all that we should. Let writers, lecturers, preachers, teachers, parents, and friends take one step farther, present the ideals and then believe in them.

The devoted father calls his erring son to his side, lays one hand affectionately upon that son's arm, clasps the other in his with fervent grasp, and looks upon him with eyes full of love; while he presents to the boy an ideal that sends the blood to the young fel. low's cheeks and kindles his eyes with fire. Hope, courage, inspiration, responsibility rapidly follow one another in the youth's face. A thoughtful, earnest determination is beginning to pervade it when the father adds, "This is what I had expected of my boy; this is the picture I have been paint. ing ever since the day you lay, a helpless infant, in your dear mother's arms, but," -ah, that but,- your character is almost formed, and I have grave misgivings as to your future.

You have gone so far astray and have so little will power that I doubt your ability to reform. You may be able to climb up, but my surprise at this would be even greater than my pleasure. However, my son, I beseech you to try for your old father's sake." That last loving appeal is unavailing. The strong and lofty look of determination to do and to be has given place to one of sullen despair. The ideal has vanished. The incentive is gone. The boy goes forth to struggle alone. Will he struggle? What is the use? Nobody believes in him. Oh, the power of faith, faith in ourselves, begotten of the knowledge of faith in us of those whose opinions we value, those who are nearest and dearest, those whom we love.

The writer, with his well-rounded sentences and exquisite figures of speech, may so clothe beautiful thoughts as to form ideals of manly men and womanly women, such as the world has never before known; and yet if he cannot show his hearers, in some clear and forcible way, that he believes in the possibility of existence in this "wicked world" of just such men and women, and that he has faith that those who see the pictures formed will see them always and reach out towards them, his artistic touches will fade away and leave no trace in our practical lives of their one-time existence. Writers too often work to uplift rather than to keep uplifted those to whom they appeal. They seek to edify rather than to strengthen. We are in sympathy with them head to head, hand to hand, even heart to heart; but not soul to soul.

The teacher who has faith in children, in

their capabilities, in their desires, in their longings after the indefinite something that is better than the present gives, wields a power whose strength is magical. She seldom says "don't.' She often says "do." She talks to the children as if she expected they wanted to do right and only needed to be shown how. She does expect this. The children feel her faith, they are elevated, and they stay elevated for more than a moment, more than an hour, more than a day. If they fail she is sorry and surprised. It is the surprise quite as much as the sorrow that puts them on their feet again. Many of the trials and tribulations of childhood's school days disappear under this wonderful influence. "I think you had better remain a few minutes to-night, my boy, and copy that exercise. You probably forgot to day and hurried a little, not realizing that you were scribbling. You see it is not nearly up to your best effort, and you do not feel comfortable to let it stand so. I am very sure of that. You will find paper in that table drawer." The child shows his uncomfortableness in a blush of shame at not having kept upon the height on which he is expected to walk. Perhaps he had intended to shirk for once, but the teacher's innocence of it and confidence in his desire to do right make the staying after school a voluntary punishment, and such a strengthener of character as many a flowery and eloquent sermon fails to give.

"Do yer know why I didn't lie out of it," said Jim "Blue bottle" to his confidential friend Jake? "Now mebbe yer'll think I was all-fired silly, but I jest couldn't. She called me up to her, quiet-like and said, 'Now Jim, I know yer faults and I know yer virtoos. Yer ain't no coward, Jim, and yer won't lie even if yer should have ter take a licken. Some boys will say the square thing when they think they won't get licked, and some boys will tell the square thing any way. A fellow like you, who could grab a little kid out from under a runaway horse like you did poor Sammy Smithers, aint going to be no coward now. Whatever yer tells me, Jim, I'll believe, and there the thing ends; for I won't ask no one else.' Then I said, 'Why don't yer ask Willie Perkins as allus does what yer say?' But she said she'd believe me as quick as any feller in the school. Think of that, Jake! And I jest up and told her, and she said she was awful sorry I done it, but the principal said he'd lick the boy and course I'd have to get licked. I said 'course,' and I tuck the licken. Feel kind o' sore out

side, but awful quiet-like inside. I'll do it agin, too. You bet she's right when she says, 'Jim, yer have yer faults, but yer aint no coward.' Most folks think I'm tough. but she don't. She knows I won't lie, and I won't lie never no more."

Who of us has not sometime in his life felt like Jim "Blue bottle,' "more quiet-like inside" for having chosen to do the right? and can we not all look back upon some epoch in life quite as striking as this in his, when we have not only felt like being brave, and true, and pure, but have been so because somebody believed in us?

Why, then, go through the world doubted and doubting? With high ideals and faith in one another, timid aspirations will become bold determinations; good intentions show themselves in noble acts; and pure thoughts produce loving lives.-N. E. Journal of Education.

IN

DECLAMATION DAY.

