the school-for in teaching these boys and girls we are, in a degree, teaching their great-grandchildren.

Are we teaching the best things? We are everywhere trying to do this. But there is so much blundering theory, so much mistaken practice. There is unrest and dissatisfaction everywhere amongst thoughtful people. They tell us the schools are not doing their work as it ought to be done, either in the matter of sound elementary scholarship, or in moulding thought and character and shaping life to the high ends that may fairly be expected of them; that they are working far too much on the low plane of self-interest and vulgar self-seeking.

And all this is true of very many schools both in city and country. There are schools in which things sweet and noble, generous and beautiful, seem seldom or never to be thought of or spoken of; in which the splendid imagery of the poet is never made to pass before the rapt vision of the child; in which the grandeur of heroic achievement or self sacrifice is never held up, to be regarded by the growing boy or girl with quickened heart-beat, and imitated humbly afar off. Alas, for the men and women who were children where all this was true! And alas for to-morrow where this is true to day! You have perhaps forgotten some of the teachers who taught you only the alphabet and spelling, penmanship and arithmetic, grammar, geography, and what not-a " dry grammatical cinder" one and another of them may have been, whom you have neither gratitude nor affection. But the man or woman who gave you glowing thought and noble imagery, the thrill of heroic impulse and high inspiration, he or she is immortal.

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Who are the best people you have known? whom you have most enjoyed? from whom you have had most good? Those who knew fine things and loved them, who thought them, and said them, and wrote them, and sang them, and put them deep into your heart of hearts for time and for eternity. Would we be so remembered by some of our pupils when we have "crossed the bar," the path is open and the way is clear. But it is a way in which none are found to walk, save only unselfish souls of wise purpose and high courage. selfishness is the secret of all true success, of all enduring good report, in teaching as in any other worthy field of effort. "He that saveth his life shall lose it." The self-seeker, working for mere wages, is in the long race a failure, never truly beloved, and soon forgotten. Not" mine" but "thine"

is the animating spirit of the best lives. Think of the influence of a noble life such as this upon a large school!

Teachers such as these are the very elect of God. They are God's angels dispensing heavenly manna to His children. We care little to remember those who directed for us only the dull routine of school life, but we venerate the memory of the sainted ones in our school calendar who were teachers indeed! For they made real to us the "splendor of grass and flower," the privilege and the glory of living in a world and in an age like this; the beauty, and the duty, and the promise of human life. How wrought they this miracle of grace? By giving, without measure or stint, the best they had in their own richly endowed natures, and the best they had gathered from all the world beside, "giving all as though they gave nothing."

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"The way to the blessedness that is in music, as to all other blessedness," says George Macdonald, "lies through weary labors, and the master must suffer with the disciple. So, if the best results are to be had in the study of the best thoughts of the masters, the teacher must be willing-glad, indeed-to do this work along with his pupils. These choice things must soon be apart from the printed page, and "in the air;" and in all this the reward, for both teacher and pupil, is hardly less in the "living present" than in the certain future. Besides, pupils are encouraged to do this work all the better if it be done by the teacher, to whom they look as leader and guide. It is often surprising with what readiness a song, a hymn, a poem of some length, or a prose selection, may learned by a large school with some help and direction on the part of the teacher, though for the most part they may be committed to memory without such assistance. "We learn to do by doing," and the memory is greatly improved and strengthened by such exercise. There is nothing in the average school curriculum to equal this in its lasting influence upon mind and heart. We must know the ordinary branches of knowledge, but they are largely of "the machine," fitting us the better for the business or professional life of the world; and this is what they are meant to do. What high thought or noble purpose, moulding life and shaping character, do pupils get out of arithmetic, or algebra, or geometry, or other science, as it is usually taught? For these better things we must look elsewhere, The time appointed for our school work is short, and the grist that is ground in the schools has in it a very large proportion of bran and "chopped stuff." Let us put in enough good wheat, and run the mill with such

care as to insure at least fairly good Graham flour for human souls to feed upon. Our thoughts come we know not whence or how. Let us put into the mind of youth all the suggestiveness towards good thought that lies in our power. The mind will have something to exercise itself upon; and to rise to good requires more effort and needs more help than to sink downward to the low plane of idle personalities, cheap gossip, evil suggestion, and ignoble aims.

