beneficial nor healthy to sit in a cramped or even an erect position in an illventilated room, it is not for one of these wiseacres to quarrel with her by trying to make statues of children, and, at the same time, implant the seeds of future mental and physical disease along with the alphabet and all the other mysteries of his erudition.

There is a sad need that public sentiment be modified; and, instead of taking for granted that we have always been right in our theories, we should investigate them, and make an earnest effort to do away with everything that is mere routine.

W

СНАРТER III.

EDUCATIONAL CRAMMING.

HEN a lad at thirteen years of age, I was so unfor

tunate as to have studied, in a common country school, in addition to the ordinary common branches of education, Algebra, Mensuration, Physiology, Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Physics, Watts on the Mind, Moral Science, History, Rhetoric, Botany, Etymology, and some German. I was, of course, represented to my parents by the teacher as being a smart lad, although I knew nothing, comparatively, of any of these sciences a year after having studied them. I have the satisfaction of knowing, however, that I had a number of classmates and a teacher who were my partners in ignorance. I cannot express my regret in words for my loss of time while pursuing these studies, nor for the utter stupidity of my teachers. I cannot conceive how a man can be so blind to the interests of the young as to permit himself to make so great a mistake. Goldsmith's schoolmaster was in some respects, I often think, a fair sample of the one to whose guiding care and control I was subjected in my boyhood days.

That old-style race of pedagogues has not, by any means, become extinct yet. If you take the trouble to search, you will find many a one posted behind his

great desk in his easy-chair, dealing out alternately his learning and his muscle, in the same style and with the same force as twenty or more years ago, when you and I were schoolboys together. His blows, however, are not more lavishly given than his knowledge. His pupils are taught soon to put away the study of the common branches as unworthy of further notice, and turn their attention to such higher subjects as the sciences, rhetoric, and possibly French and Latin. Oh! it has sometimes made my heart ache to see one of these little fellows trudging along with a huge lexicon under one arm, and a half-dozen text-books on other subjects, in his book-strap. I was n't surprised at all when I saw his pale, waxen face, and delicate, trembling, powerless fingers. Not only his language, but his body too, has almost been given to the dead. I have thought sometimes that those of our children who attend these cramming-schools- I know no other name for them · much in the predicament of Gulliver when carried to the house-top and fed with nauseating food by the huge Brobdignagian monkey. The only difference seems to lie in the fact that the child, instead of being helped out of its misery by its parents - who should take most interest in its welfare is by them dragged or forced into the presence of this man-monkey, where the cramming operation is performed to its evident disgust, but to their extreme satisfaction and pleasure. We commiserate the condition of Gulliver; but Gulliver's lot was no more unhappy than is that of many a one of our children, which is mentally crammed and gorged until

are

nature rebels against the harsh and inhuman treatment, and either removes it from our uncharitable world, or so weakens its physical system as to prevent further torture.

Parents, too, as I have said before, help to make the matter worse, by indorsing, either directly or indirectly, this system of cramming. They send their children to school, and complain bitterly if they do not progress rapidly from book to book. They seem to think that a child makes no progress unless it be advanced at such a rate as requires it to take up a new study almost every six months. Here is where much of the difficulty lies. So long as parents sanction work of this kind, we will have it. Now their duty, and the duty of every thoughtful, conscientious teacher with regard to it, seems to be plain. The mind is not only not strengthened, but it is positively weakened by an over-amount of knowledge, and it cannot perform its proper functions any more than can the stomach when too great an amount of food is repeatedly taken. In either case dyspepsia is the result: for there is such a thing as mental dyspepsia, as well as that under which those who injudiciously pamper their appetite labor. I know "it sounds big" to use a homely phrase to have one's child say that he has studied Latin, and possibly Geometry, Chemistry, and others of the more difficult sciences; but then the injury does more than overbalance our pride. I have now and then met parents, in my career as a teacher, who, in placing their child in my care, told me how much their boy or girl had studied, naming so many branches some