moral life than the one who can repeat from beginning to end the best catechism of religious doctrine or text-book of moral science ever promulgated by council or compiled by man. For memory is but one of many faculties of man; while habit and will are the man itself.

The first virtue of work is punctuality, the habit of doing work at the right time, and having it ready when it is wanted. Not only tardiness in coming to school, but the habit of putting off lessons until a few minutes before the time of recitation, should be sharply rebuked by the teacher. The scholar should be taught that no good work can be done in a hurry, and should be encouraged to begin his tasks early enough to allow plenty of time for their performance. A good way to impress this duty upon the scholar's mind, and at the same time train him in habits of forethought, is to require him to draw up a table, showing the hours when his lessons command the time which he proposes to devote to each.

The second virtue of work is orderliness. And right here let me say that by work I mean doing something. Unless the teacher gives the scholars something more to do than merely to recite lessons from the book, there is no real work for the scholar to do, and hence it is idle to talk of his acquiring the virtues of work. I assume that I am addressing teachers who require their scholars to work over and appropriate every thing they learn, and to present it in their own ways. Examples handed in on paper or performed on the board should be judged, not merely by the answer, but by the way the answer is obtained. Each step in the process should stand out clearly in its proper place. The fundamental characteristic of all truth is perfect orderliness. The scholar should be trained to reproduce that orderliness in every process that he performs. In his diagrams and analysis of sentences this cardinal principle of work may be still farther applied. And in the analysis of flowers and the description of natural objects order should be made of prime importance. And in constructing work, such as composition, drawing in gymnastics, and all manual work, order and form can be shown to make the whole difference between good work and bad.

Neatness is a virtue closely akin to orderliness. Orderliness arranges the necessary materials in right relations to each other. Neatness rigidly excludes every thing that is not necessary. It demands that there shall not be a mark, or a scratch, or a spot, or a smirch on the paper on which an example is performed or a sentence written. It begins every task with a clean slate, and lets nothing come on it except the precise lines and marks essential to the process to be performed.

Another virtue of work is concentration. Concentration is conscious and intensified attention. Nothing weakens the mind and saps the virtues of work so much as dawdling over one's books. On this account, as, indeed, for every reason, the teacher should avoid, as he would the plague, the habit of merely giving out a lesson to be learned from the

book. This shiftless habit of saying to a class, "For the next lesson you may take from the top of page twenty-four to the bottom of page twentyseven," is responsible for half the shiftlessness, inattention and dawdling that marks the study hours in so many of our schools. It is impossible to concentrate the mind on an unknown quantity, or set about acquiring the contents of pages twenty-four to twenty-seven inclusive with enthusiasm. The teacher should give at the close of the lesson a brief outline of the main points in the next: calculated to awaken interest and curiosity. In connection with the lesson there should be some exercises to be performed, embodying the principles and applying the facts contained in it. The will is the active nature of man. And you cannot bring the will into exercise unless you give it something definite to do.

Mere memory is too largely passive and receptive to bring the will into full activity. Concentration and attention are virtues which cannot be developed in pitchers and bushel baskets.

Good work is hard at Many spoiled efforts must

Another virtue of work is perseverance. first. Its many blunders must be corrected. be abandoned. Many blotted and disfigured sheets of paper must be torn up. Many bungling processes must be done over again. In the mean time attention flags. Interest wanes. Enthusiasm dies. Then the teacher's encouragement is needed. The scholar must be told to "try, try again." He must never be allowed to give up. The word impossible and its synonym "I can't" must be stricken from his vocabulary. His pride, his pluck, his obstinacy, every reserve in his nature must be called into action. He must learn the joy of victory, and feel the glory of a conqueror.

The comprehensive and crowning virtue of work is thoroughness. The scholar must be taught to do his best. And he must be trained constantly to compare his best with the best. Absolute rather than relative excellence should be the aim. It is not of the slightest consequence whether he can do better than his neighbor. It is of supreme consequence that he form the habit of doing whatever he does as well as he can do it. The teacher should never accept anything below the level of a scholar's highest possible attainment. The best or nothing should be the rule. Here again I am referring not to lessons recited but to work done. I refer not to the contingencies of so capricious a faculty as memory, but to such qualities as accuracy of statement, neatness and orderliness of presentation, faithfulness of study, precision of observation.

In order to develop these virtues of work in the scholar there must be more real work done in the school. The scholar must take a more active and aggressive attitude toward his studies. Manual training is an important step in this direction. But the principle which underlies manual training-that we learn by doing and not otherwise-must be applied to every study taught in the school. A lesson which cannot be

.

put in practice, a lesson which cannot be made the basis of an exercise calling for the reaction of the scholar's mind upon it in a definite, original and practical way, is not a fit lesson to be taught in school. And the teacher who has not sufficient energy, invention and enterprise to translate the subjects he teaches into exercises is not fit to be a teacher.

The next step forward in public school education, a step which many teachers are taking already, is this substitution of active exercise for passive receptivity. The chief obstacle to this reform is the bugbear of examination. Examination as generally conducted to-day is educationally a blunder, psychologically an absurdity, morally an injustice. It tests not ability to work, but capacity to cram. It puts the premium not on quality of work quietly done throughout the term, but on quantity of memorizing crowded into its closing hours. A final examination, as such examinations are generally conducted, is no fair test of either teacher, school or scholar.

