Volume VI

PRIMARY EDUCATION

PUBLISHED BY THE

Growth

Number 9

It is just as essential for the teacher to grow as for the children; indeed, the degree and quality of the children's growth is largely dependent upon the growth of the teacher.

What are some of the tests of growth in teaching power?

School Management: The teacher who has entered upon the work of the year with no larger knowledge of child-nature, of the child's feeling about school, of its unconscious rebellion against physical restraint, of its natural demand for exercise and variety of occupation, evidences no growth from past experience, and will have all of last year's troubles to battle over again with less patience to meet them.

Reading: How much growth has resulted from last year's experience in teaching the little ones to read? To take up, mechanically, the old stereotyped method, without thought, without a fresh study of the underlying principles in teaching children to read, without a query as to the significance of last year's obstacles, is to practically confess to a dead standstill,-if one ever can stand still.

Arithmetic: Any discoveries concerning the presentation of this subject to the little ones? Have the recent earnest discussions by the educational leaders, as to the science of teaching elementary arithmetic, meant anything to the primary teacher? Has she read them, followed the arguments of both sides, and reached any personal opinion? Have the terms "ratio" and "quantity" been illumined with new meaning? The primary teacher who can relegate such important discussion to an uninteresting arena for the professional leaders to "fight it out by themselves," and who can go,calmly and contentedly back to her "tables" and to her "plus" aud "minus" vocabulary. as "good enough for her," should be alarmed at her own apathy.

Language: So long as the book-makers go on reproducing inane language books, and so long as teachers are willing to lean upon them and be guided by them, not much growth can be expected in the teaching of elementary language. When the first year primary teacher believes that the child had a brain and expressed himself in full-grown pithy sentences long. before he ever saw a school-room, she will cease to waste a year in the namby-pamby "method" of filling out the chopped-up sentences of grown-up authors. Growth in language teaching will begin when teachers. begin to think out a common-sense course for real children, and not waste time on imaginary ones.

Nature Study: Does this still mean "petals" and "stamens" and overdone "stories"? Hasn't the horizon widened at all. as to the use of nature study? Is there no glimmer of the meaning in nature for humanity? Is there no springing up of fresh impulse to clear dull eyes to see the divinity of beauty in the world of nature? Pity, a thousand pities, for the

teacher who has not grown in soul-sensibility with every effort she has made to make this a worthy part of her school work. A year that records no perceptible growth in nature-love and nature-lore, is a year of great personal loss to the teacher.

Child Study: Do the teachers of little children feel more closely drawn to them this year than ever before? Have they ceased to be "pupils" to be run through the grade mold? And, instead, do their teachers see them as tender, wondering, pulsating bits of humanity, needing the sympathy of the motherheart at every step of the new way? Growth in child study does not mean a new skill in probing the child with senseless questions; it does not mean collating and averaging a thousand statistics; but it means an increasing conviction that child nature is an unknown mysterious realm, to be best observed, studied and trained, when lovingly enthroned in the child-heart. How to find one's way to this little heart-kingdom, always waiting to be won; - how to hold one's place there worthily after it is found;-how to guide and be led at the same time; these are some of the questions that urge themselves upon the growing primary teacher.

The Library and Little Children

T

MAY H. PRENTICE Cleveland O.

(Read before the State Teachers' Association in Ohio.) HIS has been called the children's age. When it is compared with former ages the title may not seem too flattering, though to the good time and the happy generation coming, such may seem a strange misnomer, remembering the thousands of children the nineteenth century allows to be reared in vice and poverty; the thousands it allows to die. for lack of good food, fresh air and intelligent care; remembering the wretched "pound of cure" of our reformatories, workhouses, and jails, with which we vainly try to make good the ounce of prevention" of early training.

However, the present age admits the child's right to life and life more abundantly; liberty such as has never before been granted to childhood; and happiness, as far as happiness may depend upon a decent and healthful environ

ment.

Not insignificant among the agencies which are bringing breadth and fulness of life to the children is the library. Marvellous are the changes the past ten years have made in the status of the children's department in the libraries. At the beginning of that time it consisted in most cases of a small alcove or a few shelves, filled almost entirely with children's stories, and issued only to boys and girls who had already reached the borderland of childhood on their way to manhood and womanhood. Now, in many cases the children's department is one of the most important in the library, while in place of an assistant listlessly handing out books over the bar, is a clear-eyed, large-hearted woman, in the midst of the books and the children, and studying both very earnestly and very unostentatiously.

A number of the libraries have entirely abolished the agelimit. In other words, they have adopted the theory that a child who is old enough to care for a book is old enough to be granted the loan of one. This is true of the public libraries of Cleveland, Milwaukee, Buffalo and Denver, and of many smaller ones. The "big brother" of eight leading the tot of four or five, who hugs close the picture book he has drawn from the library, is to my mind a goodly sight. There is a pleasant air of proprietorship noticeable in both

children.

Before that marvellous girl, Helen Keller, was nineteen months old, the time at which she entered the world of darkness and silence in which she has since dwelt, her father was in the habit of singing her a certain song, and she of acting out, in amusing baby fashion, some of the ideas suggested. After the illness which resulted in the loss of her sight and hearing, the associations of this song were so

painful that her father never sang it again. When she was sixteen, Dr. Waldstein, without previous warning to her, caused the air of that song to be played upon a piano on which Helen's hands rested. The effect was startling: Feelings, associations, some of the words of the song, were recalled to her by the felt vibrations of the instrument, and expressed in signs of emotion and in spoken words - for we must remember that she has learned to speak. Miracles are; but they are not outside law; it is only that, as yet, the law is outside our knowledge. Aside from the seeming miracle of the manner of the reproduction through a sense seemingly inactive in the first instance, of the psychological condition produced through another sense, the incident has a deep meaning. We are apt to discount early associations and memories as likely to have been deepened and retouched by recurrence and family conversation. absolutely precluded — and yet, the right tune given to the Here is an instance where such possibilities were phonograph, not one tiny impression on the wind-cylinder fails to give forth a clear, full voice.

Scott and Burns were sung to sleep with old songs and ballads, and almost before they could speak, listened with eager ears to tales and traditions from the inexhaustible store of nurse or mother. Is it possible that these stories and songs were the bits of glass, the tiny colored stories,

which formed the basis of those brilliant and beautiful kaleidoscopic figures, the tales and songs with which they, in their mature years, charmed the world?

-

The library must be in many cases, the nurse, the fostermother, who tells the old stories, sings the old songs. Into many a home the school and the library—often the library through the school,- bring all that comes of the "sweetness and light" of culture.

"I learned to read at my mother's knee; of course longer ago than I can remember," said Horace Greeley. That is the ideal way, but it is not for the children who so learn that the work of school and library is most needed.

The school must, in most instances, teach the child to read. The library must furnish - best through the school — books which will make him wish to learn to read. It is much easier and cheerfuller work to dig when you know that gold lies at the end of your digging.

Measured by their difficulty, the books given to first-grade children should be very tiny indeed, with large print and attractive pictures. Where the library is large enough and rich enough there should be one for each child. Ten in a room will be vastly better than none, however.

"Better buy fewer copies of Mother Goose and more scientific books," so a neighbor of mine said. He had failed to get from the library the book he wanted, whereas his little daughter, aged five, had secured the book her heart desired, Dutton's beautifully illustrated Mother Goose. It was a selfish grumble; and I cannot enter here into the question of what the little ones' books shall be. But I fancy that in this case and in the minds of many parents and some teachers the "Mother Goose," typifies the whole range of books for little children.

To furnish the books is the work of the library; to select them for her own class, to use them and teach the use of them, is the work of the teacher. But devoted and skilful as she may be, her work must be sorely limited and hampered, unless she is at liberty, either through direct assignment, or because the heart of her superintendent safely trusteth in her, to regularly use a certain carefully judged amount of school-time for this work.

Given a number of books equal to the number of children in the room, each child chooses his own book—to be kept a week two weeks as long as the teacher thinks best. Only the last child of any choosing-time has absolutely no choice. The books chosen, there comes a time of silent reading or looking at pictures. The teacher is simply the spmpathetic friend, the mother, who enjoys the pleasure of the children, who "tells " the hard words which they cannot get by sounding or guess by the picture, who slips into one seat here and another there to encourage the faint hearted, brighten the dull, and rejoice with the discoverer of hid

treasure.

In the first year the "silent reading" will be very little — a familiar word recognized here and there, new words

guessed as a great triumph, a whole sentence read alone. Even in the second and third years the teacher who looks for brilliant results will be deeply disappointed in all cut a few cases. But there will be a growing love for, and ability in, reading, until at the end of the third year, the reading vocabulary, at first so far behind, will often have overtaken and overpassed the speaking vocabulary.

