substance. This lesson would have an apparent advantage over one heard directly from the text-book; but, except so far as independence of the book at the time of recitation goes, only an apparent advantage. Oral instruction differs from other instruction in that it makes its own text-book-that is, its definition, its statements of principles, its rules, all that would be put in a book; and in that it does this, not by giving them ready-made, but by leading to them by regular step. It aims to persuade the pupil to use his own power by a skillful presentation of points adapted to awaken his curiosity. It assumes that the pupil may, within his range, investigate and discover truth and learn to make the formulas by which it is expressed, and that this is better than to give him formulas of any sort and tell him to use them for solving problems or for doing any part of his work. It is a process of unfolding, of development, rather than of furnishing the results of previous investigation made by others. It is orig inal inquiry under guidance; inquiry at first hand, rather than reception of truth at second hand; it is a path of discovery, rather than a subsequent account of what has been discovered. It is leading the child to do what all who make books ought to do, instead of telling him outright the results which others have already reached. It is a methodical presentation of truth, not ordered on the surface, but near enough to stimulate search, without requiring too severe toil or too deep delving. Step by step truth is unfolded, not communicated. Ray by ray light is let in, that each point may be seen by itself, and that the whole may at length stand revealed, and that each part, by the process of discovery, may be the learner's. In the nature of the case instruction which has this end as its leading idea must be oral; it must be for each learner a bringing out of his powers; it must be a direct personal contact of his own mind with the mind of the teacher, and through the medium of the subject which is under investigation.-Growing World.

INJUDICIOUS ASSISTANCE.

JEAN GOLD

WE

E are learning, or we can and must learn, if not very stupid, something new every day. We can learn in these later days without any great effort of our own, which, by the way, I consider the most unfortunate part of our education. Men have been and still are studying night and day, with a zeal that allows them little rest--working their brains continually for the benefit of the million; working to simplify and render easier for our comprehension the vast wonders of earth, sea and sky. We read a condensed article on steam, electricity or Polarized light; get the accumulation of years of laborious research, experiment and reasoning in a nutshell, and scarcely say a "thank you" to the one who has given life and strength to the work, who has spared us the trouble of searching the truths out ourselves. If we remember what we have read we do well.

The trouble is, it is true in knowledge as in love, "Lightly won, lightly valued," and when we have only to use our ears or our eyes for a brief hour or so, to get

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a general idea of a profound subject, as a matter of course we do not appreciate the subject. But, some one says, we cannot spend days and years searching out every subject; a lifetime would not suffice for gaining a tithe of the knowledge we can obtain from the statements of others; and they say truly. We cannot all devote years to scientific investigation. It is a mercy and blessing that the few can do the hard work for the many; that we have our encyclopedias, more and more voluminous and comprehensive; our scientific journals, penetrating with unflagging earnestness and untiring will the mists of the Invisible Universe, and our specialists, who give the richness of their lives to the work, so that, at our leisure, in our sanctum, we may with our glass take a wide sweep over the heavens and earth, if we wish, in a glance.

But the truth is still the same. "Lightly won is lightly valued," and there is real danger in carrying this making-easy to the extreme. Manual labor saved by machinery is an invaluable gain, unless it takes from man's ability and power by the non-exercise of his muscles. If he can find a nobler employment for his arm than swinging a scythe, let him have a mowing machine; but if his arm is to be left hanging idly at his side, better give him back the scythe to wield.

In a word, if inventions, improvements and labor made easy rouse within us higher aspirations and quicken our energies for work, then assistance has done good. But when you look about and see discontent and hear grumbling because there is any personal effort to be made at all, you may rest assured harm has been done, and men have grown weak for want of enough exercise instead of too much.

