For the Schoolmaster. The Stone of Ancient Error, the Cube of adapting a good system of mental training, gait of health and freedom, nor learned to go and power to put his theory into practice. I through the minuet of life with dancing mean by that, a force of mind which shall grace!-N. Y. Independent. dominate over both scholars and their parents. These things are indispensible in a master. But for subordinate, or inferior persons, who for pecuniary reasons devote themselves to teaching, it will be sufficient to earnestly study the method of such a master, and to be unflinching in carrying it out. In the midst . of competition those who have the sense to see, and the firmness to pursue, the true end of education, will soon gain patronage. The public may not recompense the righteous, but it generally sees its own interest with sufficient clearness to reward the able. There are certain mental powers which rank first in importance, and without which man is a helpless imbecile. He may be a shrewd fellow, possessing only the smallest embryo of imagination, but there are other faculties which are imperatively necessary in large measure. First, comes Attention, or the power of concentrating the mind upon any subject. Incapacity to do this is idiocy. Next comes what is generally called Judgment. To be destitute of this is to be insane. Then comes Memory the emptiness of which is childishness. These faculties bave a principle of growth within themselves, and are, besides, very susceptible of cultivation. If nature had not decreed it so, what would have become of the female mind by this time, for what proper means have ever been taken in schools to secure the development of those important functions? Compulsory exercise alone and that quite unregulated ;-nothing whatever adapted precisely to the object. They put feeble little girls into the treadmill, keep them "exercising" there until they attain womanhood, and then they wonder that they have not acquired the strong, joyous, springy THE following extract from the "Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table," in the March number of the Atlantic Monthly, is worthy of careful perusal. No one, who has a taste for rich thought and beautiful imagery, carrying with it a moral which cannot be mistaken, can fail to be interested in it; especially may those who are instructors of the young derive benefit therefrom. I. D., JR. "I wonder if anybody ever finds fault with anything I say at this table when it is repeated? I hope they do, I am sure. I should be very certain that I had said nothing of much significance, if they did not. Did you never, in walking in the fields, come across a large flat stone, which had lain, nobody knows how long, just where you found it, with the grass forming a little hedge, as it were, all round it, close to its edges,— and have you not, in obedience to a kind of feeling that told you it had been lying there long enough, insinuated your stick, or your foot, or your fingers under its edge and turned it over as a housewife turns a cake, when she says to herself, Its done brown enough by this time'? What an odd revelation, and what an unforeseen and unpleasant surprise to a small community, the very existence of which you had not suspected, until the sudden dismay and scattering among its members produced by your turning the old stone over! Blades of grass flattened down, colorless, matted together, as if they had been bleached and ironed; hideous crawling crea their nests in the hearts of a new-born humanity. Then shall beauty-Divinity taking outlines and color-light upon the souls of men as the butterfly, image of the beatified spirit rising from the dust, soars from the shell that held a poor grub, which would never have found wings, had not the stone been lifted. tures, some of them coleopterous or horny- by it. He who turns the stone over is whoshelled,-turtle-bugs one wants to call them; soever puts the staff of truth to the old lying some of them softer, but cunningly spread incubus, no matter whether he do it with a out and compressed like Lepine watches; serious face or a langhing one. The next year (Nature never loses a crack or a crevice, mind stands for the coming time. Then shall the you, or a joint in a tavern bedstead, but she nature which had lain blanched and broken always has one of her flat-pattern live time-rise in its full stature and native hues in the keepers to slide into it ;) black, glossy crick- sunshine. Then shall God's minstrels build ets, with long filaments sticking out like the whips of four-horse stage-coaches; motionless, slug-like creatures, larvæ, perhaps, more horrible in their pulpy stillness than even in the infernal wriggle of maturity! But no sooner is the stone turned and the wholesome light of day let upon this compressed and blinded community of creeping things, than all of them that enjoy the luxury of legsYou never need think you can turn over and some of them have a good many-rush any old falsehood without a terrible squirmround wildly, butting each other and every-ing and scattering of the horrid little populathing in their way, and end in a general stam-tion that dwells under it. pede for under-ground retreats from the region poisoned by sunshine. Next year you will find the grass growing tall and green where the stone lay; the ground-bird builds her nest where the beetle had his hole; the dandelion and the buttercup are growing there, and the broad fans of insect-angels open and shut over their golden disks, as the rythmic waves of blissful consciousness pulsate thro' their glorified being. -The young fellow whom they call John saw fit to say, in his very familiar way,-at which I do not choose to take offence, but which I sometimes think it necessary to repress, that I was coming it rather strong on the butterflies. No, I replied; there is meaning in each of those images, the butterfly as well as others. The