VOL. I.

No. 6.

T

The

HE spirit of investigation has forced the science studies into prominence. English has been shadowed by a tree of knowledge. trunks, the branches, the leaves-even the roots are grafted with cion of science. Agassiz gave to American teachers the lesson of original research. The teachers of English have not learned the lesson. Why?

I plead for thorough, practical training in English. To ask that you wisely consider your methods of teaching this study that is the strong golden thread woven in the weft of every curriculum. The mental appetite for literature must be created or augmented in the grammar grades.

I have no suggestions to offer in the teaching of grammar. Every progressive teacher understands the work. The error of teaching English is much more. vital than your methods in grammar. As now taught the pupils are able to pass a thorough examination in the parts of speech, attribute and object complements, in all kinds of phrases, clauses, sentences; can build a sentence and diagram it with such facility that the exam

ination paper looks as though it were covered with oriental hieroglyphics, but is more meaningless even to a benighted American. They can construct a frame work of a composition with the intuitive knowledge of a Yankee carpenter. Forty little girls with forty little essays and fifty little boys with fifty little speeches step out on the graduation platform in every little town each year. Re

sult, a few go to the high school and learn the figures of speech, formation, capitalization, the allusions, illusions, the whys and the wherefores, of "The Lady of the Lake," the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," "Snow Bound," "Alhambra," and some other selections. A very few

go to the university and after a course in philology with a great deal of time spent on the miserable spelling of Chaucer and Spenser, return home with their ability to write English enhanced by a broader culture, but lessened by an indistinct recollection of the rules of technical grammar. Technical grammar and composition, as taught, give a perilous facility for colorless expression. The knowledge obtained of English from the teaching of grammar is on the border land of ignorance. General result, .a

How do you teach chemistry, physics, botany, entomology and kindred sciences? Without specimens? Without experiments?

The foundation of the Stanford University upon the distinctive idea of investigation has quickened the impulse and given inspiration to original research. among western teachers and scholars. This idea of investigation, taught by Louis Agassiz, and emphasized by the sciences, must be applied to English. The sixth year pupils are ready for the color and atmosphere of literature before they are prepared for the rules and principles of grammar. The natural order should be followed. Goodwin wrote his Greek Grammar more than two thousand years after blind Homer sang: "Anthon, his Latin rules centuries after it was written: Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres. Grammar rules are deduced from languages already in existence. Plato, the greatest master of language, wrote before words were divided into classes, or parts of speech. Aristotle and the stoics cared more for logical than grammatical form. The Alexandrian scholars were the first to analyze and classify the phenomena of language as a language. The million little sufferers throughout the world owe the torments of grammar as a text book to to Dionysius Thrax. He should be forgiven, however, because it is doubtful if he intended to make grammar the basis of language. It is the modern teacher who has done that. The school world has been wrong for a thousand years upon this question. The result of original investigation has been so marvelous that the wonder is that pupils were not started years ago to deduce principles of grammar, composition, rhetoric and

new.

This is not

The Aryans, on the olive-crowned hills of Syria when language was young, made every word a metaphor and taught the child beginning to articulate by pointing to the setting sun, "growing old and dying;" not to the hieroglyphics on their text books of stone.

I have been a plain and simple worker in English. I have tried to teach the honesty and earnestness of words. My faith in the rules of punctuation was made faithless through a visit to the printing offices of New York. Every proof-reader, the maker instead of the servant of rules. Try this experiment: take a book from ten of the leading publishing houses of the world, examine the punctuation of the title pages. Result, not two alike. Why?

An experiment of this kind with a class will do more to strengthen it in the line of investigation than the perfect memorizing of a whole grammar.

My interest in English in the schools has been awakened by actual inspection and examination, and from frequent attendance at institutes where teachers gave some practical demonstrations of their English; also from a critical examination of the journals published in the interests of education. No profession shows such a lack of the use of good English through its journals as that of the teachers'.

The Century and other dictionaries are full of strong words. There is a vitality about words that give them the spark of life. The child of twelve will understand and appreciate strong words. The Hindu child used them. The Nazarenes who composed the wise men, at the age of twelve knew the strong words of

the Armenian tongue, and Paul, John, and St. Matthew knew the strong words, and I doubt if they heard of an attribute complement. The native Indian lisps in strong words. Let the American school boy and girl have unbounded appreciation for strong words, and care not whether they be Greek, Roman or Anglo-Saxon. The wisdom of all the centuries is theirs, and ours. Let them know that English is the ocean into which streams of language empty both debris and gold.

