laborer quite pronounced. The skilled labor that we used to boast of is now found abroad. Could we have a better factor to instill respect for labor and the laborer than working with others on objects that are interesting and of value outside of the self? We do not have to watch the city schoolboy with his legs twined about his chair or see him kick every small object he sees upon the sidewalk, without being conscious of observing a nature rebelling against inactivity. Can we think of nature under restraint all the time and wonder why it is petulant, easily excited, and irreverent? If the child cannot act in making, he is very liable to act in breaking.

One of the worst traits of the city boy is his irreverence. The fault, I am afraid, is not so much in the boy as in his environment. The school in intellectual lines appears to him to advance faster than the home, and children often begin to think they know more than their parents. The school should recognize the close connection between the home and the school as a social and moral rather than an intellectual one, and lead the children to respect it. The child's interests in the home should not be selfish ones. He must make things in his manual-training work that will bring pleasure to others. If we can make the connection between the home and the school a happy one by the pupil's looking to the interests of others, are we not doing right in creating a habit which will give pleasure?

The manual-training models must be interesting, and we have discussed the interests of the boy, but there is another point of adjustment between the child and his work that is just as vital. The model must be within the capacity of the child. Is there a different standard here for the city and the country boy? In the city we see the more nervous and sensitive nature which wants to do all at once; to rush it through and then on to something new. The city boy has less desire for continued effort. The manual-training models for the city boy must not require long-continued effort at first, but gradually increase the persistence and patience required, that he may build upon accomplishment to longer-continued effort.

We must examine the two boys also from the æsthetic side. With the country boy an object complete in itself will take its place among the other objects of the home as a rule, without detracting from the beauty of the whole. With the city boy, who lives in surroundings that are less simple and sometimes elegant and harmonious, the element of agreement requires special study. The model must not only be

finished and of artistic form, but must also be so finished that it does not mar the harmony already in the home.

Manual training will develop the powers of the child through spontaneous self-activity, if the models the child makes are adjusted to his capacity, and so based upon his interests as to draw upon his energies. Through these interests the child not only has more points of contact with his environment, and thus more easily adjusts himself to it, but also helps create a definite and true environment. The work is not only based entirely upon the child and his interests, but through them it endeavors to create new and higher interests. Finally, manual training thus carefully adjusted will give a mental reaction that is ethical, bringing about a definite largeness of life, and approaching nearer to complete living.

NOTE. - We have space for only four of the drawings accompanying this article. The names of those not published are as follows: quoit stick, coat hanger, glove stretcher, plate rack, umbrella rack, bottle rack, book rest, and whiskbroom holder.— EDITOR.

EDWIN W. FOSTER,

Manual Training High School, Brooklyn, New York.

ALONG with the well understood and universally acknowledged tendency to concentration of our population in densely settled cities have appeared certain corresponding phenomena, social and otherwise.

One of these which often appears to the manual-training teacher in woodwork, and which never fails to surprise him, is the dense ignorance of the average city boy in regard to tree and vegetable life in general.

Of course this lack of knowledge of tree life appeals to the teacher of woodwork most strongly because it is a study to which he has given. much thought.

To have stated a generation ago that out of several classes of boys, each containing thirty students, not one could distinguish a chestnut. tree or had the slightest idea as to how it differed from other trees, would have been an invitation to ridicule and incredulity. Yet this 1900]

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