Let us teach the supreme things, things generous and noble, reverent and true. Let us, so far as we can, determine character on high lines, and so make life "worth living," because it looks on towards a blessed immortality. The influence of the good teacher in this direction is incalculable. Learn some good selection in prose, and especially in poetry, each week, the teacher learning it as well as the pupil, for the benefit to himself should be even greater than to his pupils. Let these be assigned a week in advance and appoint a period upon the programme, of one or two hours, during which the selections may be written from memory in books kept for that purpose, with due attention to the arrangement of matter, punctuation, use of capitals, spelling, etc. Our own time for this-a part of which is given to concert recitation and the reading and consideration of new matter assigned-is Tuesday, from 9 to II a. m., and nothing is permitted to interfere with this exercise, which we regard the most important of the week. After months and years of this kind of work, even the slowest pupils get great good out of it from increased power of attention and of the memory, and much more good from the side of thought and the literary charm of that with which they are brought so closely into contact. We forget these good things in part, but we go back over them again and again, on weekly declamation days, the pupils being expected to hold many of them as they do the multiplication table.

Therefore during school days let us commit to memory much that is best in our literature. We have all the favorable conditions. The pupils are with us in the schools. The programme of their work is arranged by ourselves as, in our judgment, shall be for their best good. We can thus give to them a vast store of precious treasure-wealth that can never be squandered or lost, like that inherited in the way of bonds and mortgages, city real estate, or paternal acres-wealth that will increase by more than earthly compound interest, and which, either in itself or in its essence, can be taken with them when they go beyond-for is it not immortal treasure?

Regarding this great matter as I do, from the standpoint of human duty, human responsibility, and a confident expectation of the life to come, if I were a superintendent of schools, I would give this subject a prominent place throughout the course from the primary to the high school-if principal of a Normal or Training school it should be my first purpose, whatever else must give way to do this, to put abundantly into the thought and memory of those preparing to be teachers the fine gold of literature, which they having would again pass on to their pupils in after years in unceasing round of benefaction-as a teacher, I would give it (as I do) the place of honor upon the school programme-as Sunday-school superintendent, I would take enough time, though it might be half the time of the session, to teach a hymn or psalm or similar precious thing to the entire school, having concert recitation of others that had previously been taught--everybody, old and young, so far as possible, taking part in the exercise as secretary or official in charge of a Young Men's Christian Association, or similar organization for the benefit of young men or young women, I would make this one of the leading features of the work to be done. Any one doing this work well would be more than millionaire in ability to confer benefaction upon his kind, just in proportion as spiritual are of greater account than material things.

Do the pupils get great good out of it? Many do, to whom it will be increasing good through all their lives. Anything of which this can be said deserves to be rated essential. Our boys who go to college soon find reason to congratulate themselves upon knowing so many choice things in English literature. And boys who go higher than college! In our last year's class there was a youth of clear brain and steady purpose, who would have entered college this year with better preparation than any of his school fellows. He was taken ill some months before the close of the term, and was confined to the house until his death a few weeks since. When I called to see him a day or two before he died, his voice had sunk to a whisper and he was quietly awaiting the end, glad to think it so near. As I sat on the side of his bed and talked with him of familiar things, I recalled his having learned the ninetieth Psalm, and said, “You know the grand old verse, 'Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations?' With a glad smile, "Oh, yes !" he whispered, for he could no longer speak above his breath, and went on with the verses that follow, adding eagerly, in a whisper, when he had ended,

"Oh, how good many of those sweet and noble things that we learned in the High School have been to me when I have been kept in the house all these long months! What plea ure it has been to think them over and over again !” He was dying, but these things out of his school life he recalled with rare gratification even then. Not mathematics or science or Latin or Greek-and he was foremost in all of these studies— only this! Is it good to do such work? I think so.

Do we as teachers hesitate to begin a work so far reaching and influential because it involves unusual effort? Let us rather think of the end; for, like good St. Christopher, we "labor for eternal life "-for them and for ourselves. In the Heart of Midlothian, when Jeanie Deans makes her touching appeal to Queen Caroline for the life of her sister, she says-and the heart of the world has felt that appeal: "When the hour of death comes, that comes to high and low-lang and late may it be yours!-oh, my lady, then it is not what we have done for ourselves, but what we have done for others, that we think on most pleasantly." From an Address.

285. THE YOUNG SCHOLAR.

C. D. WARNER.

I should think myself a criminal, if I said anything to chill the enthusiasm of the young scholar, or to dash with any skepticism his longing and his hope. He has chosen the highest. His beautiful faith, and his aspiration, are the light of life. Without his fresh enthusiasm, and his gallant devotion to learning, to art, to culture, the world would be dreary enough. Through him comes the ever-springing inspiration in affairs. Baffled at every turn, and driven defeated from an hundred fields, he carries victory in himself. He belongs to a great and immortal army. Let him not be discouraged at his apparent little influence, even though every sally of every young life may seem like a forlorn hope. No man can see the whole of the battle. It must needs be that regiment after regiment, trained, accomplished, gay and high with hope, shall be sent into the field, marching on, into the smoke, into the fire, and be swept away. The battle swallows them, one after the other, and the foe is yet unyielding, and the ever-remorseless trumpet calls for more and more. But not in vain; for some day, and every day, along the line, there is a cry, "They fly, they