It is the same with mental powers as it is with physical; the same law of use and disuse; use strengthens, invigorates, accelerates; disuse enervates, weakens; use conduces to growth and improvement; disuse to stagnation and collapse. A child learns to speak, we will say, by instinct, not stopping to inquire here what that instinct born in him is; the tiny brain works tremendously for such a young one. He hears a sound, a voice say, and instantly connects the voice with a meaning, with a person and with the person's face, for the baby even looks into your face when you speak to it. He may not get it all right the first time, but that he gets any of it anywhere is one of the mysteries of the dawn of the intellect. When he is older he learns by his eyes as well as his ears. Words printed as well as spoken he finds have meaning, and little by little he hitches the right meaning to the word. Nowadays most children learn the alphabet from painted blocks, or fancy pictured A B C books. It is well enough to let them begin the up-hill journey with bright, flowery a's and b's-they think they get the thorns without any roses farther on. the ascent so gradual, so easy that it will require but slight effort from the But the great aim now is to make child, judging from the various text-books in common use.

The child's easy reader is more than half pictures, and whole pages are devoted to pyramids of small words, like “up, go up, do go up, I do go up," until the child despairs of ever getting up through the labyrinth. If you are attempting to help him up, you will not get half way before your eyes will see and "go ups" dancing in every conceivable shape and manner up and down the 66 ups" page. All this is sheer waste of time and strength on a few of the simplest

words; it is made easy to the harm of the child. Grammar is simplified; arithmetic is diluted till it is sickening to offer it over and over again to the little ones; and then we come to the sciences reduced to the comprehension of the smallest and dullest. Again, in some schools text-books are at a discount. The teacher does the studying, and delivers lectures to the children, who listen and remember what they can. This oral teaching has various advantages, but it usually educates the ear drum, while the eyes and tongue remain in a decidedly half cultivated condition.

It is so much easier to be told anything than to find it out yourself, that a child soon learns the "what is it," "why is it," and "where is it?" A trifle more trouble on the teacher's part at first, and the child could be taught to answer three-fourths of the questions for himself, and take pleasure in answering; for, gaining the knowledge by his own industry, he appreciates the trouble, if not the result. Object teaching is also of benefit, for often the only effort necessary is to keep a child attracted to the subject to have him become interested and learn. But oral and object teaching should not intrude upon the domain of study.

One great lesson of life is application, and one great aim of school education is lost when the process of acquiring knowledge is simplified too much. The child who learns (and the younger the better) by earnest and continuous practice to test his own mental power over his puzzling division, and perseveres until he conquers, will make a more efficient man than the boy who runs to his teacher with every vexed question, sure of being answered, because it is his instructor's business to teach him.

"But," says the teacher, "I may as well tell him how many times twelve goes into eighty-seven; he can look in the table and see--and it saves time." That is the point where I do not agree. It is not saving time. Better send him to the table than make it so easy. If he is ten minutes finding out by his own wits, he will remember ten-no, a hundred times-better than by your telling him. Another child asks, What does such a word mean? and the teacher replies. Far better would it be for the child to send him to the dictionary and let him hunt up every word in the definition he does not understand. He will never forget that word or its meaning again. A friend asks, How can a child find a word in the dictionary he may not know how to spell? Help him for the beginning; but if he is taught to think for himself, he will soon learn from the sound of letters enough to bring him to the page, where he can glance down till he finds it, and in the future he will remember also the spelling of that word. I grant it is more work than to ask somebody, but it is time saved in the end.

After a child has reached an age to read clearly and understandingly to himself, do not, in the form of teacher, usurp the place of books. Do not let a child look upon yon as a walking dictionary or encyclopedia. It may be a great compliment to you, but it is a greater injury to him. Simply let your work be to guide him in his application. Give him a text-book, and not the skim-milk one, if you please, but one you know has something in it worth his studying, and then watch carefully the result of his labor. Keep silent while he tells you what he has learned from his lesson. Do not ask him if so-and-so is so, and let

him answer yes or no. By the questions he will ask and answer himself, you can easily note if he has touched the essence of the subject; or, if he is only an expert little parrot; then let your few words of condensed recapitulation be just to the point in hand, acting as the nut to hold forever that one screw of truth in his brain.

If you were teaching a little girl to sew a seam, would you commence by letting her, with a dozen (more or less) of coarse stitches, run from beginning to end, to get a general idea of sewing and the length of her seam, and then go over and over the distance with finer stitches at each repetition? Yet that is something like the method by which the children are taught. In the first school year, if the little heads get the idea that the world is round, and three-fourths water to one-fourth land, and a few general definitions of the divisions of land and water, they have made sufficient progress; in brief, they have run over the seam, have gained a general idea that geography teaches about the earth's surface, and that it is a wonderfully long journey, this one around the world. The next year they will have the stitches a trifle closer.