It is not alone with their teachers that the children converse about their books,― at times they sit by twos, or gather in groups about some especially attractive book, and talk freely but quietly. Volunteers may be allowed and the timid assisted and encouraged to make selections from their own book - O, the charm of the ownness! — to read to the class. They may tell the stories they have read (in the second and third year), or recite the poem or verse they have learned. Asked formally about his book the child becomes dumb.- "It's about Indians," or "It's a nawful good book" disposes of the topic.

The teacher has to remember,

"The child-heart is so strange a little thing,
So mild, so timorously shy and small,
When grown-up hearts throb, it goes scampering
Behind the wall, nor dares peep out at all!
It is the veriest mouse

That hides in any house.

So wild a little thing is any child-heart, And softly and tenderly she must call: Child heart! mild heart!

Ho, my little wild heart! Come up here to me, out o' the dark Or let me come to you!"

The reading-habit when acquired at all is generally acquired before the age of twelve and often before nine. No child acquires it unless he finds pleasure in reading, and he finds little pleasure in reading until he reads with ease. Hence the need of care that the books supplied him in his early attempts at early reading be not too difficult. A "big book," or a book containing too hard words daunts him, as Motley's voluminousness or Hegel's abstruseness does us.

If he learns to love reading however, there will come a time when the baby-books are given out, that he will come to the desk with "Please may I take the big red book on your desk?" and if she is wise she will say "Yes." Tennyson or Fiske, as it happens,- is far beyond him. But Hamilton Mabie says most discerningly: "The mind is not

the Pilgrim's Progress, the Arabian Nights, Robinson Crusoe, a book of history, the Bible, or the weekly newspaper." He "clung to his book like a wasp to a mellow apple." Of Scott it is said that from his earilest childhood he was a ravenous and insatiable reader." In fact omnivorous reading seems to be often characteristic of intellectually keen childhood. It maintains in some great men like Mr. Gladstone, who retained to the last the ready receptivity of childhood, and in weaklings who are willing to let the shadows of other men's thoughts pass through their otherwise empty minds. The latter who read good books are few. In the atmosphere of such books there is something tonic and bracing.

The child who listens to the voices of good books will

"Do noble deeds, not dream them all day long."

Or, if this seems untrue, let us remember how often the dreams of childhood are the deeds of manhood. The child who reads widely is laying up, unconsciously, riches which his manhood will discover with glad surprise.

Mr. Cutter, in the third report of the Northampton, Mass., library, recommends the adoption of the following orary rule:

"Books are not to be lent for use out of the building to children under 12 years of age, except by the written permission of a parent (or person standing in the place of a parent) who shall specify whether the books are to be lent at all times or under restrictions."

And what of the children of Jackson Court and Gundry Alley, whose parents can scarcely read at all, and not at all in English? What of children like the little girl who being told that she would find the twenty-third psalm in the Bible, said it wasn't in theirs, and in proof thereof brought me a book called the "comic Bible" which gave in coarse burlesque the stories of the Old Testament, illustrated by coarser caricatures in which the irreverent hand which drew them had not spared to place the Almighty himself. Is the judgment of these parents to be final as to what and how much their children shall read? I think not.

To these children the school, and through the school, the library, come as saviours. And the vacation time, when the school closes its work, is the time when the library has need to labor most diligently.

it presents at given moments certain definite limits of expression, but it never discloses its capacity for reception. And it is an open secret that it can receive, brood over, and find delight in ideas which it only dimly understands; more than this, such ideas are often the most nutritious food for the growing mind."

In this fact lies the justification of giving the freedom of the library to our little boys and girls as soon as they care for it; but see to it that the standard of the library is high. The spirit of the book may touch the spirit of the child, and touch it to deeds of high emprise - when its words are but half understood. "The brain," says Holmes, "may somesimes act without our taking cognizance of it, as the heart commonly does. 'Something goes on in the brain,' quotes from Leibnitz, "akin to the circulation of the blood. Thought, not perceived, may exist." The body of what Leibnitz called "the insensible perceptions" Dr. Waldstein calls "the Sub-conscious self" - and his little book with that title is full of interest to parents and teachers.

" he

On the cover of the book is a little corner-piece - two heads, one clear and bold, the other a shadow, the conscious and the sub-conscious self, but it is the shadow-self which is winged and more beautiful. It is to the growth of the latter more than that of the former that the child's voluntary reading ministers.

