played in their seats and were great favorites. "Introducing to the king and queen" is the old joke where the one introduced in given a seat on a coat stretched between their majesties and falls to the floor as they rise. The children never wearied of this and were as anxious to go through it the tenth time as the first. "Needle's eye," "Green gravel," and "Ruth and Jacob" were played in a ring around the room. They furnished more exercise for all, but could not be more enjoyed than the beloved "Cat-mouse." These are only a few of the games that might be played quietly in a schoolroom, chosen for description because one set of pupils liked them better than any others. There is a great field for the teacher in making up new games, especially ring games which call every pupil into action. When even "Green gravel," which is the poorest doggerel and has the slightest amount of action, can call forth such delighted enthusiasm, it behooves us to try to give our pupils something that will inspire the eager minds at the same time that it refreshes the tired little limbs. There are more lessons in kindness, unselfishness, and consideration for others to be learned at play than in study. Here is a great educational opportunity.-New York School Journal. WAR-SONGS. "The Battle Cry of Freedom," "Tramp, Tramp, the Boys are Marching," "Just Before the Battle Mother," and score of other warsongs, were written by Doctor George F. Root. He did more for his country by his stirring songs of freedom than he could probably have done had he shouldered the musket. It was no ordinary feeling that his appeals inspired; they came from his pen aflame with patriotic enthusiasm and never failed to inspire the sons of freedom. In 1861 the Lombard Brothers were in Chicago for the purpose of holding a war-song meeting. They were anxious for a new song and their need inspired Dr. Root, who siraightway wrote both the words and the music of "The Battle Cry of Freedom." The ink was scarcely dry before it was sung from the courthouse steps. One brother sang the verses, the other joined in the refrain. Before they had finished, a thousand voices took part in the chorus. In the Reform excitement of 1867 in England, it became as well-known there as in America. In In March, 1895, Doctor Root's son gave a war concert in Chicago. At the close an old man threaded his way to the foot-lights, and when he faced the assembly the audience instantly recognized Doctor George Root. The applause swelled into so great a volume that it seemed it would never cease. The son announced that his father would sing his great war-song, "The Battle Cry of Freedom," and he desired the audience to join in the chorus. The silver-haired veteran sang with spirit and enthusiasm, and more than five thousand voices joined in the chorus. It is remarkable that this simple composer, who has greatly enriched the psalmody of the church, should have given the cast of endurance to songs of patriotism that flowed forth as pure patriotic fire, that, Prometheus like, remains a heritage of the fateful past. From paper on "National Songs of America," in Self-Culture for March. 7. Name the cities that are first in the following industries: (a) meat canning, (b) oyster packing, (c) manufacture of threshing machines, (d) iron smelting), (e) manufacture of flour. 8. In what states are the following: Mammoth Cave, Yosemite Park, Garden of the Gods, Yellowstone Park, Falls of Minnehaha? 9. What is meant by Greater New York? 10. Name: (a) the largest state, (b) the smallest state, (c) the longest state, (d) the state with most neighbors) i. e., the one that adjoins most other states), (e) the state with most sea coast. 11. If you journey from New York City to San Francisco by rail, going via Philadelphia, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Denver, what states would you cross?-Ex. MANUAL TRAINING A COLOSSAL ADVANCE. In a modern school, verbal recitations form only a small part of what the pupil is required to do, says Prof. William James in the March Atlantic. He must keep notebooks, make drawings, plans, and maps, take measurements, enter the laboratory and perform experiments, consult authorities and write essays. He must do in his fashion what is often laughed at by outsiders when it appears in prospectuses under the title of "original work," but what is really the only possible training for the doing of original work thereafter. The most colossal improvement which recent years have seen in secondary education lies in the introduction of the manual training schools; not because they will give us a people more handy and practical for domestic life and better skilled in trades, but because they will give us citizens with an entirely different intellectual fibre. Laboratory work and shop work engender a habit of observation, a knowledge of the difference between accuracy and vagueness, and an insight into nature's complexity and into the inadequacy of all abstract verbal accounts of real phenomena, which, once wrought into the mind, remain there as lifelong possessions. They confer precision; because if you are doing a thing, you must do it definitely right or definitely wrong. They give honesty; for when you express yourself by making things, and not by using words, it becomes impossible to dissimulate your vagueness or ignorance by ambiguity. They beget a habit of self-reliance; they keep the interest and attention always cheerfully engaged, and reduce the teacher's disciplinary function to a minimum. the various systems of manual training, so far as woodwork is concerned, the Swedish Sloyd system, if I may have an opinion on such matters, seems to me by far the best, psychologically considered. Manual training methods, fortunately, are being slowly, but surely, introduced into all our large cities. But there is still an immense distance to traverse before they have gained the extension which they are ultimately destined to possess.