Dollars and Cents

"I do just as good work as I am paid for. Do you
suppose I'm going to do any more for thirty-five
dollars a month? No, indeed!"

The teacher who begins to adapt the quality of her
teaching to her salary, whether thirty-five or seventy-
five dollars a month, is lost. When it comes to the
actual compensation for the worth of a good teacher,
seventy-five dollars isn't much nearer the mark than
thirty-five. The work of a skilful, generous, conscien-
tious teacher is priceless. It never has been paid for
and the twentieth century will find it still unrewarded
unless the world moves faster in the appreciation of
soul work than it yet has done.

There is only one way for a scantily paid teacher to
keep her head clear and her eye steadfast, to think
of the children. That incentive never wavers. Salary
or no salary, appreciation or no appreciation, ebb tide
or high tide, their needs remain the same. And that
teacher who can even think of dollars and cents in
connection with the quality or degree of effort she
puts forth for the children, who can
gauge that
effort by the amount of her salary, is worth less than
she already receives.

Guiding and directing the development of a human.
soul admit of no half-interest. It must have the
whole or be a dismal failure. The artist who refuses
to give his subtlest coloring to a picture because it is
already poorly sold, or who would not get up in the
night to add the finishing touch that grew from dreamy
fancies, because that picture is to bring him but five
dollars, will never paint anything but five dollar pic-
ture, till he ceases to grudge his best self. An artist
soul must do artistic work in the face of starvation.

So there seems but one way for the poorly-paid,
poorly-appreciated teacher to keep her courage bright
and soul steadfast; to do the work before her
thoroughly and as artistically as she can, for its own
sake. Is not this what Browning meant?

"Strive, and hold cheap the strain;
Learn, nor account the pang;

Dare, never grudge the throe!"

Children's Love of Self and Other Interests

Prof. M. V. O'SHEA University of Wisconsin Madison NSTRUCTION must be based first, last, and all the time upon the capabilities and interests of the one to be instructed. One of the earliest and most important duties of the instructor, then, is to discover, if possible, what are the best instincts or interests (for these two words refer in the main to the same things) of pupils at various stages of their development, as well as to ascertain something of their capacities for the mental foods he proposes to offer. I desire now to discuss briefly some instincts which one should take account of in all his teaching, as well in respect of the materials of instruction

further with young children in discussing abstract justice or unselfishness, because there is not the basis of great concern about the welfare of others in general upon which to build. There will come a time when the pupil may be safely led to adjust himself in an unselfish way to all the life about him, and there is no need of striving to unduly hasten this with children. Nature plainly advises us to allow the child to develop for a period as an individual; let him have his day planning for himself and endeavoring to realize his own ambitions when they do not directly antagonize with those of others, and when he has become strong as an individual, he may be made all the stronger as an unselfish member of society.

"Children Should be Seen, not Heard" (!)

Parents and teachers alike feel that the child ought from his tenderest years to surrender his individuality to that of his superiors. Because a child is a wee bit of a thing with

arrangement of class-room exercises.

To begin with, a young child is always most vitally interested in everything that has to do with the promotion of his own welfare and that of those who are near and dear to him. We have here an instinct implanted deeper by nature in the child's being than perhaps any other. The round of life is appropriately divided into several cycles, each with its predominant interests and purposes. The first cycle, lasting to puberty (or to twelve or thirteen years of age), is the time of preparation for life, when the child is an individual thinking most largely of his own well-being, and unconsciously devoting most of his energies to the accomplishment of his own immediate purposes. At adolescence, the second birth, this supreme interest in self gives way to a broader interest in others, and the child is then ready to live a community life, to become an integral part of a larger whole. During adolescence and after, the individual may be led with comparative ease and graciousness to sacrifice his own ambitions and pleasures when they conflict with the rightful pleasures and ambitions of his own fellows; but before this period it is more difficult for him to make sacrifices, and he cannot clearly comprehend why he should. He does not readily discern why others should have rights which prevent him from realizing his own desires.