66

The dange of over-reading are not to be over-looked, neither are they to be over-estimated. People who read little have always shaken their heads over children who read much. Horace Greeley, at five years, devouring every dry twig as well as every green blade of print to which he could get access would have been a subject of calamitous prophecy to them. "It mattered little," says his biographer, "whether it was the Confession of Faith, a stray almanac,

ANNIE W. SANBORN

Colombe's Birthday

HAVE chosen "Colombe's Birthday" as the best selection with which to begin a study of Browning's dramas,

sentative of them, but because, in its beauty and tenderness it seemed well adapted to the purpose.

It was published in 1844 and was presented at the Haymarket Theatre, London, in 1853, with Miss Helen Faucit, afterwards Lady Martin, in the part of Colombe. It has since been presented under the auspices, respectively, of the Browning societies of London and Boston.

As an acting play "Colombe's Birthday " has strong passages, but it is pre-eminently adapted to reading and study. Its action is important and its situations intense, but both are of the inner rather than the outer life. The action is confined to one day, the birthday of Colombe, the five acts representing morning, noon, afternoon, evening, and night. The episode which forms the basis of the drama is purely imaginary, the scene being laid in a German duchy of the seventeenth century. Colombe, the young and beautiful Duchess of Juliers and Cleeves has held that position for one year, since the death of her father.

Morning

In the first scene a group of perturbed courtiers wait for audience with the Duchess to greet her on her birthday. They are the same men who, a year before, had led her out from the secluded castle where her youth had been spent, to be their ruler. A rival

The morning finds them at an unhappy crisis.

* Copyrighted 1898, by Annie W. Sanborn.

claimant to the duchy, Prince Berthold, is approaching the city. His claims have been hidden from the Duchess but the time has come when she must not only know of them, but perhaps must acknowledge them and step down from her throne. The courtiers are, with one exception, selfishly occupied with the probabilities of their own future, should the Prince become their Duke.

This exception is Guibert, whose personality is deftly developed in the course of the play. He is a perfect example of bluff impulsiveness turned by the atmosphere of a court into pitiable vacillation. His family motto, Colombe ironically reminds him, is "Scorning to waver," but Guibert, as it proves, does nothing but waver between his better and worse natures.

as

Guibert supplies the comedy of the piece and is handled with delightful humor. He is so shrewd, yet so simple; so bold, yet so timorous; so keen a wit, yet so blind to the grotesqueness of his own position; so weak, yet so fine in the ultimate triumph of his loyal heart over his craven head.

The courtiers are wrangling over who shall give Colombe the paper containing Berthold's requisition when Valence, a travel-stained messenger to the Duchess, enters. He comes to plead the cause of his over-taxed city, Cleves, and appeals to Guibert, to whom he has once done a service, to gain him an audience.

Valence appears in very nearly his true colors from the first. He is the grave, steadfast, yet ardent man, deep of heart, clear of brain, and bearing the burden of other lives. He is a simple, straightforward gentleman, strong enough for a leader, but a patriot rather than a statesman. He has seen Colombe for the first time a year before, when she took possession of her duchy. It is the ideal of womanhood first presented to him by her that has been the inspiration of his work for Cleves.

The courtiers see in Valence their opportunity to shift a painful duty. Without being informed of the contents of Berthold's note, he is told that he can purchase audience with the Duchess by laying this paper at her feet. He consents, and the act closes with a last cynical explosion from Guibert, who rallies Valence on his tense silence and accuses him of intending to supplant him, the Duchess' premier :

"Isn't the grand harangue
You mean to make that thus engrosses you?
Which of her virtues you'll apostrophize?
Or is't the fashion you aspire to start,
of that close-curled, not unbecoming hair?
Or what else ponder you?"

"My townsmen's wrongs,"

replies Valence, and with these words bitten into the background of Guibert's uneasy flippancy throws into bold relief the contrast of their two natures.

Noon

The second act introduces Colombe. She has recently awakened to more than a vague suspicion of danger to her rule and to a partial realization of the uncertain allegiance of her court.

In soliloquy she reproaches those who brought her forth from the old castle of Ravestein only to let her be driven back to it so soon. She rebels against being thus doubly robbed, first of her care-free girl-life, now of that which had been given in its place.

"Cleves has wrongs? Apparent now and thus?" She demands the paper prepared by Valence to set forth the case of his city.

Valence is thus reminded of the price of his audience and hands her instead Berthold's requisition, of whose contents he is ignorant. Colombe reads it. Her fears are confirmed. She turns on her courtiers with reproach for their concealment of the matter from her and then renounces her rights thus:

"Prince Berthold, who art Juliers' Duke. it seems,—
The King's choice, and the Emperor's, and the Pope's-
Be mine, too! Take this people? Tell me not

Of receipts, precedents, authorities,

-But take them, from a heart that yearns to give!
Find out their love,-I could not; find their fear,-

I would not; find their like,-I never shall,

Among the flowers!