stone is ancient error. The grass is human nature borne down and bleached of all its color by it. The shapes that are found beneath are the crafty beings that thrive in darkness, and the weaker organisms kept helpless When we are yet small children, long before the time when those two grown ladies offer us the choice of Hercules, there comes up to us a youthful angel holding in his right hand cubes like dice, and in his left spheres like marbles. The cubes are of stainless ivo ry, and on each is written in letters of gold -TRUTH. The spheres are veined and streaked and spotted beneath, with a dark crimson flush above, where the light falls on them, and in a certain aspect you can make out upon every one of them the three letters L, I, E. The child to whom they are offered very probably clutches at both. The spheres are the most convenient things in the world; they roll with the least possible impulse just where the child would have them. The cubes will not roll at all; they have a great talent for standing still, and always keep right side up. But very soon the young philosopher finds that things which roll so easily are very apt to roll into the wrong corner, and to get out of his way when he most wants them, while he always knows where to find the others, which stay where they are left. Thus he learnsthus we learn to drop the streaked and speckled globes of falsehood and to hold fast the white angular blocks of truth. But then comes Timidity, and after her Good-nature, and last of all Polite-behavior, all insisting that truth must roll or nobody can do anything with it; and so the first with her coarse rasp, and the second with her broad file, and the third with her silken sleeve, do so round off and smooth and polish the snow-white cubes of truth, that, when they have got a little dingy by use, it becomes hard to tell them from the rolling spheres of falsehood." Reading Aloud. A Thrilling Incident. THE Hon. George N. Briggs, ex-Governor of Massachusetts, delivered a temperance address some time since, in the course of which he related the following anecdote with thrilling effect: Mr. Briggs said this question of the introduction of intoxicating drinks assumed somewhat of a practical form last Spring, in a thriving borough in Pennsylvania. The inhabitants had assembled, as was their usual custom, to decide what number, if any, of licenses the town should petition from the County Court, from whence they were issued. There was a full attendance., One of the most respectable magistrates of the borough presided, and upon the platform were seated, among others, the clergyman of the village, one of his deacons, and the physician. After the mecting had been called to order, one of the most respectable citizens of the borough rose, and after a short speech, moved that the meeting petition for the usual number of licenses. They had better license good men and let them sell. The proposition seemed to meet with almost universal favor. It was an excellent way to get along quietly, and one and then another in their turn expressed their hope that such a course would be adopted. THERE is no treat so great as to hear good reading of any kind. Not one gentleman or lady in a hundred can read so as to please the ear, and send the words with gentle force to the heart and understanding. An indistinct utterance, whines, nasal twangs, guttural notes, hesitations, and other vices of elocution, are almost universal. Why it is, no one can say, unless it be that either the pulpit, or the nursery, or the Sunday School, gives the style in these days. Many a lady can sing Italian songs with considerable execution, but cannot read English passably. Yet reading is The president was about to put the quesby far the more valuable accomplishment of tion to the meeting when an object rose in a the two. In most drawing-rooms, if any-distant part of the building, and all eyes were thing is to be read, it is discovered that nobody can read; one has weak lungs, another gets hoarse, another chokes, another has an abominable sing-song, evidently a tradition of the way he said Watts' hymns when he was too young to understand them; another rumbles like a broad-wheel wagon; another has a way of reading which seems to proclaim that what is read is of no sort of consequence, and had better not be listened to. instantly turned in that direction. It was an old woman, poorly clad, and whose careworn countenance was the painful index of no light suffering. And yet there was something in the flash of the bright eye that told she had once been what she was not. She addressed the president, and said, with his permission, she wished to say a few words to the meeting. She had come because she had heard that they were to decide the license question. Evening Hours for Mechanics. "You," said she, "all know who I am. You once knew me the mistress of one of the best estates in the borough. I once had a husband and five sons; and woman never had a kinder husband-mother never had five better or more affectionate sons. But where are they now? Doctor, I ask where are they now? In yonder-burying ground there are six graves filled by that husband and those five sons, and oh! they are all drunkard's graves. Doctor, how came they to be drunkards? You would come and drink with them, and you told them that temperate drinking would do them good. And you, Sir, addressing the clergyman, would come and drink with my husband; and my sons thought they could drink with safety, because they saw you drink. Deacon, you sold them rum which made them drunkards. You have now got my farm and all my property, and you got it all by rum. And now," she said, "I have 'done my errand. I go back to the poor-house, for that is my home. You, reverend Sir, you, Doctor, and you, Deacon, I shall never meet you again, until I meet you at the bar of God, where you, too, will meet my ruined and lost husband and those five sons, who, through your means and influence, fill the drunkard's grave." The old woman sat down. Perfect silence prevailed, until broken by the president, who rose to put the question to the meeting; shall we petition the court to issue licenses to this borough the ensuing year? and then one unbroken "No!"