In the meantime the lieutenant had made his way to Radnor, where he terrified the settlers with the announcement that Indians were upon them, having attacked and slain all the company but himself. Flight toward the South was commenced and about daybreak the fugitives came flocking into Delaware. Here a party remained behind at the blockhouse for defense while the rest continued their flight. Several amusing instances of the extreme terror experienced at this time have come down to us. One case in particular is that of a certain family, who in their haste. bounced their three year old son out of the back of the wagon and did not notice his absence until they were five or six miles further on. Dreading the Indians, they feared

to go back and so continued their journey without him. One of the kind hearted settlers picked the child up and took him home, where later he grew to manhood.

Upon the whole, the county suffered severely on account of this "defeat." Many of the crops were left unharvested as most of the fugitives were very slow in returning and quite a number never came back at all. Several years elapsed before the effects of "Drake's Defeat" ceased to be felt. By this time the last remnant of the once powerful Delawares had been removed to new hunting grounds beyond the Mississippi.

JOHN H. MOIST. Delaware High School Class of

1900.

By your permission, I should be pleased to make a few observations, in the columns of your valuable journal, on the topic of Grammar, as given by Prof. A. F. Waters.

It seems to me, that in his treatment of the Participle, he has adhered to old forms, which are not in keeping with the teaching of best authorities at the present time.

It would appear to me, that in the teaching of the subject of

Grammar or any other subject which comes in the curriculum of school work, in our time, it would be better to instruct in the living present.

If Professor Waters's disposition of the Participle be subjected to the usage of best authorities at the present time, it would undergo some criticism.

In offering any observations on this topic, I do so, in true defer

ence to my fellow writer, and in the spirit of investigation.

First, I cannot agree that the Participle partakes of the properties of a verb and a noun. It does partake of the properties of a verb and an adjective.

In the sentence, "The pupil was engaged in studying his lesson," studying is not a participle at all, but it is the infinitive ending in "ing," commonly called the gerund.

In such sentences as "You remember my hurrying home," the possessive my is a true indication that hurrying is a gerund and not a participle.

So, I should say and teach, that every one of the examples given as a participle partaking of the nature of a verb and a noun, is the infinite instead of the participle.

Again, I should regard reading, writing, hunting, and singing as given in ninth division of said article pure gerunds.

I agree that it is sometimes difficult to tell whether a particular word ending in ing is a verbal or

not.

There are many words ending in ing that are nouns, pure and simple, but certainly not in the sentences quoted as examples.

I here offer the following authorities in proof of my statements: The Latin clearly exemplifies such illustrations to be infinitives and not participles. Harkness's Latin Grammar; Baskerville and Sewell's English Grammar in the discussion of verbals, pages 172-177; Id., page 123, Section 186; Id., page 285, Section 408; Whitney and Lockwood's Grammar, pages 113-117, special Section 290; Id., pages 185-195, special Sections 429 and 435; Swinton's Grammar, pages 52-64, Section 135; Id., 121-122.

Other authors cited for self-inspection: Bain, Maxwell, Welsh, Metcalf and Mason, together with all standard vocabulists.

Seeking nothing more than the good of advanced thought, the writer respectfully submits the above for inspection.

In considering the above subject I find there are so many things lacking in the country schools, and as space would not allow a discussion of all of them, I find myself

almost at a loss to know which to consider the paramount wants of our schools today. But I will here make mention of two things which I have in my experience found to

be great wants. These two things are Time and Books. These we will proceed to consider.

I. TIME.

I have asked a number of teachers, What do you most lack in your school? and the answer was almost invariably, "Time." The teacher of the country district school can readily see the truth of this statement. Let us try to look for a few moments into the country school. It is no uncommon sight to see a teacher standing before a school of from twenty to forty pupils, and in some instances I have known the number to reach sixty, or even more. These pupils are of all ages from six to eighteen, and constitute seven and sometimes eight grades. What does this mean for the teacher?

*The first grade is supposed to have four recitations a day; the second grade four; the third grade five; the fourth grade five; the fifth grade six; the sixth grade seven, and the seventh grade seven, making in all thirty-eight recitations each day besides writing.

What can a teacher do under these circumstances? In the first place he must know how to economize time (there is much yet to be learned by many teachers in that direction). He must run his school on schedule time and must see that there is no time wasted.

*As taken from a Course of Study.

