use of all the means of educational grace within your reach. Spend a part of your first month's salary in subscriptions to at least two leading educational journals, to be carefully read and studied—not kept for show. Two or three good books on teaching should follow as soon as may be possible. At least a part of the earnings of this first work should be devoted to the acquirement of the professional training every successful teacher must have. The way to get this training most conveniently is to attend. some good normal school. The superintendent will be glad to advise with you on these subjects, or any other.

Strive to make a favorable impression on your school. Kindly looks and words sown with care will bring quick returns in little attentions, showing love and respect on the part of the pupils. Never come before your class without preparation, for the truest freedom on your part comes from keeping the objective point of the recitation clearly before you. Having made careful preparation, and provided for all foreseen difficulties and needs, you are free to devote your time to teaching and the study of your class.

Have few rules. Give your pupils all the liberty consistent with orderly school government; but remember that in school, as well as national government, the largest liberty is found in the closest observance of the law. Don't expect to get on without difficulties. If an irate parent sends you a note threatening to come and give you a talk in plain English, don't be frightened. Respond by giving her a pressing invitation to visit the school. If worst comes to worst, and instead of a note the angry parent arrives in person, give a courteous explanation, and if you are convinced that you are in the right, go ahead. Hold such conferences beyond the hearing, and if possible without the knowlege of your pupils.

Use good sense in the exercise of the authority vested in you, and keep your motives pure. You may and will make mistakes, but if you strive to improve and do faithful work, the seed will surely live. "And grain will grow from what you sow."- Western School Journal.

Teaching and Mental Growth.

BY FANNIE HARNIT.

Does teaching conduce to mental growth? Does the teacher find in the profession development of his own mental activity, or must he look outside of the work and its preparation for all that tends to cultivate a higher and broader intellectual life?

To be candid, it must be admitted, in the first place, that a large part of the vast army engaged in training the youth of the land do not find

their labors a means of widening their mental horizon. Indeed, I venture the assertion that a fair proportion of the present assembly would give a decided negative to the question that our Superintendent has assigned to me for consideration. Such being the case, the question arises, Is this the fault of the profession or of the individual? Is mental growth possible to a vocation beset with such inevitable and disheartening trials?— the weary repetitions, the dullness of some pupils, perverseness of others, the indifference or opposition of parents, and the ungenerous criticisms of those ignorant of the work and its necessities.

Here, for example, is a teacher of a school drawing its pupils largely from the slums of the city. Besides the continual noise of work and the nervous strain necessary to keep all busy, giving extra personal aid to the slow child, assigning an additional task to the quick one, such a teacher must deal with children having no respect for authority, whose parents have no control over them-children coming from homes in which filth, drunkenness, profanity, and even crime are rife. The teacher, exhausted mentally and physically, takes home some written exercises in the correction of which to while away the evening; to-morrow is but a repetition of to-day; next week of this, and thus passes the year. Where, asks this martyr to the cause of education, is mental growth to be found in such a life? Again, here is a teacher who contends that the very habit of thought necessary to the instructor-the attention to exact demonstration and minute detail-narrows the mind and unfits it for an even cultivation of all its powers.

Still another concedes that higher mathematics, history, or the sciences may conduce to the mental growth of the instructor, but maintains that such cannot be the result of teaching year after year the same routine primary or secondary work.

I recently read an article purporting to be from the pen of one with long experience in the school-room, in which the writer wondered if the poet who sang of the "delightful task to teach the young idea how to shoot" had ever tried it himself, as nothing would ever convince him that the teacher was not the most unfortunate creature on the face of the earth, the hours in school continual misery amid the multitude of petty annoyances incidental to the profession!

It is unnecessary to further dwell on its ills; no one with any experience in the work denies that it severely drains the teacher's vitality, exhausting alike both mind and body; but those who find in it only stagnation, dull routine, mental torpor, and indifference to culture, have no right to shift upon the profession all of the blame, a large part of which, at least, should rest upon the individual. They should break away from the bounds of the school-room and seek other fields of usefulness in which genius may be unfettered.

The faculty of volition is called into constant exercise in the direction of school-room affairs; the emotional nature is developed by the interest awakened and the sympathy enlisted in the needs and aspirations of the youth with whom he is associated, while, in most instances, the teacher's purely intellectual powers are those to which the profession offers the least stimulus. This must be supplied by personal energy; but whatever the direction in which one's efforts are exerted, it depends upon the individual whether or not the daily labors shall constitute both centre and circumference of life.

It is questionable whether, in the lower grades of common schools, there is much mental growth in the actual truths presented after the second or third year; but it is a fact that such teachers, when offered different work, usually prefer to remain in the same grade, because their routine is all arranged and no time is required for preparation. If such a teacher finds no mental growth in the work, is it the fault of the occupation or of the individual?

No matter how simple the lesson or how oft repeated, it will be most successful only when the teacher has previously considered how best to present the subject in this particular instance. The very effort of arranging ideas and studying the best method of presentation tends to benefit the instructor. So varied are the mental endowments of the human race that no two children are ever to be found with exactly similar minds; what is clear to one may be unintelligible to another; and the teacher cannot meet the exigencies constantly arising from different circumstances and different intellectual conditions without finding some mental growth a result.