Unselfish Conduct not the Same as Speculating About Unselfishness

Most people would say that whether a child be naturally selfish or not up to the period of adolescence, he should nevertheless be trained, or, more emphatic still, should be compelled to be unselfish. The underlying philosophy of the kindergarten declares that the young child may and should be guided to think more of others than of himself, or at least to regard their welfare as highly as his own; and within recent years considerable of our teaching in the primary grades has aimed directly and explicitly to cultivate the various virtues of unselfishness. While doubtless much of this is to be commended, in so far as it relates to the scrupulous observance by each pupil of certain modes of conduct which are necessary for the welfare of the entire school, still there is danger of carrying it too far when the teacher seeks constantly to lead the child as a matter of education or discipline to make unselfish judgments upon questions which are not directly of concern to him in his daily, concrete relations to his companions. There are those who apparently see no good in the inborn and therefore deep-seated instinct of childhood to keep its own wellbeing uppermost in mind and heart at first; and I believe. that much time is wasted and injury done ofttimes by such persons in trying to coerce a wee child into regret for many of the apparently selfish acts and thoughts of his daily life, and by endeavoring to instruct him in altruism as an abstract virtue.

I must not be understood to mean that I think the child should be allowed to be wholly selfish in all his conduct. I would on the contrary insist that he acquire habits of respecting the plain rights of others with whom he comes in daily contact; but I would not think it wise to go much

should be permitted to assert against those of the adult who is so much bigger and who must take life so seriously. Consequently we see efforts about us all the time on the part of parents and teachers to make children ever obedient to authority for its own sake, no matter how much that may antagonize their native impulses. But nature again indicates that the parent and the teacher exist for the well-being of the child to devote themselves to his needs; and the adult is not to have the only say as to what those needs ought to be, but he is to accept them as he finds them in the interests of the child. My thought is, then, that up to the period of adolescence the child must be indulged at least in a measure in his selfish propensities. The word selfish is not a happy one in this connection, however, for it suggests to the mind something worthy of blame; but the interest of the child in his own well-being is certainly not thus censurable. He comes by it as the most secure and sacred gift of nature, and no parent or teacher can suppress or ignore it without doing violence to the child's normal, all-round development.

In concrete instances that arise in the child's intercourse with his playmates, he must indeed be guided to see that he cannot realize his own desires if by so doing he brings pain or sorrow or affliction of any kind upon others. He must form habits of thus respecting the rights of those with whom he comes into immediate contact; but it is to be questioned if the various lessons and discourses upon unselfishness which find a place in many school-rooms are suited to the age of the pupils to whom they are frequently given. There is danger in the teacher's trying to enforce her idea of unselfishness upon the child who is not at all ready for it; for over-hasty growth leads only to arrested development, and finally to degeneration.

Children's Interests Center about Things of the Present

I wish to refer in this connection to the immediateness of children's interests to their wanting what they want right here and now. It would be well for us all to consider in our dealings with children that their hopes and desires always center round some object or end immediately attainable. It is a psychological impossibility for a child in the primary school to set for himself an end in the distant future which shall determine his present conduct. The child's foresight is exceeding short; his experiences have not yet given him the idea of a future in which what is harvested will depend upon what is sown to-day. So that when teachers and parents ask a boy of five or six whether he wishes to become a good man, and if so, if he should not deport himself differently now, they can expect very little permanent reformation in his behavior. A thing so uncertain and hazy can have no restraining influence in the face of present interests; and besides, a desire to be a good man must be a very shallow emotion in the child's heart.

We forget that a child has childish conceptions and wishes; and while a man might desire to be a noble man, a babe cannot wish it. It is merely to please the teacher that the child will declare his interest in such a thing. We must rather reach him through his present enthusiasms, through

those that are vivid in his life and that appeal to him immediately. Only injury can be done by constantly referring to those larger and more comprehensive interests, such as being a good man or woman, which the child may begin to think seriously about after he passes adolescence, but not before. It is a case again of the adult dealing with the child from the adult standpoint; time and energy must always be uselessly spent, if nothing worse is done by pursuing any such course.

(Concluded in February No.)

A Glance at the at the Drama V

W

ANNIE W. SANBORN

HERE to begin, in reading from the great dramatists, is not a stupendous question there are SO few of them. The proportion of readable plays to the bulk of literature is astonishingly small. When we begin to recall them, those of Shakespeare rise conspicuously if not exclusively to the mind. Then we name Racine and Moliere, Goldsmith and Sheridan, and, thinking farther back, Æschylus and Sophocles and Euripides. And we are further reminded, returning to our own period, that Browning and Tennyson wrote readable, if unactable plays and that Ibsen is still writing them. But we come back, at the end, to Shakespeare, who represents real drama to us as no one else ever can or ever will.

It seems strange, does it not, that although so few poets have made themselves immortal in drama, the greatest of them all should have found that medium so fitted to his wants? Yet there is reason for the fact that so few plays have survived, as literature, to our day. The dramatist, if he writes for a living, has to make his appeal through the fads and fashions of the day. Men and women who write comedy and melodrama must strike a current and popular note. Else they must have enough of the fire of the gods to touch off their audiences and make them there own by sheer force of dramatic power.

