graduate who has a training worth while in the conduct of life is also well fitted to enter college for further training. In general, too, the high school must consider its individual students. A well-rounded training for one is a very lop-sided discipline for another, and the development of special interests must not be overlooked. For these reasons a considerable range of choice is necessary in a good high school. This does not, however, imply an elective system such as the colleges have found necessary. In an ideal high school system the election should be mainly in the hands of the teachers. But at the same time the wise teacher makes sure that the student maintains a continuous interest in something. The lack of such sustained interest is the main reason why most of the boys drop out of the high school to get where they will be doing something dealing with things, not words.

It is clear that even yet with all the advances or encroachments the sciences have made, the study of words still fills too large a part in our secondary schools. The traditional college education was a training in words. It is easier and cheaper to teach language than anything else. The average child learns words by rote, while other subjects demand a more complex method, and the tendency is to fill the child with words regardless of the dyspepsia and disgust the abnormal diet may produce.

In an out-of-door He knows that the

In my judgment, with the average student and especially the average young man, some study of natural science ought to go with every year in the school. The child is surrounded by a world of actualities, each producing a definite effect on his senses. world, he recognizes that external things are real. sun rises in the east, and he soon learns the various phases of woodcraft and fieldcraft-how to comport himself in the presence of realities. The constancy in these relations gives to him a kind of moral training, and the knowledge he obtains he wins at first hand. It is acquired in terms of his own experience and in such terms all real and helpful knowledge must always be stated.

In our cities we can not replace the training of the farm, the knowledge of the woods and hills, but we can continue to give in some degree, the essential part of it-contact with realities and extension of knowledge in terms of experience. This is through real contact with animals, plants, rocks, chemical compounds and physical instruments, and a well-conducted scientific laboratory has the same value as out-of-doors experience, with the great addition that it can be made systematic and therefore effective for power. The value of genuine nature study, study of science in out-of-door laboratories is of the very highest order. Not so the imitation nature-study, the study of sentimentalisms about nature, of nature words smothered in painted adjectives, now popular in some quarters. Of still less value are the nature books written as pot

boilers by men who would turn out dime novels or problem plays just as cheerfully if the literary current set in that direction. The student of realities in nature and the "nature-fakir” are not on speaking terms with each other.

Once the students cuts entirely loose from real objects, and spends his days among diacritical marks, irregular conjugations and distinctions without difference, his orientation is lost. He loses the distinction between what is inherently true and what is true by agreement among men. He does not go far enough to touch bottom again in the real science of philology. And the average American boy quits the high school in disgust because he can not interpret its work in terms of life he can not see how its work is related to the world of things as they are.

As to the relative value of the sciences, that is a minor question. Those sciences are best which give largest play for observation and judgment. Those sciences are best which can be taught best, with most accuracy and most enthusiasm. In general, it is better to teach one science well than two imperfectly, and the reason for teaching any science is its helpfulness to the mind, not the fact that there may be money in knowing it. But to have any value at all the science we teach must deal with realities, not book-science. "If you study nature in books, when you go out of doors you can not find her."

And this, too, is a reason why manual training of some sort ought to form some part of every well-balanced school course. Training of the hand is really training of the brain. This is a motor world we live in a world in which men do things. We of America are preeminently a motor people. We do things. What can I do with it is the first interest of every child. And to learn to do things with the hand is of greater value as mental training than the disentanglement of phrases, or the memorizing of lists of verbal irregularities. The development of manual training of some sort for all boys and girls will represent the greatest immediate forward step in secondary education. But the purpose of this training must be intellectual, not to teach a trade, and only secondarily to fit for the engineering courses of the universities.

As the third of the three most important duties of the high school, I would place the mastery of English. The student ought to learn how to write good English-clear, accurate and straightforward. He should read enough good English to know it when it is written. He should study poetry enough to know what it is about, and if he is to do any memorizing, there is nothing that enriches the mind so much as the memory of good verse. I do not know how good English can be taught. Most of the students who use it seem to have grown up in it rather than to have learned it in the schools. But it is the most

important tool of every man who possesses it. It is wanted in every profession in every walk of life. The high-school course of every man who acquires it must be judged successful and no pains should be spared to emhpasize its importance. How to give this power is another question. Probably the real teacher of English, like the poet-which indeed he must be is born, not made.

