everything is done, by both pupil and teacher, in the quietest, easiest, and Emerson says there is a "best way" of boiling an egg ; there best way. Good rules, wise counsel from those who have succeeded in the schoolroom, chiefly the wisdom that one can find in the great number of books that relate to teaching, may finally guide the young teacher into the highway of the "best way, "but all the counsel, from Aristotle to Col. Parker, and all the wisdom found in books, cannot make a true disciplinarian of one not born with an intuitive taste for "best ways." If we only had machines with which we could separate those to the school-room born from the rest of the great army of teachers, just as we have machines to separate the grain from the chaff, the educational millenium would come, and nothing could prevent its coming-neither bad laws, indifferent legislators, nor incompetent school boards. There are some teachers who have a best way of leaving home and going to the school-room, and a best way of greeting their pupils there. They are always bubbling over with good cheer, and heartiness of good wishes for success to everybody; not like the bubbling over of the fountain in the public square, whose murky ditch water is forced, by artificial power, through an iron pipe, to glitter a moment in the sunlight, then drop straight back again into its iron receptable, but like the spring at the foot of the hill, that wells up from the deep bosom of the earth, clear and sparkling like liquid diamonds-in winter like a warm breath, and cool and refreshing in summer, and as far as its clear streamlet winds through the meadow land, the grass is greener, the flowers are richer and more abundant, while in its bosom lie the pebbles, washed white and clean, and above it the air is purer because of the same pure influence. Its ripples, like a never-ceasing laughter, provoke the birds into singing; the robin and the meadow-lark meet their mates on its banks to lay plans for the first new nest in the spring; to man and beast it is a never-failing boon of refreshment and good health-the true symbol of God's everlasting good cheer to all his creatures. Let it serve you, my earnest young teacher, as one of God's books, in which you may read the best way, if you want your life to run out like a brook, in happiness and blessing to others. There are people who come in ever like a child with a piece of good news." Every successful teacher belongs to this class. With them there is no sameness of manner, no drudgery in work, but each morning their strength of heart is renewed, and the day opens with new duties, new hopes, and with brighter prospects. The whole school is at once made to feel that to-day is different from all other days, and all cheerfully pick up the burden of that day, and soon the work causes a glow in every heart. Each one is a willing worker, and cheerfully obeys the rules; but rules in such a school with such a teacher are so vital a part of the spirit of the school that they do not seem to be rules, and one unacquainted with the secret of true discipline will go away thinking that anyone can teach such a school where the children are so well behaved. The chief essential of discipline must be sought for first in the disposition of the teacher. If that is unsound, if it is diseased by irritability and selfishness, if it lacks tenderness and sympathy, there is no remedy. for it; by no prescription in all the multitudinous volumes on methods of teaching can such a person be cured into a successful teacher. This element is, in a sense, a compound of the best qualities of heart, mind, and body. The purer the heart, the greater one's power over the conduct of others; but the mind must also be strong and comprehensive. The teacher who does not know what to do next in an emergency can lay no claim to natural gifts in discipline. She will not have an orderly school, where learning thrives in a wholesome atmosphere, though she be as pure as an angel. The successful teacher must first win her victories in her head, before the matter comes to an issue in the school-room. . Children, though they often manifest strong impulses, rarely possess force enough to follow them persistently, doubt and fear intervening. This element of doubt in child-nature is of the greatest importance to the teacher. Were it otherwise, and the child followed its own impulses, as the duckling, just out of the shell, takes its own course to the brook, there would be an end of all education. It is this doubt, this element of helpless weakness, which God turns into a blessing, by making it an element of tractability, through which the child is easily molded. The natural, unspoiled child is always ready to learn and to accept as right and proper anything it observes in others whom it regards as its superiors. It is this which makes teaching such a delicate and responsible undertaking. Children, either good or bad, are the result of their handling. Their conduct and their habits are chiefly imitations of their superiors. There is no need, at this point, to pause and discuss the question of inherited tendencies, and conclude that it is useless to try to discipline a child into right habits and proper manners, when it has freighted barks of villany coursing through its veins, set afloat ages ago. In a scientific work on education it may be necessary to devote a chapter or two to inherited tendencies. It is a factor not to be ignored in the education of children. But whatever may be claimed by modern science, or maintained by medieval theology, it will, nevertheless, remain true that never yet has a little child come under the care of a true teacher predestined to irreclaimable wickedness. If you wash the face of the child. of a cannibal with warm water and soap, and comb his hair with a gutta percha comb every morning, you have in so far removed the child from cannibalism and set his feet into the path that leads to the highway of Christian civilization. In many a school a basin, a cake of soap, a clean towel, a looking-glass, and a good comb would be much better preservers of peace, decency, and respect, than a rod under the teacher's arm, and at fresh supply of them in the corner nearest his desk. The physical constitution of a teacher-good health, proper height, to lend dignity and respect, regular and pleasant features, are very desirable, and may pass for more value than great learning. A cheerful face goes a great way; it has always a merry heart back of it. A merry heart is to be preferred to great wisdom; for Solomon, though he had the satisfaction of being the wisest man in the world, in his old age came to the conclusion that wisdom and happiness do not always keep pace through life, but a merry heart has a continual feast. Good outward appearance, backed by corresponding inward character, are sureties of success in almost any calling. A man may teach a good school and be a good person, though he have but one arm or one leg; but no one with deformed features ought to be intrusted with the training of children. Such a person has no more claim upon school teaching than a blind man has upon running an express train. In a few square inches of the human face can be traced in clear outlines the map of the territory over which the owner of the face is the supreme ruler. The teacher's face should be so