not insensible to its influence.

The tones of sym

pathy may touch a chord that will vibrate more sweetly because of its very strangeness.

If the people duly appreciated this great evil, and were in earnest to suppress it, not a truant could walk the streets, when known, without meeting such faithful warning, or kind persuasion, as to redeem him, if not among the rare incorrigibles. If the pulpit and the press would speak out in earnest tones, and the people in every city, town, and district, respond, this crying evil would pass away. Let each search for the truants in his own street, village, or district, to restrain by warning and counsel, or to encourage by clothing and money when in poverty. Let the school itself, with its music and gymnastics, its occasional pleasantries inside, and its freer plays at recess, be made so attractive, that attendance may be esteemed a privilege and a pleasure, and not an imprisonment, with its monotonous routine and drudgery. All genuine improvements, both in instruction and government, tend directly to lessen truancy.

But while kindness and moral suasion should be the main reliance in all efforts to prevent absenteeism or reclaim truants, it is of essential service to have some authority, some law, with its officers and sanctions to fall back upon. In those cases where parents without good reason deprive their children

of the advantage of education, or where they have no control, as in the case of an intemperate father or a widowed mother, legal coërcion may properly be employed. Better let a hyena rove at large, because his keeper cannot control him, than this class of hardened truants, who will go on from bad to worse; making others also thieves, robbers, and incendiaries.

The City of Springfield is now carrying out successful measures for the prevention of absenteeism and the reformation of truants, to which I may be permitted to refer, as the one with which I happen to be most familiar. It is this: 1. The teachers are specially and earnestly instructed to use all the means in their power to prevent truancy and to secure constant attendance, and to visit promptly the parents of every delinquent. 2. For such as they cannot control, an "ungraded school" is provided, to which all delinquents are first sent. Whenever any of these irregular pupils become uniformly constant in attendance, they are permitted to return to the graded school where they properly belong; but when their irregularity degenerates into truancy, as a third step they are sentenced by the police court to the reform school, a place of confinement at the city almshouse. They are here confined by themselves, entirely separate from the other inmates of the poor-house.

The aim of this school is reformation rather than

punishment. Its regulations are rather remedial than penal; its restraints are needed by those refractory natures. Parents unable to govern their children at home, have felt, painful as is the necessity, that it is better for them to be where they must learn subordination, and practise obedience under a system of discipline strict, though not severe. This reform school, with its earnest teacher, seems to me accomplishing a good work for its inmates; and besides this, according to the testimony of the teachers and the superintendent, it has exerted a most salutary influence outside in diminishing absenteeism and truancy, and greatly increasing the average attendance at school, which during the last year has risen from sixty-seven to eighty-seven per cent., showing the remarkable increase of twenty per cent.

Other causes, especially the marked improvement of the schools and school-houses, since the appointment of the efficient superintendent, have contributed to this striking result; but the most prominent agency is the new system for the reformation of truants. If now manual labor could be introduced into this school, alternating work and play, the Spring-. field plan would be well nigh perfect. The cost to the city, compared with the gain, is trifling. A kindred plan has been adopted in some other cities, and might well be employed in all, at moderate expense. The practice of sending truants to the common jail ought everywhere to be abandoned. It is not a

place of reformation. Its bad companionship makes it a school of evil.

What, then, shall be done with truants? is still the question I often hear. The State Reform Schools are full. The School Ships are crowded. These misguided boys should be separated from older and more open offenders, and placed where manual and mental labor can be combined. The cities can easily make such provisions for the instruction and employment as well as restraint and discipline of truants. But the small towns separately cannot do this. Let them combine. I heartily indorse the recommendation of my friend, the Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, that the duty of making all needful provisions for the confinement and instruction of truants in each county be transferred to the County Commissioners. In most cases this could be done by a slight enlargement of some city or town establishment already existing.

Still, I say, important as is the law, and essential as is the reform school, useful as have been our truant officers, earnest individual efforts on the part of teachers and friends of the young, will effect far more than any and all laws can do; while the existence of wise laws, and the appointment of faithful truant officers, will add weight and authority to all personal persuasions.

LECTURE VIII.

THE PROPORTION IN WHICH KNOWLEDGE AND DISCIPLINE SHOULD BE MADE THE ENDS OF EDUCATION.

BY THOMAS HILL, LL.D.

THE proportion in which knowledge and discipline should be made ends in education, is one of those indefinite subjects upon which there may be an indefinite number of opinions, each equally just and true.

Some pupils require different instruction from others, owing to difference of disposition and ability; and some pupils are preparing for a different society and different state of life from others; some teachers also, are capable of imparting one kind of life, and stimulating to one kind of exertion, while others are fitted for a different labor.

The subject proposed for discussion may seem, then, at first sight, too indefinite for any profitable discussion at all. Yet, I think, we shall find, on