EARLY DAYS OF THE STATE NORMAL SCHOOL.

5

These results are greater than to be calculated. I shall not say more of them. They cannot be mentioned by name. I believe now some of them still teach-some I saw only a little while since. They were still teaching. What further need one say? It is perhaps one's admiration for the class he himself represents, which rates all newer classes as less superior to ordinary men and of an enthusiasm not so deep as theirs. But Rhode Island need not be ashamed of the record of these toilers in her schools. Shall the same energy not be again displayed? Are there not daughters yet as noble and as worthy?

I beg whosoever reads this little reminiscence to reflect upon the really remunerative operation this first year of the Normal School has proved to be. And if he should insist upon my over-enthusiasm in describing my own class and its merits, let him have the benefit of believing that every other year of the career of the school has been equally prosperous and its pupils equally enthusiastic, persevering and true. Then he may construct his own theory of its usefulness. And I shall warrant him, his conclusion, if it be a true mathematical result of cost resulting in reward, shall not be half enough in fact.

There were good teachers in those first days of the school. Dana P. Colburn was principal. Arthur Sumner was associated with him. From the college came once in a while a professor to hear us tell what we thought of their own discoveries. Professor Greene taught constantly his favorite topic of Grammar. And one by one, three or four ladies from the ranks of pupils were promoted to the position of assistant teachers. Miss Goodwin was first. Miss Brown taught mathematics in a masterly, that is to say, in a thoroughly efficient way. Miss Saunders afterwards taught reading. It was the duty of the lady first named to teach geography.- Colburn himself— may his memory survive-taught mathematics in his own vigorous, telling way. He was proud, too, to show that his culture was not on one side of science—he often prepared himself to treat in a bright, lively exercise some other of the branches of school study.—Colburn was in many ways a remarkable man. No person I ever knew was like him in the combination of apparently different qualities of mind and culture. He could teach and he could govern with superior ability, yet was as simple as a child in his ways of speech, altogether social and kindly.

THE TEACHER PROGRESSIVE.

BY GEO. 8. BURLEIGH.

Armed with the weapons time and toil have wrought,
Annealed in centuries of consuming thought,

The slow results of daring search and guess,
Didactic failure and divine success,

The Teacher leaves the world's gray dawn behind
And boldly sounds the forward march of mind.
Not now to dwell in ruins of the old,

He rakes their ashes and disturbs their mould, Reads arrowy signs from Nimrod's temple aisle, Unwraps the long-tanned mummies of the Nile, Tracks through Pompeii's palace hall and street, The car's stone groove and tread of sandalled feet; Far better homes the bright green present yields, Made sweet with incense of our clover fields,

And nobler temples and diviner shrines

Gleam where our sun on spire and bell-tower shines.
But from the Past he wrings reluctant lore,

To light the paths that open far before;
Beacons the rocks with phosphorescent fire,
From bones of crumbled empires, from the mire
Of rank Campagna's feeds the glowing throat

Of engines almost wise enough to vote;
And like the Vestal Nature when she burns
In tulip flames and lily's fragrant urns;
The gray dead things of winter, his clear brain
Consumes old husks to cherish the new grain.
"Stand and deliver," is the hail he gives
To all that was or is, that lived or lives;
Nubia and Luxor, from their giant mass,
May yield one atom for his chemic glass,
One vital fact from all their dusty lees-
The mummy wheat of thirty centuries,-

That in his garden into new life fed,

May grow to feed the hungry soul with bread.

Old Greece will give him, what all time will guard,

The tragic Muse and Scio's sightless Bard:

Rome lend a sparkle of heroic fire,

With silvery music of her Mantuan lyre.

And the dead nations from their funeral urn

Shall teach the lesson that they would not learn,
That men are brothers, and they build to fall
In hopeless ruin who build not for all;

EDUCATIONAL STATISTICS.

