windows. If it means anything, it means that no word or smile of yours that carries to one little heart the gracious message of your sympathy, no brightness that you can show from pictured walls or blossoming windows, is lost.

Everything that makes one child the happier is worth while. Very quiet rooms, full of very patient children, may be seen where no happiness is; but there never yet was good, enthusiastic work in the school-room without brightness.

The beautiful school-room must surely contain children who have learned the habit of personal neatness. If necessary, the teacher must help here. In one of the most admirable school-rooms I ever saw the teacher had a habit which worked wonders. Immediately after devotional exercises were over she passed down the isle and looked at hands laid down for inspection. It was a room full of poor boys, of a range of nationalities, but a lady need not have blushed for such hands as they showed.

A boy has laid a good foundation for gentlemanly manners when he has learned to be conscientious in the matter of hands, hair and boots. It is but a step farther to teach orderly surroundings. Neat desks and floors are surely indispensible in the beautiful school-room. Both for beauty's sake and for honesty's sake, the children must learn to respect public property; to keep pencils and knives from desks and doors, and never to mark books that they do not own. It is astonishing how many adults need this last lesson.

Neatness in the school-room and its inmates we must have; so much is a matter of necessity. The matter of decoration rests with the teachers, many of whom need no hint of the possibilities in this direction. Yet many a school-room might be made a more attractive place with very slight effort. True, salaries are not elastic, and they have to meet many inexorable demands. But heliotypes in wood frames are not expensive, and when we think of it why should not some of our favorite pictures hang where so many of our working hours are passed, even if the living room is a little barer in consequence?

Perhaps if we succeeded in bringing refining influences more directly to bear upon our tasks, they would seem less like drudgery. Not to build a rich outer temple of enjoyment, for which we eagerly leave our work, but to transform the work-room itself into such a temple, is the true philosophy.

All these adornments, and many more, are good; but better, a hundred times, is the living beauty that reigns in some happy school-rooms; the fadeless beauty of a loving heart. Happy is the child who need dread no rude repulse, whose delicate instincts of affection are withered.

by no harsh sternness, no cruel sarcasm; who can feel even in the hour of punishment that it is right, "because the teacher does it"; who sees in that teacher no enemy, but a faithful friend; and carries through the long years loving memories and undiminished loyalty.

Let us often remind ourselves what a blessed privilege is that of giving happiness. Let us take home to ourselves those beautiful words of Ruskin, "Be sure that the room is a pleasanter place for your being in it."-American Teacher.

Objections to College Training for Girls.

BY EMILY F. WHEELER.

The world seems of late touched with the mania of gathering information by means of questions on all manner of topics addressed to all manner of people. As a way of reaching average opinion the postal-examination system has merits, though so many addressed have no opinions, or no time to write them, that it is, after all, only a minority. report which is thus made up.

But a recent trial of it has proved interesting as showing the average objections to college training for girls. To the sweet girl graduate of high, normal and private schools in a large eastern city four questions were addressed. They were asked if they would like to go to college, if they meant to go, and if not, why not; and finally what objections they had heard urged against such training? Seventy-seven answered, and of these sixteen had no desire to go, sixteen meant to go, and the rest would like to, but could not-chiefly for lack of money. A few were unwilling to postpone so long their entrance into society; and one, a normal graduate, was of opinion that though she might know more after four years at college, she would not be better fitted to teach.

But it is the answers to the last question which are most instructive, as showing the prejudices still ruling the average mind. The chief objections urged are: "College training is unnecessary; women need to learn only household duties. They soon forget all they learn, have no use for it in after life, do not remain single long enough to profit by it. It is useful only to those who have to support themselves or who enter a profession. It makes women masculine, causes loss of pretty lady-like ways; makes them strong-minded, vain, independent, disagreeable, dissatisfied with home life, injures the health, unfits them to be economical wives, destroys the maternal instinct, and hinders them from marrying."

Now it may be useful to note how entirely the social fallacy underlies most of these objections. Substitute "men" for "women" in them and

more than half of them become absurd. But is education one thing for men and another for women? Precisely, answers society. A man's education is for his individual profit in knowledge and character, society gaining in turn from his gains. A woman's training is for the good of the home; she cannot be considered apart from her special mission as mother and home-maker. In that case, our homes are still, in the main, "dolls' houses." There are, of course, numbers of people who think all college training a mistake; who oppose it equally for boys and girls, urging, with slight variations, these same objections. This is at least consistency if it is not good sense. But the people who believe in it for the average boy, should show cause why the average girl may not equally profit by it; why only the exceptional girl who means to teach or take a profession should be given it. The question, indeed, resolves itself into this: Has a woman a right to life on her own account? If so, then the good of society will give to her, as to her brother, the broadest development, and trust to profit indirectly by her culture as it does by his; no more no less.

