off any number of equal parts on a line, the construction of triangles and parallelograms, the pentagon, hexagon, and octagon, the construction of circles with chords, arcs, and tangents, with many practical applications will be as far as the grammar grades should go.

In connection with these constructions, definitions and theorems in their proper places will, of course, be taught It is questionable whether the subject of ratios-involving the the theory of limits and solid geometry should be taught.

It is true that the best text books upon elementary geometry take up these subjects-albeit in a very simple manner but I should prefer to omit them entirely. Some elementary instruction in Loci can also be profitably given-as, for example, Two roads cross each other at right angles. A place is six miles from the crossing and equally distant from the two roads. Find by construction how many places answer this description. METHOD OF TEACHING THE SUBJECT.

The method of teaching the subject can be reduced to a single precept: "Do, what you may know," No theorem is to be memorized, but all properties are to be deduced from constructions made and thoroughly understood. To illustrate: The class has learned to construct a circle upon any diameter-all will construct

circles.

Connect any point in the circumference with the ends of the diameter and measure the angle thus formed.

How many degrees are in the intercepted arc? What relation between this. and the angle? Lay off 60 degrees as an intercepted arc with the vertex of an angle at any point in the circumference and measure this angle. (The class knows that the radius is the chord of 60 de

Does the same relation bold good? Perform with 90 deg.-15 deg.150 deg. Is it still true? What general truth follows? Now give a demonstra tion and require a complete proof of each step. Give many practical applications and require that all work shall be accurately and neatly drawn.

Too much attention can not be paid to these two points-neatness and accuracy. Encourage the class to find original ways of making constructions and demonstrations, thus cultivating the true scientific spirit of independent investigation. example, in one of the constructions, you may expect that, finding an angle inscribed in a semi-circle is a right angle, at least some of the class will utilize this knowledge in erecting perpendiculars.

For

I remember that as a student I once

found in inscribing an equilateral triangle in a circle that each of the sides divided the diameter perpendicular to it in the ratio of 3 to 1, and at once proceeded to use this cumbrous and involved method to trisect a line in the place of the more simple and direct one of parallel lines. Nevertheless I had the pleasurable sensation of the exercise of a newfound power, and was doubtless benefited thereby. If you show the class how by measuring the distance from the base of a lofty object and its angle of elevation, they can determine its height, there will be no lack of interest displayed in their utilizing this-to them-new information.

Under the subject of areas give many arithmetical problems and have the class originate others.

Sometimes an impossible problem will fix a principle more firmly in the minds. of the class than any other method. For example, ask the class to find the area of a right-angled triangle having a base 4 and an altitude 5 and hypothenuse 10.

Although our last Legislature may have done many things that deserve condemnation, the effort it made to bridge the gap between our grammar schools and the State University is certainly to its credit. The system of High Schools proposed by this law supplies a link that has long been missing, and makes our public school system a symmetrical, continuous whole.

The now defunct Grammar School Course was designed to accomplish this same end. It failed, however, to effectuate its purpose, and finally proved itself a huge misshapen blunder. It was never popular, and possessed but one virtue-brevity of life.

Under the provisions of the new law, each county may have its High School, or any number of districts may unite, and thus form a Union High School District.

The first school organized under this act began work August 31st, with 15 pupils. It is located at Livermore, Alameda county, and draws its support from nine adjoining districts, containing a population of about five thousand.

As this is the first school of its kind, it will be watched with a great deal of interest, and its success or failure will be

regarded, in a measure, as a criterion of the law.

The following course of study, prepared by E. H. Walker, Principal of the school, was adopted by the trustees, it having been approved by a representation of the State University. We append it, that our readers may obtain a clear idea of the amount of work these High Schools are supposed to accomplish.

Pupils are supposed to have completed the Alameda Grammar Grade course, or its equivalent, before taking up the work of the High School.

Physics-Gage's Introduction to Physical Science completed, two terms. Practical experimentation.