-which made the very walls re-echo with the sound, told the result of the old woman's appeal. DOES not the echo in the sea-shell tell of the worm which once inhabited it? and shall not man's good deeds live after him and sing his praise? LIGHT things will agitate little minds. WHAT have evening hours done for mechan ics who had only ten hours toil? Harken to the following facts: One of the best editors the Westminster Review could ever boast, and one of the most brilliant writers of the passing hour, was a cooper in Aberdeen. One of the editors of the London Daily Journal was a baker in Elgin; perhaps the best reporter of the London Times was a weaver in Edinburgh; the editor of the Witness was a stone mason. One of the ablest ministers in London was a blacksmith in Dundee; and another was a watchmaker in Bauff. The late Dr. Milne, of China, was a herd boy in Rhyne. The principal of the London Missionary Society's College, at Hong Kong, was a soldier in Huntly; and one of the best missionaries that ever went to India, was a tailor in Keith. The leading machinist on the London and Birmingham Railway, with £700 a year, was a mechanic in Glasgow; and perhaps the very richest iron founder in England was a working man in Morap. Sir James Clark, her Majesty's physician, was a druggist in Bauff. Joseph Hume was a sailor first, and then a laborer at the mortar and pestle in Montrose ; Mr. McGregor, the member from Glasgow, was a poor boy in Rosshire. James Wilson, the member from Westbury, was a plough. man in Haddington, and Arthur Anderson, the member from Orkney earned his bread by the sweat of his brow in the Ultima Thule. HOW TO JUDGE OF CHARACTER.-It has been shrewdly remarked that what persons are by starts, they are by nature. You see them, at such time, off their guard. Habit may restrain vice, and virtue may be obscured by passion; but intervals best discover the man We fancy this is strictly true. The Ready Reckoner. grind an axe than to go at it with a hoe." The power and inspiration of an artist can not WHEN a pupil sees his teacher or an ac-have free course while his instruments delay countant rapidly adding a long column of figures or performing easily any of the primary operations of arithmetic, it excites an almost envious admiration as he contrasts it with his own tardy reckoning. "If I could only do like that!" He thinks such facility the crown of arithmetical science and art. him. A good arithmetician needs the skill of a reckoner, and this does require practice and often long practice; and only thus can most persons obtain it. If the pupil has occasion to gain it, let him not be discouraged by his early slowness. 1. Supposing the learner to be able to count with sufficient rapidity backward and forward, We introduce here some methods suggested Yet no distinction is more evident after by Prof. De Morgan, an eminent English fuller experience than that between the ready mathematician, to aid in developing the skill reckoner and the expert arithmetician. Says of the ready reckoner, for which purpose their Mr. Robinson, after the consideration of the persevering practice will be very effectual. ground rules of arithmetic, "Those persons-DR. S. WILLARD, in Illinois Teacher. who are quick in what precedes may very properly be said to be quick at figures, though some such persons may be very unsuccessful in future progress, as that will depend on a by single units, he should then learn to count philosophical rather than a numerical turn of backward and forward by twos, by threes, by mind. A good reasoner can always be a good fours, up to tens, beginning with different arithmetician; on the contrary, one may add, numbers. For instance, commence with three subtract, multiply, and divide, with the rapid- and add four-thus: 3, 7, 11, 15, 19, etc, or ty of intuition, and if [he is] not a quick and commence with sixty-one-thus: 61, 57, 53, sound reasoner, quickness of operation will 49, 45, etc. No reiteration should be allowed. only make weak logic the more glaring. It is It should not be three and four make seven, and a mistake to suppose that long practice is four make eleven; but simply 3, 7, 11, 15, etc. most essential to make a good arithmetician." If there be difficulty, let the pupil be allowed He adds an illustration of fact: "Zerah to take his own time; but let him be preventColburn astonished the world by his numeri-ed from repeating any single word, except one cal power of computation, but it was mere which expresses a result. computation. He was a very indifferent arithmetician, his reasoning powers being such that even education could do little for him, The author has known many expert reckoners who were, and always must be, unsuccessful arithmeticians.” Nevertheless, quickness in reckoning should not be depreciated. We might as well undervalue good tools because tools alone could not build Solomon's Temple, or carve the Venus de Medici. Perfection of tools aids perfection of work. Some one says, "If a man has wood to cut, it is better to wait to 2. The next exercise is the formation of the defect of a lesser number from a greater, when the defect does not exceed nine. The manner in which it should be required is by giving the lesser number, and the units only of the greater-the learner having to supply for himself the tens which should be in the greater, so that the defect may not exceed nine. Thus, having fifty-six and seeing four, the exercise consists in learning immediately to supply both the eight in fifty-six and eight make sixty-four,' and also the six tens. To perform this exercise by itself, write down |