But

This is genius, and when a man has genius, he may write Shakesas well as he likes and people will listen to him. peare did this gave his best to the temporary whim. He is a most unself-conscious poet,— he had no idea of you and me as possible audiences. He merely lived and wrote for the people of his own time, three hundred years ago. his contemporaries did the same thing, and how they have dwindled! Shakespeare is of our time as well as of his own. But Marlowe we know as he of the "mighty line; Beanmont and Fletcher and "rare Ben Johnson are little more than names to us. In fact, unless the playwright have the mysterious gifts of the gods, he must live with his public and die with it. He must produce an "Old Homestead" or a "Hazel Kirke" that will run phenomenally and draw crowds night after night; even then his work is as dead as the dodo when the "500 consecutive nights" are over and a new favorite claims the crowd that demand to be amused. Yet, through all the ages, the principles on which dramatic success rests, have been the same,- common to Æschylus and Shakespeare and Sheridan. The successful playwright of any age, whether he be a Shakespeare or a Boucicault, aims to challenge the close attention of his auditor from the first. Whether he goes farther and fires the imagination, inspires the will and thrills the heart, depends on what stuff he is made of. The majority choose to startle and amuse, regardless of the final effect on their hearers. Here and there we find the man of great artistic purposes like Wagner, who was a musical dramatist, or Browning, whose plays are full of life and thought and action.

are wide apart in excellence, it is true of both that their day is past when the audience and the actors who called them into being are gone.

The Remnants Left Us

A few plays have come down to the modern stage from the past, like Sheridan's "The Rivals" and Goldsmith's "She Stoops to Conquer," and now and then some manager with a fine taste and a worthy company revives some still obscurer old English comedy. But for the most part we depend on the modern for our dramatic supply, and even Shakespeare is played less often than some of us could. wish.

So it comes that what we have of real dramatic literature is of slender volume, if great in kind. We must make the most of it, for it gives us something that we get nowhere else. In the old days the drama played an important part in public life and education, and we get at the heart of the people, in a measure, through it. Nowadays, it expresses rather than moulds life. The best dramas that have been written in the last ten years have our nineteenth century stamp upon them, so that instead of teaching us, they fit themselves to our mood. But the dramas that have survived the fashions and the actors for which they were produced and even the governments that witnessed their production, have something instructive for us as well.

The Greek drama is such a survival, and it is only as literature that you and I are likely to know it- unless we are fortunate enough to witness one of the occasional productions of a Greek play by college students. Even then we shall not have the wonderful setting-the great unroofed circular theatre, with its carven stone seats, the central stage, the blue sky above, the fresh wind and the sound of the sea. Nothing in a comparison of Greek with modern life presents a more striking contrast than this of the amphitheatre, as we mentally place it beside our heated, scented, garish modern pleasure-house. It is as sharp and as typical in its difference as the Greek girl, with her sandalled feet and unbound robes is different from the buttoned and corsetted modern woman.

The Classical Drama

So, for knowledge of the drama as literature, we are driven to the books themselves, and some brief excursions in this direction are worth while, even if we do not take them very seriously. Do you read Greek? Then I say nothing to you of Eschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, for you are wiser concerning them than I. But if they are still but names to you, try following through them the tragic story of Iphigenia, the Greek girl vowed by her father to a premature death. Each of the three used the story as the subject of a play. In the "Electra" of Sophocles, the "Iphigenia in Tauris” and “ "Iphigenia in Tauris" and "Iphigenia in Aulis" of Euripides, and the "Agamemnon" of Eschylus, you have the theme treated in varying and characteristic fashion, while in Racine's " Iphigenie en Aulide" we find still another version of the story. Of Eschylus and Sophocles the Plumptre translations are the best, while Lawton's version of Euripides will be found satisfactory.

A rhymed version of Racine has been made by R. E. Boswell, but if you have a moderate knowledge of French, you will find " Iphigenie en Aulide " far more interesting in the original. Although Racine, as I have said, does not follow his classical model very closely in motive, he has the distinction of being the most successful of the brilliant school of French dramatists who attempted a revival of the Greek drama.

For one Wagner and one Browning, h wever, in the universe, we have a horde of playwrights if all gradations from Sardou, with his "Cleopatra" and "Theodora " down to Hoyt and his "Parlor Match." Now it will never occur to the reader of this or any future period, to buy a copy of "Theodora" or "A Parlor Match" for home reading. manufacThey were made for immediate consumption

volume of "Classical Studies" dedicated to Henry Drisler and bearing his name.