N his paper "A New England Boyhood," in the August Atlantic, Rev. E. E. Hale says of the teaching of elocution in earlier days:

I remember perfectly the first time I ever spoke. It must have been in September, 1831. At my mother's instignation, I spoke a little poem by Tom Moore, long since forgotten by everybody else, which I had learned and spoken at the other school. It is a sort of ode, in which Moore abuses some poor Neapolitan wretches because they had made nothing of a rebellion against the Austrians. As Tom was himself an Irish patriot who had never exposed a finger nail to be hurt for the Irish cause, I have since thought that his passion was all blatherskite. However that may be, I stepped on the stage, frightened, but willing to do as I had been told, made my bow, and began :

Ay, down to the dust with them, slaves as they are!

I had been told that I must stamp my foot at the words" down to the dust with them," and I did, though I hated to, and was sore afraid. Naturally enough, all the other boys, one hundred and fifty of them, laughed at such an exhibition of passion from one of the smallest of their number. All the same, I plodded on; but alas, I came inevitably to the other line,

If there linger one spark of their fire, tread it out!

and here I had to stamp again, as much to

the boys' amusement as before. I did not get a "good mark" for speaking then, and I never did afterwards; but the exercise did what it was meant to do; that is, it taught us not to be afraid of the audience. And this, so far as I know, is all of elocution that can be taught, or need be tried for. In college, it was often very droll when the time came for one of the Southern braggarts to speak at an exhibition. For we saw then the same young man who had always blown his own trumphet loudly, and been cock of the walk in his own estimation-we saw him with his knees shaking under him on the college platform, because he had to speak in the presence of two hundred people. I owe to the public school, and to this now despised exercise of declamation, that ease before an audience which I share with most New Englanders. This is to say that I owe to it the great pleasure of public speaking when there is anything to say. I think most public men will agree with me that this is one of the most exquisite pleasures or life.

OUR CHILDREN.

I looked at the happy children
Who gathered around the hearth:
So blithe they were, no children

Could happier be on earth:

With their merry plays, and their winsome ways, And the sound of their silvery mirth!

Then I thought of those other children,
So wizened, and hard, and bold,
Who huddle in slum and cellar,

And shiver with want and cold;
Not fresh as the dew, or the morning's hue,
But haggard, and lean, and old.

But yet may they still, those children,
Be taught to forget their pain;
And gathered in arms that love them,
Their laughter may come again;
And the stare of woe and the craft may go,
And the spirit be washed of stain.

SANTA CLARA COU TEAGUE

THE SCHOOL JOURNAL.

LANCASTER, NOVEMBER, 1892.

"Ye may be aye stickin' in a tree, Jock; it will be growin' when ye're sleepin'."

W

Scotch Farmer.

HO brought about the change in the date? It was down in the books as October 12th. The Committee of the National Educational Association issued circulars to the country to observe that day. Congress solemnly resolved that that day should be celebrated throughout the land. The commissioners of the World's Fair fixed upon October 12th as dedication day, and sent out invitations to the exercises. Suddenly there was a change. Heralded by no newspaper discussion, preceded by no exhaustive treatise, without any authorative decree, a change was made to October 21st.

He

The following facts are indisputable. An aged retired minister in the Methodist Episcopal church, living in Wellsboro, Tioga county, Pennsylvania, author of a little book entitled "Our Calendar," Rev. George Nichols Packer, saw the error. possessed the confidence of Judge Henry W. Williams of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. After laying the facts before him he secured through him the approval by the several justices composing that body of an effort to change to the proper date, October 21st. Equipped with this approval he secured the endorsement of his project by Governor Pattison and some of the heads of the Executive Department at Harris burg.

He then went to Washington, gained an audience with the President, laid the subject before the member of Congress from his district, and went before the Congres

sional Committee.

The evidence in support of the proposition was so presented that it could not be successfully disputed. Congressman Wm. A. Stone skillfully enlisted influential colleagues in an effort to correct the error already widely spread. The correction by the National Legislature was in time to have its influence upon President Harrison, who named October 21st in his proclamation, as the day to be observed, and Boston and Chicago fell into line.

All honor to the Rev. George Nichols Packer, of Wellsboro, Tioga county, Pennsylvania. D. J. W., JR.

THE Board of Lady Managers of the Columbian Exposition is arranging to provide dormitories for lady teachers during July and August next year, by using the school buildings tendered to them by the Board of Education of Chicago. It is the desire of the Lady Managers to extend this hospitality to as many lady teachers as possible, and a circular has been prepared which will be forwarded, on application to Mrs. Solomon Thatcher, Jr., Board of Lady Managers, Rand-McNally Building, Chicago. Though the women engaged in teaching in Pennsylvania do not all receive salaries that enable them to travel extensively, yet many will be able during the coming winter to lay aside a sum sufficient to educate themselves next season at that greatest and cheapest of summer schools, the Chicago Exposition. Our Western fellow teachers are strenuously striving to keep expenses down for us by a most generous hospitality. It will be an opportunity of a life-time. Every teacher will do better work for having improved it. The important point for most teachers is to begin to save money now. Even if some obstacle to going should be interposed, the fact that the money was saved will not be a matter for regret. A year hence the greeting among teachers will be, "Were you at Chicago?" Only the forehanded will answer, "Yes."

