arise about the necessity, the kind, the extent, the distance and the cost of transportation, the general policy of transportation as a factor in the solution of the question as to what can be done for small ungraded schools in sparsely settled regions of the state is proving to be very helpful.

While the school committee has no right to expend money for transportation unless the town has specifically authorized such expenditure (chapter 27, section 10, Public Statutes), it has exclusive and absolute charge of the settlement of all details about transportation after it has once been authorized by vote of the town. Whatever the committee does, it is always under statutory obligation to provide convenient schooling for every eligible child. Schooling is made convenient by locating the schoolhouse near the child or transporting the child to the schoolhouse. What is a reasonable walking distance the committee must decide for itself. The secretary, when asked his opinion about reasonable distances, inclines to the view of his predecessor, that little children should not be made to walk much over a mile, although older children of grammar school age may walk a mile and a half or even more. But numerous conditions may serve to modify this opinion. If for little children the mile lies through lonely, unfrequented, wooded or difficult roads, it would be too great or too dangerous a distance for them to walk. If, on the other hand, the way lies over a welltravelled thoroughfare, with good sidewalks, and houses all along the road, it would not be a hardship for the children to walk a considerably greater distance than one mile. Transportation should not be used to reduce sturdiness, self-reliance and reasonable self-denial in boys and girls. It cannot be made equally convenient for all families. It often has to be partial for some while complete for others. In cases of genuine doubt, the leaning should be towards the convenience of the child.-Report of Mass. Board of Ed., 1896.

RHYTHMIC BEAT IN POETRY.

Do you yourself enjoy and want your pupils to enjoy the rhythmic beat in poetry that makes music of the sounding lines? Then put it into the air of your school-room. Let the ictus fall where the accent comes, and let it fall hard. Lead your pupils in scanning the lines in concert, or by classes, and have them scan not detached lines only, but the poem from beginning to end. Nothing is more easy than for little boys and girls, all of whom sing, to know and recognize promptly the two com

mon feet, the iambus and the dactyl, or the same reversed in trochee and anapest; or to know exactly what is meant by the metre abbreviations in the hymn book, which are the same measured lines as found elsewhere in very much of our best poetry. Soon they will know how to do this easy and pleasant work as well as the teacher or any one else. But do not teach it, this simple scanning, as a leading thing, or as a great thing. The thought is always the great thing; then the fitting words by which it is expressed; then the arrangement of these words into musical lines,-though it is the music of the lines that may first attract and please.

On the wharf in Philadelphia a few days. since my ear caught the beat of a trochaic tetrameter line. I looked in the direction of the full, rich voice, and listened for the words as the question was repeated:

"Tell' me war' yo wan' 'o go' to."

It was warm. The black man sat on a stone step, hat and coat off, trying to keep cool, bald crown, good head, kind face. A boy had sat down beside him, and was leaning towards him, a look of "help wanted” in his eyes and all over him; and the black man wanted to help him, but must first know just where he wanted to go. "Tell me where you want to go to." It was a pleasant picture, but I hardly think the old man knew that he was talking in trochees.

Let me give you some verses in which the iambus, the trochee, the dactyl and the anapest come in the order here named to show how simple and natural the work here suggested:

Anapest:

'Tis the wink of an eye, 'tis the draught of a breath, From the blossom of health to the palenes of death, From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroudOh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud? Have your head full of these good things; quote them freely; note the bright eye, and the ready ear, as your pupils are becoming educated; and presently the tone of every-day acquaintance, in which these lines and verses and poems may come to be repeated-for teacher and pupil should constantly be adding to this store of treasure better than gold. Hear Longfellow in "The Day is Done."

Such songs have power to quiet

The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction

That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice,

And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.

As you know, when we quote a fine thing in verse we usually do it with a flourish, or on stilts, or at half-breath. Let the schools think poetry more, in all the charm of its exceeding beauty and excellence, and they will come to talk it more as a mother tongue. Teachers who have this high-grade work in their schools, themselves and their pupils enjoying it, are never forgotten, but are remembered with increasing gratitude because they were good to live with.

J. P. MCCASKEY.

KEEPING UP AN INTEREST IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

There is a tendency in the public to forget the school; the teacher must bear this in mind. Several years ago I had charge of a school in a village where there was a young ladies' seminary, and it seemed to me there was a hundred times more interest felt in that than in my school; so I set to work to investigate, and I came to the conclusion that the principal made a business of keeping his institution before the public. I asked myself the question, Can I not keep the public school before the public? These were some of the means I used:

In September each year, before the school opened I invited the pastors of all the churches to mention the opening of the schools and to preach on the importance of education. This matter was referred to in the village paper; the remarks made by the pastors were given in brief.

I had notices in the village paper telling about the opening of the schools. There was a long article giving also the course of study, the departments, the names of teachers, the school board, etc. The editor was glad to have me give him weekly items, such as the number in attendance and accounts of public exercises. As I had public exercises every Friday I had something for him every week. At these weekly exercises I invited the clergymen to make short addresses; I found when one man had spoken the others were ready to follow on succeeding Fridays. Then I took hold of the lawyers, the physicians. I took pains to notice the fact of these persons appearing at the school, in the village paper. A candidate for the legislature was invited. Soon the school board began to help, at first they were quite backward; now if any man of note came into the village he was brought up to the school.