-Prof. William James in the March Atlantic. Of FLORIDA AND PUERTO RICO FRUIT-GROWING COMPARED The Floridian orange and lemon grower, who has struggled against the perversities of his sandy soil, where his carefully prepared fertilizers straightway proceed to enjoy the society of subterranean fossils rather than to give renewed life to his tenderly husbanded trees, and where the climate is all gentle zephyrs one day and a black frost the next, would do well to move to this country of vegetal luxuriance, where fine sweet oranges will grow well in the dense thickets in spite of choking and entwining vines and overarching shade trees. The same advice applies to the fruit grower of arid southern California, who by constant irrigation and by the sweat of his brow raises his crops from the sandy soil, creating upon the desert spots of green loveliness, and se curing in return, it is true, an exuberance of fine fruit. The same amount of capital and energy, however, expended in Puerto Rico would insure twice the crop of the Floridian, and fully as great as the Californian can raise on his artificially prepared ground. With Puerto Rico an integral part of the United States there is no doubt but that it will literally become the fruit and vegetable garden for this country. Almost every known tropical and semi-tropical fruit can be grown, and many of the growths of temperate climes find the soil congenial. A northern man fails to comprehend the meaning of the word fruit until such time as he has lived on this lovely island and tasted each day for a year some new edible creation of nature. The descriptions of flowers and odors fail me, as there are no adequate comparative terms or sensations in which they can be expressed. They are sour or sweet, savory or insipid, pungent or mawkish, fragrant or malodorous, and all degrees between, but with an individuality in each and every fruit which should debar one from remarking that it is in taste a near approach to others. -Harper's Weekly. THE PEDAGOGICAL TYPE. The fact that the public school teacher meets society on an abnormal footing helps to accentuate the type towards which most teachers, both men and women, undeniably tend. This "type" looms up before them as a bugbear, a kill-joy, and sometimes appeals so strongly to their imaginations as to induce them to abandon teaching-while there is yet time. They doubtless observe that other occupations and professions leave as distinct an impress, that neither the lawyer, physician, business man nor type-writer can long resist the subtle influence and indelible stamp of his calling. But there are types and types, and the teacher perhaps feels that his, when well emphasized, is quite beyond popular sympathy. And, alas! he is right. The teach er's reward, like that of many clergymen, is to be relegated to an isolated, unreal existence, with no vitalizing outlook on the big bounding world, or contact with it. His immediate environment fosters in him a narrow conceit, a talky shallowness, a worrisome primness and ethical mindedness that would unbalance any ordinary mortal, and which compel the world, elbow deep in the battle of life to make a special case of him. And there it ends; or rather, there his problem begins. What is a man to do when he is shelved socially and intellectually? He may live in the next world, or write his life-lines "to antiquity," but he does not live among his contemporaries. It is true that he is in constant fellowship with his pupils. But they are not his contemporaries. They belong to another generation -to the world of the future. Discriminate as he will, their standard of conduct, or rather the standard of conduct he inculcates on them, becomes in time his own standard of conduct; and he finds himself living not according to principle, but by rule, precisely as in the old college days, when he studied philosophy, he vowed that he never would. Moreover, police-duty vulgarizes. To be a tool, a mere receptacle of others' determinations, degrades one who can come to his own. Reiteration dulls a bright mind. If, as an able critic once said, "acting is the lowest of the arts; and even if it were the highest it would be brought low again by its infinite self-repetition," what can be the reflex influence of teaching?-The teaching?—The Bookman. THE TRUTH ABOUT SNAKES. Mr. F. Schuyler Mathews in his charming book, "Familiar Life in Field and Forest, endeavors to explain the natural aversion which man has for snakes. When a snake is seen the observer is sure to make a most desperate attempt to dispatch him, and, if successful, to glorify himself; while, if the reptile escapes, the man is sure to be overcome with a feeling of guilt. The cause of the ill-feeling towards reptiles has long been a mystery to us. Mr. Mathews is a close observer of nature, and, we are happy to say, states that we must learn to let the snake alone or else in the long run we will be the sufferers. In the eastern part of the country we have only two venomous snakes, the rattlesnake and the copperhead; all the rest are absolutely harmless. The venomous character of these two dangerous reptiles is greatly overestimated and very naturally a great amount of dread. and sensational nonsense has been unnecessarily connected with them through ignorance of the facts. Not more