That life is progress, and her true souls march
Abreast with Time through his triumphal arch,
And realms that falsely move, or idly wait,
Are ground to powder by an iron fate.

With pick and hammer, and an eye that knows
Life's lightest foot-print in the rock, he goes
Into a past that makes the long array
Of buried realms the infants of to-day,
Among gigantic bones in ruin hurled,

The wallowing monsters of a seething world,
Primeval pines and plumes of palmy fern,

The old flames fixed, that loosened still will burn;
The long procession of ascending lives

From starry forms that multiply their fives,

Through jointed rings, through shells aglow with hints
Of life's great sunrise in their roseate tints,

To the last form, predicted from the first,

That stands erect, the flower of soul, full burst,-
Finding the same great lesson, God in all,

And life forever onward! To his call
The recluse Darkness render up her keys,
And tongueless Death his rock-bound mysteries.
Then when the past, condensed in one quick word,
Has lent what fire its bounding pulses stirred,

He waves it back into its silent grave,
Rich with the worth of warning which it gave,
And makes the living Present the free heir
Of all his wealth uncumbered with its care.

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EDUCATIONAL STATISTICS.-Napoleon I. said: "Statistics mean the keeping of an exact account of a nation's affairs, and without such an account there is no safety." And Goethe says: "I do not know whether figures govern the world, but this I do know, they show how it is governed." Good educational statistics will show the present generation occupied with caring for a future one; it will faithfully depict a nation's hopes and fears connected with this care, and will thereby enable states and individuals to preserve the intellectual heritage of centuries long gone by, and transmit it to the coming generations. Educational statistics alone can show the way out of the bewildering maze of different educational systems; they will be of more than ordinary importance in a State occupied with a reform of its educational system. All such reforms would build on a very unsafe foundation if they had not been preceded and were not constantly accompanied by most exhaustive educational statistics."

SCHOOL DISCIPLINE.-NO. 6.

Another powerful agency in the management of a school, is kind

ness.

By this, as exemplified in the life of the true Teacher, I mean his uniform good will, earnest sympathy and hearty generosity, habitually exercised towards his pupils. There is no force on earth so potent as love. When it has possession of the human heart, it is all-pervading and over-powering, especially if brought to bear upon sympathetic childhood and youth. That teacher who truly loves his pupils, alone has the power to gain their love and confidence—which should be his chief reliance in school management.

The affectionate pupil will confide in your judgment, respect your authority, and fear your displeasure. Show him, by your personal attention and kindness, that you are his true friend, and that all your efforts are designed to secure his best good, and make him believe it, and you hold him as by the power of enchantment. You have no further need of a display of physical force. He is held under another and a higher law, which induces him to gratify your wishes and seek the best good of your school.

You, as a teacher hold, for the time being, the place of the parent, and you should, as far as possible, cherish the affections and manifest the interest and zeal of the true mother, who spends her life in loving and toiling for her children. But let me not be misunderstood here, either in what I have said, or may say, touching school discipline.

This kindness, which is an essential element in every true system of government, is not and cannot be a substitute for authority, or an obstacle to severity, when the good of the individual or the school demands it. And I wish it distinctly understood by the teachers who read these articles, that the system of school government which I recommend, is full of love and kindness, and that love is never more truly exercised than in administering necessary reproof, or inflicting necessary pain, in the administration of public affairs.

Of the teacher's heart, Shakspeare could not say,

"It is too full of the milk of human kindness,"

if only he has enough of authority, firmness and executive will.

Without these, even love, as an element of school discipline, is sometimes powerless. Even God's Infinite Love fails to win the hearts of wicked men, and in the government of the world, He has instituted pains and penalties to be inflicted upon the incorrigible offender. All the pain that has ever been endured since the fall of man, regarded as corporal punishment for sin.

must be

Then in the Divine government this principle is incorporated; and can man devise a system of discipline more wise than God's? And if Infinite Love employs this severity, may not human kindness do the