school-master, but it is the schoolboys who educate him."-Emerson. "Childen are not to be taught by rules which shall always be slipping out of their memories."-John Locke.

"As the pupil ascends the grades, less stress should be laid upon concrete facts and ideas, and more upon abstract facts and ideas."

"Nothing is more destructive of good habits in the pupil than the continuous flow of the teacher's talk, no matter how good the talk may be."

"Constant care must be taken to develop literary taste, and this can be done only through constant contact with good reading matter."

"All that a university or final highest school can do for us is still what the first school began doing teach us to read. * * The true university of these days is a collection of books."-Carlyle.

*

"Imperfect as they are, books are the best expresion of the minds that produced them."

"The original and proper sources of knowledge are not books but life, experience, personal thinking, feeling and acting."

"The reading lesson is the common ground on which the true mind of master and pupil meet."Committee of ten.

"Few mental qualities in the teacher are more valuable than the sense of perspective."

"If they really love the poetry

and find it pleasant to their souls, I'll risk the rest."-Hudson.

"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested."Bacon.

"English grammar may be defined as a description of those usages of the English language which are now approved by the best writers and speakers."-Whit

ney.

"I have strongly recommended. the constant use of good literature as a catharsis in English."

"Rules must always for the most part be negatives."-Minto.

"The average boy does more for his education by observation and reading than the schoolmaster is able to do for him."-W. D. Howells.

"It is therefore much more a matter of importance to get the right kind of book than to get a living teacher."-W. T. Harris.

"Every language must be learned by use rather than by rules."

"The vernacular first, then Latin."-Comenius.

"The power to understand rightly and to use critically the mother tongue is the consummate flower of all education."-C. W. Eliot.

"Language lies at the root of all mental cultivation."-Dr. Momm

sen.

'The structure of every sentence is a lesson in logic.”—J. S. Mill. "Conference makes a ready man;

writing, an exact man; reading, a full man."-Bacon.

"The reader is pre-eminently the character-making and taste-making book. It is the queen book of the elementary school."

"The influence of a few great models, thoroughly read, is a hundred fold greater than that of all the grammars, dictionaries, rhetorics, and language books ever written."

"Their speech was noble because they lunched with Plutarch and supped with Plato."-Lowell.

"Teach the children how to read, and what to read, and give them a love for reading."

"Poetry is one of the most efficient means of education of the moral sentiment as well as of the intelligence. It is the source of the best culture."-Prof. Norton.

RAMBLING NOTES.-No. 2.

By J. J. Burns.

One of the "books t'at helped me" a good many years ago was Tyndal's Heat as a Mode of Motion, and the substratum it left somewhere in my mental system suffers a molecular stirring as I read Mr. McCuller's interesting article on Hot Ice. I look for some "reader" to answer, in the Monthly, the author's eight questions, and according to the specifications. I am fairly "up" on the first six; in doubt as to the significance of the seventh, and forget where absolute zero is located-assuming that to be the meaning of the final query.

I have been asked to be something more explicit with a little problem which I recently ventured to state in this department. Suppose the axis of the earth were vertical to the plane of the planet's orbit. You, the observer, are at the north pole, and it's morning all the time, likewise evening, the sun continually peering over the horizon. You start for Columbus, Ohio, and now you have day and night, and the sun crosses the meridian of Columbus higher and higher every day, till at length you are fifty degrees from the pole and the sun is at noon fifty degrees above the southern horizon. Suppose, again, at this instant the earth indulges in a partial rotation, bringing the north pole down twenty-three and one-half degrees nearer the plane of its orbit, and toward the sun. Your horizon to the south is depressed twenty-three and one-half degrees, and the sun is now seventy-three and one-half degrees high. Six months thereafter, that inclination, if fixed in direction in space, is away from the sun, and the amount of it in degrees must be subtracted from the fifty named above. Hence the greatest height of the sun at noon is the sum of the observer's distance from the pole and the planet's axial inclination; the least height, the difference of these two quantities. Say that we, in the next stage of our existence, have "a local habitation and a name" on another planet. Its

name is K. Onr highest noon sun is 68 degrees; our lowest is 48 degrees. Plainly we are in latitude 32 degrees, and K's axis inclines 10 degrees toward the plane of its orbit.

MARCH 9.

In '99 I saw my first robin on March 1st. This morning, March 9th, my number one gave a startled cry from the top of a hickory, three lots away. He was perched away above what seems a mere rag without color or history; but no, it is the stark ghost of the flag of Cuba Libre! How vain are all things here below!

A ride into the unpaved districts. the 16th of last month gave me sight of a flock of crows. They do not go so far away as the robins, sometimes leave a lonesome fellow here and there.

MARCH IO.

The big snow of the season still lies deep here though evidently it has been melting in the counties farther up the Auglaize valley, an inference from the booming river. The ice went down this morning, gorged at the head of an island below, and gave us the promise of a young deluge. This afternoon it let go and passed on down toward the lake.

