or must we be remanded to an experimental ethics, as our reformers would remand us to experimental science? This question cannot be argued at this time, but a little reflection will show that the world can grow better only on the hypothesis that the attainment of virtue is made somewhat easier for each succeeding generation. In other words, virtue can be taught; each child is not to construct a code of ethics out of his own experiences, but is to accept the highest code of ethics that humanity has bequeathed to him. In a specific and sound sense, we do follow nature when we adapt our instruction to the organic mode of the mind's activities. The mind is an organism having its own predetermined mode of activity. This constitutes its nature; and when we respect this order of procedure in the presentation of knowledge, we may with scientific accuracy be said to follow nature. When the mind works naturally, that is, in accord with the laws of its organization, it proceeds from aggregates to parts, from the vague to the definite, and, in childhood, from the concrete to the abstract; and the teacher follows nature when he allows the mind to elaborate its knowledge in this order. In conclusion, I venture to offer this bit of advice to those who are trying to make of their teaching a rational art: In your thinking and writing never allow yourself to personify the term nature, but leave the mythologist, the poet and the novelist in sole possession of this deity. IT is a name that we associate not alone with Dr. Higbee, but also with that of Dr. Thomas H. Burrowes, who had so much to do with the organization of your education system, building better than he knew. There have been few men, if any, in all this broad land whose work was so clearly defined and so well sustained that it could be said they founded a School System for a State. But it is to the glory of Dr. Burrowes that he organized one of the very best systems for one of the best States in the Union. Connecticut has had her Henry Barnard, Massachusetts her Horace Mann, Illinois her Richard Edwards, California her John Swett, but nowhere, outside of Pennsylvania, is there a State with such a trio spanning so many years as Burrowes, Wickersham and Higbee.-A. E. Winship, Editor N. E. Journal of Education. IN A PICTORIAL GEOGRAPHY. BY C. M. DRAKE. N no study was I more poorly taught than in geography. No study now taught in school is more barren of good results than geography. A pupil learns a host of names to which are affixed no mental pictures, and these names rapidly fade away at the close of school and there is worse than nothing left. When I began to teach geography I found that I had to begin the study over again. I had never seen a school journal in those days, but one day a bright boy raining, and pools of water were standing gave me an inspiration. It had been all about the yard. He said, pointing to a large peninsula, "That is North America." The resemblance in form was striking, and we had an impromptu geography class then and there. We built up mud mountains, and we dug rivers. We hol lowed out bays, and we put pebbles for cities. Pupils who had taken little or no interest in geography before this, ran for their books that they might see where to locate the different cities, and other North Americas were begun all over the yard. It was long after one that noon before I remembered to call school. The first class was a geography class, and the lesson was about the products of North America. They begged to have their lesson in the yard, so they could point out in our North America where the products grew or were made. We went to the yard, and the idlest boy in the class brought along a lump of coal, and stuck it on top of the Alleghany mountains before I got in the yard. Here was another inspiration. The way we filled the soil of our continent with products the next few days was a caution. The neighbors' chickens ate up our grain and scratched our rivers full of mud, but crops were put in anew. But the neighborhood did not appreciate our "mud pies," and I lost my school on account of my inspirations being "too previous." I had a great many stereoscopic views of the Rocky mountains and other places which I had taken or bought some years before, and one day I brought these to school. They proved a success, and the next day I began a geographical scrapbook of pictures, the first one I ever saw or heard of. I had many copies of Frank Leslie's Illustrated Weekly, and I cut out fo it all the pictures I could find of places, plants, animals, and noted people. These I pasted in an old geography beside the pictures already there, so that I had an illustrated geography better than any mere text-book descriptions. This small scrap-book afterwards grew into several large scrap-books, and in all the years I have taught geography I have yet to find a better help than these pictorial geographies in teaching about a new country. Suppose the lesson to be about Nicaragua. What do we want the pupil to have? We want a clear, yet complex mantal picture to be called up by the word Nicaragua. Before the child there should arise a country of volcanoes. Dense vegetation almost impenetrable should cover the hills and lowlands. Curious adobe and grass or wicker huts should be seen clustered together in towns and villages. Spanish and Indian people should be seen dressed in the manner of that country, together with many naked little children. Immense adobe churches, quaint and heavy looking, are the most noticeable buildings. Various domestic animals are running in and out of the open houses, most