friend as a bit of his early experience. He says, One Sunday, when my parents were just starting for church, leaving me alone in the house, one of them turned and said, "John, don't meddle with the clock while we are gone." It was an unusual restriction; nothing of the kind had ever been said to him before; and, so far as he could remember, no thought of meddling with the clock had ever occurred to him. A new idea was suggested. to him, and it took fast hold upon his mind. He began to look at the clock and to wonder at the regular and monotonous swinging of the pendulum, the steady movement of the hands, and the marvellous process of striking. The clock fascinated him and soon absorbed his whole attention and energy. He could neither see nor hear anything else. He climbed upon a table, which stood under the clock, to get a nearer view, opened the small door to have a better chance to observe the strange movements of the pendulum and the wheels. In the end the clock was taken down, placed on the table, and finally thoroughly dissected. The parents returning found the boy watching the remains of the dismembered 10 k.

This is a typical example of what takes place in many homes and in many schoolrooms. A child is blamed, perhaps punished for the commission of some offense which he would never have thought of but

for the negative suggestion of the parent or teacher. The menta¡ processes which lead up to the act are perfectly legitimate and, in the absence of any counter suggestion, from without or within, the forbidden act is sure to be committed. Counter suggestions may be anticipated in mature minds, but can not reasonably be expected in young children.

The psychical law involved in such cases is of the very highest importance in the training of children into the practice of what are sometimes called the cardinal virtues. There are two methods of teaching these virtues, one of which may be called the positive, and the other the negative method. The difference between these will be best illustrated by examples. Suppose the immediate purpose, at Some particular time, is to strengthen in young pupils the love of truth, and to create a disposition and habit of truth-telling both in language and conduct. Psychological law suggests that the first step toward the accomplishment of this purpose should be the production in the consciousness of the children of an idea or notion of this virtue and of the speech and conduct corresponding to the idea. In other words, a mental picture is needed. which shall embrace the essential elements of truth in a concrete form, and with such settings and colorings that the representation shall be attractive and winning.

This picture will be a positive and not a negative thing, something to admire and love, and not something to be hated and shunned. It draws and does not repel.

An appropriate anecdote or short story will usually supply material for the picture. The purpose in view demands the creation of a dominant idea which shall unfold the loveliness of truth and the beauty of truthfulness in language and behavior. The entire mental

movement, the processes of thought, of emotion, of volition, should be in the same direction, and should be toward the virtue under consideration, and toward conduct in harmony with it.

Unfortunately the method of teaching a lesson in truthfulness is usually the reverse of this, and is of the negative kind. The processes employed violate the most fundamental and most obvious physical laws. A beginning is made by the production of a mental picture just the opposite of the virtue to be inculcated, a representation of untruthfulness and its consequences. Very likely the fable of the "Shepherd Boy and the Wolf" is told or read; the evil consequences of lying are pointed out; it is made to appear that the practice of telling that which is false is unprofitable, in some cases even dangerous, that falsehood in the end "does not pay."

It is freely admitted that at some times, and under some conditions,

the use of this and similar fables and stories is justifiable; but not when the purpose is to create a love of truth, and a disposition to conform one's life and conduct to its requirements.

This illustration will be sufficient to indicate the method of ethical instruction and training which the principle of direct and positive suggestion requires. The lessons of the home, the school, the platform, and the pulpit all unite to prove the futility of attempting to lead either the young or the more mature into love for excellency and goodness, in character or conduct, by employing negative and "contrary suggestion."

Even a very little reflection should be sufficient to make it evident that shunning vice because it brings suffering, or avoiding lying because it is, on the whole, unprofitable, does not necessarily lead to

a love of virtue and truth. The fear of the results of evil doing is not by any means the same thing as the love of right-doing. It is the love of the good and not the fear of the evil that is needed to make really excellent men and women of the boys and girls in our schools.

NATURE NOTES. No. 2.

By J. J, Burns.

I wonder whether our Circle people who enjoyed Riverby a few years ago, have noticed in the August Century an article by the author of Riverby. For fear some of

them have not, I rise to make mention of it. Mr. Burroughs tells in his charming way his reason for selecting the place for his cabin called "Slabsides" and why he so named it; not a thing of art but Nature with the bark on it.

The robins followed him and marked this new rustic homestead for their own; receiving, when they came, the song-sparrows and chippies.

Here on a page farther along is a picture of Slabsides. It makes the looker-on pass resolutions about his future way of life. Pictures also, of the robin's first journey from home, of the crested flycatcher, the creeping warbler, the red-winged blackbird; but there are many birds in the text not seen in the pictures.

It is at least a trifle like having a cabin of one's own somewhere, with birds for neighbors, to carry "Glimpses of Wild Life about My Cabin," out into the shade of a door-yard maple, and read; with the eyes frequently turned from the book to watch the sparrows and the robins jumping into the little pond in the grass where the hose is playing, ducking their heads under water, flapping their wings and splashing in evident glee, then mounting to a perch overhead to shake off the water-drops and dry their feathers, before darting over to the grapearbor for an early supper.