The rest of the high-school course has a minor claim on our attention. Algebra and geometry have a high practical as well as definite intellectual value. These constitute, moreover, the only door to the profession of engineering. History may be learned in the high school, but its significance is mostly seen later. The practical demands of intelligent citizenship seem to call for modern history, elementary economics and civil government as high-school subjects. Besides, those who do not go to college will read no history they do not begin in the high school. The languages, ancient and modern, have a high value to those who can master and use them, for every new language opens to a man a new world and the influences of a new civilization. Most high-school students get very little from any of them, and the one intellectually most important-the Greek-is practically excluded from our secondary schools as being of least practical value. Without in the least underrating the value of Latin to "roman-minded men," who make a manly use of it, there is no doubt that the average American high school boy gets less out of Latin than out of any other subject in the curriculum. We may regret this, but we must face it as a fact. For the rest, drawing ought to have a place in the course if only for its value as an aid to observation. "A pencil is one of the best of eyes," as Agassiz used to say, and drawing is one of the means of expressing observation in terms of action.

In brief, the American high school ought to limit the range of its activities so as not to do too much at the expense of thoroughness. It ought to broaden its range so as to give to each boy or girl what is individually best, and it ought to keep in touch throughout with realities, with the power of doing things, and it ought to cherish as its choicest art, the cultivation of the power of clear, accurate and original expression in the greatest of all languages, which is our own.

TH

COUNT RUMFORD

BY JOHN CANDEE DEAN

INDIANAPOLIS, IND.

HE annals of history do not record many geniuses who, with so little effort, and in so short a period of time, attained the high position occupied by Benjamin Thompson. In England he became colonel in the army, under secretary of state, knight, fellow of the Royal Society, founder of the Royal Institution. In Bavaria, minister of war, major general, count of the Holy Roman Empire; counselor of state, chief of state. In France, member of the Institute of France and lecturer at the Academy of Sciences.

Thompson was born on a farm at Woburn, Mass., in 1753. His father died when he was an infant, and his mother, having but a narrow income, took him from school before he was thirteen years of age and apprenticed him to a merchant at Salem. His thirst for knowledge was even then insatiable, and he found it impossible to apply himself to anything except his favorite subjects of study.

His scientific work began at Salem, where his zeal for experimenting nearly ended his career. Having undertaken to prepare some fireworks for celebrating the repeal of the Stamp Act, the ingredients of a mortar exploded, burning his face so seriously that it was thought that his eyesight had been destroyed, but in a few weeks he recovered.

The impending American revolution put a stop to his master's trade, and he thereupon left Salem for Boston where he continued his studies, to which he added medicine, anatomy, French fencing and other accomplishments, meantime supplying himself with necessary funds by teaching school in adjoining New England towns. He allowed himself but seven hours' sleep, the remainder of the twentyfour hours being devoted systematically to reading, study, experiments and exercise.

The American revolutionary period was prolific of great men. Washington, Franklin, Jefferson and Thompson were produced from a population of less than three millions. It is doubtful whether the vast population of the western hemisphere has since produced one man to rank with these four gifted men.

When nineteen years of age Thompson moved to Concord, New Hampshire, where he continued his profession of teaching. Here he met Mrs. Rolf, a young, attractive and wealthy widow to whom he was soon married. Among the prominent people whose esteem he won

was Governor Wentworth, who made him Major of the Second Provincial Regiment. This appointment aroused hostile criticism from Thompson's fellow officers, who could not repress their indignation on learning that a young man, not yet of age and without military knowledge, had been raised above veterans whose long service justly entitled them to advancement. It will be shown presently that this incident prevented Thompson from engaging in the revolutionary struggle and led him to foreign lands where his genius had a wider field for

development, and where he soon became closely associated with the most learned and accomplished men of Europe.

In 1774 he left Concord with his wife and infant child and returned to Woburn. Charges were circulated that he was unfriendly to the cause of American liberty, and soon after the battle of Lexington he was arrested, and confined at Woburn. His case was heard by the Town Committee of Correspondence, by whom he was released. The principal evidence presented against him was that he had employed on his farm two British deserters, who, wishing to return to the British army, applied to their employer to secure immunity from punishment. Thompson complied by giving them a letter to General Gage, in which he asked that his efforts in their behalf be not disclosed.

VOL. LXXIII.-3.