-which may be taking a prospective view of life, but unfortunately it is not practical. When the boy is released from school restraints that were so irksome, and enters the office, he finds that to his new situation there are attached duties as monotonous, and probably more than those he has cast off. discover how defective his

difficult of performance, Only then he begins to education still is, and if

he does not find this out himself, his fellow-workers soon do so, and fail not to let him feel it; the senior clerk calls him a dunce, and the principal places first one and then another younger apprentice over him. He thinks it useless to wait for promotion there, but hopes to win it by a change. The change is made; but as the heads of offices are quick enough in detecting a boy's failings, though they may not always be as ready to discern what good qualities he may have, the aspirant to commercial distinction meets with no better success in a second or third situation. He drifts into indolent habits, for between leaving one and entering another office, time is generally lost, which, of course, is spent in idleness; for few youths of the kind we have before the mind at present, think of employing such leisure in supplementing their school

education, and acquiring such technical knowledge as will be useful to them, and the very want of which they have already so painfully felt. The lazy habits thus picked up follow the boy into his new situation, and he is accordingly discharged from one employ after another because of want of knowledge, or of application, or of perseverance; and as the boy is father to the man, the same negative deficiencies and positive faults grow up with him, mould his character for life, and ruin his worldly career; and this chiefly because a wrong bent was given to it at the outset. In Liverpool, a large proportion of boys who leave school early find themselves, or rather, are found by those who would otherwise employ them, unfit for office duties; and having no stability of character, and no inclination for steady work, betake themselves to a seafaring life. This is a well-known fact here in Liverpool, and the natural sequel of a defective education and a too early removal from school, which probably was only fitfully and irregularly [attended. It is a sad lesson, which yet is not without its uses as a warning to parents, who do not attach that importance to school education as a practical training for business life which it really constitutes, and

who, for the sake of the miserable gains of the boy during the year or two so taken from school before his time, ruin the prospects and fortunes of the man. Money invested in a good education. suitable to the future career of the boy repays itself manifold. A boy may be sent to a situation before he is fourteen years of age, and he may do well in it, provided his scholastic training was steady and well directed; but without a well-disciplined experience at school, the probabilities would be against his giving satisfaction to his employers. By the end of his fourteenth or fifteenth year, an ordinary boy who has regularly attended, and striven to profit by the instruction given at a good school, will have received such an education as will qualify him for the intelligent performance of the duties expected of a youth in any good office or situation. Should he have attended a school where more time is devoted to classics or mathematics, and other branches of study not immediately bearing on commercial life, a year or two more should be allowed. But as objections are made, on the score of age, by many employers when boys exceed fifteen years, parents who intend their sons to pursue a purely commercial career should make it a condition of their educational

programme that it be commercial and completed

by that age.

Regularity of Attendance.

Regularity is indispensably necessary, if the pupil is to make satisfactory progress; the very best school and the most efficient teaching can do him but little good if his attendance is irregular. I could dwell on the hundreds of cases with which I have met, of boys losing position in their classes, and all interest in their work and in the school, through their parents' indifference as to regularity and punctuality in school attendance.

Parents commit a serious error who calculate the loss sustained by the pupil, through absence for a morning or afternoon, at the nett loss of time; for this is but the least portion of the evil. The boy who is absent for one day returns on the following with much less disposition for study than if there had been no interruption of it. This is in accordance with human nature and universal experience. The day of the week the working man is least willing to set to work is the Monday; therefore he so often wastes it in idleness. Naturally the boy misses what is taught in his class on the day of his

absence; and on his return, his ignorance of the new rule in grammar or arithmetic, of the first lesson on a new map, or the connecting link of a series of propositions in Euclid, places him at a disadvantage, which prevents him for days afterwards working with his class on equal terms. And not only does he lose what was demonstrated during school hours; the lessons, which were set to be prepared for the following day, are also left undone; and he takes advantage of this fact to treat the work of the day of his return with indifference, very much as if it did not concern him because he did not prepare for it. it presumptuous on the teacher's part to expect him to know anything about,, or take any interest in, what was explained during his absence. Instead of making an effort to overtake his fellow-pupils, he considers himself harshly treated, if he is asked to join them in the same work. All this may

He will consider

result from one day's absence-a second day's absence aggravates the evil; but it is frequent absences a day now, half a day another time, and this repeated from week to week-which are specially to be reprehended, for they do more harm than a continuous absence of a month, or even a