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SISTINE MADONNA, MADONNA OF THE CHAIR, HOLY NIGHT, CHRIST AND THE DOCTORS, HOLY FAMILY, ANGEL HEADS, SPRING, SHEPHERDES, BY THE RIVER, RAINBOW, AURORA, BABY TUART, ANGELUS, HORSE FAIR, PLOUGHING, MILLET, PHAROAH'S HORSES, PRINCES IN THE TOWER, CHRIST BLESSING CHILDREN, QUEEN LOUISE. ADDRESS MRS. E. M. PERRY, 10 Tremont St., Malden, Mass. Be sure to mention PRIMARY EDUCATION. Volume VI A Monthly Journal for Primary Teachers PRIMARY EDUCATION PUBLISHED BY THE April 1898 I come, I come! ye have called me long; From the streams and founts I have loosed the chain; Number 4 There is so much to wake up to, in April, and so much to watch for and welcome, lest we lose the first thrill of discovery. It is preeminently a month for the finest sense-training. The fresh new odors every day, what are they, where do they come from? It is the smell of opening furrows, and of quickened root-life everywhere? And that distant bird-note what bird was it? Was that the first faint frog-piping? Who knows where to look for the darling hepatica? When that comes, the heart is full and life has begun over again. "How it whispers that winter is over at last, That the time of the singing of birds is at hand; How it blends with the music of streams rushing fast, And the note of the robin that thrills through the land! So fragile and graceful, so welcome and dear, As it smiles 'mid the brown leaves, so withered and sere, With its delicate bloom, and its subtle perfume, Its exquisite rareness, ethereal fairness How it gladdens our thoughts in the spring of the year!" Getting Ready for Spring How! By out-door life if the teacher had time or opportunity, but she needs to begin this preparation before there are visible signs of spring. There are a few books that can stir the pulse of the busiest, tiredest teacher, and actually crowd out the buzzing details of school work that haunt her like little demons. Yes, these can be banished by getting into the hearts of books, and under the spell of nature-loving spirits. John Burroughs can cure school-fever. "A Year in the Fields," ought to be on every teacher's hometable, to be taken up at every opportunity. The "Spring Relish," and " April" chapters take possession As we read on and on, the pulse quickens, the heart warms, the imagination is stirred, and the world of care rolls away because the new world - God's spring world is coming soon, overflowing with richness and delight. April sounds, April odors, April air, take possession of the soul and we long for them as if they could bring new hope, new opportunities, to begin over again. of one's soul. Thomas Wentworth Higginson's "Procession of the Flowers," is another inspiring book. The chapters, April Days" and "My Out-Door Study" are full of inspiration, and his flower-procession passes before us like a succession of old friends,- friends that bring back our youth again, and great things seem once more possible of accomplishment. Thoreau and Emerson's nature poems, are to be read in the spring, and Hamilton Mabie's "Essays on Nature and Culture" belong to early spring and every other season. They interpret and explain all other nature books in their revelation of the subtle process of soul-growth through soul-companionship with Nature. Nature Stories through the medium of music; another is impelled to tell of the beautiful things he sees, another gives us pictures and Must the schools be freshly deluged this spring with sculpture. One will give us poetry, another a simple little the same kind of nature stories that have afflicted them so long? Or, has Nature been made to talk herself out and everybody else to death? The story-tellers have portrayed her in every mood from the worst-tempered shrew complaining of winds and weather, neglect, and natural law, to the vapid mutterings of some irresponsible inbecile. What is there left to say? Are there more walnut trees dying to bear tulips, more evergreens that are neglected in the forests, more tall flowers looking scornfully on low flowers, more gay leaves flaunting their beauty in the face of quieter ones, more plants that refuse to grow if they can't have their own way, more records of Mr. Wind and more moral preaching done by butterflies and industrious ants, more nest-building by Mr. Robin and Mrs. Robin? Must we keep up this demoralizing, make-believe, senseless chatter of self-conscious nature? Is there no prospect of a reaction? It is a wonder that our children have any reverence left for the natural world, after this flood of belittling literature has been poured out in every direction, since nature study was made a part of school work. Children see enough and hear enough of human weaknesses and passions without having them reproduced in Nature's kingdom, and they need hardly be taught abbreviations by loading down plants, animals, and insects with human titles. Nature is law. Nature is calm, self-poised dignity. Nature has the still small voice that must be listened for by the highest and best in humanity. Nature is God's handiwork. Let these facts be remembered when we attempt to drag her down and harness her to the pedagogical wheels. Art in the Home and the School ALICE HELM FRENCH Chicago Ill. WISH that I could help every teacher and every mother to whom, my thoughts may come to feel that however limited her previous opportunities for her own personal culture may have been, and however narrow her