of which never saw a pane of glass. Insect pests are making the child feel one of the greatest discomforts of a tropical life, hardly to be compensated for by the many delicious tropical fruits which are so cheap and plentiful. Parrots and other strange birds are flying about in the air, while dangerous reptiles and wild animals are in the thick woods. These are a few of the things which should go to make up the complex mental photograph developed by the naming of the word Nicaragua. It will do the child little good to learn the name merely of a place, if no correct mental picture accompanies that name. If the habit of fixing a mental picture to geography names is once formed it seems to be impossible to prevent some sort of a picture arising when you read of a place. Mere word descriptions can never be so effective as pictures, and of the latter, actual photographs are preferable to any other kind. How can you make a pictorial geography that will be good, cheap and comprehensive? It will take some money. At a second-hand book store or at a hotel you may find a hotel register that has been filled with names and thrown aside. This book is almost sure to be very well bound, and is just what you want for a basis of work. Tear out the blotting pads. Divide your book, first into grand divisions, then into countries. In the part devoted to each country, put first the pictures showing the physical characteristics of the country, for on those depend the industries as well as, to a certain extent, the animals, plants, mines and even the government. Your plant pictures can, many of them, be found in florists' catalogues. Railroad advertising sheets will supply many a fine picture of scenery. Old copies of papers and magazines, which can be got for the cost of waste paper, are filled with pictures of cities and the notable objects of art which may be found in the cities. Some of the cheap paper books for children contain very fine pictures of the wild and domestic animals. once. Do not try to get your book filled at If you are not sure of the permanent value of a picture, leave it in the scrap-book unpasted until you know it will be of service. If descriptive text accompanies the picture it should be very brief. Names are useful, but the picture should be its own explanation. In each broad isothermal belt select some one country to be very fully illustrated. I take Nicaragua for the typical tropical country. My illustrations are, many of them, taken from the advertising pamphlets of the Nicaragua Canal company. The illustrated papers often contain pictures of Nicaraguan scenery. Corinto was well pictured during the late British unpleasantness. The earthquake and volcano at Granada some time ago were fully illustrated. I have in my library more than a dozen books of travels in Nicaragua and the adjoining countries, and yet the pictures I have seen of the country have given me the greater portion of my mental pictures of Nicaragua. They stay by me better than words do. One thing in my picture of a place is usually in strong relief, while the rest is in the background. At Greytown I see most plainly the ships just entering the canal. At Leon the cathedral overshadows all the rest. At Masaya I seem to see long trains of young Indian girls going up and down the steep trail to the crater for water, with the water jars poised upon their heads. At Granada everything else is subordinate to the volcano which stands on the island in front of the city. I feel quite sure it was my picture scrap book which has made me know rather more about geography than about any other common school study.-N. W. Journal of Education. A HOUSEHOLD SCHOOL. HERE is one school that has not THE enough students, although its faculty can never be excelled. It is the school of forbearance-of forbearance at home. The chief teacher in this school has a necromantic quality, for he moves mountains, and every day works miracles; but he is invisible. His name is Love. It is a home school, of course, and its class-rooms are all over the house-in kitchen, bedroom, dining-room and parlor. The pupils come to this school fresh from other schools, where, it is very likely, they have been doing hard work, and are usually feeling that they are to be considered and rested, no matter what happens. They are to lie abed in the mornings for a complete rest, and that last sweet slumber, the very cream of sleep, and are to have a hot breakfast at all hours; they are to have an appetite coaxed by all sorts of dainties and delicacies. In every holiday season there flock back to the home school those who are apt to forget that there is real rest in a change of work, and that to be wholly idle may be wholly selfish. Let our lads and lassies whose parents have to make exertion and endure some deprivation in order to clothe them fitly and send them to school, think a little on this point. If their overworked brains need the refreshing and repairing influences of sleep, let them go early to bed, in order that sufficient sleep may be had before they rise betimes in the morning, dress, and run down stairs to build the fire, and surprise the mother with breakfast ready for her when she descends. will call into use an entirely new and different set of muscles from those which have been most active during the year, and will therefore give rest to those needing it, if these young people then proceed to clear away the breakfast things, to wash the dishes, to sweep and dust, to prepare the dinner, to make the dessert, to do as much as possible of whatever It house-work there is to be done. It is the mother who has been using muscle and sinew and bone all the year, and who now should have rest by being given time and opportunity to use the brain, to lie in her chair and read her book, to go off on some journey, to gossip about among the neighbors, to enjoy a rest from her labors, knowing that all is going on right in the house, and enjoying the rest doubly that it is given her through love.