to it what warmth and moisture are to the seed. He must take the child figuratively, if not literally, by the hand and teach him how to climb the hill of knowledge. He must, by his own personal force and presence, create those conditions which will be favorable to the child's intellectual growth. Otherwise knowledge will be acquired, but not assimilated, and the thought which should spring in the mind of the child to confident and vigorous expression will be lost in dry technicalities and misplaced words. Nothing but soul will quicken soul. The best method will not do it; the best system will not. An eminent writer says: "Truth that is merely received and committed to memory sticks to a man's organization like an artificial limb or a false tooth; but knowledge gained by one's own thinking resembles the natural limb; it alone belongs to us fully."

But this reliance upon the system, instead of one's self, results not only in memoriter methods in teaching, but also in a melancholy lack of back-bone and good judgment in other respects. A teacher becomes the slave of method and, instead of infusing into it the vitality and heart which it requires, proves to be himself the dryest and most unfeeling thing connected with it. Everybody else sees that pupils are not all constituted alike, but no matter how different in temperament or natural ability they may be, he subjects all to precisely the same inflexible process. Mrs. Squeers did not more impartially administer her dose of brimstone and treacle to every poor urchin in Dotheboys' Hall than does such a teacher grind each pupil who is thrown into the machine which he is appointed to revolve. Is a child timid and sensitive, he is put in and ground. Is he too ambitious and precocious, he is subjected to precisely the same process as his two fisted classmate who never learned a lesson. And when a child is at length deemed inferior, his teacher gladly takes him out and throws him into the hopper of the mill next below. Now, this teacher may be faithful and diligent, and may even be deemed successful, but he does not bring a warm-hearted personality to bear upon his class; he fails to discover that children's minds cannot, like pins and needles, all be sharpened by applying them to the same wheel; and he does not study each member in order to adapt instruction to differences in aptitude and mental growth. makes no effort to find redeeming traits in dull and mischievous scholars, and he devises no ingenious and well-laid plans to counteract unfavorable home influences and native tendencies.

While we would not, then, unduly magnify this element in education, nor sacrifice to it systematic instruction and orderly progress,

we believe that it should be the steadfast aim of the teacher to establish such relations with his pupils that they shall all feel the stimulus of his personal influence. He should show such a regard for them individually, and so encourage and arouse them by his instruction that they will perform their school work with greater ease and pleasure because of the interest their teacher has taken in it. In proportion as this ideal is reached, will the work of teaching and governing a class be performed without nervous irritation and fatigue. The teacher will find his duties not irksome, but pleasant. His daily routine will not be monotonous, and each kindly effort to assist his pupils will afford pleasure to himself as well as benefit to them.

How potent and valuable this element is when successfully exerted upon the child, we may see in the familiar fact that under the stimulus of such an influence he overcomes his natural dislike of restraint and attends school with willingness and even pleasure. Subjects of study usually considered dry and difficult become easy and attractive. A new interest attaches to everything.

Remember, too, with what surprising readiness the child learns the slang of the street and the play-ground. No teacher can inculcate useful knowledge half as fast as a bad associate will instill the wretched tales and false sentiments which corrupt the young. Many a boy is learning more bad grammar and other coarseness in the hour which he spends on the sidewalk than the best of teachers, and parents too, can refine away during all of the rest of the day. Indeed, it is said that mothers fear to send their little ones to Sundayschool, lest they may hear their innocent lips utter some vile word when they return. Now, why do children learn from one another with such facility? Whence this marvelous contagion of thought? Not as some have supposed, because of innate tendencies to evil, for they learn many innocent and useful things in the same way and just as readily, but rather because, in the unrestrained and happy intercourse of childhood, mind flows freely into mind. The thoughts and feelings of favorite companions are absorbed without effort and assimilated as certainly as is the food which nourishes the body. And where the intercourse is wholesome and ennobling, we may say with the poet laureate :

"What delights can equal those

That stir the spirit's inner deeps,

When one that loves but knows not, reaps

A truth from one that loves and knows?"

In some measure, at least, should the relation of teacher and pupil

resemble the intercourse of child with child, of friend with friend. Can the teacher thus see one sluggish mind quickened into activity; above all, can a whole class be thus gradually aroused and inspired, not only with enthusiasm for the teacher, but also for the knowledge to be imparted, the work will not be deemed drudgery nor the routine

monotonous.

If we were, then, to consider only the ease and comfort of the teacher, or if we were to regard only the pleasure of the pupil, we should find, in either case, that the surest way to success in teaching was through the avenue of personal influence and ascendancy. But when we remember that the great object is to develop and strengthen the faculties of the child, and that these will attain their most vigorous growth only under such conditions as we have described, we see the importance of every teacher possessing and exerting a powerful personality. Provided the teacher's character and impulses be good-and otherwise one' should not be permitted to teach-the more positive and powerful the ascendancy the better, for the more rapid and healthful will be the child's improvement.

