Term "corporation" as here used to include all joint-stock associations having powers or privileges not possessed by individuals or partnerships. xvi, 13.

RAILROADS AND CANALS

To be public highways, and companies to be common carriers. Corporations may build railroad within State and connect at State line with roads of other states, may intersect, connect with or cross any other railroad, and shall receive and transport each other's passengers, cars and freight without discrimination. xvii, I. Corporations organized in this state shall maintain an office therein where stock may be transferred, books inspected by stockholder or creditor, and record made of amount of capital, names and holdings of stock, transfers, names and residence of officers. xvii, 2.

All individuals and corporations to have equal right to transportation of persons and property, and no unreasonable discrimination to be made in charges or facilities; charges to any point not to exceed same to more distant point in same direction; commutation and excursion tickets may be issued at special rates.

Competing or parallel lines may not be consolidated or control each other's stock or franchises, nor shall officer of one act as officer of competing company; question which are competing or parallel lines to be decided by jury as other civil issues. xvii, 3, 4.

Common carrier may not engage in mining or manufacturing, or any other business, nor acquire or lease lands except as necessary to its business; but mining or manufacturing company may carry its product on its railroad or canal not more than fifty miles long. xvii, 5.

No officer or employee of railroad or canal company to be interested in furnishing supplies thereto, or in transportation as a carrier over lines owned or operated by such company. xvii, 6.

common

No discrimination in charges or facilities to be made between transportation companies or individuals, by abatement, drawback or otherwise; no company or employee to make preference in furnishing cars or motive power.

No free passes, or passes at discount, to be granted except to officers or employees of company. xvii, 7, 8.

Street railways not to be constructed within municipality without consent of local authorities. xvii, 9.

No transportation company existing at adoption of Constitution to have benefit of future legislation except or complete acceptance of all its provisions. xvii, 10.

Secretary of Internal Affairs to have supervision of transportation companies, except as to their accounts (kept by Auditor General); in addition to annual reports, may require from their officers special reports at any time on any subject relating to their business. xvii, II.

General Assembly to enforce foregoing provisions by law. xvii, 12.

AMENDMENTS.

Amendments to Constitution may be proposed by either House of Assembly; when approved by majority of each House (yeas and nays entered on journal), to be published in news

THE

THE cry "More and better English in the school programs" has voiced one of the most popular demands in contemporary education. It appeals to every one. The primary teacher appreciates the need in the daily battle with bad grammar; the secondary teacher is familiar with the trials of slovenly speech and incoherent writing; the college professor grieves over the failure of his students to give back in their examination any clear indication of the longed-for response to his efforts to inspire a clearcut and accurate statement of fact and opinion. Nevertheless, there is less advance toward the attainment of the desired end than was to be expected.

It is, perhaps, difficult to explain this. There has been some slackness in the schools, some want of courage in the colleges. When a student does not pass out of the school, or into the college with credit in English, there is a strong tendency to make excuses, accept conditions, and otherwise palliate, if not entirely overlook, the failure. But on the whole, both school and college have been in earnest. The school teacher feels ashamed of his pupils' bad spelling, inaccurate sentences and incorrect diction. The college professor is hampered by the incapacity of his students to express themselves clearly. The school teacher means to secure better results; the college professor knows the men who are so deficient in the mother tongue are out of place in college. The real problem seems evasive, however, and neither school nor college has truly solved it.

Here is a boy, for example, who has read and studied the books required for admission to college. He can tell the stories so as to show familiarity with them. He can answer questions of his

torical and literary criticism. He is full of facts. But when he takes up his pen to express what he knows, he shows, even in the most simple answers, a total inability to write straight-forward, correct English; and in the brief composition his ideas, which are often good enough, have to be guessed at or reconstructed by uniting to the incorrect and vague statements of the writer the knowledge of the book possessed by the examiner.

When carefully considered, it becomes evident that the true difficulty with the student is an inability to express what he knows, thinks and feels.

Is not this due to a common defect in all our teaching? Is it not true that we generally neglect the whole field of expression as a department of education? And is it not further true that the great importance of English in our educational work is because it is the vehicle of ordinary expression? That is to say, that English as a language, as a literature, is for this purpose subordinate.