-Harper's Bazar. "THE HEATHER LINTIE." BY S. R. CROCKETT. JANET BALCHRYSTIE lived in a little cottage at the back of the Long Wood of Barbrax. She had been a hard-working woman all her days, for her mother died when she was but young, and she had lived on, keeping her father's house by the side of the single-track railway line. Gavin Balchrystie was a foreman platelayer on the P. R. R., and, with two men under him, had charge of a section of three miles. He lived just where that distinguished but impecunious line plunges into a moss-covered granite wilderness of moor and bog, where there is not more than a shepherd's hut to the half-dozen miles, and where the passage of a train is the occasion of commotion among scattered groups of black-faced sheep. Gavin Balchrystie's three miles of P. R. R. metals gave him little work but a good deal of healthy exercise. The black-faced sheep breaking down the fences and straying on the line side, and the torrents coming down the granite gullies, foaming white after a waterspout, and tearing into his embankments, undermining his chairs and plates, were the only troubles of his life. There was, however, a little public-house at The Huts, which in the old days of construction had had the license, and which had lingered alone, license and all, when its immediate purpose in life had been fulfilled, because there was nobody but the whaups and the railway officials on the passing trains to object to its continuance. Now it is cold and blowy on the westland moors, and neither whaups nor darkblue uniforms object to a little refreshment up there. The mischief was that Gavin Balchrystie did not, like the guards and engine drivers, go on with the pass ing train. He was always on the spot, and the path through Barbrax Wood to the Railway Inn was as well trodden as that which led over the big moss, where the whaups built, to the great white viaduct of Loch Merrick, where his three miles of parallel gleaming responsibility began. So it came to pass that one night Gavin Balchrystie did not come home at all, at least, not till he was brought lying comfortably on the door of a disused thirdclass carriage, which was now seeing out its career anchored under the bank at Loch Merrick, where Gavin had used it as a shelter. They had found Gavin fallen forward on his knees, as though he had been trying to rise, or had knelt down to pray. Let him have "the ben efit of the doubt" in this world. In the next, if all tales be true, there is no such When his wife was but newly dead, and his Janet just a smart elf-locked lassie running to and from the school, Gavin got too much in the way of "slippin' doon by." When Janet grew to be woman-muckle, Gavin kept the habit,thing. and Janet hardly knew that it was not the use-and-wont of all fathers to sidle down to a contiguous Railway Arms, and return some hours later with uncertain step, and face picked out with bright pin-points of red-the sure mark of the confirmed drinker of whisky neat. They were long days in the cottage at the back of Barbrax Long Wood. The little "but-an'-ben" was white-washed till it dazzled the eyes as you came over the brae to it and found it set against the solemn depths of dark-green firwood. From early morning when she saw her father off, till the dusk of the day when he would return for his supper, Janet Balchrystie saw no human being. She heard the muffled roar of the trains through the deep cutting at the back of the wood, but she herself was entirely out of sight of the carriagefuls of travelers whisking past within half a mile of her solitude and meditation. through Janet was what is called a "throughgaun lass," and her work for the day was often over by eight o'clock in the morning. Janet grew to womanhood without a sweetheart. She was plain, and she looked plainer than she was in the dresses which she made for herself by the light of nature and what she could remember of the current fashions at Merrick Kirk, to which she went every alternate Sunday. Her father and she took day about. Wet or shine, she tramped to Merrick Kirk, even when the rain blattered and the wind raved and bleated alternately among the pines of the Long Wood of Barbrax. Her father had a simpler way of spending his day out. He went down to the Railway Inn and drank "gingerbeer" all day with the landlord. Gingerbeer is an unsteadying beverage when taken the day by the length. Also the man who drinks it steadily and quietly never enters on any inheritance of length of days. So Janet Balchrystie dwelt alone in the white" but an'-ben” at the back of the Long Wood of Barbrax. The factor gave her notice, but the laird, who was not accounted by his neighbors to be very wise, because he did needlessly kind things, told the factor to let the lassie bide, and delivered to herself with his own handwriting to the effect that Janet Balchrystie, in consideration of her lonely condition, was to be allowed the house for her life-time, a cow's grass, and thirty pound sterling in the year as a charge on the estate. He drove down the cow himself, and having stalled it in the byre, he informed her of the fact over the yard dike by word of mouth, for he never could be induced to enter her door. He was accounted