Shakespeare and the Elizabethans

As we approach Shakespeare it is well to take a glance at the condition and development of the stage previous to his day. The rise of the drama through the "mysteries" and miracle plays although familiar in a general way, will bear review with reference to a closer study of the Elizabethan drama. For this purpose Mr. Symonds' "Shakespeare's Predecessors" is admirably adapted. Read, if you can, Fletcher's "Faithful Shepardess," Ben Johnson's "Every Man in his Humor," and Marlowe's "Dr. Faustus." Then turn to Shakespeare.

A very sensible if not very celebrated authority, has advised his readers to take Shakespeare, at first, as one vast whole, reading the plays in as rapid succession as possible, not pausing for notes. This has the advantage of producing a brilliant, kaleidoscopic impression of Shakespeare's genius and is to be followed, of course, by a slow and studious rereading, with notes and commentators. The plan would be an admirable one for people of leisure but it has the drawback for busy people that even a hasty reading of all the plays would take nearly all one's spare time for many months. For us, who have already some familiarity with the plays in a general way, the deliberate selection of one play and steady devotion to it until we know it through and through and in and out, seems to me the best way of getting well and truly acquainted with Shakespeare.

I have a vivid recollection of attacking Hamlet in this fashion, when a very young girl. The edition I read from had no notes nor had I ever read a critical essay on the play at that time, but I know more about Hamlet now than about almost any other of the plays, simply because I lived in it for weeks at that time. Once get the movement and the personnel of a play so fixed in your mind, and every word you hear spoken or see written concerning it forever after, falls into place.

It is not a bad plan to take Shakespeare as we considered taking the great epics - read one or two of the plays every year say one comedy and one tragedy. You may demur that, even at that, it will take you twenty years to read them all. Well, and what then. You are in no danger of outgrowing Shakespeare and he will never go out of fashion. Life is long, Shakespeare is perennial; and in any case, you would better know "As You Like It" by heart, than to know the whole thirty-odd by rote.

Shakespeare's Women

Teeming as the Shakespearian dramas are with all kinds and varieties of human life, to you and me his women present themselves with the most overwhelming fascination

a coterie that can never grow wearisome. From "sweet Mistress Anne, who has brown hair and speaks small like a women," to the audacious Beatrice and the untamed Katherine, from Juliet, young love incarnate, to Cleopatra, passion at its zenith,- they are all wonderful and of infinite variety. How they stoop before us as we summon themPortia, Hermione, Desdemona, Viola, Imogene, Ophelia, and the peerless Rosalind. Beautiful, noble, witty, stimulating, they are the most thoroughly alive of any women in all literature.

Libraries have been written about Shakespeare and many volumes about his women. To hint at a choice among them is all but impossible. The greatest critics all have paid their homage at that shrine, and you may safely choose those among them who seem to appeal most closely to your own sympathies and judgment. But first of all, know the men and women about whom Shakespeare wrote. It will be time enough afterward to know those who wrote about him.

N the ideal school where the teacher has plenty of time and blackboard room, the children come to school some morning to find drawn upon the board a large calendar, with a pretty border of golden-rod around it. They do not know what it is for, but the teacher tells them that the long word at the top is "September," is the name of the month, and that each little square stands for one day in the month, as they can see by looking closely, for in the corner of each is a little number.

the

Then they are asked to notice at recess the way the wind is blowing, and to look for the moon that night so that they can make a picture of it to-morrow, for this calendar is to become a faithful weather record of the month, and each day several things are to be marked upon it, kind of day, the direction of the wind, and the phase of the moon. In doing this, it is not necessary to use technical subjects, but rather those that the children can understand. A sunny day may have a little yellow sun with long rays, shining in the corner of that square, in another corner is the white crescent moon, as seen on the night before, and there is room in the middle for the arrow which tells us that the wind is blowing north. Or if the day is gray and cloudy, the space may be filled with a soft gray tone, over which the arrow and moon are drawn, while snowy and rainy days may be represented by covering the space with little white dots for snow-flakes, or long, light, slanting lines for rain.

Such a calendar may be started at any time, but it is better to begin it sometime in September, when the children have been at school long enough to feel acquainted with their surroundings, and have begun to notice, through the prompting of their teacher, the happenings in the world of nature around them.