The notes of several song-sparrows, "sweet and low," as if the jolly musicians are scarcely ready for the spring opening yet, re

warded my early morning walk to the river bank.

Sir Henry Irving congratulated the citizens of Chicago over their "great public institutions, great buildings and great weather." This remark pales its ineffectual significance before the recollections of that weather. I tell you that which you yourselves do know, if you attended the recent department meeting of the N. E. A. But about this meeting the Monthly will hear from its head and front. Mr. Irving might have inserted "great shows" in his table of magnitudes,-at least there was no crush at the evening lectures before the "department."

AN EXHORTATION.

The time is at hand when the secretary may with reason expect to hear from his colleagues in the counties. During the long term from September to April he must walk by faith and live in hope as the county secretaries, with a very few rare and radiant exceptions do not report in the fall, upon the organization of the local circles, number of members and other points of interest. In the December Monthly I put this case before the secretaries who read this journal, and asked for the kindly aid of boards of examiners. To do the work we would plan for the future, it is necessary that the annual income of the board of control should increase, and there would be ample if

each teacher who reads the course and each applicant who buys some of the books under the timely prompting of the examiners, would deal fairly, enroll as a member and pay in his quarter.

To the tune of "The AbsentMinded Beggar" let us sing:

When you've said "Go, raise the standard,"

When you've prayed, “May good things be,

When you seat yourself to do the stated reading,

Will you kindly drop the shilling in our little treasurie

And aid a cause that now to you is pleading?

AN EASTER FLOWER GIFTI O dearest bloom the seasons know, Flowers of the Resurrection blow, Our hope and faith restore; And through the bitterness of death And loss and sorrow, breathe a breath

Of life forever more!

The thought of Love Immortal blends

With fond remembrances of friends;
In you, O sacred flowers,
By human love made doubly sweet,
The heavenly and the earthly meet,
The heart of Christ and ours!
-Whittier.

APRIL.

The fact most prominent in the mind of a boy as the first of April approaches is that he will make an "April fool" of some one. This is a very old custom and seems to be universal throughout Europe.

The origin of this old custom is not definitely known but it is thought that it may be a relic of some old heathen custom. The favorite mode of making an April fool is usually to send the person on some fruitless errand. Because of this some writers say that perhaps it is a travesty of the sending hither and thither of the Savior from Annas to Caiaphas and from Pilate to Herod. In Britain as in America the person fooled is called an April fool; in Scotland a gowk, and in France un poisson d' Avril (an April fish.) The origin of April is unknown. The Romans gave it the name of Aprilis, from aperire, to open, because it was the season when the buds began to open; by the Anglo-Saxons it was called Ooster, or Easter-month; and by the Dutch, Grass-month.

SOME PLANS FOR OPENING

EXERCISES.- No. 1.

By Margaret W. Sutherland.

A school which has no special exercises for its opening of each new day loses a valuable opportunity for æsthetic and moral culture. Even the perfunctory reading of the Scriptures is more helpful than the immediate starting at arithmetic or grammar. The seed sown by the mind sometimes falls on fertile soil. But where the school authorities encourage or, it may be, simply permit religious exercises for the opening of school, the Scripture should be selected with thought as to the special needs of the school at the time. This reading may follow a hymn selected not merely for its religious spirit but for beauty of words and genuine melody of music to which they are set. If after the reading there is prayer, it should be the Lord s prayer offered by the school in concert or a short appropriate prayer made by the teacher in which he by care keeps from the frequent repetition of any expression and avoids anything that carelessly disposed pupils could ridcule. I have known pupils in the advanced classes of ungraded schools and of high schools to be afforded much opportunity for jest by the prayers made at opening exercises by their teachers. I do not defend the jesting, nor do I defend the teachers who give occasion for it.

However, even when these re

well con

ligious exercises are well ducted, I believe it best that there should be an occasional variety in them. The world will be made better if we train our pupils to look for the moral, the spiritual in all literature and life. Therefore I shall give several outlines, not necessarily to be followed just as given but to be adapted to age and surroundings of pupils.

No. 1.-By Looking and Doing We Become.

Let the teacher read to the class on several successive mornings, Hawthorne's Story of the Great Stone Face and then ask the pupils what it teaches. If the pupils are not sufficiently advanced for this plan, let the teacher tell the story in a simple way. Afterwards call on one or two pupils to reproduce the story orally. At the same time. have the following quotations on the blackboard and gradually have them all learned:

For thou art not flesh and hair but a will; if thou keep this beautiful, then wilt thou be beautiful.Epictetus.

"Do you wish for a kindness? Be kind.

Do you wish for a truth? Be true. What you give of yourself you

find

Your world is a reflex of you.

"Let your speech be as pleasant
As a bird that sings.
Better far be silent
Than say bitter things: