be suggested, but these are considered quite enough to show clearly the desirability of revision.

II. Problems.

1. Of the problems requiring study perhaps the first place should be given to that of alternating studies. At present every branch in the course of study appears on the program five times a week, except literary readings, to which no time allotment is made. In foreign secondary programs, on the other hand, as well as in the familiar programs of the committee of ten, many studies appear a lesser number of times. With some branches, and certainly with some at a certain stage of acquirement, alternation would be a distinct disadvantage; but with others it might prove a gain. The following four considerations in its favor deserve careful study: (1) it permits a more satisfactory distribution of studies in the program. The mathematics, for instance, now concentrated into two years, might be spread into three, and thus in a measure overcome the objections urged above. (2) It is claimed that classes actually accomplish more work in a given branch when the same number of hours is devoted to it three times a week than when the time is concentrated. (3) The dwelling in a subject for the longer period implied in recitations three times a week tends to make the acquisition deeper and more permanent. (4) The wide-spread adoption of the plan as the result of experience must be accounted a strong argument in its support.

2. Should the program call for three or four class exercises per day? At present three is the rule, except that literary readings come in as an extra. At the same time many of our schools have introduced four, and the movement seems to have been slowly in that direction. The committee of ten also arranges for four. Four, by increasing the number of classes, make a heavier demand upon the teaching force; they consume more of the school time of the pupil in recitation; they divide up his interests. On the other hand they increase the variety and extent of the school program; they give the pupil more teaching; the plan opens the way for extras, as music, drawing, etc.

3. Should the program provide for physical training, drawing, music, rhetoricals, etc.? It is one of the striking peculiarities of the programs of the ten that no place is found for such things. Perhaps like Mr. Herbert Spencer's humanities, they are remanded to the leisure of edecation.

4. The whole problem of English teaching in the high schools needs careful study. Ques

tions may well be raised about other departments, but in none of them are in such utter chaos and inefficiency in our schools as that of English. We do not know what to do, in what order, or in what way. Until some well thought out scheme in this field is presented it will be vain to hope for a satisfactory recasting of the English course. Complaint from the colleges

of unsatisfactory preparation in English will do little good until more definite help in this matter is afforded.

To answer these problems properly considerable detailed study will be necessary, in which the experience of the best schools in other states ought to be diligently sought out and compared. Moreover, at present hopeful efforts after uniformity of requirements for college admission are under way, which may be expected to contribute not a little towards determining the exact nature of the changes which it is best to make in our courses. It seems wiser, therefore, not to attempt immediate recasting of the programs, but rather to encourage thought and discussion on the subject by such a preliminary presentation as this. J. W. STEARNS.

SEMI-CENTENNIAL HISTORY.-FOR SUPPLEMENTARY READING.

I. How Nicollet Came to Green Bay.

The wild Winnebagoes at the head of Green Bay more than two centuries and a half ago were greatly astonished to see a white man. They had never before seen such a sight, and they had never even heard that there were any people in the world except red men.

They saw a canoe come up the bay, and several men step out of it. One of them was a white man. But the difference was not merely in the color of the skin. The Winnebagoes were nearly naked, but he was clothed, so that only his hands and his face could be seen. Their clothing, when they wore any, was skins of wild beasts, but the white man wore a robe of fine shining cloth, all embroidered with birds and flowers. The Winnebagoes had been notified of his coming by a messenger sent in advance, and some of their young men ran to the canoe and helped unload it and carry the baggage.

The white man held in each hand a curious thing and, when he wished it do so, this curious thing spit fire and made a great noise. The women and children all ran away, screaming that this is a great spirit and he carries thunder and lightning in his hands. The chiefs. and warriors were also afraid, but they would not show it. Only women should scream with

fear; warriors must not be cowards. So they stood still and let the stranger from spirit land

come near.

Some of their young men who had traded with the Menomonies down the bay, and with the Chippewas further along the lake, could make out a few words of the Indian language the strangers spoke. They said the spirit was friendly and would not harm them even if he did carry the thunder and lightning about with him.

If

Now with Indians, as well as with white men when you wish to be friendly with any one you treat him to something to eat or drink. These Indians at that time knew nothing of liquor. This was one of the gifts of the white men later on, a sad gift to the Indians. they had been Frenchmen they would have treated the strangers to brandy. If they had been English, they would have treated them to beer. For this was long before the days of temperance societies. But being Indians who had never seen or heard of brandy or beer, they at once treated their guests to tobacco, which the Indians taught the white men to use. A great pipe was filled and lighted, and passed from mouth to mouth, each one taking a few whiffs, and then politely passing the pipe to the next.