Then I mentioned the names of pupils who took part in the exercises. There were two societies formed and they debated once a fortnight; accounts of these appeared in the papers-names of those who spelled certain lists. of words, of those who were not tardy during the month, etc. All these things kept the school before the public and aroused an interest never felt before. I have mentioned here only a part of the means I employed.—Teach

ers' Institute.

A GOOD SCHOOL AND ITS PRODUCTS.

Some days ago, I was in a neighboring county. I met an old acquaintance and we were exchanging confidences. Our talk fell into the line of what some communities seemed to be able to do for themselves, and what some of them seemed to not appreciate as worth doing. We talked of factories and wholesale houses and public enterprises, and finally came down to the magic influence possessed by some public schools, and how some communities seemed to be so rich in the boys and girls that make a name and a place for themselves. He told me this story, and it impressed me so much that I give it to the reader who has had the patience to think with me in these rambling reminiscences, as it is a lesson every Iowa school district can well afford to learn.

"There is a little school near one of the second class cities in this state which has had a remarkable record. It is in the center of a farming community, not noted for wealth, nor fine houses, nor for a chance to do great ma

markably large number of effective men and

women. This community has had but two chief objects: good morals among the youth, and a good school for their instruction. The people of this school district have employed a superior teacher, one of the very best they could get for many years. They have never cheapened their school in hard times, as they preferred to sacrifice elsewhere, if it was necessary, and they have had results that are worth being heralded abroad for the information of all communities that desire to build for the future. From this school has come in the past fifteen years a large number of the most substantial business men of the city near by, from it has come a percentage of professional men who are now at work in that and other cities, from here has come a large number of women that have made their mark in social, home and cultured life of that part of the country. The roll calls of the old daily registers of this school are a revelation to the hearer as one by one it proceeds, giving indications of the astonishing careers they have begun or they have already accomplished. They are in most every case leading farmers, merchants, lawyers, doctors, teachers, contractors and housekeepers, influential in the county and the state, far beyond their share, so far as equality of numbers should permit, and holding this remarkable prestige because their parents saw fit to invest for their children in intelligence, industry and character, even at large expenditure and with much sacrifice.-H. H. Seerley in Iowa Normal Monthly.

WHAT SCHOOL CAN DO FOR HOME.

The best and most radical work of the school outside of its walls is its contribution to the confidence and hopefulness of adults as to possibilities of their own mental improvement. "Old folks" and "middle-aged folks" are often at their intellectual best at the very time of life when the popular notion concerning them is that "they are too old to learn." One is never too old to learn, to think, to read, to grow in knowledge and wisdom. The spirit

may be young even when the flesh is feeble. Old people may break old habits and form new and good habits. A true taste may be cultivated late in life. Away with the pessimistic doom of the old! Some of

heresy about the the best work of the world has been done by mature men who have carried out their farreaching plans of self-improvement.

Mr. Mabie says: "James Smetham, the English artist, feeling keenly the imperfection of his training, formulated a plan of study

combining art, literature, and the religious life, and devoted twenty-five years to working it out. Goethe spent more than sixty years in the process of developing himself harmoniously on all sides; and few men have wasted less time than he. And yet in the case of each of these rigorous and faithful students, there were other, and, for long periods, more engrossing occupations." engrossing occupations." We all know of old Cato who studied Greek when he was eighty, Sophocles, who at eighty wrote his masterpiece, Simonides, who at eighty won a literary prize, Chaucer, who at sixty wrote the "Canterbury Tales," and Goethe, who at eighty completed "Faust." On the tombstone of John Richard Green, the historian, is the epitaph "He died learning." Here is an important mission for the school: To awaken age and even old age in the family, to its privileges, possibilities, and responsibilities in literary and educational work-and chiefly for the sake of the coming generation. The busiest people may crowd into life at least fifteen minutes out of every twenty-four hours. That means the thoughtful reading of at least two pages a day. But that means two volumes a year of three hundred and sixty-five pages each. That means, in ten years, the reading of twenty great volumes.

Therefore let the school startle all adults and the most venerable members of society to cooperate with its own systematic efforts for general education. In this way the school will embrace the whole community and the home will have the school to thank for sweet memories and for perpetual inspiration; and the later generations will give honor to the schoolhouse of our new century for its work in behalf of the grown up and the old as well as the young. Bishop Vincent in Normal Instruc

THE STUDY OF THE CHILD, a brief treatise on the psychology of the child, with suggestions for teachers, students, and parents, by A. R Taylor, (215 pp.; $1.50), undertakes to present simply, and freed from needless technicalities, the most important results obtained by child-study. It takes up in order the several senses, apperception, symbolism, language, feelings, will, the principal forms of intellectual action, habit, instincts, morals, abnormality, and stages of growth, thus on the whole keeping closely to the rubrics of psychology, and aims to show in general the new views attained by the later methods of study. With the methods themselves it has little to do, and one who goes to it for guidance as to how to study children, for exposition of difficult points in such study, or for discussion of controverted positions will meet only disappointment. It is the teacher, the parent, and the general read r to whom President Taylor appeals, and who will find him an intelligent, interesting, and stimulating guide. He is president of the Kansas state normal school at Emporia, a fact which enables one