through the half opened door, "All aboard!" and there was a rush for the train.

Perhaps the audience saw only a burlesque on the methods in vogue at railroad restaurants, but into the mind of at least one who was present there floated a remembrance of a certain schoolroom. Flushed and eager from outdoor exercise and interests, a crowd of happy children walked briskly into the room and took their seats.

"What have you, there, John, that is attracting so much attention?" sharply inquired the teacher.

"A little spotted turtle; we found it down by the spring and

"Carry it right outdoors and leave it there. You ought to know better than to bring such a thing into the schoolroom-of all

"But please, ma'am, I thought you might want it in nature study," replied the boy, as a few in his immediate vicinity pressed forward to see it, and in various parts of the room a dozen or more hands came up from excited children, who had evidently participated in the capture of the turtle, or who wanted to see it. "No, we don't want it to-day. Don't you know that we commence the study of the local amphibia on the 15th

of April? To-day our schedule says we are to have buds. I have an armful of specimens here on my desk, as you can all see. I was out hunting for them before some of you children were out of bed."

John, rather crestfallen, in a mystifying guilt as to his "amphibia" stumped along in the manner that only a boy of repulsed interests can do, and carried the turtle out of doors. The other children wilted in their eagerness, and slumped into their seats. The hand-bell rang snappishly, the children stiffened, with rigidly folded arms, and perfect order reigned in that schoolroom. No a la carte in that mind restaurant, but a public institution of diet changed only after long routine and per schedule.

And yet as I day-dreamed there, I thought what an ideal teacher she is. What a good disciplinarian, how perfect in her manner, how conscientious and thorough, in everything that she does. Her principal has required "Fifteen minutes a day for nature study, preferably after the opening exercises." (Get it off your hands as early in the day as possible, so that you will be ready to do something this was not in the schedule, but I felt it; perhaps I was wrong, perhaps not.) The

teacher congratulated herself because she could not do a thing half way. She must have a time for everything and everything for a time. She had therefore met a few other teachers in the building, and they had prepared this schedule, which had met with the heartiest approval of the principal.

"That teacher is so thorough," said he with emphasis and with pride, as he exhibited the schedule, "she does everything thoroughly."

Do you not know that you have systematized and scheduled in elementary or dilute science and out every particle of nature study? I saw the boy carry it out in his heart, face, and hand.

Again I visited that school. I knew Sam. He lived not far from my home, and we had had many an enjoyable walk together in the great outdoor world. He had a general interest in all natural objects, but he dreamed of pet mice. That boy was an enthusiast, and consequently an authority on pet mice. I heard the teacher read a part of the interesting chapter, "Wild Mice," in Ernest Ingersoll's book on "Wild Life of Orchard and Field." Sam and the other children listened attentively as the teacher read:

These jumping mice are the prettiest of all the Eastern

wild species. If you should look at a kangaroo through the wrong end of a telescope you would have a very fair idea of our little friend's form, with hind legs and feet very long and slender, and forelegs very short; so that when he sits up they seem like little paws held before him in a coquettish way. His tail is often twice the length of his body, and is tipped with a brush of long hairs. He has a knowing look in his face, with its upright furry ears and bright eyes.

Then the teacher took down her new copy of Witmer & Stone's "American Animals," and let the children enjoy those two plates of photographs of the skins of various mice and shrews.

I watched Sam. And Sam looked at me occasionally in an eager way. He reminded me of my old dog Daisy, when I held her trembling in eagerness, with the woodchuck only two feet from her nose, and plainly visible under the boulder at the bottom of the dilapidated wall.

The teacher read on, about the meadow mice that" are the homeliest of their tribe," and about the deer mice and the white-footed. And again the photographs of the skins were passed around.

Sam, I thought, I know that you would like to get right into this, right up here with the mouse that you caught in the meadow day before yesterday, and bring in that wood mouse, and a few of those "fancy" pet mice, the waltzing ones in particular, and tell us more than the books and we

have ever known, perhaps not about mice, but about the enthusiastic pleasure of keeping them and caring for them. It takes a boy to know that! If the big man that writes books really knows that, it is because he has remained a boy; he may have the man's body, yet he retains the boy's heart.

One scientist with a grown up body and a boy's heart, Professor Clifton F. Hodge, writes:

But after all, childhood-active, fresh spontaneous childhood-and its need of the normal environment for growth and vigor, supplies the imperative demand for a natural and active nature study. Truly "trailing clouds of glory do we come"; and when we discover the right way, there shall be no "shades of the prison-house" to "close upon the growing boy!" In rare cases now we find the charm of childlikeness, the open interest and rapid growth, extending on through boyhood and to the end of old age. When we learn how to educate normally, this may become the rule rather than the exception.

The teacher read on in her book, while I had been silently soliloquizing. The schedule was one on mice in the last of two weeks' assignment on rodents.

I fear that my mind wandered from the reading for I know the children and their interests. Sam let me have a pair of waltzing mice, and had been giving me lessons in feeding them. I asked him