contact with the ideal right in the public mind. Children, also, whose notions of right and wrong have not been perverted at home before they entered school, will unanimously pass a fair and just decision in regard to the acts of their classmates or of their teacher concerning the affairs of the school. They are just and fair judges,—unusually just to themselves as well as to others.

Since the school is the pupil's place of business, he should attend to business there. This means that he should be regular in attendance, and quick and willing to do whatever is required of him. He has no more right to waste the time that belongs to others than to waste his own time. To be at school on time is his duty. Besides, he should be neat and clean. Water and soap are cheap in this country. A dirty person ought to clean himself up before he goes among others, but if a child is too small to prepare itself for the schoolroom, then the mother should prepare him.

The school, too, is essentially a place for work, incidentally for play and the inculcation of good habits. It is designed to touch the child on four sides of his nature,—to take care of his body, to develop and expand the intellect, to control the emotions, and to regulate the will; because it is the self-governing as well as the self-regulating power, and our entire theory of government is based on intelligent, self-control. The citizen must be able to control himself and be subject to law. He is further fashioned on the side of his moral nature through his emotions, affections and desires. He must be taught to respect the rights of others, their privileges, duties, obligations and responsibilities. Here incidentally should be spread out before the child all these nobler traits of character which the good value most highly. Added to these are those great intellectual achievements which come from the study of books, and in coming in contact with men engaged in the practical affairs of life. As one has forcibly expressed it: "Man possesses the power to know, the power to do and the power to feel. The highest mode of man as a power to know is-science; the highest mode of man as a power to do isgovernment; and the highest mode of man as a power to feel is-religion. To know the world, to wield the world, to

experience infinite satisfaction that comes from doing good in the world, these combined, form the truest type of human greatness."

Good teaching itself is a great moral force. Paraphrasing the remarks of a noted American divine: "To have teaching judgment, to have a good teaching head and heart, to have a deep interest in teaching, to have a deep enthusiasm in the highest and best kind of teaching, are the qualities that will develop the good in children." A good teacher must have a strong, but not a harsh will, and must be a lively worker; the judgment to perceive, the enthusiasm to inspire, the will to resolve, and the resolution to act. To these high qualifications, there must be added the power of analysis, the ability to simplify a complex subject, and to show clearly, distinctly and separately all its component parts, and to put them together as systematically as they were taken apart; otherwise the attempted work of teaching is as uninspiring as that of moles in their underground passages.

(To be continued.)

E

JOHN M. LATHROP, NEW YORK, N. Y.

VERY now and then some notable man of great force of character, but scarcely any book learning, criticizes a college education as a proper preparation for the actual affairs of business. "Nothing can equal the training in the school of experience," some one says, as though that put an end to the discussion. Coming from otherwise respectable sources, such words may carry dismay to many people who have not heard the other side of the question. Thus hundreds of young men who would have gone to college are precipitated into business careers, where they will probably remain at the bottom of the ladder, through their lack of the broad knowledge and culture that modern business demands.

Before going into the merits of the question at issue, it is expedient to observe that one who makes his way to the front in the mercantile world without crossing the threshold of any institution of higher learning necessarily speaks with no actual knowledge of college culture; his opinion is inconclusive if not presumptuous, because not based on first-hand acquaintance with the facts. For all we know, whatever success was had without the benefit of college would have been doubled or trebled with it. Such reasoning leaves us where we startedit proves nothing. We might as well contend that because some individual recovered from an illness unaided, therefore doctors and medical treatment could be dispensed with by the common run of humanity.

Take the business of railroading, for example. There is positively no doubt that a college education would rapidly send a young man forward, because its momentum would be more than sufficient to offset the time spent in the routine work of transportation. One whose mind has been carefully trained by mathematics, the classics and modern languages, to say nothing of philosophy, chemistry and physics, is capable of quicker thinking and better judgment than a lad who comes

to his duties fresh from the farm or the city and without such discipline of the mind. He can remember orders better, he is smarter at figures, he has acquired greater discernment, and in other ways he is generally the master of the immediate situation, securing the friendship and respect of his fellow-workers and the kindly notice and approval of his superiors as well. His ability to act in an emergency, his initiative, his personal resource and his general reliability, single him out for promotion. This has been demonstrated again and again, and is what is naturally expected. Under the modern system of optional and elective studies, a college student can make his subjects of study exactly fit the needs of the calling he intends to follow upon graduation, whether it be merchandising, manufacturing, journalism, or anything else.

Of course, if a boy of eighteen has a widowed mother to support from his labors, the only manly thing for him is to take a situation at anything he can get. That means he must renounce a college career. He then should attend night school or perhaps undertake a course of instruction by correspondence, if he would acquire additional knowledge. But the probability is that he will not go far into the domain of learning, as the exactions of business or the diversions of society tend to prevent all effort at systematic study. It should be noted, however, that this is but a makeshift, as neither night schools or correspondence schools have the facilities for instruction of the average college.

But if a young man has no one dependent upon him and is in fairly good health, the want of funds for board and tuition is not an insuperable bar to a college course. All the large colleges offer plenty of opportunities of support while studying for a degree, either as waiters, clerks or manual laborers. A boy with muscle can readily find honorable employment of some kind for part of the time. In some cases he may actually pay his board and tuition and save money besides. If he understands shorthand and typewriting, bookkeeping or newspaper reporting, let him proceed at once to any large college, without fear of the result. There is more than one university where a student can live comfortably, all expenses paid, on less than one dollar a day. And it must not be forgotten that

tuition is often given free to deserving students, aside from the regular scholarships.

That a student may acquire vicious habits at college is only too true; that he may graduate without very much study we all know at least at some colleges; that too much attention to athletics, femininity, or the "flowing bowl," is often associated with the term "college boy" is conceded. None of these things is inseparably connected with a college education, and constitutes no indictment against colleges in general.

The only thing is that for the first few months a college graduate may throw out his chest too much. This exaltation of feeling, marking the successful completion of four years of hard work, is only natural and very soon wears away, the young man forgetting all about his sheepskin. Besides thousands of intelligent, modest young men have worked their way through college and never known what pride was.

Since many look at the matter from a utilitarian standpoint, I may mention the acquaintances formed at college with hundreds of young men from every portion of the country. Aside from the great pleasure derived from the constant meeting of these young men, there is no doubt that in after life their friendship will be a very valuable asset to the man who knew them at college in the old days. The friendships made under such circumstances are frequently of the Damon and Pythias type, for better or worse, and not to endure for a day. Many a man has been helped over serious obstacles and lifted up to higher success by his former classmates or fellow-alumni, because of their fraternal interest in his welfare. No one can doubt that the assistance and advice which Senator Lodge freely gave to Roosevelt when the latter was comparatively unknown to the country had much to do with placing Roosevelt on the road to the Presidency; their being Harvard alumni is more than a mere coincidence.

Because some famous person dispensed with a college education himself is a sound argument only for those who are sure they possess the same inherent ability. Of course, general rules do not apply to a genius. Of one thing you may be sure, if this genius be the father of a boy, the son will get the best college training there is.