scure place; yet high as it is, it is the one commendation every man may obtain.

In view of all this, there can be no justification of apathy and listlessness. There is a harvest field waving white in the breeze, and awaiting the sickle of every earnest man. I remember in one of the school "Readers" of my boyhood, a conversation between Mr. Goodman, a practical philanthropist, and Mr. Fantom, a visionary. The latter gentleman was for doing things on a grand scale-for improving the condition of whole nations. at one sweep, but would do nothing for his distressed neighbor in the next street; and so, as Mr. Goodman observes to him,

Between the great things you can not do, and the small ones that you will not do, life passes, and nothing is done." It should be our business to do the duty that is nearest to hand-to help and instruct our poor neighbor now, and the natives of Boorioboola-Gha in their turn.

THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS.

BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

This is the ship of pearl, which poets feign
Sails the unshadowed main-
The venturous bark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,
And coral reefs lie bare,

Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl!

And every chambered cell,

Where its dim dreaming life was wont to

dwell,

As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, Before thee lies revealed

Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Year after year beheld the silent toil

That spread his lustrous coil;
Still, as the spiral grew,

He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft steps its shining archway through,

Built up its idle door,

Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,

Child of the wandering sea,
Cast from her lap forlorn!

From thy dead lips a clearer note is borne
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn!
While on mine ear it rings,
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a
voice that sings:

Perhaps a simple reference to a life that was hampered and burdened, yet bravely lived, that of Miss Hannah Neumann, of Brooklyn, may hold iuspiration for some others who are still struggling amid difficult and paralyzing conditions; for it was not only a life of heroic endurance, but of active work and of more than usual achievement.

It requires a strong soul and a resolute one to bear in brave, unyielding courage the bereavements, trials and anxieties, the hours of discouragement and of loneliness, and conscious weakness, the thwarted hopes and unfulfilled desires, the misconceptions and misrepresentations which all must know, yet these form always a part of the life-experience of all, and are a part of its discipline to teach us the self-mastery and the fortitude which is power-character. When to these experiences is added an unusual amount of constant, intense, and in a greater or less degree disabling physical suffering, the heroism which enables one to go forward, and still through all to go steadfastly forward, is incalculable.

A life but recently closed was one of these. Some years ago a young girl graduated, with honors, from one of our best institutions of learning. It was necessary that she should support herself and also assist in the support of those

near and dear to her, so she entered at once upon the work of teaching. As time passed the evidences of a growing cancer became increasingly manifest. She continued at her post, however, and also continued her studies-for she had not on leaving school discontinued her efforts to acquire knowledge-until she was obliged to leave them in order to have surgical treatment. Twice she thus entered a hospital, and twice was the cancerous growth subjected to the surgeon's knife.

After each operation she left the hospital wards to return to her desk in the school-room as well as to her place in the home. Her mother was strong neither in health nor in self-reliance and depended wholly upon her daughter; and her sisters also turned to her for help, and sympathy, and advice, ever abiding by her judgment. And while she was the heart and strength of the home, and the diligent and painstaking teacher of successive classes of children, she was, at the same time. living a mental life of unusual intellectual fervor. She was traversing with unflagging zeal the paths of the higher intellectual pursuitsreading, studying, 'and occasionally corresponding with the learned and the scientific on the other as well as on this side of the world

In school, at times, the pain was so severe that her head would fall forward for a moment on the desk before her, until, after an instant's inward struggle, she regained her self-poise, and resumed her tasks. At such moments the childten were as still as though penetrated by a sense of sacred awe. Who may know what blessing, like the "laying on of holy hands," may not have entered into the hearts of some of those young beholders of and sympathizers with those silent struggles and conquests. She never talked to any one about her suffering. Doubtless she could not. Silence gives strength sometimes, where speech would weaken.

Even when, the cancerous trouble still unexorcised, she had throngh its everreturning depredations wholly lost the use of her right hand and arm, and the surgeons could do no more for her, she not only did not give up either her teaching or her studying, but increased the latter by entering the School of Pedagogy. Her friends have the sweet satisfaction of knowing that she had received

therefrom the diploma granting her the title of Ph. D. before her life was closed. A friend who visited her but a day or two before she received her summons to "come up higher" found her quite as usual-in mind. She was, that day, unable to wear her dress, but her mind was clothed in all its royal robes, and she had never talked more interestedly, although she was obliged occasionally to stop for a breathing space or so, and lean forward with a stifled moan. She had, for some time, been unable to lie down, even during the night.

She was so happy over her graduation! so happy over the reception of the thesis which she had prepared and herself written-as all her writing had then to be done with her left hand! And she was so full of plans for future work and achievement-in addition still to her teaching, which she had no thought of relinquishing-and enthusiastically urged her friend to join her in her studies.

Two or three days later she lay quiet and still; the white hair, frosted early through pain nobly borne, was coiled above her brow, while all the deep lines of pain upon her face were over-written with the indelible traces of high and noble thoughts, and dominated by the look of sweet peace which Death, the Restorer, so often gives. Her pain and suffering, her struggle, ever-renewed, if ever-conquered, was at an end. A sudden hemorrhage brought her, swiftly and almost painlessly, the release and relief which were so great that those who loved her could scarcely mourn the loss that was to her such gain.

In spite of her life of pain she knew much of the best that life can give-loyalty to duty, to God-ordained ties of nature, and the elevating devotion of the unselfish love which gives itself. She knew the inspiration of high aims, the devotion to communion with things great and noble, and the sweets of the conquest of the higher over the lower, both in her mental and her physical life. She knew how to be strong and patient and true, in despite of care and disappointment and unutterable suffering; and was enabled to do the work her hand found to do with all her might, and with all her strength, heroically and faithfully, even unto the very end.

Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, The love of love.-Tennyson.

TH

OF MILITARY DRILL.

HE movement to introduce military drill into some of the more advanced schools will meet with favor. Some have already jumped to the conclusion that its object is to prepare the boys for war; but this is by teachers who look narrowly at the work of the school-room. Military drill has been employed in many private schools for the past fifty years; and it has grown in favor in these institutions. Certain ones advertise themselves as "military academies," and thereby draw a large patronage. The introduction of it into the public schools has been caused by observing its effects in private schools.

A case was lately adverted to in an Albany paper: the father withdrew his son from the high school, and sent him to a school where military drill was practiced, giving as the reason, "I want him to learn to walk like a man; he is growing fast, and don't carry himself well." In fact, the proposition to employ military drill is only another stage in the effort to give gymnastic exercise. Any observing person cannot but see that the ordinary gymnastic drill in schools is a failure. There is a lack of interest: the movements become mechanical, and finally the pupils tire of them. It is suited best for young children. For boys of fourteen and upwards there are attractions in military drill that cannot be associated with gymnastic drill.

But there are deeper reasons: they may be called moral reasons. The tendency to lawlessness is one that besets our boys as soon as they walk the streets-is the national sin. The description the emigrant gets of America is, that it is a country where every one does as he pleases. Young women as well as young men aim to be able to do as they please. The value of the school is fully twenty-five per cent. less in its intellectual effects because of this unwillingness to observe law -to be under authority. There are many pupils sent to private schools where military drill is practiced, for the sole reason that they will learn to obey orders. There is not a teacher from Maine to California but has one or more pupils who contest his authority; this is a painful subject.

Military drill has for its main object, as a school exercise (though this may not be disclosed to the pupil), the subjection to the will of another. Many a worthless fellow in a country village has been made

into a brave, courageous, self-forgetting man by enlisting as a soldier. Then for days and months he came and went as another directed; his old self, that aimed only at pleasing himself, disappeared. The military drill of the boys of the Berkeley school is something to be admired on account of its effect on their bodies; but the teachers say that the admission by the pupil that he must yield to an order from a superior follows him into the construction of the languages of Rome and Athens-he looks for a rule and follows it.

As corporal punishment has been removed from the schools the teachers have felt that they must, in some way, attain an ascendency over the pupil; and it has been the practice in very many public schools of this city, for many years, to drill the boys to Attention,' Mark Time,' March,"

Halt," in order to

THE

HE following article from a late number of the Troy (N. Y.) Press, seems well worth reproducing for its intrinsic. interest. The writer does not inform us as to the sources of his statistics, but it is probably safe to assume their approximate correctness. It may be a comfort to the teacher, when driven to despair by the seeming impossibility of bringing some dull pupil to understand or remember a few of the thousand and one irregularities of his mother tongue, to reflect that this very language, with all its irregularities and imperfections, is already, to a large extent, the language of commerce the world over, and that it is making steady and rapid progress, with a fair prospect of becoming the universal language of civilization.

"Is the English language destined to become the universal language? Three centuries ago it was employed by less than 3,000,000 of people; to-day it is spoken by over 115,000,000 people in all parts of the globe, and is constantly increasing, both as to population and territory. At present it is distributed as fol

lows: United States, 65,000,000; British Islands, 38,000,000; Canada, exclusive of French Canadians, 4,000,000; West Indies, British Guiana, etc., 1,500,000; Australia, 4,000,000; South Africa, India, and other colonies, 2,500,000. This includes only those whose mother tongue is English, no account being taken of the vast number who speak English but who have another tongue. The increase of English speakers is calculated to be 2,000,000 annually. No other language of modern times has made such rapid progress. Three hundred years ago the 3,000,000 people who spoke English resided principally on the British Isles. Now it is spoken more or less in nearly every country on the face of the earth.

The principal languages which compete with English, not considering such as Chinese and Hindostanee, are French, Spanish, Russian and German. French is practically stationary as regards the number of its adherents; Spanish is largely spoken in South America and the southern part of North America, but it owes its prominence to the colonizing genius of its speakers; where German is introduced it rapidly gives way to the native tongue, generally English; Russian, like the German, has little influence upon the Western civilization. It is a

remarkable fact that, while the English in their colonies and off-shoots have absorbed millions of aliens, there is no record of any great body of English speakers having become absorbed by any other race. In the United States there are millions of Germans and other foreigners who have become merged with the English speakers in a single generation, they losing even their family names; and the children in many cases do not understand their parents' language.

The English has practically driven the French out of Egypt, and it is rapidly driving the Dutch out of Africa. This has been accomplished in Egypt within a dozen years. The change in Africa is being effected with even greater rapidity. As the English-speaking settlers rush into the new country, the Dutch and other languages, which are ready to be met with drop into the backwoods and are finally lost. Africa is witnessing a repetition of the fight of the tongues in America three centuries ago, which resulted in a victory for the English. The history of lingual development in America alone is as ufficient argument for the prediction, which is made with much confidence, that no languages, excepting possibly those of the Orient, will long remain formidable competitors of the English."

punishment. In one case it was suspension for a year, in the others for six months. The students say they are resolved to sustain the honor system. Score another for foot-ball, base-ball, and honorable athletics generally. The old honesty is all the stronger for its new backing of vigor and energy from the gymnasium and the athletic field.

THE Brooklyn Board of Education proposes to make important changes in the courses of study in the public schools. It is proposed to reduce the number of subjects taught, and the amount of time required for study. Several of the recommendations by the principals will be adopted, among them the teaching of inventional geometry in connection with their drawing; the teaching of natural science in the grammar schools, in connection with geography; the postponement of the time when geography shall