than two dogs in nine die who have been bitten by the rattlesnake. The copperhead is by far a less venomous reptile than the other. The rattlesnake is occasionally found in the wildernesses of the northeastern states, in the vicinity of Lake George and in the southern catskills. For the last fifteen years in traveling about the Adirondacks no indication of these snakes was observed nor could anyone be found who had seen them, which, considering the elasticity of the imag ination of some of the Adirondack guides, is quite remarkable. The racer, water snake, and blowing adder are the most formidable, so far as appearances are concerned, but they are only aggressive and fight without doing much damage when angered. None of them can bite as hard as a red squirrel. To this list might be added the black snake, which is probably the most ferocious, and, although harmless so far as mankind is concerned, has frequently been known to overcome the rattler in combat. As for our innocent little green snake, he is the mildest, most defenseless little animal on the face of the earth. Yet, the cry of "Snake!" is the immediate signal for war with whatever weapons are handy-stones, pitchforks, clubs, sticks, and heels. heels. Every man does his duty in the fray and when the poor mangled creature squirms at the part where he is not quite smashed, someone remarks: "Oh, it is no use hitting him any more; you know snakes never die until after sundown;" and all are satisfied that the country is rid of one more big and dangerous reptile. But in truth the farmer has lost one of his best friends, for proof of which we have the snake's stomach. When opened it is found to contain mice, insects, grubs, slugs, rats or moles, as the case may be, all enemies of the farmer. Snakes are never out at night. In the spring they haunt the ploughed fields and garden patches, ever on the alert for grubs, worms, grasshoppers, and slugs. Yet in spite of all this the garden hoe is an ever-ready weapon with which to chase the poor thing from the field, if not eventually to make mince meat of him. Intelligent people would refuse to credit as many absurd things about any other creature, yet there are many people who believe that the snake exerts a charm over its prey; that a frightened mother snake temporarily swallows her young in time of danger; and that the forked tongue of the creature is its deadly sting. Then there is the story of a snake in Africa that rolls itself up like a hoop, chases a man and strikes him a deadly blow; also the most common and generally believed that a snake never dies before sunset and that when its fangs are extracted it lives an indefinite length of time on the stimulus of its own poison and other numerous absurdities. As a matter of fact, snakes are strangely tenacious of life; some live without their brains or without their heart. The body, decapitated, ofttimes continues to move, the separated head will dart out the tongue or even try to bite. Some experiments related by scientists we are inclined to doubt, not that the facts are untrue as stated, but that they happened entirely by chance. The sun has nothing to do with the life of a snake, and when the last lingering remnants of life have fled, the snake is dead. As for the tongue that delicate and marvelously sensitive organ -it is absurd to think so soft a thing is a sting. The snake is dull of sight and hearing and this deficiency is made up by pursuing investigation by touch with a dainty tongue. Snakes are remarkably prolific and bear anywhere from seven to 100 young ones. From observation it is believed that snakes are capable of taste, and at the time of casting or shedding their skin they are partially blinded by the dull, old skin which also covers the eyes, as snakes possess no eyelids, and often a snake is food for a snake. In the menagerie of the Jardin des Plantes, in France, a viper (Pelias berus) was put into a cage with a horned viper (Cerastes), and as they were about the same size it was believed that they would live peaceably together. During the night following, however, the Cerastes swallowed the Pelias, and in order to accommodate himself to his huge prey, his body was so distended that the scales which touched each other laterally and even lapped in his normal condition, were now so spread apart that between the longitudinal rows a space equal to the size of the scales was left. Digestion went on regularly, however, and the Cerastes did not appear to suffer. The bones of the serpent are held together by elastic ligaments and the reptile's capacity is correspondingly elastic. With a head scarcely half an inch long, a frog not less than an inch and a half in diameter is slipped down between his distended jaws, the teeth of which are set in a backward curve and by slightly working his jaws, which consist of four sections, two above and two below and worked independently, the kicking frog is worried down by slow degress in spite of his slippery hide, which, were it not for those tiny, sharp, recurved teeth, might assist him in the struggle for freedom. The snake then. gives a ghastly wide-mouthed gasp or two to work his jaws back to a state of repose. Snakes sleep all winter, waking up after seven or eight months' nap with a sharpened appetite, and at this time discards his dull skin and arrays himself in a resplendent coat of iridescent colors. The skin is shed complete, inside and out and scraped off by contact with bushes, rough ground and dead leaves. -From "Familiar Life in Field and Forest." Published by Appleton & Co., New York. I see you, on the zigzag rails, I hear you when the air is full All in your speckled jacket trim, "Bob White! Bob White!" you whistle. There, you are gone! but far away I hear your whistle falling. Ah! maybe it is hide-and seek, And that's why you are calling. Along those hazy uplands wide We'd be such merry rangers; What! silent now. and hidden too? "Bob White,'' don't let's be strangers. Perhaps you teach your brood the game, In yonder rainbowed thicket, While winds are playing with the leaves, And softly creaks the cricket. "Bob White! Bob White!"