(Taking off her coronet.) Colombe of Ravestein

Thanks God she is no longer Duchess here!"

In the scene which follows the courtiers oscillate between admiration of their lady and desire of the new Prince's favor. Valence, in rage and scorn at their cowardice and adoration of the lady whom he now recognizes as the mistress of his heart, offers her the arms and suffrages of Cleves. She accepts him as her only loyal subject and withdraws. Immediately upon her going the Prince's approach is announced.

Afternoon

The curtain rises on the third act with the Prince and his confidant, Melchior, in the room where they are to receive the courtiers. Berthold's character unfolds distinctly and rapidly before the reader. He is a man who, having suffered as we learn from certain allusions in his soliloquies, through the unfaithfulness of a woman, has filled his life with the activities of ambition.

Like

He is world-weary, yet the world is essential to him. all successful souls, his aims expand with his progress. Once a duchy seemed beyond the summit of attainment,now the prospect of an empire hardly quickens his pulse. He is self-centred, assured, doubts neither his own methods nor his own prowess, is endowed with that serene and positive self-esteem which seems an element of all worldly sucHis friend Melchior, a scholar and philosopher, serves as a graceful foil for the Prince's determined yet sagacious worldliness.

cess.

In Berthold's conversation with the courtiers something of the impressiveness of Colombe's personality is unfolded to him. He perceives that one who could so impress herself on a group of men of the world as almost to secure their allegiance in the face of their interests, must be "a mind to match one's mind with." He even begins to fancy in Colombe a possible compensation for his lost love, and, more, a possible sharer of the imperial throne to be. ensuing scene, in which he meets her for the first time, strengthens this half-formed purpose.

The

At the close of this scene the Prince gives his credentials for inspection into the hands of Valence who is nɔw Colombe's spokesman and adviser. Valence is to pronounce upon their validity and to meet the Prince and Colombe at night. After Berthold goes out, a scene takes place between Colombe and Valence, in which with the impetuosity of her girlhood and the imperiousness of her rank, she lets him

"The old place again, perhaps,

The water-breeze again, the birds again."

But she is passing rapidly from the light-hearted child to the woman with cares and rights and duties. She who has led hitherto a sheltered yet wilful life, is now confronted with realities; she feels herself pitted for the first time against her world. It is a pathetic situation. Courage and self-assertion are not lacking, yet how inadequate they seem in their effort to inform and shape the life of an untrained and unguarded girl.

Yet she faces her courtiers bravely and they are stirred to a new enthusiasm for her. Valence's opportunity arrives and a few impetuous words tell the story of Cleves. Colombe's heart is touched. "Wrongs? she cries

heart.

"This is indeed my birthday, soul and body," she says, and again:

"Believe in your own nature and its force
Of renovating mine! I take my stand
Only as under me the earth is firm;

So, prove the first step stable, all will prove.

That first, I choose:-the next to take, choose you!"

Her meaning seems unmistakable, yet Valence, after a few moments of bewildered rapture, attempts to explain her words on other grounds than the real. His heart is too strong, however, and he ends with

"I cannot so disclaim Heaven's gift, nor call it other than it is! She loves me!"

He reminds himself, however, that for Cleves' sake he

must prove her Duchess if he can, even though to do this is to keep her high above him:

"Cleves, help me! Teach me, every haggard face
To sorrow and endure! I will do right
Whatever be the issue. Help me, Cleves!"
Evening

Two important scenes are contained in the fourth act. One is that in which Berthold comes, in advance of the appointed hour, to Valence, to suspend his claims to the duchy and present instead a request for Colombe's hand in marriage. He speaks of love only when Valence brings it to his attention as an item commonly included in transactions of this character, and he by no means belittles the advantages to be gained by an alliance with him.

Valence's hopes, raised by the discovery he has just made that Berthold's claims are valid and the Duchess no more a Duchess, are thus dashed to the ground and it becomes his heart-breaking duty to acquaint Colombe with the Prince's offer. The scene in which he does this calls the dramatist's most delicate art into p'ay.

In this most marvellous love-scene, it is the attitude of Colombe which is so wonderfully portrayed. A lesser master not only would have made her sure of her own heart, but would have despoiled her of the feminine frailties, tricks and subterfuges that make the scene a triumph of subtlety. Browning, on the contrary, shows Colombe as she was, a woman capaple of great things, but only half awake to them. She is dazzled by Berthold's offer, besides being tempted by it, in the most natural and feminine way in the world, as a dignified solution of her personal problem.

