for your school to have a first class teacher. Such teachers are to be had by searching for them. How pleased a good teacher is to be sought after! How it inspires him to nobler effort! Suppose all school trustees would endeavor to get the very best teachers, and would employ no one as long as a better one was to be found. What would happen? The best teachers would have two or three dozen invitations, competition would spring up, good teachers would stay in the work, the poorly qualified would have to get ready and keep prepared and the whole public school system would have a great uplift. I wish I could make this thought stand out so plain that every trustee in West Virginia would hear of it and resolve to act upon it. Teachers will never come up to the highest mark unless merit is rewarded in this way and the worthless dropped out. As it is today, a teacher may fail utterly in one neighborhood then cross the river into another part of the county and get a school, and no questions be asked. In many places the poorest teacher in the county is about as likely to get a school as is the best one. A promise to board with one of the trustees may do the work. An acquaintanceship with a great-grandfather or step-uncle will go farther with some trustees than the best certificate and highest endorsement possible. No wonder the great principle of the "survival of the fittest" doesn't work in teaching. It so seldom has a chance to work. Taking the schools in general and counting the deplorable losses from our ranks from various causes, the opposite phrase, the survival of the poorest, comes nearer the truth. It is humiliating to admit such an assertion and I am glad that there are many noble exceptions, but it is a thousand times too near the true statement of the case.

We who are trying to do our duty ask

to have our records investigated. Throw on the search-light. If our character and work will not stand the test, please do not employ us. And while you are investigatin keep posted on the teachers and try to procure none but the best. A few communities in each county nearly always do just what I am writing of and as a result we have a few banner neighborhoods edu

cationally, morally and socially in various parts of the State. A few years of good teaching in a community will give it such an uplift that it will be known far and wide for its excellence. Think over the neighborhoods in your county. You remember the communities to which I refer. This awakening comes about often through the influence of one good, energetic school trustee who seeks good teachers and stands by them in upbuilding school sentiment among the people. The very same thing is true in town and city schools. An upto-date president of the Board of Education can set the whole town ablaze with enthusiasm by the help of the earnest teachers he gathers around him.

Teachers Merit Appreciation.

Nothing pains me more than to see the feeling of superiority manifested by some persons who have the employment of teachers. They seem to treat the teacher as a sort of inferior individual who has but little excuse for living and no claim whatever to recognition as a man among men. It is indeed a pitiable sight and one which ought to stir every particle of resentment in the human heart to see a few self-important school officials moving time-honored teachers around like check

ers

on a checker-board. Having no worthy record of their own, they do not realize what a reputation for uprightness and gentlemanly conduct costs. As I said in the beginning, the place was, perhaps, compromisingly and disreputably obtained; but, no matter, according to our laws these men are in charge of the schools and in a day can drive from the profession men who have grown gray in the service and who have done more for the advancement of civilization than a host of ward-heelers.

School men as a rule are modest and un

assuming. They are not often men of affairs as we say, consequently they have too little recognition among the people generally. One great reason for the teacher's failure of recognition is his poverty and dependence on others. So long as a man is kept in poor circumstances and people know his position is unstable, he is not considered one of the substantial citizens of the community. Why isn't the

teacher entitled to a good home of his own and money on which to travel and with which to surround himself with good books and comfortable equipment for the best living? Give him greater security of position and better salary and I feel sure he will take great pleasure in becoming an influential and prominent citizen of your town. He will then help pay taxes, assist in building up the city and be with you always in promoting the best interests of the country.

The successful teacher is usually wellinformed, conscientious, capable and honest. If all are not, the proper care in selection, as suggested, can rid the profession of those who do not come up to the full

measure of a man. I long for the day to come when all teachers shall be men and women highly respected in the places where they live and when a teacher will not feel that he must go into some other profession to gain favorable mention or make a respectable living. "As the teacher is, so is the school." As the school is, so is the community. Dear employers, you have great responsibilities and great opportunities, won't you please take a hand in giving your community a forward. movement in education. Let your motto be, "Only the best is good enough."

Fairmont, W. Va.

(To be continued. The next paper will be "Talks With Parents and Other People.")

Fellow Teachers: You will all agree with me that for any workman to do efficient work it is necessary, not only to have the proper tools, but also a convenient building, well fitted and constructed for the purpose of his work. The schoolhouse is the teacher's workshop. Its location, its plan of building, the materials of the same, its workmanlike construction, and its appropriate and sufficient internal fittings are, it is evident, of the same importance as the places wherein working people and artists ply their avocation. To none will this be more patent and evident than to such of you as have been hampered in their work by poorly located, ill-constructed, and insufficiently furnished school buildings.

