requirements for this course being graduation from a higher school for girls or a normal school. The teachers' course extends over three years. The music course includes both Japanese and European, altho the latter is chiefly taught. The teachers of music and of art for middle and normal schools in Japan are chiefly supplied from these two art institutes at Tokyo.

Industrial education in Japan may be divided into three grades. Entrance to an institute of the highest grade is granted to graduates of the middle school. The period of study covers three years. The middle-grade industrial education is given to those who possess the qualifications of a grammar-school graduate. The period of study in this grade usually covers three years. The lowest grade of industrial education may be offered in such schools as the apprentice schools and the industrial continuation schools.

Of the industrial schools in Japan those which have exhibits here are the Tokyo Higher Technical School, the Sapporo Agricultural School, and the Tokyo Higher Commercial School. These three represent the highest industrial education in Japan. Conditions for admission to these three schools are the same as those prescribed for the industrial schools in general. The course of study in the Tokyo Higher Technical School covers three years; that of the Sapporo Agricultural School, four years; and that of the Tokyo Higher Commercial School, four years. The curriculum in the first-mentioned school includes mechanical engineering, electro-chemistry, applied chemistry, dyeing, weaving, ceramics, designing, and making of cuts for printing. The prescribed courses in the Sapporo Agricultural School comprise agriculture proper, civil engineering, and forestry. The courses given in the Higher Commercial School are a commercial course proper, a consul's training course, and a special course for training in every branch of trade, such as banking, insurance, etc.

The middle-grade industrial school is provided for both sexes. The schools of this grade having exhibits here number six for boys and one for girls. There are, besides, one agricultural and one commercial school which also have exhibits. The lowest-grade industrial schools exhibiting here are

two.

Among the exhibits from the highest grade of industrial shools the most interesting feature is the method of coloring metals. The method of coloring metals was originally a Japanese art, which the French artists have tried to imitate. This Japanese art has been kept secret for a long time. As the result of teaching this art to the students of the schools improvements have been introduced till the art attained almost to perfection, and the Japanese today are able to obtain the color without using any coloring matter, and in such manner that the color will never fade from the metals. This new method was invented by Mr. Kobayashi, assistant professor at the Higher Technical School.

Education of the blind and deaf is steadily improving. There is one institute of this kind in Tokyo under the direct control of the central gov

ernment, besides several similar institutions in different provinces which are under the subsidy of the prefectural or municipal governments. The courses of study are divided into general and special. In the general courses are included those given in the primary and grammar schools. The special course is designed to train the pupils for such professions and trades as will fit them to make a living; and includes music, massage, and acupuncture, for the blind, and painting, sculpture, sewing, netting, and embroidery for the deaf. The training in these special courses enables the pupils to obtain a living better than that in any other branch.

A peculiar course in the studies is that of acupuncture. This is the method of treating affected parts of the human body by pricking with a silver needle, the medical art used with such beneficial results by the Japanese. As to the beneficial effect of this art there was much doubt till it was decided to subject the method to the test of medical experts, who declared it perfectly harmless. The teaching of this art to the blind, which was for some time prohibited because of the doubtful effect, has been restored.

The text-books used by the blind are of point letters, which were specially invented by Mr. Ishikawa, an instructor of the Tokyo Blind and Deaf School, and in which is used the Japanese alphabet consisting of fifty letters, modified after the method of M. Braille, of France.

Memorial Addresses

William Bramwell Powell

BY JOHN W. COOK, PRESIDENT, NORTHERN ILLINOIS STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, DEKALB, ILL.

It was in the late sixties that I first began to hear of a man who bore the alliterative title of "Powell, of Peru." He was the superintendent of schools in a town at the head of steamboat navigation on the Illinois river. The population was quite exclusively German and had become accustomed to leave the schoolmaster to his own devices. It was evident that he had improved his opportunity to do some thinking and experimentation on his own account. It was currently reported that some of the time-honored traditions had been ruthlessly desecrated by the introduction of various novelties in the way of school occupations, and that the children were doing many things. not set down in the books. At a time when the study of the ordinary lessons was the exclusive employment of the schools such reports awakened an interest quite similar to that which some ten or a dozen years later made Quincy an educational Mecca.

I had recently become a schoolmaster, and was already hungering for some new ideas. I heard no little of what was going on at Peru, and had a warm desire to know the man and his methods. Nor was my interest diminished when I learned that the normal school in which I was teaching did not meet his approval. We were having trouble enough with the ultraconservatives without encountering the opposition of a man who was winning the admiration of the school people by the novelty and excellence of his work. I sought an early opportunity to find him out.

I was invited to assist in the exercises of a teachers' institute in the little town of Rutland, where one Aaron Gove was master of the village school. This was in 1868. Mr. Powell was there. He was then thirty-two years old. He was of medium height, of rather slight figure, keen-eyed, squarebrowed, heavily mustached. His voice was rather sharp, with a slight nasal quality; his speech was somewhat hesitating; and his manner in general. indicated a man of action rather than of words. It was shortly after this that an acquaintance began which ripened into an affectionate intimacy that was in no way interrupted until his removal to Washington city some seventeen years later.