The work done in exercises connected with daily lessons should be kept on file in every school. The inspection of that work should be an important part of the examination of the school and of the individual scholars. The knowledge that their work is to be submitted to inspection, and that their standard and promotion will in a great measure depend upon it, will lead them to do their work promptly, systematically, neatly and thoroughly. It will train them to work and teach them the virtues of work. Work done thus in quietness, taking all the time that is necessary, is free from that anxiety and worry which is the bane of the hurried cram for examination. The method which rests everything on

a final examination on what the scholar can remember of a whole term's work, encourages superficiality, haste, sham, artifice, confusion, which are the vices of work. Teachers, let us require of our scholars more active work and less passive absorption. Superintendents, we look to you for such examination as shall give to the evidence of faithful work throughout the term, at least, as much significance as the hurried sentences transferred to an examination paper in the flurry of excitement following a period of unnatural strain. Then will our schools become educators in habits of thoroughness and integrity, which are the virtues of all work and the foundation of all character, instead of nurseries of rivalry and show, which are the vices of the lazy and pretentious, and are the ruin of character.

The test of a man's education is the quality of work that he can do, not the quantity of information that he can remember. Mere memorized information in the mind of the scholar is as worthless as undigested food in the stomach of an athlete. The development of strong intellectual muscles and steady moral nerves is the end and aim of education.

The criticisms that have been passed upon our public schools, so far as they are just, are all directed against the one-sided education

which sacrifices bodily health and moral character to the single end of acquiring a maximum of memorized information. If that were the only conception of the mission of the school, it would have formidable educational rivals in the wild life of nature, the rough-and-tumble experience of business, the reverent atmosphere of the parochial school. Better citizens and artisans and Christians could be trained by these agencies, than in schools devoted to the passive reception and retention of undigested and unassimilated information.

The school should be an intellectual workshop in which the virtues of good, hard, honest work are taught by experience, and where pupils are trained in those habits which are essential to good workmanship. The habit of doing one work well is not the whole of morality. But it is the heart and core of morality. Without it no combination of other virtues can give to character solidity and strength. On this as a foundation all other virtues may be securely laid. This ability to do work honestly and well for the love of it, not for the fame or pay it brings, is the one thing needful in our industrial and social life. For the supply of this deficiency we must look to the training given in our public schools.

Train the pupils in these schools to do the work there given them to do with promptness, neatness and order, with all their might and to the best of their ability, and you will do your part towards fitting them for any sphere of life-making them ready to take hold of any kind of honest work-and qualifying them to assume the duties and responsibilities of membership in the social and industrial order, and of citizenship in church and State.-Popular Educator.

Success in Life.

ADDRESS BY REV. A. E. DICKINSON, D. D., AT THE LATE 198TH ANNUAL COMMENCEMENT OF WIILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE, WILLIAMSBURG, VA.

My part in these interesting exercises is to offer a few words of kindly counsel to those present, who are now receiving their well-earned honors at the hands of their glorious old alma mater. Mine is an easy task, since there is nothing easier or more pleasant than to tell other people what to do. One may be a complete failure himself without feeling that he is the least incapacitated for pointing out to others the path of success. This, at least, is one of the things about which the man can say most who knows least. If he can do nothing else he can have the serene satisfaction of knowing that he can tell others what to do.

There was never a time in all the history of the world when so many people were giving advice as now, nor has there ever been a time when all other helps were so freely bestowed-and often without money

and without price. With so many pointing to the best paths, and with so much other aid so unstintingly given, why is it that so few win in life's great struggle? Look which way we may, our eyes fall upon the scattered wrecks whose early dawning was as cloudless as yours. They, too, entered the race as you do to-day, with the ringing applauses and congratulations of admiring friends, but soon they fell behind—and out.

There is one great fact about which there is, alas! no room for doubt; namely, that in all the callings of life there are many failures-many complete and unmitigated failures. None can question this. Take the legal profession, to which some of you are doubtless looking as the calling in which you hope for wealth and fame. For every busy, prosperous lawyer, how many there are hanging around with nothing to do-waiting for cases that never come, until their own case becomes lamentable in the extreme. And the preachers-how many of them are "walking about Zion" looking for places and calls, but looking in vain! And thus, too, it is with many who devote themselves to the healing art. They grow sick and die while waiting for others to call for their services. How is it that many men who have had the advantages of collegiate education fail, while so many without any such aids succeed, and succeed grandly?

When we leave the learned professions and come to those who make their bread by the sweat of their brow, we find that those who are blessed with any considerable measure of success are in a very small minority. Many of the farmers of the country are not slow to emphasize the fact that they are not doing well, and yet, even among them, as among other classes, you will find here and there those who are conspicuous and inspiring illustrations of what great possibilities are within the reach of all who make the best of their opportunities. Why should one farmer rise to the highest success, while a dozen around him, equally well equipped, and with opportunities as favorable and with natural endowments as good, fail? It is not the result of mere chance. If one acre of land groans under its golden harvest, and another acre adjoining it is naked and bare, no one attributes that difference to chance. It is sufficiently explained by the fact that the one has been fertilized and cultivated, while the other has not.

One singular thing about many who are conspicuous, chiefly because of their failures, is that it never dawns upon them that the fault is their own. They will seek to explain the fact by some cause outside of themselves, even if they have to go to the ends of the earth to find it. It may be manifest to every one that the fault lies within themselves, but they will always look beyond themselves for it. Sometimes you may

have heard one explaining why he has failed to meet the expectations of those with whom he was associated in early manhood, but you have rarely, if ever, heard him say frankly that the fault was his own. The fault he will put at the door of others.