-again I hear That blithely whistled chorus; Why should we not companions be? One Father watches o'er us! --George Cooper. THEORY AND PRACTICE. READING FOR YOUNG FOLK. It The report upon the prize competition of lists of twenty-five books for a young folks' library appears in the July St. Nicholas. shows that a great many people care much as to what children read, and that a very great many children are mightily occupied with the joys found between book-covers; also, that numbers of the lists sent in by children and young people are better than many of those made out by careful parents, teachers, and librarians. The first aim of education, says the committee, should be toward development-development all around as a human being. Literature is a precious power in making the best possible human beings out of boys and girls by acting on them directly, as well as in many indirect ways, such, for one, as giving them something stimulating and interesting to talk about. So, in offering these prizes, St. Nicholas excluded consideration of religious works as such, and books of information as such, bebecause it is desirable that young folk should also be enriched from literature by the joys to be obtained simply as joys. "But do you. want every one to read purely for amusement?" some one asks. A deal of harm has been done by this fixed habit of opposing amusement to instruction, in talking about reading. Robert Louis Stevenson said that "reading, to be worth the name, should be a rapture." Now, when reading is a rapture it is done neither for amusement nor for instruction, but for sympathy for the interplay of kinship between author and reader; and what is better than an exchange of wholesome sympathies in any form." The idea of basing a child's reading on the books that teach this specific lesson or that is deplorable. Suppose he eats too fast, and his guardian wishes to break him of that bad. habit. Let the little man, by all means, be instructed as to the habit's evils, but let us think twice before directing his reading to some feeble tale ubout a boy who got indigestion through bolting his food. Would it not be better to exalt him, if possible, with the poetry and mirth of "A MidsummerNight's Dream," one of the treasures of the world, and trust that while it is doing so many other great things for him it would also refine and soften his instincts and make him more amenable to instruction in all good manners? It is not enough that a child learn what is taught in text-books and manuals of morals. and manners. All that can be done should be done to make him brave and loving, high spirited, humorous, ready, inventive, fluent, and witty, seriously observant and wise in the ways of men to give him, in short, all good gifts. He will never possess them all in full measure, but the best authors whom he can read with enjoyment will help him in ways that no straight code of study or conduct can. The best authors hold their place because the best readers have found inspiration and enrichment in their work. A special reason for giving to young readers books established among English classics is that it educates them in modes of feeling and expression other than those in fashion in their own little hour. When we are young we are plastic, and are easily moved to sympathize with many styles; and the man who in youth has never learned the accents of the masters of an earlier day is sadly apt to remain imprisoned in his own time, to his lasting impoverishment. On the whole, the lists received are full of encouragement for those who believe that, as one correspondent says, "the best is none too good for the children." Most of the lists, even those from the smallest competitors, had a few great names that stood out like stars. "Robinson Crusoe" has been mentioned, and stands first in popularity with all kinds and conditions of list-makers. But "Esop's Fables," "Midsummer-Night's Dream," and "Gulliver's Travels" make a great showing, too. The several little cramped hands that attribute the authorship of "Gulliver's Travels" to "Lemuel Gulliver" gave us keen pleasure. And acquaintance with a good book is not completed, but only begun, by early knowledge of it. It will grow on us as we grow. Among the modern writings that are very widely loved, it is delightful to see Dana's "Two Years before the Mast," and Mr. Edward Everett Hale's "Man without a Country." Their success shows again how free from tricks, how grave and simple, may be the writer who wins his way in young hearts. The list sent in by the winner of the first prize is as follows: 1. Ivanhoe, Scott. 2. Quentin Durward, Scott. 3. Pathfinder, Cooper. 4. Last of the Mohicans, Cooper. 5. Jungle Books, Kipling. 6. Westward Ho!, Kingsley. 7. Arabian Nights. 8. The Rose and the Ring, Thackeray. 9. Wonder Book, Hawthorne. 10. A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens. II. Christmas Stories, Dickens. 12. Poems of Longfellow. 13. Works of Shakspere. 14. Treasure Island, Stevenson. 15. Child's Garden of Verses, Stevenson. 19. The Man without a Country, Hale. 24. Jackanapes, Ewing. 25. Wild Animals I have Known, Thomp |