But even then there is a lack of time, so in the second place I would suggest that he alternate classes. Omit geography one day, grammar another, etc., and then make the lessons longer. I know this is not the best thing for a school, but it is the best plan I know to suggest under the above circumstances.

I have found it a good plan to have a daily program carefully arranged with the time for the beginning and close of each recitation specified thereon, and then close the recitation at the specified time. It seems to me this is really the only way in which a teacher can deal justly with all his pupils, for if he allow one recitation to extend over the time limit he will be robbing another class of their just dues.

Again we can save time by having more written work done. One grade can be writing a lesson while another is reciting one, and we can alternate this work from day to day.

And yet with all the time saving methods that we may be able to devise, the teacher of the country school has his mind constantly filled with the thought that he is not doing justice to his pupils because he lacks the time. But if he is using all of his time and using it to what he feels the best advantage, what more can he do? The problem must be solved in some other way.

II. BOOKS.

I have mentioned as another great need in the schools, books. If we could but have a library of good books, suitable to the age of the child, in every school house, how many starving minds could be fed! There are many minutes in the course of the day in which some pupils have nothing to do. This very frequently occurs. Are these minutes to be wasted? Can we afford to let them be wasted? Yet they are wasted because we lack proper means of utilizing

them.

Now if we could have a "Reader's Corner" in our school-room, with good, suitable literature, where the pupil could sit undisturbed and read, how profitably these spare moments could be spent. How much good could be done for the child. There are many children who never get a chance to read a good book even if they desired to do so.

Their parents cannot or do not supply them, and in this age of books they must grow up without one taste, I may say, of good reading.

I can go into a school room and in a very short time find the child who is supplied with good reading at home, and the child who has none. There is a wide difference between the two. It naturally follows that the former is the brighter, possesses better conversational powers, a more mature mind, and

almost invariably leads in all his classes.

If we could have reading matter in our schools, what should be the nature of it? Perhaps all will not agree with me on this point, but I would suggest for the lower grades-I mean those far enough advanced to read intelligently-a set of geographical readers, historical stories, stories of nature and the like; for the more advanced, historical stories, stories of travel, and stories from the lives of great men. Especially would I urge the latter, for the lives of great men are the beacon lights that lead us on to greatness-if we ever attain greatness. Every time we read the life of a great man our lives should become greater. When I do see a school library, I like to see it filled with the lives of the men who have risen from the farm, the flat-boat, the canal-boat, the tannery, or the log cabin, to be the greatest men in

the nation. I like to see the lives of Washington, Lincoln, Grant, Garfield, and many others adorn the book shelves. And near these, but perhaps not on the same shelf, the lives of Aaron Burr and Benedict Arnold.

Here, perhaps, we again differ. But it seems to me that the history of these men contains a great lesson; one which all may profitably learn.

But to go back to the main questions which I have been here trying

to consider. How are we going to be enabled to have more time, and how can we have school libraries for all? And I can see but one answer to both, and that is "By consolidation of schools."

As soon as we do this, we will have time enough for teaching, and we will be enabled to have books for our pupils to read. Hasten the day!

A few years ago a gifted young woman from the East delighted many audiences in Ohio and elsewhere by her lectures on birds. It was her custom to arrive in a city where she was to lecture, in ample time to visit its parks and other public grounds in order to observe what birds might be found in them. In many places there was a lack of birds and she attributed this scarcity to the trimness of the grounds. There were no long grasses, tangle of bushes or dead trees, and without these the citizens could not hope to have a great variety of little songsters.

To some persons a dead tree is a blot on the landscape, to others it is a source of sadness. Nearly three hundred years ago Ruysdael painted his picture, "The Forest of Oaks." In the foreground of the picture is a quiet stretch of water, with a few pond lilies; to the left, on a slight rise of ground, a great gnarled oak, with broken top and branches stands out in bold relief

against a background of noble trees. Although this great oak has lost the beauty of its verdure, through the interpretation of art, we are enabled to admire it in its second beauty.

A class of second-year pupils, after reading a story about an owl in a hollow oak tree, was delighted with Ruysdael's picture and took pleasure in imagining the old tree as the home of all sorts of little creatures. One boy said: "A cuckoo might sleep in it all winter." Would it not increase our liking for dead trees if we were to do a little of this kind of imagining when we meet with one in our walks and drives?

In the extreme north of Franklin county is the tiny town of Flint. In company with others I visited the school on a May day to see what had been done by Miss Georgia Johnson, a kind friend of the school, to cultivate the taste of the children in that vicinity. As we approached the building we could