tion of sentences with precision, and the drinking in of reasons for certain mathematical results. The worship of the text-book is dying out; the instructor who cannot face a class unless he be armed with the treatise is outliving his opportunity. The next generation will demand more of extempore teaching, so to say, and welcome the coming instructor, who will be no slave to the letter. The educational achievements of the common school will continue to furnish a theme for occa-sional orators, for rhapsody-loving dealers in verse,, for the politician's smooth address to half-believing auditors. These indiscriminate and favorable comments do not signify. But there is to be, we doubt not, a wider familiarity of parents with what is done and left undone in the institutions that are making or marring their children. It matters, comparatively little, in one point of view, whether professional educators and those who talk about: schools with the assured air of experts be contented with the development of our system of instruction. The main inquiry is, What do those who contribute of their substance for its support,. and commit their children to the care of the school, think of its practical workings? The average: strong sense of the people must be satisfied, or that which is the very life of the system-the co-operating sympathy of the community-will be taken away. The common school is for the people not for theorists, however able; not for officials; not for the sustenance of men and women who earn a living in this way rather than in some other, caring little save for pay-days and holidays, sorry to begin, glad to leave off, but for the people! The end of its being must be kept steadily in view, or the American common school will have seen its best days. But I am persuaded better things of it. It will provide for the community's needs, not merely be responsive to its desires; keeping in advance, yet in sight always; taking the middle course between dead conservatism and unreasonable liberalism! REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON NECROLOGY. CHARLES NORTH END, New Britain, Conn., Chairman. WHEN, year ago, we assembled at Saratoga, a spirit of deep sadness came upon us, as on the first morning of our meeting it was announced that one* greatly honored and beloved, who had come to address us, had suddenly been called to a higher sphere. As we came together at this time, a spirit of deeper sadness pervaded not only this body, but our whole country, from the knowledge that the life of the honored President of the United States, whom we so fondly hoped to see and hear on this occasion, was in a precarious condition from the murderous attack of an assassin. By these sad providences, how forcibly are we impressed with the uncertainty of life and the certainty of death! Since our last annual meeting, four of our membership have been called from earthly scenes and labors; but while we may lament this loss, we may also find occasion for an alleviation of our sorrow in the consciousness that they all died full of years and full of honors. Like shocks of wheat fully ripened for the harvest were they gathered in, all having passed the limit of threescore and ten, and all having done good service in the great work of education, and all having left behind them "Footprints on the sands of time" for the guidance and cheer of those who follow on, and 'a little. longer wait." Of all whose decease it has been my duty to chronicle during the last five years, no one has occupied so prominent a position in relation to this Institute and its work as one who has been called from. earth the present year, the last but one † of those who took an active part in the organization and early support of this Institute,— who was its first secretary, and for several successive years its presiding officer. That man was the late George B. Emerson, of Boston; and the only survivor of all who took an active part in organizing this Institute is the honored Henry K. Oliver, whose name and influence have always been connected with every good effort in the cause of education. It is a great pleasure to know that he is with us to-day, and that we may hope to hear words of wisdom from his lips. While many of us will associate the name of our revered friend with an article to be found in many of our educational books, entitled "Two Ways of Telling a Story," we all know that his way has always been that in the cause of truth and right. GEORGE BARRELL EMERSON. BY GEN. H. K. OLIVER. The idea of forming a society whose object should be the elevation of the common schools from their existing very unsatisfactory condition originated with certain teachers and others interested in educational matters, who habitually met every summer in Boston, for some years, from 1820 to 1830. The outgrowth of their communings was, that on the 15th of March of the latter year, fiftyone years ago, and continuing in session till the nineteenth day of the same month, there assembled at Columbian Hall, in that city, a body of the friends of education, mostly teachers, from various parts of the New England States. Having with much deliberate and frank discussion considered the status and the crying needs of these common schools, it was decided to form a society; to which, that its name might indicate its comprehensive grasp, was ultimately given the title of the "American Institute of Instruction." The preparation of its constitution was intrusted to Ebenezer Bailey, Benjamin D. Emerson, Abraham Andrews, George B. Emerson, Gideon F. Thayer, J. Wilder, and Henry K. Oliver; all teachers and all of Massachusetts, and all but the last named now dead. At an adjourned meeting, held on the 19th of August, 1830, in the hall of the House of Representatives, in Boston, at which several hundred were present, this constitution, carefully matured, was, with change of the title of the society from that presented by the committee, and some other minor alterations, duly adopted, and the offices thereby created duly filled, - Rev. Francis Wayland, of Brown University, being made its first president. Of the entire thirty-six officers constituting its first board of government, I alone, so far as I can learn, survive. All the rest are haloed and hallowed each by his celestial crown. For all of them "the mourners have" in turn "gone about the streets"; the silver cord of each life hath been loosed; their golden bowl hath been broken; their dust hath returned to the earth, and their spirits to God who gave them. As the shadowy forms of these loved and noble men, whose earnest sympathy with the coming generations embodied itself in substantial actualities to secure for them the abiding and best blessings of mental and moral training, as these flit across my memory, "In very face and shape, so clear, so true, That the heart leaps enraptured at the view," I feel impelled to say - with fitting change- as said the surviving bard in Gray's "Ode" of his dead fellow-bards, — "Dear lost companions of my early art, Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes, Ye died and naught is left but reverent memories." And if there yet remain other survivors of those distant years, lingering like pilgrim-strangers among contemporaneous posterity, — poor “shadowy Buckinghams" of the past, dissolving remnants of our former selves, played-out and faded loiterers on the stage of life, we feel "Like one who treads alone Some banquet hall deserted, Whose lights are fled, whose garlands dead, And full well do we know and feel that "Yet a few years, or days, perhaps, Or moments pass in silent lapse, And time with us will be no more." We alone, and we better than any else, can tell with what sacri fice of self, with what fidelity of labor, with' what earrestness of devotion they "did what they could," and far in advance of the times in which they lived, to promote the cause in which you are their enlisted successors, and who are morally obligated to keep that |