No one seems to forget that man must know and must think. But hundreds seem to forget that man must express what he knows and what he thinks, and in the largest conception of life, what he is. I once knew a very learned man upon whom a familiar comment ran, "His mind is a cupboard of knowledge with the door shut fast." He was a learned man, but a poor teacher; a gentle and affectionate man, but few ever found it out. Education had reached no worthy goal in him when he was trained to know, to think, to feel, but left with knowledge which blessed neither himself or others, with thoughts that cheered and feelings that charmed none except himself.

A very large part of the most wearisome blunders in the examination papers of pupils are the outcome of careless expression. A recent paper informed me that "in the second century the costumes of the heathen and the Christians were entirely different." Inquiry brought out the fact that costumes was written where customs was the word sought. And in looking over a long list of school blunders recently published in one of our magazines, I have been struck by the large proportion of them which were due, first, to want of care in preparing the examination paper,―i. e., to indifference to the expression of knowledge painfully acquired; and, second, to want of ability to

| state an idea which required thought,i. e., to incapacity of expression. The following examples are quoted from a paper on the humorous side of such blunders. Those first cited are clearly due to mere indifference or carelessness:

"A volcano is a burning mountain that has a creator and throws out rooks." "I came sore and conquered."

"His brain was teething with grand ideas in all directions."

“Stored in some trouser-house of mighty kings."

Another class show the utter failure of the power of expression:

"A triangle is sometimes regarded as standing upon a select inside which we then call the base."

"The apex of the heart is placed downwards and slightly upwards."

"Fiction is something which is believed in but which is nothing."

Such examples are far removed from the ludicrous mistakes too often met with which involve ignorance of facts, false analogies, and mistaken inferences. Those above noted are apparently due to carelessness in stating simple facts correctly conceived, and to incapacity to express in language ideas once correctly conceived but which at the time could not be recalled with accuracy. The latter class are constantly to be found in papers of schools which demand that answers shall be given in the language of the teacher. The attempt to reproduce the language in which a statement not fully understood has been made is a common cause of ridiculous blunders. We may see something of this in such an answer as the following:

"Climate is an imaginary belt of the globe parallel to the equator; it is so called by earlier geographers because the difference of these climes depends upon the proper inclination of these spheres."

Here is inaccurate memory supplying ammunition for a shot at a mark beyond the intellectual vision.

I received a paper some months ago from a young woman who was attending a course of lectures given under University Extension auspices in one of our large cities. She was able to take notes in shorthand, and made an earnest effort to profit by the course, which was on "The Development of the United States." This paper is an answer to the question, "What were the causes of the American Revolution?" It is a gem of its kind.

When the colonists came to America, they had no written government except a charter given to them by their king. In this charter very little liberty was given to them by the king, so they agreed to form a group and make a set of laws for themselves. It was absolutely necessary for them to do so, for in the charter granted by the king, the men of the settlement did not even have the right to choose their own governor.

"In the cabin of their vessel men gathered and made a set of laws upon which they all agreed, and on landing, they ran and hid them in a tree which was afterwards known as the Charter Oak. The cause of their hiding them was the fear of the strict rules of their old country, and on this account they were obliged to do many immoral acts which they would not have done had they had a little more freedom.

"This England positively refused, thus causing a bitter feeling between her colonists and herself, which, as we have learned, has been the principal cause of the American Revolution. She compelled the people to pay a very heavy tax which she laid upon them, and if they refused, they had to undergo a very severe punishment for refusing. A feeling of hatred was continually growing until it was suppressed by the war. She passed a law imposing a heavy tax upon tea, and compelled them to pay the same, but they were strongly opposed to this, and utterly refused to drink the tea. In one of the shipments from the mother country there was a cargo of tea sent to the Boston Harbor, and the people were compelled to buy it. This enraged them very much, they formed a party and at midnight boarded the ship and threw over all the tea.

"This event was afterwards known as the Boston Tea Party, which was practically the cause of the Boston Massacre. These petty quarrels continued until the war broke out, which settled all the difficulty."