This white man had lived twenty years among Indians, and was used to smoking the same pipe and eating out of the same dish, and sleeping in the same bed with savages who never washed or combed. So he smoked the pipe with the chiefs as it was handed round the circle that sat inside a dirty skin tepee, as the Winnebagoes called a wigwam. And when the supper was ready he sat down and ate his boiled muskrat and wild rice and pounded corn out of the same dish with the greasy and nearly naked Winnebagoes.

This white man was a Frenchman named Nicollet, and he had been sent to explore the far west by Champlain, the first governor of Canada. All the Europeans then believed that the South Sea, as they called the Pacific Ocean, was only a few days journey west of the Atlantic, and that it was not far across it to China. Champlain had heard stories from the Indians of Canada about the Great Lakes, and that the great water was not far beyond them. They also said that men with bald heads and no beards came to trade with the Indians beyond the great lakes. These, he thought, must be Chinamen, such as Marco Polo had lived with in his wonderful adventures in the Far East.

Champlain knew that there was a great lake to the southeast, the one we call Ontario. He

knew also that there was another great lake to the northwest, the one we now call Huron. He wished to learn if there were any more such great fresh water lakes. He wished to reach the Great Water beyond them, in order to get a route to trade with China. And he also wished to make the Indians friendly to the French and to stop fighting one another.

For these reasons the governor of the little colony of Frenchmen sent Nicollet on his long voyage westward. He went with the first missionaries to the Hurons on the Georgian Bay on their hard journey up the Ottawa river, and across portages, through swamps and mosquitoes. Leaving the missionaries at their destination, he took seven Hurons with him to make the long journey to the "Saltwater tribe" as the Canadian Indians had called the Winnebagoes. They paddled all day in their canoes. When they could not kill a bird or catch a fish, they ate a little pounded corn and tightened up their belts. They slept out doors under the stars. And when it rained they peeled the bark from some trees and made a little shed of it to protect themselves and their fire. When the wolves howled, they built up a bigger fire to scare them off. When it was very stormy they rested, because high waves would easily upset their canoe. But other days they kept on paddling all day long. They followed the shore of the Georgian Bay and then of Lake Huron, through the straits of Makinaw, along the northern shore of Lake Michigan and into Green Bay.

They visited a village of the Menomonies on the river of that name, now the boundary between Wisconsin and Michigan. These Indians spoke a dialect nearly like that of the Canadian Indians. They told the travelers that the Winnebagoes lived at the head of Green Bay, and that they held the streams that led to the Great Water. They said that the Winnebagoes were called the Salt Water tribe, because they had come there lately from the salt water to the west. They called it Stinking water, and so the French named the Winnebagoes the Stinkers (Puans), and Green Bay they called Stinker's Bay (Baie des Puans), and these names stuck to them for a hundred years.

So Nicollet supposed the Winnebagoes might be Chinamen, or at least their allies, and so he dressed himself in the queer robe of Chinese Damask, all embroidered with birds. and flowers, which he had brought so carefully all the long journey. And so he fired off his pistols, to make the Winnebagoes think he was a great man. He succeeded better than he expected, for they thought he was not a

man but a spirit, and they treated him accordingly.

Many years after when the later explorers followed on Nicollet's path, the Winnebagoes and the Sioux, or Dacotahs, their kinsmen, called the white men spirits, just as Nicollet had been called. The white men had strange and mysterious powers which the Indians did not understand. They could make thunder and lightning. They had queer little boxes in which were needles that always pointed north, and thus showed them the way, even when they could not see the sun or stars, and where there was no moss on the north side of the trees. They could mark something on birch bark or on paper, and send it a long way off, and the "talking leaves" would tell the story they were charged with; but the Indian who carried the message was none the wiser, for the leaves would not whisper to him. They had knives made of iron, far sharper and better than the stone and copper knives of the Indians.

They wore wonderful clothing, much handier than buffalo robes and wolf skins. Some of them had time pieces by which they could tell the time of day or night even in a wigwam or when it was cloudy just as well as if they had looked at the sun or stars. They had strange medicines for all kinds of sickness. And, most valuable of all, when the fire went out, they could strike fire with flint and steel, instead of painfully rubbing two sticks together as the Indians had to do. For people who were hunting or traveling a great deal, and who could not always carry live coals with them, this power was a wonderful and a very useful thing, to make fire in two or three minutes instead of after half an hour's hard work. The white spirits thus had magic and medicine and arms, which made them very valuable to the red men.