History-Myers' General History through the year, especial attention to be given to Greek and Roman life, thought, institutions and government, with marked regard to their relation to and influence on modern civilization.

Literature-Brooke's Outlines of English and American Literature through the year, completed. Lowell's Vision of Sir Launfal, Addison's Sir Roger de Coverley, Thackeray's Newcomes, Shakespeare's Julius Cæsar, and Hale's Bulfinch's Age of Fable to be studied according to requirements of the State University.

Reviews-Grammar, especial attention given to syntax and parsing; geography, especial attention given to physical and commercial geography; arithmetic, special attention given to logical analysis of problems.

Drawing, composition, and elocutionary drills. Theses in all branches.

SENIOR YEAR.

Algebra-Book completed and reviewed first

term.

Geometry-To page 380, and review second

term.

Rhetoric-Kellogg's, one year; especial attention given to composition, style, and rhetorical analysis.

Civil Government of the United StatesFiske's, completed, in connection with a critical review of United States History.

Literature-Hales' Longer English Poems, according to requirements of State University;

Age of Fable, work of Junior year continued;
Milton's Comus; Selections from Burke;
Payne's I.

Drills as in junior year.
General reviews, second term.

THE SPECIAL TALENT.

In the report of the directors of The Workingman's School of the United Relief Works of the Society for Ethical Culture, a free school for the training of the children of the poorer classes in New York-we find the following:

"Our experience has clearly shown, that the standard of education, heretofore universally accepted, which makes the literary progress of the pupil the principal test of his mental capacity, is altogether false. Literary ability is a special talent, as much as is proficiency in music or in any of the fine arts. And as there are many persons who have not the slightest gift in these directions, so are there many who can not write a pleasing essay or letter or appreciate the style of a great author; yet the unmusical man may be a successful and clever business man, and the non-literate man may become a great artist or develop genius in some other direction. In fact many a man who in his boyhood found it difficult to adapt himself to the literary standard of the school has broken his way to fame and success by means of talents of which his teachers had not the faintest inkling."

"Technical education is still in its mature youth. Even now, hampered by ignorance on the one hand and conservatism on the other, by untrained students and untried difficulties, it need fear no criticism. What development may it not attain when our educational machinery has been adapted to its needs, when states or individuals have placed larger means at its disposal, when the United States has achieved that indus

trial supremacy which is predicted for it?" PROF. H. W. TYLER, in Forum.

Gems from the Educational Number of the "Forum."

"It is a great gain for any boy to learn early to bear defeat gracefully, and to scorn an advantage won by the sacrifice of truth, courtesy and honor."

"The highly accomplished, enthusiastic, inspiring teacher is rare. The art of imparting knowledge is a gift as well as

an art."

"Attention and accuracy are the essentials of any successful method."

"The discipline of the school will be largely influenced by this idea; to deal with all the boys as if they were or meant to be gentlemen."

"The life of a great school is like the life of an individual. What is best and most precious shuns publicity, and is harmed and degraded by notoriety."

THE REV. DR. HENRY A. COIT.

"The essential quality of a University is individualism. Organization is a limit to freedom, and a hard and fast or

ganization or any code of regulations beyond those necessary to secure order, is

a burden to teacher and student."

"No second-hand man was ever a great teacher, and I much doubt if any really great investigator was ever a poor teacher."

"Marks, honors, prizes, degrees even, are incentives which belong to the nursery days-the babyhood of culture."

"The new University in America. should address itself directly to the life and work of the people of a great republic, and of the coming twentieth century."

DR. DAVID STARR JORDAN.

ISTORY, as commonly taught in our schools, lacks much of the interest and profit which properly belong to it as "the record of the universal mind of man,"-the story of his ambitions, adventures, successes and failures. The whole realm of knowledge is the fruitage of centuries, and centuries are the working material of history. The record of the evolution of society from the time of the childhood of the world to the period of its maturity; from the fancy and fable of the far past to the more substantial mind-processes of the present, is fraught with inspiration, especially for the young, who, more than others, are moved by the recital of those thoughts and deeds which have historic. value. In man, man should find most interest. Yet, so long as text-books are compiled from second-hand and therefore, often very inauthentic material, and teachers generally do not possess that broad and more sympathetic conception of the reality, the science, in history, children will not receive the best that this study is capable of giving.