After words, thought. Teachers have not yet dreamed of the combinations that will be made with words. With the liberty that Lowell gives in his saying, "The thought is his who expresses it last and best," a future is open in the use of English greater than in any other direction. The distinctive idea of investigation has been augmented somewhat in the direction of English and has brought encouraging results. Word analysis is now in almost every grammar school. Philology is not touched upon outside of the university. Yet I have seen splendid results from skeleton work like the following:

A description of the Aryan race and its migrations, dignifying the Aryan with the title of the "Mother of Languages." Trace one branch of the family through Persia and Asia Minor, between the Black and Caspian seas, another to the farther north, peopling the Russians with the Slavonia nation, and another in the shadow of the Alps. Some more venturesome than others, reaching the land of Scott and Burns, leaving in their trail the Indo-European languages, and giving to the world the Anglo-Saxon-and the annals of the daughters of Latins--the French, Spanish, Portuguese. Are not these migrations as interesting as the course of the Ama

zon? Does not the Mother of Languages, the daughters of the Greek and Latin open a field of investigation that is wide. and full of human interest? Lessons may be given by comparing the migration of the Aryan race to a tree and its branches. The leaves representing the literature of each division. The tall and heavy laden English branch broken with the weight of its leaves. University work-high school work? No. It is no more than a lesson on geography; an outline of general history. Yes, it is; for it gives to the pupil a knowledge of the human interest in words. The trail of the English through the ages. child is not ready for composition until it has learned to distinguish clearly the use of words. When it has learned to investigate words it is ready to investigate thought, and when a child is ready to investigate thought it is ready for literature, and when it has thoroughly investigated literature it is ready for grammar. In fact a student of literature ought to be able to deduce his own principles of grammar.

The

Has the child of the grammar grade power to comprehend the thought of literature? Tell it of the romantic and sensational lives of Shelley and Byron, and see if "Roll on, thou dark and deep blue ocean, roll," and an "Ode to a sky lark," are beyond his comprehension. Take up in your grammar grades the lives of the classic writers. They are full of human interest. Why not? Is it possible that the lives of bugs and insects are of greater interest to our boys and girls than the environment of those who have given to the world the enduring monument of literature? The last words of Goethe, "More light," the mystery surrounding the thunderous words of Ossian, the pitiful death of the literary forger Chatterton, the tipsy imaginations

of Burns, the sensitive death of Green, the quiet and melancholy life of Wordsworth, the erratic career of Poe, the sweet and gentle existence of Longfellow, and the historical and social environment of our great American authors are lessons that once learned are never forgotten.

While text books are apt to limit the senses those who study the mind know that there is no fixed limit, and a professional reader can read a page at a glance. Every journalist knows that the exchange editor reads an entire page in less than three minutes. The expert mineralogist reads ore at sight, while we are required to study and compare and then guess whether it be gold, iron, copper or silver. I could multiply examples. It is sufficient to say that upon this line depends the development of the intellect of the child.

The work is primary, and is not complete, but it is such as to awaken the child. Less than twenty-five per cent. of the school children reach the grammar grades, a larger per cent, of high school and university graduates continue their studies after graduating. Why? Because they have been awakened.

The California teacher should turn from the text-books of literature to nature for object lessons in word-building and the imagination of the pupil cultured to the full extent of its powers. We need the color of the West in the public schools. It must come up, and through the school-room.

What stranger has ever seen or comprehended the color of California? Writers of other lands come to us with colorless words and the colorless ways of other lands. They are dazed, like the owls that suddenly face the sun, and they see nothing of us, and they know

thing of us till they have lived and be

come acquainted with the light and color of California. Oh, these wise looking and wide eyed owls, that fly here, and flutter there, blind! blind! blind! Blind to the tawny hue of our hills of gold; our hills of gold that lie like huge lions with noses on their paws, and their paws pushed into the sea. Blind to the brown bosom of our mother earth; that soft, that restful, soulful old gold color into which all other colors melt. What stranger, I ask, has ever seen or fitly described one foot of California color? A dash of sunset. Yes, borrowed from Ruskin and other books on Italy. For fifteen hundred years England has gone to Rome and written of Italian sunsets, until it has become second nature, and it is well done. But the color of a California sunset has never yet been seen by any wide eyed owl. We must grow with this color, and become a part of it.

Joaquin Miller in his new song of California says: "The keen, quick light in the morning, the burst of color at meridian, the soft and changeful hues that melt into the tawny glory of the twilight, and the heavy old gold curtains of night are let down out of heaven and hung on the new moon's horn. Cold, gold, gold, fine gold, flung down out of heaven, tangled in the stars, and hung from the white moon's horn."

Who has seen so much even as one of our orange trees? The green and gold, and gold and green, with silver sun

shine shot between-a riot and revel of color. The hills and mesas are unconquered. Hold out loving hands to those who breathe the atmosphere and live the color of those brown hills.

Horace said: "The Greeks had genius, the Greeks spoke with well rounded throats. The Roman youth was taught to divide the AS into a hundred parts. The slow dripping rain of time will not