We need to note here how slowly the power of will is developed, a faculty which more, perhaps, than any other needs to be educated. The displays of temper or obstinacy in the child arise more from the lack of will than from its possession, and are never to be confounded with that noblest of all human attributes, the power of rational choice and persistence. The child's fickle impulses hurry him on from one momentary pursuit to another, till they leave him stranded in the helpless misery of "nothing to do.". It is the teacher's office to gain control of these youthful impulses and utilize this wasted energy. Simply set the child a task and you will fail. He may strive with a conscientious fidelity that in him is really heroic, but in the average boy the work will soon become drudgery and he cannot do it. Create in him an interest in the subject, a relish for the work, and he will develop a power of accomplishment as surprising to others as it is delightful to himself. And the usefulness of the teacher will depend in no small degree upon her tact and skill in thus turning the child's spontaneous activities into those of deliberate and intelligent purpose. None but the teacher who possesses a vigorous personality and exerts it pleasantly upon the pupil can do this. It was no doubt in the remembrance of some such teacher that the noble writer, from whom we have already quoted, wrote: "It has long been my opinion that we are all educated, whether children, men or women, far more by personal influence than by books and the apparatus of the school

The privilege of sitting down before a great, clear-headed, large-hearted man, and breathing the atmosphere of his life, and being drawn up to him and lifted up by him, and learning his methods of thinking and living, is, in itself, an enormous educating power."

Nor have other masters of educational science been slow to note the same fact. "A good school," says President Eliot, "is a man or a woman." "I care very much for scholarship," wrote Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, "but if one or the other must give way, I prefer in a teacher activity of mind and an interest in his work, to high scholarship *** for, to be successful, he must enter heartily into the full improvement of those whom he is teaching." "Individuality is indispensable to a teacher," says President Gregory. Professor Tyndall says: "There are men who can so rouse and energize their pupils so call forth their strength and the pleasure of its exerciseas to make the hardest work agreeable. Without this power it is questionable whether the teacher can ever really enjoy his vocation; with it, I do not know a higher, nobler, more blessed calling than that of the man who converts the knowledge he imparts into a lever to lift, exercise and strengthen the growing minds committed to his charge."

We should also note at this point that conspicuous cases of failure in teaching usually arise from a lack of this ability to assert one's self in the school-room without arousing antagonism. One teacher governs a room full of pupils with no apparent effort, and the good order is as unconscious as it is complete. All act in harmony, and the idea of opposing the will of the teacher is never conceived. In another room confusion reigns supreme, and efforts by the teacher to secure order only render matters worse. The difference lies mainly in the personal qualities of the two teachers. Both work under the same system, but differ in the personal traits which they bring to its operation.

A School Conscience.

A Paper read before the State Teachers' Association by W. H. SMILEY, Master of Jarvis Hall, Denver.

Just half a century ago Bronson Alcott, one of New England's finest characters, opened his school in Boston. Nearly all his methods at that day were looked upon with distrust. He believed the

natural way of educating even the youngest children to be through their spiritual and imaginative faculties, rather than through stocking the memories with facts about the material world. A special, if not the most important feature of Alcott's system, was this: He had made out of the story of Christ's life, as given in the Gospels, a narrative suited to the ages of his children, illustrating the career of spirit on earth. A portion of this narrative, read each day, served as the starting point for conversation concerning all the qualities which go to the forming of manly character.

Many of the principles of teaching, which Mr. Alcott at that time championed, to-day form part and parcel of our public school system. We attempt to make such work attractive and interesting by the same means that he used. We insist to a greater extent than ever before on the necessity of daily composition work out of the subject matter of daily lessons, as he did then.

But of the daily awakening of the conscience to questions of right and duty, on which Alcott laid such stress, we have, I am afraid, too little, and that little subject to the disadvantage of being unrecognized by school authority. The time, I hope, is near when everybody will expect and demand that those virtues which affect the public welfare and the daily business of life shall be inculcated in no indefinite fashion, but as a recognized and important part of our school system.

Long ago Herbert Spencer, in the beginning of his Chapter on Moral Education, used these words: "Strangely enough, the most glaring defect in our programme of education is entirely overlooked. While much is being done in detailed improvement of our systems in respect to matter and manner, the most pressing desideratum has not yet been recognized as a desideratum."

In a recent letter to his priesthood in England, the Pope has written: "Hardly anything can be imagined more fitting than the union with literary instruction of sound teaching in faith and morals. In our schools in Rome the liberty of parents is respected, and it is in these schools (what is most needed, especially in the prevailing license of opinion and of action,) that good citizens are brought up for the State, for there is no better citizen than the man who has believed and practiced the Christian faith from his childhood." Thus we see the agnostic Spencer and the infallible arbiter of spiritual faith each in his own way voicing the need for better training in knowledge of those duties which will devolve upon parents, which will devolve upon citizens.