means, that art is not a thing that is consequently far remote from her grasp. It is the office of every teacher to endeavor to reveal to her children all that she may of truth and beauty, and at the same time to try to discover in what way each child's artistic sense manifests itself. There is no principle involved in the teaching of art that should not apply to every study. The time is past for considering one study as a thing by itself; we must consider each as a part of one perfect whole. Let us pause for a moment and ask, "What is art?" Dr. Dewey of the University of Chicago says something to the effect that art is anything that is done well. You see that this carries the idea of the artistic into all that we do. If our sense of the beautiful and harmonious is developed we shall see the possibility of making all that we do, in a measure, beautiful. This is certainly a truth worthy of being instilled into every child's mind for the value it may have for him in future life. It is such a beautiful thing to lift the common duty above the plane of drudgery. Your teaching, for instance, may descend to drudgery, for it is never easy work, but you may be very happy in your lot if you feel the beauty of helping to develop the finer instincts of a rude nature, or preserving and fostering the poetic sense of the rarer child. The artistic sense manifests itself in many different forms and unhappily is not always recognized. One person is able to express his sense of the beautiful and harmonious tale, in which the sense of the poetic is as strong as if it were written in verse. We observe that even as early as the kindergarten days the child has become so keen an observer of nature that his acting shows his artistic ability. But these are only the first and most usually recognized of the manifestations of the artistic sense. We have all known people whose duty it was to perform very simple and humble tasks, but whose spirits were of this fine quality that they perceived the possibility of performing their duties so well as to produce a result no longer merely good enough, but really beautiful. It is no wonder that Ruskin talked of art and morals very closely together. The kindergartner is early taught that nothing unlovely is to have a place in her work. If the teacher can help her children to see moral beauty, she is so much nearer to revealing to them the beauties of literature and art. There are two characteristics that are found in a greater or less degree in all pictures and sculptures, that should be looked for in all works of art, and they should be looked for by every teacher in all the work done by children who depend upon her for encouragement and development. One is accuracy and truth, which are never to be undervalued, and the other is the poetic sense, which in every work of art seems to me to be the greatest of all. These two qualities are often very equally balanced, but perhaps more often not. We cannot teach the latter as we can the former, but we can protect and foster it and help it to find expression. There is a good deal of danger of teaching the poetic sense out of a student even in an art school. The safest thing to do is to point the student to nature and trust to her to take care of him. Fortunately this is being done in our Chicago public schools and no doubt widely through the country. In the last exhibition of public school work at the Art Institute of Chicago, there was a study of oak leaves that showed this poetic, or as we may call it, artistic sense, unspoiled. It was very much admired by some of the artists. The work in our Chicago public schools is remarkably free and unaffected by cast-iron system. It may be rather uniform in manner, but that is the necessary result of its having to be taught by those who have not enough knowledge themselves to be original in their methods. They can only follow the suggestions of the superintendents of drawing. There are few grade teachers prepared in this specialty. The coming school teacher is going to have a better opportunity to study drawing than the present ones have had; in fact, the coming teacher is having good instruction now, although there will no doubt be a great advance in a few years. I have been much interested in the instruction of teachers and have seen remarkable progress made in a few lessons, where large drawings were made with colored chalk. My class has used the cheapest quality of ingrain wall paper, which can be found in very good shades of light gray, at the small price of thirty cents for twenty-four yards. My idea has been to use material so cheap that schools could afford to use it in large quantities. The chalk is the only material in which large studies may be made in the limited time the school can give. This is the reason I have found it so practical. A knowledge of light and shade and color may be gained with it that can be used in working with water color or any other material. Water color is suited to smaller work. I like to give color at first because I think it important to teach the student to see the object he draws from, as a whole, in his early lessons. The education that most of our present teachers received in drawing was a sorry affair. Most of them can look back to a dreary waste of copying, in which there was no thought of nature. They were not made to feel that it was a tree that they were drawing, but that one line must be just so far from another line; and