Nevertheless, patriotism should be cultivated, should in every home be communicated to the children, not casually, but by plan and forethought. For too long our children got it as they did the measles, caught it.

"Now, in the schools, American history and American institutions as serious and important studies are beginning to have more, but not yet adequate, attention.

“The impulse of patriotism needs to be instructed, guided, brought to the wheel if it is to do the everyday work of American politics."

'Sentiment, yes, never too much; but with it, and out of it, a faithful discharge of prosy routine of a citizen's duty. A readiness to go to the fields? Yes, and equally to the primaries and to the polls."

That is patriotism in the elementary schools from the natural standpoint, that is building the citizen from the heart. That is beginning at the right end. What a foundation on which to rear the various superstructures required in the upbuilding of a community!

Loves his mother, "Well I just love her." I like that standpoint of loving his country, and the same spirit in loving this wonderful and beautiful world.

Oh, no, some scientific appreciator of a mother may say, that is crude; it flavors of the Middle Ages, of the amateur, of those who love their mother from the heart. This is an age of scientific spirit, an age of the intellect rather than of the affections.

Do nothing so simple as that; learn really to know your mother, and then you can love her with solid, intellectual appreciation.

First collect some pictures and drawings of all the mothers you can find; arrange them side by side and compare your mother with them. That will add to your knowledge of the comparative merits of mother's personal appearance.

Devote a half-hour at a certain time every day to the study of mothers. Draw pictures of them; make a detailed list of color of hair, number of eyes, nostrils, ears; length of chin, height, weight, number of fingers on each hand; state the age, past history and a hundred or more other facts. Arrange these details under a few heads, draw a bracket before each, and collocate these in line under one big brace, with the word Mother written in capital letters.

Make a drawing of your own mother standing erect, and also bending down to kiss you as you

start for school in the morning. Sketch in detail her eyes, fingers and nose.

Write a list of nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs that will apply to your own mother, and from these compose ten sentences each day from 10: 15 to 10:45 A. M., in connection with the drawing work, and if the task is completed before the time has expired, we will fold our arms and sing about our mothers. Bear in mind that you must never really go to see your mother for the enjoyment of seeing her, nor only for the enjoyment of her loving presence, but you must learn to love her, and to let her influence permeate every fiber of your life, by noting down with pad and pencil, all possible details of her physical

structure.

But we all know that this is not the method of securing the highest degree of love for nature; in fact such a method would tend to obtain a heartfelt love for one's own mother.

Too much detail, too much method, too much correlating kills it.

7

"Nature Study is the means of training persons to come into thoughtful contact with Nature. It thus becomes an art and not a science, excepting in its relations to the Science of Pedagogy. It is the art of training in the methods of studying those things which are the foundations of the natural sciences. It differs from science in many respects. It also differs from Object Lessons based upon natural material. The success of Nature Study depends upon the teacher and not upon the subject."

-PROF. H. A. SURFACE.

"For many years it has been one of my most constant regrets that no schoolmaster of mine had a knowledge of natural history, so far at least as to have taught me the grasses that grow by the wayside, and the little winged and wingless neighbors that are continually meeting me with salutations which I cannot answer, as things are. Why did not somebody teach me the constellations, too, and make me at home in the starry heavens which are always overhead, and which I do not half know to this day." -THOMAS CARLYLE.

"All things are beautiful,

Because of something lovelier than themselves,
Which breathes within them, and will never die."

-LUCY LARCOM.

CHAPTER IX

SCIENCE IS NOT ALL

We all want science in our colleges, science in our high schools, and we want it systematically taught. Our educational periodicals should head their departments of science, as science. We teach science, then why not, in the name of common sense, call it science.

But that is not all. We want, previous to it and with it, hand in hand as closest companions, another important factor, a daily communion with the natural things of this world.

Before and during our study of science we need an acquaintance with nature like that of a child with his mother.

"To teach young people or old people how to observe nature, is a good deal like trying to teach them how to eat their dinner. The first thing necessary in the latter case is a good appetite; this given, the rest follows very easily. And in observing nature, unless you have the appetite, the love, the spontaneous desire, you will get little