In the study of history, after giving that attention to man of pre-American times that the perspective of history demands, we pass to America's annals which, properly, contain nothing of dull

ness.

Romance, Adventure, Genius, in their most daring and ingenious aspects are ours to enjoy and profit by. No grander men than Americans have ever lighted the world, or carried greater nations in their train. Yet, notwithstanding our heritage in this respect, there is a certain lifelessness in history-teaching that makes the wonderful little more than commonplace, and the commonplace worse than drudgery.

The fault lies principally in the histories published for school use. The practice of cutting and copying from other histories, carried, as it has been, to extreme, has resulted in a mass of very defective text-books. Probably the best and most nearly perfect of our smaller United States histories, was published a few years ago by the late Alexander Johnston of Princeton, a scholar of the highest attainments; yet even this book, admirable as it is, shows signs of the

shears and paste-pot plan of compilation. Text-books should bring the "atmosphere of the "There and Then" as far as possible into the "Here and Now;" surround pupils with the strongest actualities of history attainable; resurrect, in a word, the men as well as their deeds. To do this it will be necessary to discard much that now encumbers our textbooks, and remodel all in the light of first-hand history.

In many of our great universities, the student is brought into direct contact with historic relics and documents themselves and led to gather his lessons therefrom. Some such method of instruction -modified of course to suit the capacities of the printing press, etc.-I predict will obtain in our public schools inside of twenty years. Documents, papers, or pages containing a re-presentation of the original aud resembling it in thought and form as nearly as practicable; these in the hands of the pupil should certainly be more effective than abstract condensations, shorn of those picturesque details which aid so materially in making the picture interesting and, therefore, easily remembered.

The following, being a copy of manuscript in my possession, is a translation. (excepting the, introductory paragraph-"What sagas are, ") from the sagas, and will serve to illustrate what is meant by appealing to the fountain heads of history:

THE VIKINGS.
"Let our trusty band,
Haste to fatherland;
Let our vessel brave,
Plough the angry wave,
While the few who love
Vinland, here may rove,
Or, with idle toil,
Fetid whales may boil,
Here on Ferdusstrand,
Far from fatherland.

THORHALL in Thorfinn's Saga.

WHAT SAGAS ARE.-For hundreds of years after Ptolemy, there are no new records of discovery, but in the Royal Library at Copenhagen, they will show you among their treasures, certain leaves of vellum, yellow and brown with age, and written close with ancient characters, brightened here and there with dashing capitals of red. They were written out, letter by letter, about 1400 A. D., by the hands of pious monks, who called to their aid "Omnipotent God and the Virgin Mary" as they worked. These are the Sagas of the North, and tell us the story of the ancient Vikings or North

men.

FROM THE SAGAS OF ERIC THE RED.— In the saga or story of Eric the Red, it stands written:-"The land some called Greenland, was discovered and settled from Iceland. Eric the Red was the name of the man who went from here (Iceland) to there, and took possession of that part of the land which later was called Ericsfiord. He named the land and called it Greenland, and said it would encourage people to come there, if the land had a good name. They found there, both east and west, ruins of houses and pieces of boats, and begun stone work." "Learned men say that twenty-five ships went that summer from Greenland to Iceland, but only fourteen arrived. Of the rest some were driven back and some were wrecked. (A. D. 986.)

FROM THE SAGA OF LIEF THE FORTUNATE. Now there came to Brattahlid in Greenland where Eric lived, a man named Biarne, who told of land far westward, seen, as was driven by storm that way, and afterwards, "there was much talk about discovering unknown lands. Lief, a son of Eric Red of Brattahlid, went over to Biarne and bought the ship of him and manned the vessel,