Even the matter of discipline, the most unpleasant feature of schoolwork, is not wholly an unmixed evil. The teacher who constantly anticipates insubordination will rarely be disappointed, and if certain punishments are laid down for certain offences, the offences usually follow, for Johnny not unfrequently decides that the fun of violating a rule will compensate for the known consequences; whereas, the teacher who awaits the necessity and then promptly and decidedly meets it, reduces to a minimum the offences and cultivates in himself fertility and readiness of resource, so invaluable in any position in life.

Because of constant association with those of limited knowledge and experience, the profession undoubtedly tends to give the teacher a view of life, as it were, through the wrong end of a field-glass, to limit the mental horizon to the four walls of the school-room, and lend a pedagogic air to intercourse with those who may possess less book-learning, but far more practical knowledge of the world. That teachers, as a class, are not unjustly charged with being narrow-minded, is proven by the narrow view which too many of them take of the profession, when they fail to

distinguish between merely "keeping school" and teaching in the sense attached to it by our great naturalist when he discarded all other titles and declared himself "Louis Agassiz-Teacher."

Education means, not crowding the young mind with a certain number of text-book facts, allowing no scope for independent thought or growth of individual character, but awakening and stimulating the intellectual and moral resources, creating a taste for good books, and fitting the mind to develop to the utmost its inherent abilities and make the most of life.

The true educator must be a student and in sympathy with the learner, in order to originate new and ingenious methods. He must read something beside school-journals, keep informed respecting the industries, politics, and literature of the present as well as the past, and maintain an interest in people and affairs of the outside world that will increase his knowledge, enlarge his views of life, and enable him to endow an old. lesson with new spirit and stimulate the pupil's desire for further mental culture.

Any profession is largely what it is made by those who recruit its ranks; it is stamped with the character of its members; and when teachers become more than mere machines to drill a certain number of facts and processes into the minds of their pupils, then, and then only, is the profession raised above the plane of intellectual drudgery and a possibility disclosed of mental growth to the teacher.—Public School Journal (Cincinnati).

Hints on History.

BY C. A. P.

If the proof of the pudding is in the eating," the proof of the History is certainly in the recitation. Therefore, the object of all our work in this subject should be to teach our pupils to give, in their own. words, an intelligent, connected account of the event under consideration. As the recitation is entirely dependent on the mode of study, the first step should be to teach them how to study.

Each day, then, the new lesson is studied with the teacher, she choosing the most important parts and dwelling on them till she is sure that the skeleton of the event is clear to all. This skeleton may thus be arrayed in all the interesting and additional facts which can be obtained from the various histories which are in the hands of the pupils, as well as the regular text-books.

The interest awakened by this work outside the text-book must be carefully handled, for whether it is a help or a hindrance depends entirely on how it is used. Its only object is to fix the leading points in the minds of the children, and must always be given with this idea in mind,

else a chaos of unimportant detail will fill the minds which we are trying to store with useful facts and principles.

This story is, of course, topical, though rapid question work is good for a resume of the lesson. If the children are encouraged to bring in all the histories they can find at home, and to search the newspapers for appropriate items, a personal, wide-awake interest will be aroused which will go far towards making this subject a live issue and not the "drybones" affair it is sure to be when their researches are confined to a single text-book.

Some one has said that history is the story of great men's lives; so biography must go hand-in-hand with the study of the events in the life of any nation. This is a fascinating field for most young people, as the lives of such men are full of interesting and thrilling experiences.

Maps and pictures, both in books and on the black-board, procure another powerful ally-the sense of sight-to fix the subject in the minds of all.

As for teaching dates-the best advice is perhaps that which a famous writer gives to any one who contemplates writing a novel-“ don't.” However, in this, as in everything else, a compromise is always better, so a few, a very few, dates are admissable and necessary. As to how many-take, for instance, the history of the United States from 1492 through the Revolution-a dozen are ample. But they must be well chosen and intelligently handled--i. e., as pegs on which to hang the others—so that a moment's thought will enable them to calculate the date of any event with sufficient accuracy for all practical purposes. The few dates that are learned absolutely should be ground in by daily drill till they are as familiar as the alphabet.

As for the recitation, which is the measure of the efficacy of all our methods, it should be a very simple affair. The topics for the day are on the black-board. The pupil called on stands, reads the topic, and then talks. They should be taught not to expect questions or suggestions. from the teacher, and if this is persisted in, even the slowest will fall into line and make an attempt in keeping with his ability. Any recitation. which does not include the leading points in the topic should be considered a failure. All additional information is encouraged, and there are usually plenty of volunteers to give it.

At least one lesson a week should be written, and each abstract should consist of as many paragraphs as there are topics.-Popular Educalor.

Grammar.

BY IDA A. AHLBORN, BAKER UNIVERSITY.

Though the English language is called the "grammarless tongue," there is still more grammar left than many people master. Do they