To return, then, to our main thesis, the child blunders because he neither knows what he is trying to express, nor the vehicle of expression. In his development the teacher must constantly give attention to the three considerations of knowing, thinking and expressing. It is easy to teach facts-but hard to resist the temptation to teach facts in fixed formulas. To repeat the statement of a

fact in the identical language used by the teacher in communicating it does not prove that the child has learned the fact. To change the statement may show that the fact has been correctly grasped, but the teacher may be content to accept a very poor statement, if a grasp of the fact is but shown in it. Yet education is dependent on the combination of correct information, precise mental action and clear verbal expression.

It is, of course, true that the power of expression is one of the latest powers to be matured. But it is also true that it is dependent on training. This training should go hand in hand with growth. The immense value of English composition appears here. It is one of the greatest burdens that the teacher has to bear. But compositions must be written, carefully studied, and rewritten, if any real power is to be developed. If the early instruction is devoted to clear and correct statement, to the expression of facts and ideas in simple language, with little or no effort to secure any very original thought from the pupil, good reading and intellectual growth will do the rest. One of the worst features of the older teaching of composition was the constant striving after rhetorical finish. One of the worst defects in graduating essays to this day is the abundance of artificial flowers with which they are garnished, and the frequent note of insincerity struck in the ringing quotations from authors with whom the writers are unacquainted.

This leads me to the last point which I wish to make. The highest note in all education is the expression of self,-of what a man is. It is essential for this that a man have a mastery over his mother tongue.

If a man is to be a lawyer or a minister of the gospel, every one sees clearly enough his need of mastery of spoken and written discourse. But, though in a different form, it is equally important to the man of business, the engineer and the physician. The quantity of speech does not measure its importance. A business man may have more at stake in a page of a letter than a lawyer in fifty pages of a brief. The page of that business letter should be so clearly conceived, so accurately expressed, that any contract made upon it should be beyond all doubt and controversy. The plans and specifications of an engineer or architect re

quire clear and correct statement, and too often possess neither.

But quite beyond mere business affairs a man's speech, his letters, his use of language should be a true expression of himself. A man who is straightforward and clear-cut in character should be able to make men know it by what he writes and speaks; a man who is gentle and kindly should know how to make his tongue utter the goodness of his heart; a man who lives in the sunshine of God's love should know how to speak a word in season which will shed some of that sunshine on the path of others.

Practice is indispensable to perfection. Precept counts for little in the perfecting of expression. Infinite pains alone brings success. But even those who have no hope of attaining to perfection must strive and struggle to attain to that degree of power by which a man may live. -Education.

ADVICE TO YOUNG MEN.

THE

HE world is older than you by several years; for thousands of years it has been full of better and smarter young men than yourself; when they died the globe went whirling on, and not one man in a hundred million went to the funeral or heard of their death. Be as smart as you can, of course; know as much as you

can.

Shed the light of your wisdom abroad to the world, but don't try to dazzle or astonish anybody with it, and don't imagine a thing is simple because you think it is.

Don't be too sorry for your father because he knows so much less than you do. He used to think he was much smarter than his father, as you think you are smarter than yours. The world has great need of young men, but no greater need than young men have of the world. Your clothes fit better than your father's fit him; they cost more money; they are more stylish. He used to be as straight and nimble as you are. He too, perhaps, thought his father old-fashioned. Your mustache is neater, the cut of your hair is better, and you are prettier, far prettier, than "pa." But, young man, the old gentleman's homely, scrambling signature on a check will draw more money out of the bank in five minutes, than you could get out with a ream of paper and a copper-plate signature in six months.

Young men are useful, and they are ornamental, and we all love them, and we could not get up a picnic successfully without them. But they are no novelty; they have been here before. Every generation has a full supply of them, and will have to the end of time; each crop will think themselves quite ahead of the last, and will live to be called old fogies by their sons. Go ahead. Have your day. Your sons will by and by pity you for your old-fashioned ways. Don't be afraid your merit will not be discovered. People all over the world are looking for you, and if you are worth finding they will be sure to find you. A diamond is not so easily found as a quartz pebble, but people search for it more intently.

A

DR. ARNOLD OF RUGBY.

BY THOMAS HUGHES.

ND then came that great event in his, as in every Rugby boy's life of that day-the first sermon from the doctor.