A late writer in a magazine, like these objectors, lays the blame of declining marriage on college training and the "selfish ambitions" it fosters. And, always with the good of society in view, he reccommends, as a cure, earlier marriages. Let the girl be trained in household arts so that the youth can afford to marry, and then let her be given home and children to absorb her energies, and the "selfish ambitions," which it is so wrong for her to cherish, will wither. But it is precisely the best mothers of to day, the most intelligent and conscientious, who mourn over their intellectual deficiencies, their imperfect, old-time training, because they feel these deficiencies with their children. They form classes and literary clubs, because-"I want to know something for my boy's sake-my girl's." If the younger women want knowledge for their own sakes, it is, perhaps, because this reason has not yet come into their lives.

Let us be rid of the idea that a college training is only for teachers. The boy goes, not because he is to be teacher or lawyer, but because it is the best education of a gentlemen. Until his sister goes for like reason, because it is the best culture of a lady, we are still in the back-woods. Let us be rid, too, of the fancy that the higher education is, in some vague way, inimical to marriage and the common lot. If there is comfort in statistics, they show that college-bred women marry like their their sisters, only a little later. Statistics long since disproved the "injury to health" objection. As for the moralists who cry that women's extravagance and love of dress hinder marriage, they must surely see that a society life fosters these passions, while an intellectual one, such as college training should develop, controls them by substituting nobler ambitions.

Meantime college women are warned by these objections not to be vain, disagreeable, independent, or "anxious to occupy positions more suited to men." There is, indeed, a certain vagueness about this last, and we all know vain and disagreeable women who are not college-bred. But behind the criticism is a truth. It is part of the mission of collegetrained women to-day to recommend that education to the average mother. If we are open to criticism because of deficient social grace and tact, the cause will suffer, for, as Howells tells us, "It is certain that our manners and customs count for more in life than our qualities.” — The Chautauquan.

Attention, District Schools.

Let all city teachers omit this article, as it is written expressly and entirely for the young district school teacher.

Don't think, because you have only a dozen farmers' children of all ages and sizes, that there is no use in exerting yourself; for if you choose, you can enjoy teaching better, and, at the same time, do more good than in a mill village with fifty children.

You may not have more than three who are studying compound numbers, but the school will be interested in seeing these measure desks, tables, window panes, door-casings, the floor, platform, maps, etc., and finding how many square inches, feet or yards are in them. Have your pupils measure bureaus, picture-frames, and wood boxes at home, then in school find the square or cubical contents.

One day we all went out and measured the road for half a mile, then took the distance to a certain tree in rods, then found it in yards and feet. Then we measured a pile of four-foot wood. Remember, children like anything they can do with their hands.

If you have a small school it is much easier to teach Memory Gems after the morning reading. After reciting together a few times, two or three are ready to try alone, then others want to, and it is much better for all than where there are fifty and no time to hear them individually.

It is sometimes difficult to keep the younger ones busy while the others recite. If you have an old geography, as most teachers have in their closet, tear out the maps and prick their outlines on paper; you can do several at once, then let the children draw them and fill in rivers, cities, etc.

Or give them some of the pictures to prick the outline themselves and draw, only give them old pasteboard covers on which to do it. They will enjoy the work even more than tracing on tissue paper.

For your class in fractions put a circle on the board with a mixed

number in the centre, then around the edge write, first a mixed, then a whole number, and let them first add, then subtract, the centre number being smaller than the others.

Now for amusements: One teacher bought a croquet set for the children, as many of them brought their dinners, and she has seen them playing three ball games at once, each taking up her ball for a minute when it was in another's way. They used it spring and fall, and only one arch was lost and one mallet broken, and that was replaced by the boy who broke it. It was in constant use, and the children took the entire care of it, the rule being that those who set it out should take it in, as it was beside a much travelled road; and each should replace his mallet and ball.

That may seem foolish, but it was really an education in patience, carefulness and thoughtfulness.

Last, but not least, go to walk with the children occasionally.

Don't wait for them to ask you, but ask them to help you hunt for wild flowers. Probably you will learn several things about them during the first walk, and may see some flowers that you with your dull eyes have never perceived.

The children may not know them by their botanical names, but describe one that you would like to find, and see how their eyes will shine and how quickly they will lead yon to the place where they grow thickest.

If you are just beginning to teach you may not have an opportunity to teach in the city at present, so don't spend your time in wishing, but enjoy the country and place all the pleasant pictures in your memory that you can for reference when you are in the hurry and grind of a city school.-Popular Educator.

Relation of Superintendent to the School Board.*

BY SUPERINTENDENT C. F. FOSTER.

[The article following, with the necessary differences resulting from dissimilar legal enactments, is quite as good for Virginia as for Pennsylvania.-G. R. P.]

The idea of relations suggests that of rights and obligations. The one necessarily involves the other. This is true, whether the parties concerned are naturally and permanently related, as in the case of parent and child, or whether, as in the official relation now under consideration, they are voluntarily and temporarily associated for a particular purpose. In treating the subject assigned for this paper, however, while it may be necessary to name the general obligations on either part arising from the

*This paper was read by Superintendent C. F. Foster, of Chester, Pa., at the late meeting of City and Borough Superintendents at Harrisburg, Pa.