Girl-like, she assumes that Berthold's sole motive in wedding her will be love. "That he should love me." she murmurs, in wonder. This taxes Valence's endurance beyond the limit. He enlightens her tells her that love does not enter into the matter, yet grudgingly admits that Berthold has offered "munificently much." A brief war of words between them on this point ends with this parting shot from him :

"Where reason, even, finds no flaw,
Unerringly a lover's instinct may."

"You reason, then, and doubt?" asks Colombe,-
"I love and know."

This is the signal for the bringing into play of Colombe's whole feminine armory. Hitherto her feeling for Valence has been but the play of a girl's ardent admiration about a possible hero. Now jealousy, a fiery ally, leaps to the aid of love. Whom does he love?- she asks herself, and proceeds to find out.

The remainder of the scene is too packed with emotional action to make fragmentary quotation intelligible. Colombe, imperious, pleading, tremulous, determined, by turns, rests not till she has Valence on his knees, her helpless worshipper. That we can no more point out than could she, the precise point at which she changes doubt for certainty and becomes the conscious soverign instead of the suppliant, is a proof of the dramatist's art.

And when she has proved him to the utmost, woman still in the byplay as in the main current of her emotions, she retreats into her fortress, chills him with her privilege of rank, and brazenly laments, after his crushed departure, that "nothing's what it calls itself!"- that even this man's devotion, which she pretends to have taken for loyalty to the Duchess, was "mere love" for the woman. She even, having had the heart of a hero laid bare before her, balances it, in full view of the audience, with the potential crown Berthold has to offer.

Night

The fifth act is chiefly remarkable for the rounding out of the two delineations of Berthold and Colombe. Guibert is also completed with that single, happy little touch "Tis my birthday, too,"-which shows that the unstable has at last cast anchor.

Berthold, complex and subtle, grows in distinctness. throughout the play. He has the deliberate cynicism of the ambitious man, and when it appears that Colombe is about to accept his proposal, he murmurs to Melchior, "The Empire has its old success, my friend." Melchior, has not

only read his books" to better purpose" but has also watched
Colombe throughout the scene with a clearer eye. It is he
who is permitted to develop this last situation; to bring out
by hint and suggestion, the latent forces; and to throw into
high relief the nobility of Valence's nature.
Berthold, though blinded by custom, is yet capable of
His last address to the lovers is as
seeing and believing.
intelligent and sympathetic as it is magnanimous. You feel
his sincerity in it:

"I could not imitate- I hardly envy -
I do admire you. All is for the best.
Too costly a flower were this, I see it now,
To pluck and set upon my barren helm
To wither any garish plume will do.
I'll not insult you to refuse your duchy.-
You can so well afford to yield it to me,
And I were left, without it, sadly lorn."

As for Colombe, we found her a thoughtless girl, we leave her a woman, with a new-born soul. Every step of her development is as carefully outlined before us as the evolutionists' study of stardust and its progress. With a native inheritance of noble qualities such as truth, honor and courage, she might yet have gone on to the end of life playing at existence but for the interposition of those two developing elements,-adversity and love. That they made their entrance so appositely is the business of the dramatist, but that they wrought their perfect work is the concern of the poet-teacher-and of his readers.

The growing fineness of Colombe's divinations, whetting themselves against the crowded events of the day, is an exquisite conception of spiritual growth. At each stage of her rapidly condensed experience she grows deeper, truer, more womanly. Nor would we spare one touch of the imperious, even cruel, coquetry of the love scene because without it we should miss something of the essential femininity of the woman.

To name Colombe as the most lovable of all Browning's women would be perhaps to claim too much. But it is not going too far to say that of all Browning's lovers, Valence is the most to be envied. It is this aspect of the whole case that confronts us to the last. Valence and Colombe turn their backs on courts, the world well lost. their friends, God's earth."

They go "to

T

A Lesson of Love

A TEACHER.

HE bright beautiful sun was streaming in at the window. Regardless of the sunshine outside, it had been a hard day for both pupils and teacher. For the teacher, it had been an especially wearisome day, as that morning she had received discouraging news in a letter, and then had come into the school-room with a severe headache. Hard for the children, as it always is when a teacher is not cheery and bright.

So the long day had dragged on hour after hour, and now the time had come for closing and still three little boys were to remain. It seemed almost unbearable and still discipline must be enforced. Harry remained because he had not