Experience shows that scholars accustomed to have their work simplified, when they meet with a hard lesson to be mastered, cannot rise equal to the emergency, and the teacher divides and subdivides, explains and re-explains, smoothing out and thinning down, until he gets the truths down to a level of their brain, instead of raising them up to the work.

Thus they go out from the school, which at its highest degree is but a commencement, entering into the world's practical laboratory, where active life shall bitterly test their powers of application and perseverance.

Men and women need the accumulation of the childhood energies; need all the discipline and training for close, sharp thought, when they come to make the grand experiment of their own living successful.

There are always two sides to a question; but hearing so much from the other side, and noting some of the evil effects in the great improvements for saving time and brain labor in the teaching of children, I felt, in justice to the question, I might say a word about injudicious assistance.-Voice of Masonry.

-Talk with parents about their children. Many parents can give you useful hints about teaching. Urge the parents to send their children to school regularly, and to talk with them about their studies. Review the day before retiring. Mark down your errors, their causes and effects-shun them in the future.

-In the Mexican Department of the Main Exhibition Building at Philadelphia is a beautiful mantelpiece of so-called Mexican onyx, for which the Emperor of Germany has paid $3,000. If the stone were a true onyx, it could not be made for such a price, but it is really a veined alabaster which takes a fine polish. Its composition is carbonic acid 43.52, lime 50.10, magnesia 1.40, ferrous oxide 4.10, manganous oxide 0.22, water 0.60, silica traces. If onyx it would be composed mainly of silica.-Scientific Miscellany, in The Galaxy for November.

BLUNDERS.

W. WATKINS.

T was only by many falls that we learned to walk, and in all our life it is

I ordained that our mistakes and failures are the most instructive parts of our

experience. As no person can reach full development of character without profiting by his mistakes and blunders, so no one can become an efficient teacher without turning the blunders of his pupils to account. A blunder does not happen; it has a cause. It is characteristic of a mental or moral state. It is a per fectly natural product. The teacher must note the blunder and ask himself what state of mind could have produce it. The investigating teacher will discover that not all blunders are of the same kind, but that they are divided into two great classes, those which are caused by lack of attention and those which are caused by lack of knowledge. Blunders of inattention are very common in ill-disciplined schools. Listless idleness is their cause. The pupil is so careless and indifferent to his lesson that he will not give enough attention to the recitation to avoid mistakes which he knows better than to make. Blunders in the gender and number of nouns in parsing are usually of this kind. These properties of the noun are so distinct that no child of sufficient maturity to study grammar can have any excuse for not giving them correctly at sight. Not to do so argues inattention. This inattention has its source in a lack of interest in the subject. It is true that an undisciplined habit of mind has something to do with it, but the most undisciplined are capable of attention to those things in which they are interested. Where this evil of inattentive blundering prevails, all the teacher's labors are wasted. It must be removed. As inattention is an effect, we must remove it by removing its cause. How shall it be done? Each must find the specific means for himself. He must see that his pupils blunder because they are inattentive, and are inattentlve because they are not interested in their studies, and must set about rousing an interest in any way which is in his power. If I had a stump in my garden I should remove it, but how would depend upon its size, condition, and situation, and upon the means within my power. I might push it down, dig it out, blast it, or rid myself of it in any one of a half dozen ways. I should care very little about the method. I only view it as a means to reach my end. The stump must come out. I will take the easiest and cheapest way to be rid of it. Had I half a dozen stumps I should not employ the same means for all unless all were alike. But just as in stump-pulling there are certain eternal and invariable laws which must be obeyed, so also in fighting inattentive, listless habits in school. If you are not interested in the lessons you cannot teach your pupils to be. This is a law of nature. You cannot impart to others what you have not. If you are false you cannot teach them to be true. If you are idle you cannot teach them to be industrious. If you feel no interest in the lesson they will feel none. The teacher must examine himself. One can be lazy without knowing it, and without being called so. In Ohio teachers may be idle and inattentive for whole terms, and yet not be stigmatized