A great feast was soon prepared for Nicollet and his Indian companions. One hundred and twenty beavers were caught and cooked for this feast. The way they were cooked was by cutting up the meat and putting it in baskets, which were woven so close that they would hold water. The baskets were partly filled with water and meat, and then stones heated in a very hot wood fire were dropped into them. As fast as one stone had given up its heat to the water, it was taken out and another hot stone put in its place, till the meat was cooked. So also was the dirt and ashes on the stones and the hair from the cook's head; but the Indians did not mind little things like that. Indians often cooked dogs for great feasts, but this time they could not spare any,

Nicollet was not obliged to eat dog. If the travelers had not had strong stomachs, they could not have lived through the feasts given by the liberal Winnebagoes. The Indians often picked out pieces of fat from the beaver's tails or other dainty morsels and fed them to their guests, who could not be so impolite as to refuse. But they had been half starved on their journey and now made up for lost time. They ate and slept and slept and ate, like true Indians, Nicollet with the rest. Runners brought in Winnebagoes from other villages till there were thought to be three thousand Indians there.

After several days of this feasting with a great deal of talking and gesturing and trying to be understood, Nicollet thought he had gained all the knowledge he could from the Winnebagoes, and parted from them with a great display of friendship on both sides. They agreed to make a lasting peace with the white men and with the Indians to the east, who were friends of the whites. The Winnebagoes kept this peace about a year, and then some of their young men had too good a chance to kill two of the Beaver Indians. As they were beavers they not only killed them but ate them also which was adding insult to injury.

Nicollet paddled up the Fox river, carried his canoe around the Grand Chute, passed the island now called Doty's Island into Lake Winnebago, then again into the upper Fox river, and so on to the great wild rice marshes, full of birds.

Here he found a tribe who spoke a dialect something like that of the Canadian Indians and very different from that of the Winnebagoes. With them he could talk in comfort and understand what they told him. They said that in a few days he could reach the Great Water, but that it was a river and not the ocean, the river we now call the Mississippi, or the Father of Waters. They told him, too, that the strange men who came to trade were Indians from far west and not Chinamen at all. They were bald because they shaved their heads all but the scalp lock, and of course no Indian has a beard. So as it was useless to go any further Nicollet went with these Mascoutins, or Fire Nation, on a buffalo hunt to the southward over the prairies till they met the Illinois, and heard the same story from them, and made friendship with them also, smoking the same pipe and eating out of the same kettle.

So Nicollet went back the way he came and reported to Champlain who thought he had done a great deed in discovering another great

lake besides the two already known, and in finding out the real truth about the Great Water and the unknown traders, and in making friends with all these wild tribes so far away.

Champlain, the founder of Canada, died a few months after and Nicollet's discoveries were almost forgotten. The fierce Iroquois nearly destroyed the little colony and prevented all western discovery for many years. The Iroquois got firearms of the Hollanders at Fort Orange, now Albany. With them they destroyed the Eries and the Andastes on Lake Erie, and adopted into their own tribes all they did not kill. They attacked the Huron villages on the Georgian Bay. The Hurons, like the Eries and Andastes, were kinsmen of the Iroquois and spoke the same speech. They had been converted to Christianity by the French missionaries who went with Nicollet and were settled in villages, raising Indian corn. The Iroquois killed most of them and scattered the rest far and wide. One band called the Tobacco Nation, fled along the route which Nicollet had taken, but kept on down the Wisconsin and up the Iowa river far out on the prairies. But they were used to woods and water, where game and fish and nuts and berries and wild rice were plenty, and did not like the prairies. So after a while they came back up the Chippewa to its head waters and made their home there among the lakes and marshes. Finally they came back to Canada with the story of their wanderings to tell the traders and the missionaries.

The Iroquois drove all the Indians out of what is now Ohio and Indiana and southern Michigan. The consequence was that northern Michigan and Wisconsin became the scene of the next French discoveries and that Lake Superior was discovered before lake Erie.

It was 1634 when Nicollet came to Green Bay, and it was 1659 when the next white man reached there.. A. O. WRIGHT.

fiction was read, but very little. The girls who received books read many of Holland's works, Jane Austin's, Louise M. Alcott's, some of Dickens' works and many reference books. The boys enjoyed those on adventure, history, biography, and read less fiction and reference books. When school opened about three hundred and sixty more pupils began receiving books, making in all about four hundred readers. Books are distributed on Monday, Tuesday and Friday evenings after school to pupils in the lower grades, but pupils in the high school room receive books at any time. The book case that contains the reference books is always left unlocked and the high school pupils have the privilege of using the books when they choose. Of the four hundred pupils who received books three hundred and thirty are of the lower grades. During the week one to two hundred books leave the library and about as many more are brought in. As a general rule those read by the high school pupils are reference books though many others are also taken. Those which the girls in the high school read most are Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney's and Jane Austin's works, some of Holland's, Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare, Women who Became Famous; some of Dickens' works and a great many on literature and also standard poetry. Now in the lower grades the style of books read is entirely different. The girls in those grades delight in the reading of Louise M. Alcott's works, Rollo books by Abbot, The five Little Peppers, Seven Little Sisters and many others of the same kind. The books read by the boys are somewhat different. They care more for books on adventure, history and biography than the girls. We have in our library many good books on adventure, history and biography, so that the boys all have an opportunity to satisfy their appetites for this kind of reading. There is at present a boy who receives books from the library, who is not satisfied with a book that does not contain some adventure in it while another always asks for one that has a great deal of history in it, especially any history on the late civil war. Fennimore Cooper's works are always asked for, and it is very seldom that you see a boy in our school who has not read some of them. The boys of the high school read as many reference books as the girls and as a fact some boys read more. Uncle Tom's Cabin and many other books of the same kind find favor among both boys and girls. As a rule the boys and girls read about the same number of books. For the size and age of our schools our library is a good one. MARY E. KELLY.