Mr. Powell was born in Castile, N. Y., in 1836. He grew up on a farm, and until his manhood was engaged in the arduous life that such an experience involved. His father was a Methodist circuit rider, and in consequence

was absent from his home most of the time. When he returned he was, in the language of a friend, "more concerned with the fertilization of his spiritual acres than with the soil and crops of his quarter section." A heavy responsibility thus devolved upon the self-reliant and ambitious lad. It was to the rigorous discipline of this experience that Mr. Powell attributed the larger part of whatever success his subsequent life brought to him.

He went to the district school, prepared for college at Wheaton, and graduated at Oberlin. He always regarded his education as partial, and greatly regretted the lack of more liberal training. He forthwith deserted the farm, taught a district school for a couple of years, in 1860 secured the principalship of the Hennepin, Ill., schools, changed to Peru in 1862, to Aurora in 1870, and to Washington city in 1885.

Mr. Powell was first and last a schoolmaster. I have never known a man more thoroly devoted to his profession. He gave himself to its duties with a passionate absorption that left little thought or care for anything else. His industry was tireless. Dr. Gregory would have said of him that he was at once God-like and ox-like. He believed in a thorogoing organization of the subject-matter of the curriculum. No detail was too minute to escape his critical attention. It was my fortune to work with him for weeks at a time in summer institutes, and he wore out the nights with his patient preparation. He was not a very easy speaker, and possessed a native timidity that few of his friends suspected. Against this infirmity he ceaselessly fortified himself. It is quite possible that this was outgrown in his later life, with which I was much less familiar, but he often complained of the annoyance that it gave him in his notable career in Illinois.

To the work thus carefully digested he introduced his teachers. Of all of the superintendents that I ever knew he did most for their special preparation. He was a perpetual normal school. They were equipped by his discipline with an incomparable technic in the detailed processes of presenting the subjects of the curriculum. He dealt with the art of teaching rather than with its science, and thus they acquired great proficiency. Did he leave no room for their individuality to manifest itself? We often discussed this feature of his system. He insisted that his plans were the joint product of himself and the teachers, and that they had their full opportunity to protect themselves against the "tyranny of the superintendent." They were always manifesting their gratitude for his assistance, at any rate.

He was a pioneer in many of the most significant reforms of the last thirty years. He was the uncompromising foe of the old technical grammar grind with its endless parsing. He believed it possible to introduce children to an acquaintance with the structure of our good English tongue in such a way that when the time arrived at which the elaborate grammar of our almost grammarless language is ordinarily taught there would be no need of it. It was in the early seventies that he worked out his language lessons for the elementary grades, with nature study for their concrete filling. You will

find them in the pages of the old Illinois Schoolmaster, Aaron Gove, editor. They were the forerunners of the countless swarm of Introductions to English Grammar that sprang up within the five or six following years. What he did in this direction is only an illustration of his work in science, drawing, and manual training. He was years ahead of nearly all of us in these modern. additions to the course of study.

His promotion to the superintendency of the Aurora schools gave him an ampler opportunity to work out his ideas. To this end he established one of the first city training schools for the preparation of teachers. He took his most promising high-school graduates and put them thru the rigorous discipline which I have already mentioned, permitting them to act as assistants in the rooms that they might elect for their future work. By this arrangement, and by his constant instruction of the members of his corps, he succeeded in putting himself into every room of his city. I am not discussing the wisdom of his plans; I am only his biographer. I have only to add that, if you wish to discover his defenders, you have but to find any of his old teachers.

Altho so engrossed by the duties of his position, he was an active worker in the educational associations of the state and nation. Nothing was more natural and fitting than that the teachers of Illinois should look toward him as a suitable leader, and he was nominated for the office of superintendent of public instruction in 1874. Unfortunately it was at a time when the party to which he belonged met an unexpected defeat. It would have been interesting to see him with his liberal ideas and tireless persistence at the head of the educational forces in Illinois. In the same year he received from Lombard University the degree of M.A.

It was not long before the idea of a series of text-books began to take shape in his mind. They were all worked out within the next twenty years, and with his characteristic patience and industry. They consisted, besides the language books, of a series of readers, which were prepared with Miss Emma J. Todd's assistance, Miss Todd having been for years one of his most faithful training teachers. Later he produced a United States history and an English grammar, being assisted in the latter enterprise by Miss Connelly.

In 1885 he was elected to the superintendency of the public schools of Washington city. The old régime had at last lost its control. It was in good fighting trim, however, and made things very interesting for him. The change from the modest Illinois city, where things were at his command, to the national capital, with its inevitable political intrigues and with the conservatism of a southern city in all educational matters; must have been little short of a revolution in his life. His famous brother, the heroic major, won great renown by his canon explorations. I have long regarded his achievements as the easier task. I am indebted to a sympathetic student of his work for information respecting this portion of his professional career.

He found the schools quite good in some respects, but given over to mechani