to be " gey an' queer" save by those who had tried making a bargain with him. But his farmers liked him, knowing him to be an easy man with those who had been really unfortunate, for he knew to what the year's crops of each had amounted, to a single chalder and head of nowt. Deep in her heart Janet Balchrystie cherished a great ambition. When the earliest blackbird awoke and began to sing, while it was yet gray twilight, Janet would be up and at her work. She had an ambition to be a great poet. No less than this would serve her. But not even her father had known, and no other had any chance of knowing. In the black leather chest, which had been her mother's, up-stairs, there was a slowly growing pile of manuscript, and the editor of the local paper received every other week a poem, longer or shorter, for his Poet's Corner, in an envelope with the New Dalry postmark. He was an obliging editor, and generally gave the closely written manuscript to the senior officeboy, who had passed the sixth standard, to cut down, tinker the rhymes, and lop any superfluity of feet. The senior of fice-boy "just spread himself," as he said, and delighted to do the job in style. But there was a woman fading into a gray old-maidishness which had hardly ever been girlhood, who did not at all approve of these corrections. She endured them because over the signature of "Heather Bell" it was a joy to see in the rich, close luxury of type her own poetry, even though it might be a trifle tattered and tossed about by hands ruthless and alien-those, in fact, of the senior office-boy. Janet walked every other week to the post-office at New Dalry to post her letters to the editor, but neither that great man nor yet the senior office-boy had any conception that the verses of their "esteemed correspondent" were written by a woman too early old who dwelt alone at the back of Barbrax Long Wood. One day Janet took a sudden but longmeditated journey. She went down by rail from the little station of The Huts to the large town of Drum, thirty miles to the east. Here, with the most perfect courage and dignity of bearing, she interviewed a printer and arranged for the publication of her poems in their own original form, no longer staled and clap- | per-clawed by the pencil of the senior office-boy. When the proof-sheets came to Janet, she had no way of indicating the corrections but by again writing the whole poem out in a neat print hand on the edge of the proof, and underscoring the words which were to be altered. This, when you think of it, is a very good way, when the happiest part of your life is to be spent in such concrete pleasures of hope, as Janet's were over the crackly sheets of the printer of Drum. Finally the book was produced, a small, rather thickish octavo, on sufficiently wretched gray paper which had suffered from want of thorough washing in the original paper-mill. It was bound in at It was bound in a peculiarly deadly blue, of a rectified Reckitt tint, which gave you dazzles in the eye at any distance under ten paces. Janet had selected this as the most appropriate of colors. She had also many years ago decided upon the title, so that Reckitt had printed upon it, back and side, "The Heather Lintie," while inside there was the acknowledgment of authorship, which Janet felt to be a solemn duty to the world, "Poems by Janet Balchrystie, Barbrax Cottage, by New Dalry." First she had thought of withholding her name and style; but on the whole, after the most prolonged consideration, she felt that she was not justified in bringing about such a controversy as divided Scotland concerning that "Great Unknown" who wrote the Waverly Novels. Almost every second or third day Janet trod that long loch-side road to New Dalry for her proof-sheets, and returned them on the morrow corrected in her own way. Sometimes she got a lift from some farmer or carter, for she had worn herself with anxiety to the shadow of what she had once been, and her dry bleached hair became gray and grayer with the fervor of her devotion to letters. By April the book was published, and at the end of this month, laid aside by sickness of the vague kind called locally "a decline," she took to her bed, rising only to lay a few sticks upon the fire from her store gathered in the autumn, or to brew herself a cup of tea, she waited for the tokens of her book's conquests in the great world of thought and men. She had waited so long for her recognition, and now it was coming. She felt that it would not be long before she was recognized as one of the singers of the world. Indeed, had she but known it, her recognition was already on its way. In a great city of the north a clever young reporter was cutting open the leaves of "The Heather Lintie with a hand almost feverishly eager. "This is a perfect treasure. This is a find indeed. Here is my chance ready to my hand." His paper was making a specialty of exposures." If there was anything weak and erring, anything particularly helpless and foolish which could make no stand for itself, the Night Hawk was on the pounce. Hitherto the junior reporter had never had a "two column chance." He had read-it was not much that he had read-Macaulay's too famous article on "Satan" Montgomery; and not knowing that Macaulay lived to regret the spirit of that assault, he felt that if he could bring down the Night Hawk on "The Heather Lintie," his fortune was made. So he sat down and he wrote, not knowing and not regarding a lonely woman's heart, to whom his word would be as the word of a God, in the lonely cottage lying in the lee of the Long Wood of Barbrax. |