so, of course, the work was perfectly dead. Study from nature in every department of science and art is the only thing that has produced a great renaissance. in any age. Study of the works of other men only, may make a man a scholar, but he can never contribute anything of permanent value to science unless he adds the result of his own original research. It is no wonder that the question is asked, why the crude works of some of the very early masters should be more valued than the more perfect examples of the period following the days of Raphael, for instance. It is merely because no man was the exact imitator of his master, as there was none who preceded him who might be recognized as a perfect guide; but all his study was done for himself, and in his work, however crude it is, we see his own thought, which he struggled to express. As time went on, they gained greater facility until the days of the great Raphael, but after that many of the painters seemed not so much in love with nature as with Raphael; at any rate they appeared to think they could not beat that (to translate Italian into good Yankee), so they forgot nature and tried to paint Raphaels. The best antidote for this that I know of is to visit the museums, if one happens to be in Chicago, or any city with similar advantages, and to make one's self familiar with all the beautiful objects of antiquity that have been the standards of grace and elegance at all times. Such ideals as these will enable me to make a good choice of such modern articles as are within his reach. Of course I am telling you no new thing when I say that we are inclined to have too many things. If we turn again to our classic standards it would be hard to imagine the accumulation of inharmonious objects from one of our rooms in the place of a few simple ones that adorned a classic interior. The Japanese, from whom we have inherited such a wealth of decoration, use only a few objects of that kind in a room, and if, as often happens, they have a large collection, they change them often, and bring out only a few at a time. We might begin a work of decorations in our houses and school-rooms by putting away what we see does not help to make the room beautiful, and then if we are able to add some one good thing, say a picture or cast, it will be much more effective from the fact that there are fewer things in the room with which it must divide attention. ANNIE W. SANBORN It is a sad day when nature dies. We have all been to her funeral more or less often. She seems to have been dead and buried for a good while in the early, and also rather too recent history, of our young ladies' seminaries. It is not The Literature of Leisure fair to say that this is the only place where nature and art lay dead, but the girls' school is a conspicuous type of that period. But now even the young ladies' seminary lays aside its traditions and sends to the art school for the best available teacher, and begins to make plain, simple studies of nature, not so much with a view to making a picture, as with a desire to learn to see and to interpret nature, and to be able to appreciate the works of those who have gone farther in art than they. Our little kindergarten and primary children are making their own scientific researches and their own original drawings. Though we live in an age that has gone farthest from primitive conditions, we turn back once more to nature and trust that she may be able to save us from the artificiality that might be the natural end of our mode of life. Even in the most fashionable circles, from which we expect the least sympathy in such lines of study, we see the young people breaking away for a long summer in the country in the freest sort of sport, and very often to very plain and natural ways of living. I wish to give just praise to the societies for the decorations of school buildings, who are doing so much to place before our children good pictures and casts of sculpture, which will help them in forming classic standards. It is the greatest possible benefit to a child to be accustomed to only good things in the school and home. These will become his standards without much being said about them. By good things I mean not only pictures and sculptures, but all the furniture of a house. At home there is more opportunity to influence the child than at school, because the home requires such varied objects for its furnishing. Of course we all have a great many things in our homes that are a sort of accidental accumulation that we cannot throw away, nor do not wish to, but we may at least be very careful to make a wise selection when we place anything new in the house. We do not need to look so much to adding ornaments to our possessions as to making a wise selection of the ordinary objects of utility in the house. For one thing, a child's tastes may be much influenced by a careful and harmonious selection of dishes. They do not need to be expensive, but they must be harmonious; and so with the entire house; the effect of the whole is much better if there is a harmony in the style of furnishing the rooms. For instance, it is better to have them all in one general style, instead of an Egyptian room, an old German room, a Japanese room, and so on. We all see so much of what passing fashion says is the thing that is beautiful, that our own tastes become corrupted. We all have things about our houses that we have become so accustomed to that we do not