expressive of ability and real goodness that it almost compels the pupils to forget all else save the face. A vision is impressed upon them; from this vision the little child will construct its future ideals. With many children their guardian angel wears the teacher's face. The eyes, too, though a part of the features, are of such importance in school discipline that they need special mention. Many teachers fail to command respect because the eye is not deep enough to assert its authority in silence and with a dignity that provokes no appeal. The command of the eye is perhaps the last to develop. It comes only with experience, when modesty, often the best sign of inner worth, ceases to make the young teacher embarrassed and awkward in the presence of her pupils. But some will never acquire the power of the eye because of a defect in their spiritual constitution. Emerson has these in mind when he says, "The reason men do not obey us is because they see the mind at the bottom of our eyes." Such eyes always look out of shallow souls. Whatever the eye can do in the school-room is always better done than if done by the voice. The child corrected by the eye is more effectively corrected, because it is done without bringing the misdemeanor before the notice of the rest of the pupils. It is common to human nature to dislike with a defiant spirit all those methods of correction that parade our misdemeanors before the public; for no one falls so low in the scale of wickedness but in his heart he wishes to be better. It is for this that the more private the reproof the more wholesome will be the effect. Many teachers ignorantly believe that their government is more effective when they correct misdemeanors before the whole school. It tends to overawe the "bad boy," they think. It is a very sad mistake. The "bad boy" is overawed more easily when he is kept in profound mystery about matters of discipline. And he is more easily made a good and obedient boy when he and his conscience are the only witnesses to the infliction of merited punishment. In discipline, then, chiefest of all, never make known before the school what can as well be done in private. Never speak, nor make a motion with the hand when the eye is sufficient. The still small voice is more effective than whirlwinds and earthquakes.-Ohio Educational Monthly. Romance of the Class-room. BY ELLEN E. KENYON, AUTHOR OF THE "COMING SCHOOL." The relation of imagination to reality is a question that does not often enough occupy the attention of teachers. How much more prosaic life would be to us if we had no friends of fiction to visit us in solitude and cause the smile to play about our lips or the soft spell of reverie to fall upon us-no Cap'n Cuttle, no Col. Newcombe, no Adam Bede, no Aunt Betsey, no Little Nell, no Princess Ida, no Little Lord Fauntleroy. In spite of the little Lord's dictum that we cannot help loving our relations," how much better than some of them do we love these phantom friends, and how much more clear and constant are their images than those of many we have known in the flesh! They are not abstractions .to us. They are as real, and more so than many of our parlor friends, because what we know of them we know, through the art of their delineators, while our associates of the parlor often fail to express themselves to us in any satisfactory degree. Why should not school life gather its coterie of lifelong friends from fiction and be illumined with the joy of forming these friendships, and feel that though seat-mates may be separated by the drift of worldly life, both will carry with them the same comrades of fancy, superior to fickleness or death, and ever treading memory's halls arm in arm with the young associates in whose company their acquaintance was first made? Why not? The "system" stands in the way. A teacher once took a class of tiny boys and girls, to whom she fain would have introduced the heroes and heroines of nursery literature. But she had to teach the primer instead. She made the best use she could of that. Deprived of anything like child literature as a material for soul training, she at least had the pictures and she supplied herself with more-bright wall-pictures of children and their pets-offered free in great variety and merit by the soap companies and others. The subjects of these pictures were to be identified with the children pictured at play in the primer. The dull reading lessons, as they were to be found in fragmentary arrangements on the pages of the book, had little life in them; but, woven into a continued story, with the blackboard lessons, the object lessons, the wall pictures, the songs, the recitations, and the "reproduction lessons"-even the writing lessons and some of the number work-their scrappy meaninglessness would be lost, and, if not very valuable contributions, they would at least contribute to the one grand panoramic scene she meant to leave on memory's screen for all the children who should pass that term with her. Even the book from which songs were to be taught was a part of "the system," so this teacher had to make it a part of hers. It was Mason's New First Music Reader, and on pages 19, 39, 40, 56, 91, and 103 she found the songs that would best serve the doubly harmonious purpose she had in view. The characters of the primer were Minnie, May, Nell, Tom, Ben, Frank, Joe, Aunt Jane, little Jane, Snap, Fido, Mister Crow and Mr. Fox. The wall pictures she had at her command were "The Spring Chick," "Family Cares," "Snow Birds," and several nameless but equally live ones. The teacher read the primer and examined its pictures for an estimate of the ages of its children. Then she applied their names to the children in the wall pictures, guided by this estimate. Aunt Jane was nowhere pictured in the book, but there was a large colored print of a lady in a lovely pink dress, balancing a little girl on the railing of an excursion boat, while the child waved her hat to a passing steamer. This lady would do for Aunt Jane, and the little girl was about the right age for little Jane, who, was of course, named after her aunt, though the book didn't say so. A smaller picture of a little three-year-old in scarlet, clasping a great struggling white hen in her arms, would do for a picture of Jane, taken several years ago, when she was visiting her aunt in the country, and there was some valuable arithmetical work to be done in reckoning Jane's age at the time that picture was taken and in adding up the hen's toes and speculating about the number of eggs which could inspire her with such evident anxiety to get back to her nest. There was splendid material here for a reading lesson, too, which could be composed within the limits of the primer vocabulary; and opportunity for moral culture in the fact that at that time Jane did not know any better than to interfere, without good reason, with the liberty of the hen, while as she grew older, as marked by the excursion, she was no longer careless of the rights of others, having been taught that it was wrong, but had not yet learned to govern her appetite for ice cream and cake. She indulged too freely in these dainties on the day of the excursion, and suffered from insomnia that night in consequence. Not wishing to disturb her mother, she made believe she wasn't sick, and amused herself with watching the |