so that we could trim, prune, bud, and spray the trees. We would thereby get practice in taking care of fruit trees, and perhaps be able to make a little to help pay our expenses.

We are going to make an appeal to Professor Horchem to be permitted to edit a small journal, to which the boys and officers will contribute. It will be published monthly. It will inform the boys of all the markets, besides giving them helpful literature on farming.

We worked two or three days a week-that is, part of the time, for we were not without recreation. There was the cool, shady grove nearby, where we could play games, and the tent, where we could talk over the events of the day, and debate various questions, as stated above.

During the next summer, we will take short trips, such as the La Motte one, to various points of interest around here on the way to and fro noticing the methods of the most successful farmers and other things concerning our work.

And then, if we raise enough, which will not be improbable, we will go by wagon to the wilds of Wisconsin, the Dells of the Wisconsin River, for instance, for a week or two's camping.

Next summer a new barn will be erected in place of the old one seen in the cut. This will be quite an improvement on the old one.

Each boy will have so much ground to cultivate. He will be allowed to grow on it whatever he likes. At times all the boys will set to beautifying the whole place. They will have a taste of all kinds of work. If the roadway needs fixing, the boys will do it. A gate might be mended, or a fence repaired. The tents will have to be put up, the canvas mended. A small park should be laid out around the tents. The flowers would need

care.

The cities and towns produce ten no-accounts and criminals where the country produces one or two, and this seems to be almost entirely due to the fact that on the farm the boy has something to do and does not spend his time loafing on the streets. It is a matter of common observation as well as of statistics that the bums and criminals with which the country is cursed come almost entirely from boys and girls who do not go to school or have no regular and definite work during the formative years, from nine to eighteen.

The life of the student is dissociated from the life of his home and his neighbors. He is taken away from and unfitted for the duties of his home and community. The school helps to make him feel strange in his own home and neighborhood instead

of helping him the better to understand and more thoroughly to enter into life about him.

There is no more edifying, dignified, and profitable occupation than that of agriculture, which is conducted in an intelligent, scientific, and painstaking manner. Through a "beautiful and bountiful garden" or a small farm, the working-classes can be shown how to shun the evils which arise from unsanitary and insufficient housing conditions, and how to secure after working hours and at their leisure some advantages of outdoor garden life, with opportunities for natural and beautiful occupation. By cultivating the soil, enough vegetables can be raised in a small garden, and enough eggs and meats can be secured from the poultry to pay more than half the grocery bill. Such gardens should lead many to see the advantages of land and cause many of them to leave the dark, dusty, and unhealthy city for fresh air and profitable undertaking. It is equally true that the children of the wealthy dwellers in hotels or apartment houses are in need of the freedom, the habit of work, and the interests that are developed by this outdoor life of productive activity.

Beside creating a love for the beautiful in nature, a love for a garden will in turn cause a love for a home and the desire to keep it up and improve it, and indirectly create a sentiment for larger public improvements, such as parks. We must begin with children, if we desire to continue and develop our civic pride.

The school ought to be a great beehive, buzzing with industry. We must find ways of letting the child live a more natural life, consisting of work and play, in both of which he will have more and more chance for initiative in proportion as he develops power of self-control and of controlling others.

By the time a boy has finished his eighth school year he should know whether he wants to be a carpenter, a farmer, or a professional man. He should therefore be placed in environments that permit observation of varied occupations. He should not only see the growing of fruits, vegetables, and grains for pleasure, but for profit, and he should be brought into contact with many industries, that he may have some intelligent basis for choice of the one he has the interest and capacity to follow. This

experience should enable him to take more intelligent direction of his own course and thus save valuable time and costly experience.

Our present system of education is a terrible mistake. It is a mistake from every point of view. It is a mistake in so far as the mere acquirement of knowledge is concerned. The mind cannot assimilate beyond a certain rate. If forced with facts faster than it can master them, they will soon be rejected again. They will not be permanently built into the intellectual fiber, but fall out of recollection after the examination for which they were gathered. It is a mistake because it makes study distasteful. It is a mistake to weaken and to destroy energy without which a trained intellect is useless. Success could not compensate for ill-health, which would make failure doubly bitter. Herbert Spencer gave these facts over a half-century ago.

In our present system of study the children are not the determining factors in planning the course of study. The course of study is the main consideration. In every school teachers are specializing more and more from year to year. The curriculum is specialized, but not upon any rational grouping of children, or the innate power or ability of the children.

Someone must break away from tradition. The public schools cannot do it. If it has to come through the normal school the process is too slow. It must be started by those who have taught in the country schools, graded schools, and high schools, and who have made a study of the "doctrine of interest." Who can say what would be the power for good in the establishment of a farm school, by one who knows what he wants, what men and women he wants; one who prepares his pupils through them in such a way that each pupil will feel that he has a part to play in life, and that he should know his part and play it well, instead of preparing for a special mark from grade to grade, from grades to high school, and from high school to the colleges and the universities?

We cannot make artists out of pupils by placing them in an art gallery. They must understand the sentiments and conception of the artist before they can really understand the picture. So