The companions of my short walks over the border of the great outdoors may remember that in the October Monthly, I declared my next paper should have for its theme, The Birds at Put-in-Bay, those that were apparent after the migration of the teachers. It seems to me better to postpone that cheerful topic, perhaps till "Winter comes to rule the varied year," as Thompson, who wrote about the seasons, said, I had written it "inverted year," but that's Cowper - and now to talk a little about what we may see and hear in these days before and after the autumnal equinox.

The evening of the 11th inst. and that of the 12th a katydid on a tree near the front door spent an hour in proving the truth of a statement I have read, that as the evenings grow cooler and the tide of life among the arboreal minstrels subsides, their songs gradually become weaker and shorter, and the katydid abbreviates its call to two syllables a staccatoed "katy," "katy." The object of this stridulous sentence, "katy did," is always lacking; now the predicate is gone. The subject did not repeat its lonesome song service, for the next evening no sound came from that leafy covert. The fire was going

out.

Sept. 14. A long walk alone, but not altogether lonely, over the Aug

laize by the bridge directly south of town, up a hollow or glen which opens upon the river close by the bridge, till I came to the beginning, or shall I call it the end, of this fine example of erosion, in a brown. field shimmering in the autumn sunshine. My tramp continued through a wood till it led into another glen which in wet weather discharges a stream into the river, near by an island upon which stands a mound built by human muscles in the lang syne. All that I brought back in my hands from this modest expedition, was a fall bouquet to grace the table awhile. and then retire to a perch upon the wall, where its faded yellow and purple and blue, during the many

and long winter days, will be a memory that flowers have been, and a sure hope that flowers will be. There were goldenrods, and ironweeds and lobelias and asters and dogwoods with bright berries, and gerardias, and a single wild-rose bud.

In bright sunny places the music of the crickets and of the green grasshoppers thrilled and quivered with an effect upon the ear something like the shimmering of the heated air upon the eye. Few birds came into view; a half dozen meadow-larks, a dowve, a chick-adee not seen but heard, some bluebirds in an open bit of woods reviving the sports of spring.

At dusk, as upon several preceding dusks, two of those moths,

as large almost as humming-birds, visited the clematis, which was still in bloom and lading the evening air with its incense, and darted about from flower to flower very much as the hummer does and with as loud a hum.

Sept. 16, the concert in the trees, vines, and grass, reached high tide. Such evenings, in our latitude, characterize as truly the Augusts and Septembers, as spring beauties. and hepaticas our Aprils and Mays, and icy winds and whirling snows our Decembers and Januaries.

Is the resulting sensation, upon him who has ears to hear, one of joy or of sadness, or is it a plaintive mixture of the two, a "cheerful melancholy," as it has been described by someone.

Coleridge thrusts a sharp pen through Milton's melancholy nightingale :

'A melancholy bird'! Oh! idle thought!

In Nature there is nothing melancholy. But the poet wants room for a few exceptions to his confident statement, for elsewhere he speaks of "whatever melancholy pleasures the things of Nature utter"; and in looking about for fit materials with which to wreathe the tomb of Burns, he finds:

On a bleak rock, midway the Aonian mount,

There stands a lone and melancholy

tree

Whose aged branches to the midnight blast Make solemn music.

I am not blind to the fact that the word is used to designate moods all the way along the road, from quiet reflection to the verge of madness; and also is applied to sights and sounds that tend to induce those moods.

Sept. 29. Since my last somewhat fervid entry there has been no temptation to linger under trees at twilight and later, listening and musing. It has been almost continuously cold; much of the time, cloudy. Foliage is beginning to ripen and to show its autumnal colors and the little rhymes are beginning to credit to Jack Frost. A flock of grackles came down the wind into one of our maples, swaying and chattering, while a detail therefrom contested with the house sparrows the right to pick seed from the well-ravaged sunflowers, the real gainers from the strife being a pair of Plymouth Rocks who took as their share what fell to the ground. Withal some was left for the goldfinches who visited the tall brown stalks the next day. This chanced to be the day when the sun in his course down the ecliptic crosses the "Line," and when, so far as times and seasons are con

cerned, Earth's axis does not incline. Speaking of skiey things, one of my educational papers from farther west publishes a "September Star Study," crediting it to a paper farther east. It gives also the position "about this time," as the almanacs used to say, of certain planets; and this statement puzzles me: "Saturn can be seen in the early evening between Virgo and Libra;" and "Jupiter is visible in the early morning, between Gemini and Cancer." All we farmers know that Taurus brings the Pleiades above the eastern horizon soon after dusk early in the fall as a sign it is corn-husking time. Why then wait till morning to see big Jupiter if he is between Gemini and Cancer? And is not Saturn not only east of Libra, but east of Scorpio, quite a distance at that? What September is meant, I wonder? Saturn was in these same heavenly spaces three decades ago. Since then he has once turned the Zodiac in his thirty-year circuit, and has started again upon his long, long year. I have marked twice his slow march through Scorpio, and hope that nothing will prevent his keeping our next conjunction.