know whether they are good or bad. I VIII N most library catalogues there is a department called 'Essays and Miscellaneous." This heading, which has a kind of dryness and stiffness in the very sound of it, is but a gate or door of formal pattern leading into a domain that is not at all stiff or formal but alive and gay, rather, with diversions and surprises. The literature of which we have talked before has been creative in its nature. The poem, the novel and the play call for original activity in the writer. The essay, however, though it may be as original as they in the sense of being the true thought of the author, is yet inspired by the deeds and thoughts of others rather than descriptive or representative of new deeds and thoughts. It may, and often does, represent profound scholarship; it may bristle with epigram for whose brilliancy the author is indebted to no wit but his own; yet it is not what we call creative. It does not cause places and people to rise before us, as if present to the eye. The essay, in fact, at its highest and best, is contemplative rather than active. It belongs, so to speak, to the literature of leisure,- not idleness, but the rich leisure of the scholar. Intellectual Bric-a-brac So, when we have opened this formal door with its stiff, and even forbidding inscription, we find ourselves in a kind of museum filled with the leisure thoughts of those who were so rich in thought that they could afford to be lavish with it. For the essay is a kind of literary indulgence. To an author adapted to this form of expression, it presents immense attractions, the greatest one, probably, being its elasticity. There are positively no ironclad rules for writing an essay. The subject may be solemn or frivolous, literary, scientific or ethical, the method of treatment may be deliberate and consecutive or hap-hazard and desultory. It is not even necessary that the writer should stick to his text or know very much about his subject. On the other hand, he may do both of these things and still violate no law. we ask is that he shall have something to say that we want to hear, and that he shall say it in an interesting fashion. If the result is merely amusing, very good. If it is instructive, still very good. All If, as is often the case, the essay is the overflow of the author's mind from some more elaborate treatment of an important subject, it is sure to have at least a characteristic and original flavor. The writer of an essay takes us into his confidence, for better or worse. He button-holes us, as it were, and pours his choicest enthusiasm or his pet grievance or his latest whim into our ears. The real charm of the essay, in fine, is that it is almost always an easy and natural expression of opinion. It establishes an intimacy between author and reader. No one can read "Elia" without a pervading sense of the quaint, whimsical, confiding presence of Charles Lamb. No one can read Emerson without the consciousness of contact with an extraordinarily sweet and pure personality. The fact that both are essayists of a high order and that at the same time they are as far apart as the poles in method and treatment, is an illustration of the lack, already referred to, of hard and fast rules for essay writing. Lamb's essays are dainty variations on their several themes, each elaborated with all the exquisite precision of a Chinese carving, yet with the burlesque drollery and abandon which is all his own. Emerson strikes his keynote and lets it take care of itself when he is through with you, you are thinking your own thoughts, or so it seems to you, which is a very excellent thing in itself; and if you have failed to note just where Emerson's thinking stopped and yours began, you may be sure he will never accuse you of trespassing. He has a large and beautiful generosity. As to Selection Concerning the choice of authors in our essay reading, we may follow the same general rule that we have followed in other departments of literature. What time has ripened and justified we will choose first, rejecting, however, all that does not appeal to our best taste and judgment. Among English writers the first essayist of distinction is, of course, Francis Bacon, whose essays, have, even now, in addition to their logical precision, a freshness and piquancy of view often lacking in the work of the cleverest writers of to-day. Bacon's essays are compressed wisdom and scholarship they are so full of thought and erudition that one of them, short though they are, furnishes material and stimulus for many an hour. They are full of allusions aptly chosen, of pithy proverbs and sage epigrams, and they afford, by the way, an admirable resource for quotation. - This brings to mind a habit which it is well to form in connection with our essay reading — the keeping of a book of quotation and reference. It will make a useful companion for the one in which you keep your personal reviews of novels and poems. One of the cleverest women I ever knew kept a perfect library of notebooks made up of classified quotations on all subjects. It would be going too far, doubtless, to attribute her brilliancy of conversation to this habit, but it certainly aided in the enrichment of her mind and gave a kind of definiteness and order to her mental equipment. • Almost contemporary with Bacon is the French Montaigne, brilliant and charming, more gracious than the English philosopher, and, in literary graces, more