Though most of our schoolhouses have been built, still they may not only be improved, but there may still some new ones have to be put up. It will, therefore, be useful and profitable, to consider the best ways of locating, building and furnishing schoolhouses.

To arrive at a proper understanding of a good selection of the site of a schoolhouse, it may be well to consider where a schoolhouse ought not to be placed. It should not be in a damp, unhealthy, or inconvenient place. Not too far from a good supply of healthy drinking water. Not too near a well-frequ

ic

highway, to a railroad, a noisy factory, or dirty workshop. Not too much out of the center of the district. Not in a steep, windy, or nearly inaccessible place. Not of too small dimensions-less than half an acre in size. Not in the vicinity of a deep water, or in any locality where the children's lives or limbs may be endangered. Nor near any place where their morals are apt to be corrupted. If none of these objectionable conditions are present, the possible cost of a desirable lot will be a

consideration.

Every location will then have to be considered by itself, on account of the diversity of surface of our State. While everything seems favorable, we will still need what is so essential in a law suit, where you may have a good judge, a fair jury, competent lawyers, and reliable witnesses, and a just cause,—and that is-luck, much luck! For I have known the apparently best location turn out unsatisfactory in the end.

The plan of a schoolhouse should, in my opinion, according to my experience extending over nearly one-third of a century, be somewhat different from that after which the houses in this county have been constructed. I object to the arrangement by which the stove is placed in the center of the school room, with the pupils grouped around. If proner fuel is used, there is no reason why there should be an unsightly obstruction in the middle, and why the stove should not be on one side. I know to the "oldest inhabitant" and, perhaps, his immediate descendants, no schoolroom looks right without the irrepressible stove enthroned in the center. But his views are fast becoming obsolete, together with the fancy for low ceilings, small-sized windows, home-made furniture and blackboards. Another generation will, no doubt, work a great change in these particulars, as well as bring us a bright entry, with proper and decent cloak, wash and retiring rooms, and place for fuel.

No better material for a good schoolhouse, in our State as regards cost and durability and health, can be found for our country schools than a good frame building, put on a solid dressed stone wall, about three feet high, good metal roof, oak floors, nicely plastered inside and substan

y weatherboarded outside. A wainscoting, with slated blackboards to reach

about five feet above floor, a brick flue built from ground up, into which stoves reach with elbows. High windows, with large panes, to permit full light, on dark days, in the very center of the rooms. Not to forget nicely framed and protected shelves for library and apparatus. Our experience with brick buildings has not been favorable for various reasons, which I need not enumerate.

Besides a good location, buildings constructed on modern plans, with modern attachments and conveniences of good materials and in best workmanlike style, and furnished with modern desks, seating and heating apparatus; we need yet-and this is our principal want-proper aids for teaching, such as charts, globes, blocks, and last, though not least, a library in each school building, containing above all, dictionaries and works of reference.

Why, it may well be asked, are boards of education so backward in supplying these so necessary tools for successful teaching? The reason given to me-and my own experience points the same way— is, that they, will not buy any apparatus because they claim that it will not be taken proper care of, and, therefore, last but a very short time. That the few articles that have been put in the schools are, in many places, so badly used that they are now all but destroyed. It must be confessed, that our average teachers are extremely careless, though there are many honorable exceptions. They do not seem to realize that our boards of education have only a limited amount of money to spend, and that whatever has to be expended for repairs of school "roperty wasted and destroyed, cannot be spent for teachers' salaries. It pays for teachers to take good care of and to carefully guard school property. Children, and boys in particular, are by nature fond of destroying, and it behooves teachers to restrain, and, if necessary, punish wanton and careless destruction. But how can very careless people reform careless pupils? The answer is plain. They must begin by reforming themselves!

Maysville, W. Va.

The true University of these days is a collection of books.-Carlule..

To Live One Hundred Years

These are Sir John Sawyer's nineteen rules for living one hundred years: 1. Eight hours' sleep.

3. Keep your bedroom window open all night.

3. Keep your bedroom open all night. 4. Have a mat to your bedroom door. 5. Do not have your bedstead against the wall.

6. No cold water in the morning, but a bath at the temperature of the body.

7. Exercise before breakfast.

8. Eat little meat and see that it is well cooked.

9. For adults. Drink no milk. 10. Eat plenty of fat to feed the cells which destroy disease germs.

11. Avoid intoxicants, which destroy those cells.

12. Daily evercise in the open air.
13. Allow no pet animals in your liv-

ing rooms.

14. Live in the country if you can. 15. Watch the three D's-drinking water, damp, drains.

16. Have change of occupation.

17. Limit your ambition.

18. Take frequent and short holidays. 19. Keep your temper. New York World.