More worthy pens than mine have described that scene. The oak pulpit standing out by itself above the school seats. The tall, gallant form, the kindling eye, the voice, now soft as the low notes of a flute, now clear and stirring as the call of the light infantry bugle, of him who stood there Sunday after Sunday, witnessing and pleading for his Lord, the King of righteousness and love and glory, with whose spirit he was filled and in whose power he spoke. . . . What was it that held us childish boys who feared the doctor with all our hearts, and very little besides in heaven or earth: who thought more of our sets in the school than of the Church of Christ, and put the traditions of Rugby and the public opinion of boys in our daily life above the laws of God? We couldn't enter into half that we heard; we hadn't the knowledge of our own hearts or the knowledge of one another; and little enough of the faith, hope and love needed to that end. But we listened, as all boys in their better moods will listen (aye, and men, too, for the matter of that), to a man who we felt to be, with all his heart and soul and strength, striving against whatever was mean and unmanly and unrighteous in our little world. It was not the cold, clear voice of one giving advice and warning from serene heights to those

who are struggling and sinning below, but the warm, living voice of one who was fighting for us and by our sides, and calling on us to help him and ourselves and one another. And so, wearily and little by little, but surely and steadily, on the whole, was brought home to the young boy for the first time, the meaning of hls life: that it was no fool's or sluggard's paradise into which he had wandered by chance, but a battle-field ordained from of old, where there are no spectators, but the youngest must take his side, and the stakes are life and death. And he who roused this consciousness in them showed them at the same time, by every word he spoke in the pulpit and by his whole daily life, how the battle was to be fought; and stood there before them, fellow soldier and captain of their band. The true sort of captain, too, for a boy's army; one who had no misgivings and gave no uncertain word of command, and, let who would yield or make a truce, would fight the fight out (so every boy felt), to the last gasp and the last drop of blood. Other sides of his character might take hold of and influence boys, here and there, but it was his thoroughness and undaunted courage which more than anything else won his way to the hearts of the great mass of those on whom he left his mark, and made them believe first in him and then in his Master.— Tom Brown's School Days.

THREE PARABLES.

SYDNEY T. SKIDMORE.

"He spake unto them in parables." THE RATS.-A man once lived in an old house that was infested by rats. So he said to himself: "I will not use ratsbane; I will pull down the house and the rats will disappear." But after he had done so, and builded a new house at great labor and expense, the rats all came back, and said among themselves, "How generous and kind the man was to take away the old and give us this fine new house to live in."

This parable teaches that reform cannot be attained by tearing down and rebuilding institutions, but rather by diligence and the use of appropriate means for destroying the evil in existing things.

THE COUNTRY FOLK.-In a certain

country the people lived in equality and independence. But they were annoyed by the pilferings of their neighbors and the dishonest ones among themselves. So they said: "We will build a fortress in which to bestow our goods, and appoint a governor, with guards, whom we will hold responsible for their safe-keeping." But when they went to get a portion of their goods for use, the governor smilingly said to them from the top of the wall: "You cannot have anything until you first destroy the fortress and vanquish me."

This parable teaches that it is not wise to give into the hands of one man the defences and powers which we should exercise for ourselves.

THE MILLER.—A miller was much distressed because his mill would only grind meal that was coarse and innutritious. At first he supposed that the stones had not enough work to do, so he caused the grain to run in more copiously. This only clogged the mill and made matters worse. Then he said, "I will change the kinds of grain and mix them in other proportions," but this availed nothing. Finally, he consulted a millwright, who told him that the stones needed proper dressing, and that the action of the machinery should be made more regular and harmonious. When this was done, the trouble ceased.

This parable teaches that the best results in education must be obtained by the practice of right mental action, rather than from the kind or quantity of subjects or changes in curricula.

IN

GATHERED HINTS.

N a primary school I saw a method of examining slates that promoted both quickness and order. Each child took his slate in both hands, and held it as he would a reader, resting the lower side on the desk. The teacher passed down the aisles, and could see the work very readily with the slate held in this position, and at the same time the children's hands were busy. Another teacher sometimes inspected slate work by allowing one row of children to rise at a time, pass in line down one aisle to her, and return by the other aisle as fast as she had examined the work.

In another room, I saw an excellent way of conducting an exercise in mental