finished. After Montaigne and Bacon, we will take up a volume of the Tatler or the Spectator, and acquire at least a speaking acquaintance with Addison and Steele. These men were in a sense, the founders of English journalism, and the essay, in their hands, became the forerunner of the "leader" of to-day. Burke, the essayist of "The Sublime and the Beautiful," we must know at least to the extent of this single essay, which has stood, ever since it was written, as a monument of the magnificent possibilities of the English language. There is no need to suggest Charles Lamb to you as one of the must-be's. He gets himself read, and half a page ensures him fascinated listeners. De Quincey, fantastic and grotesque, calls for a passing glance. Coleridge, with his animated style and spiritual alertness, we may profitably read if he appeals to us. Macaulay's essays offer elaborate, yet lucid English and wonderful phrasing, and one of them at least, should become a part of our possession. Carlyle is stimulating and provocative and his splendid. belief in his heroes and saints is good to see. Ruskin, although his authority as a critic has been gravely questioned, is still a suggestive, if not always a practical guide, and is at his best a great and inspiring teacher of the highest principles of art. We have already spoken of Emerson and we must not omit Lowell, whose essays in literary criticism are among the most perfect in the language. In previous talks two important modern literary critics, Arnold and Symonds, have been mentioned, but beyond these in our own epoch, selection would be impossible within the limits of this paper. Among the "Miscellanies" There is a kind of writing which belongs to the so-called miscellanies and which is commonly done by someone who would otherwise be writing essays or treatises, and who is tempted to venture timidly upon the border-land of fiction. This is the semi-philosophical narrative, the book which is not a story, because it is a structure made solely to carry the author's opinions on many subjects; and which is not simply a treatise because it has a thread of fictitious narrative running through it. Such books are Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus" and Dr. Holmes' "Breakfast Table" series. Conversations, correspondences and dialogues which are made to carry the author's own opinions also come within this class. Among books of this order, two, widely different from each other, must go on our list, "The Autocrat at the Breakfast Table" and "Sartor Resartus." The former is the most charming blossom of the New England culture of its period. It is full of wit, fancy and philosophy, and its types of human nature are repaying studies. "Sartor Resartus" fired many young imaginations sixty years ago and has by no means survived its power to do so yet It is at once a protest against formalism of all kinds and an outcry from a famished soul. Under its obscure and wilful phraseology lie glowing jewels of thought and feeling. Moreover, in these end-of-the-century days, something of the old hopelessness of mankind that brought forth "Sartor Resartus" is still in existence. The regenerating doctrine of any period is good for the weary and footsore travelers of any other, and "Sartor Resartus" has not lost its value although the specific evils to which it was addressed have been partly righted. In books of this order, the critical faculty is somewhat disarmed. There is no construction to observe, no question of realism or artifice. The author is released from the rules of fiction and our one requirement is that he shall present his case, for he is commonly an advocate, with powerful effect. If we are convinced or even stirred and if he does not violate the laws of the language, we may decide that he has done his work well. Another point in which the reading of essays differs from other reading is that there is not only no need, but scarcely the possibillty of a systematic outline. Naturally we read many important essays,- all the critical ones,— in connection with something else. Ruskin is an essential in the study of periods of art. Lowell and Arnold and Symonds we shall find to fit themselves naturally into any literary work we may be doing. Carlyle's essays are delightfully suggestive in connection with our historical reading. "Elia" and "The Autocrat" are books into which we love to slip at the end of a distracting day, just for rest and amusement. And Emerson we turn to, if we are wise, when the world looks to be mostly soot and snubs and we have suddenly acquired a too lively sense of our own unacknowledged claims and deserts. Of Books of Travel Now just a word as to still another line of reading in which there is great enjoyment and a real escape from one's immediate surroundings. I mention books of travel just here because they seem to fall under no other heading than "miscellany." The possibility that they may suggest geography and so be the reverse of a recreation for the tired teacher, has occurred to me, but among the multitude of these books we shall surely be able to find some that are not too instructive at least directly so. Irving's "Alhambra," for example, will not remind you of the school-room, nor will Helen Hunt's "Bits of Travel," or Hopkinson Smith's "A White Umbrella in Mexico." Still less will Stevenson's "Travels with a Donkey" which is not a book of travel at all, but rather of safe yet unconventional . |