At first it is the teacher who does the marking,- always,

however, according to the report of the children, but later, when they have seen how it is done, they themselves may be allowed the delight of helping to "mark the calendar."

For the first month or two, at least, it is perhaps better to have spaces for the five week-days only, as the childish memories are apt to give out over Saturday and Sunday.

There are throughout the year many special days, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Washington's birthday, and the like, whose dates and meaning are to be explained some weeks before they occur. It is a good plan, at the beginning of each month, to talk over all such days occurring in that month, and when the date is given, to let the children find it on the calendar and mark the space with a cross. This fixes the date more firmly in their minds, and the children delight in "counting up" the days to each joyful occasion, especially if instead of the cross, the teacher sketches in simple outline some little reminder, a turkey, perhaps, for the last Thursday in November, for Christmas, a star, or little green Christmas tree, New Year's bells for the first of January, flags for Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays, a white envelope with a red seal for St. Valentine's day, and similar ones for the others. These are for the future, so that the children may watch their approach ("three weeks to Christmas,-one week,-to-morrow"), but there are also other special days, whose dates are not fixed on any calendar,-the day when the first spring flower was seen, the first home-coming bird, the day of the rainbow, and these too should be noted in some simple way upon this convenient record.

Then at the end of the month, a few moments may be given to a backward look, for the children see pictured before them the month as a whole, and can grasp the idea of the proportionate number of sunny, cloudy, or rainy days, the direction of the prevailing wind (as shown by trees, weather-vanes, clouds, and most plainly of all, by the smoke from chimneys) will be described as "this way," with a waving of little arms, but as the points of the compass are taught, the teacher should insist upon the use of the names, "north," "south," etc., instead. It is better to have the calendar placed upon the north wall, as the actual east and west are then represented on the sides where they are conventionally given in maps, which will make it easier for the children to connect the pictorial symbol with the facts.

At first the picture of the moon should be drawn only when the preceding night has been clear enough for the children to see it, but as they gradually come to see that its changes take place under regular laws, they. can judge whether, behind the clouds, it is just a "little smaller," or a little larger than the night before. And later, when they have also been led to notice which direction its horns are always pointing while waning or growing, they can be taught the pretty couplets :

"O Lady Moon, thy horns point toward the east:
Shine! Be increased!

O Lady Moon, thy horns point toward the west;
Wane! Be at rest!"

and if the teacher is clever with her pencil, she can sketch upon the board (and, by the way, it should be the south board this time, because for us in North America, the moon never gets into the northern part of the sky) the pretty illustrations which accompany these words in St. Nicholas for December, 1884.

Then later, in the upper grades, when the time comes for the lesson upon the scientific explanation of the phases of the moon, they will understand the subject more readily from having already observed its apparent changes in the sky, as all upper grade pupils have by no means done. The marking of the calendar fits in naturally and delightfully with the morning song and the morning talk, or with what in some schools is still called the language lesson. Through the fall, when we are studying, or should be, such things as the fall fruits, leaves, seeds, insects and squirrels, we should never forget, especially with the little children, to approach such subjects from the living side, and let the first thought be of these objects in their natural surroundings.

The calendar offers a natural and easy way of bringing this to pass. After marking the rain, for example, what more natural than to ask, "What do you think the squirrels are doing this rainy day?" and so on to the talk about their ways of living, or it may be the crickets, or the other little friends who hide under the stones and weeds, while before, or after, wherever it seems to belong, comes the little rain-song. In the same way we can talk about what a good time this south wind must be having, playing with the leaves and seeds, and on the bright days, when we can sing "Good morning, merry sunshine," wonder "what the merry sunshine' is doing to the apples."

One of the principal benefits of a daily calendar is the regularity with which this attitude is maintained, and with which the children are led to observe the varying phenomena of nature. It takes but a few minutes every day, but it comes every day, and at the end of the year, the children have acquired not only a habit of observation, and of deducing a few natural laws from the observed facts, but they also have a great deal of actual information which later will be applied to geography and natural philosophy, which has, in fact, been both of these all along, without their knowing it.

And besides, when the children have been educated into looking at the world with eyes which observe as well as look, they also gradually come to perceive the beauty of it all; and this is one of the most precious gifts which any fairy godmother can bestow upon a child,-the awakening of the artist side of his soul, and the giving him the power to see and enjoy the beauty of nature's picture gallery.

"It seems as if the day was not wholly profane in which we have given heed to some natural object. The fall of snowflakes in a still air, preserving to each crystal its perfect form; the blowing of sleet over a wide