Washburn, Wis.

THE OUTAGAMIE SCHOOL QUESTION.

APPLETON, Wis., Jan. 5, 1898. To Wisconsin Editors:-I think it is now proper that I make some explanation to the public in regard to the present status of the Outagamie county disputed school question. Although conditions have greatly improved in this county, they are not yet perfect. Ever since the autumn of 1896 we have not had Catholic sisters teaching in any of our public schools or in schools claiming public money.

At Little Chute the school board has engaged two regular common school teachers instead of the nuns formerly employed. All sectarian paraphernalia and sectarian textbooks are banished from their school. The board seems anxious to secure good teachers and to maintain a good school for ten months in the year.

At Freedom, too, a great change for the better has been made. A year ago last fall the old deserted and dilapidated public school house was repaired and transmuted into a very handsome, cozy, neatly furnished, and well equipped school room. The board also secured proper text-books and engaged a competent public school teacher. The only complaint I can now make against the Freedom school is this, that the public school library books are kept in the Catholic sister school across the way. The school board offers the excuse that there is no book case in the public school and that the same children and the same people would read the books, although the transfer were made. However true this may be (and it is proper that all the people in the district should have access to the library), having these books in the parochial school does not seem right and is contrary to law, which demands that the library books shall be in the public school in charge of the teacher while school is in session.

On my visits last fall I found that there are still three public schools using in part the Catholic National Series of Readers, which are compiled by Bishop Richard Gilmour, of Cleveland, Ohio. In the preface to the Fifth reader of this series the author says: "It is the purpose of this series of readers to impart sound Catholic education Of the lessons on church history in connection with other historical lessons throughout the book it is hoped that they will increase the spirit of devotion to our holy church. * These series are thought to meet fully the wants of our parochial schools. The Fifth

*

*

*

*

*

* *

reader accords with the general plan already pointed out in the prefaces of the preceding books of the Catholic National Series."

These books are decidedly sectarian in purpose and contents and cannot be accepted in a public school. Nevertheless we find them in the town of Buchanan in districts Nos. 2, 3, and I joint. Children have used them in the parochial school and bring them to the public school. I blame the school board for these conditions.

In district No. 2, town of Buchanan, the teacher is even asked to teach Catholic religion after four o'clock. It may not be written in her contract; but it was mutually agreed that she would give such instruction besides her regular school work, and she does it.

All other districts formerly criticised do now fully comply with the school laws as far as I know. Still we have good reason to urge further reform. At a meeting of county superintendents recently held in Milwaukee I learned from a number of superintendents that conditions in their counties are much the same as, and even worse than in Outagamie county. In some cases nuns are still employed in exactly the same way as formerly at Freedom and Little Chute.

These conditions very well justify the action taken by the honorable and able legislator of Winnebago county, Mr. Frank T. Tucker, who introduced the following bill in the assembly Feb. 10, 1897:

SECTION 1. Section 554 of chapter 28 of Sanborn and Berryman's annotated statutes is hereby amended by adding thereto the following: No apportionment shall be made to any city, village, or town for any school district therein, in which sectarian instruction shall have been given in the public school or schools during the preceding school year. Sectarian instruction within the meaning of this statute shall be deemed instruction in religious doctrines which are believed by some religious sects and rejected by others, and which shall be given, directly or indirectly, by any teacher of the school or other person, during the hours of the daily school session or at any other time when the pupils are subject in any manner or degree to the control, direction, or supervision of any teacher or officer of the school, at the schoolhouse or at any other place to which the pupils may repair for that purpose by consent or connivance of any teacher or school officer.

Within the meaning of giving sectarian instruction shall be included the performance of any ceremony or the wearing of any garb or dress, or the assuming of any title or appellation, or the use of any device whatever, reasonably tending to impress upon the minds of the pupils any sectarian bias or prejudice.

SECTION 2. This act shall take effect and