A MEETING of the Principals of the State Normal Schools with Assistant Executive Commissioner John A. Woodward, of the Pennsylvania Commission for the World's Fair, was held at Harrisburg on the 8th of October. The committee appointed at a previous meeting to prepare a plan for exhibiting work of the State Normal Schools at the Exposition, presented their report, which was adopted. This will be embodied in a circular to be issued by Commissioner Woodward within a few days.

Other circulars are in course of preparation for teachers and superintendents, and will soon be issued and widely circulated. Some delay has been occasioned by the uncertainties that have existed at Chicago.

It is idle to talk of educating everybody on broad lines. The elementary branches are all that the great bulk of our pupils want or have the ability to receive. All that can be done is to give to each child, so far as

possible, the chance to get what he or she can take, and when that is done the great work of the schools is accomplished. To do this we must have well-appointed buildings, properly equipped with all that may be needed in their various departments, and in them the best teachers of both sexes that can be induced to spend their lives in the school room.

LESSON OF THE FLAG.

LET COLUMBUS DAY BE PERPETUATED AS

"COLUMBIA DAY" FOR THE SCHOOLS

AND THE NATION.

HE Columbus Day celebration was not only fully up to the public expectations but in very many cases it transcended the most sanguine anticipations. To the millions of school children all over the land it came as an instructive, impressive, and most joyous event that will never fade from memory. The festival and its incidents will be narrated with undiminished interest to children's children in the mellow sunset

of life, when the youthful eyes of to-day have grown dim and its bounding steps move slow.

The milky baldric of the skies,
And striped its pure celestial white
With streakings of the morning light;
Then from his mansion in the sun,
She called her eagle bearer down,
And gave into his mighty hand
The symbol of her chosen land.

In its simplicity and peerless beauty it symbolizes, politically, independence, the sovereignty of the people, the obliteration of caste and privilege, the equality of all men before the law, indissoluble union, and for all coming time rational constitutional liberty-not a midsummer night's dream, but a practical and impregnable reality.

In its sterner aspects it symbolizes the high-souled heroism that values liberty above life, and knows how to make victory a blessing to the world. In the region of the higher sentiments it symbolizes and represents an all pervading spirit of Love, that

King of words carved on Jehovah's heart, which embraces in its scope the unity of the race, and the brotherhood of man.

It symbolizes the Golden Rule, the Sermon on the Mount, the annunciation to the

men."

shepherds of "peace on earth, good will to Following in the wake of that influence, the tiger and hyena in human nature, that for six thousand years have deluged the world in blood and devastated its fairest

realms, are at last yielding supremacy to the higher faculties of the human mind; and, under the benignant influence of the Prince of Peace, our flag leads the van in symbol

lic, fluttering so multitudinously in childish hands, or brilliantly floating in more majestic and ample folds in mid-heaven, stirring the heart's emotions to their profoundest depths and starting tears of sympathetic gladness?

When our fathers sought for symbols to represent the new nationality, they went to the eagle's eyrie on the mountain tops, and to the crystal heavens above them, not to the jungle or to the desert. Something they desired that should symbolize ideals higher and purer than the carnage of brigand slaughter, and broader than the narrowness of dynastic interests. The new nation was a new birth of freedom in the annals of time, with its promise of hope for the world, and redemption for mankind. And so,

When Freedom from her mountain height
Unfurled her standard to the air,
She tore the azure robe of night,

And set the stars of glory there!
She mingled with its gorgeous dyes

the sword and peacefully arbitrating international difficulties; and as a result, the time is not far off when, in the providence of God, the nations "shall not learn war any more."

It symbolizes the freedom of conscience, and the absolute separation of Church and State, which puts a barrier of protection against some of the most appalling wrongs that ever scourged mankind.

It symbolizes free thought, free speech, freedom of the press, free schools, and universal education.

In its beauty and its glory, as it floats in every wind under the whole heavens, it symbolizes and draws to itself the hopes of the world in its longing desire to escape from the thraldom of oppression, and secure for itself the unchallenged right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

In its unique origin and beauty and in its glorious history it symbolizes more and better, for the glory of God and the welfare of man, than any other flag on earth; and

in the principles and influences which it represents it is a harbinger and symbol of the coming time when the lion and the lamb shall lie down together, and millennial peace shall brood with halcyon charm over all the world.

In its texture only a bit of bunting from the merchant's counter, of very slight pecuniary value, yet in the complex and vast significance of its glorious ideals, when unfurled to the breeze, as it floats with majestic movement in the sunlight, it should command the reverential homage of every patriot and the undying fealty and faith of every youthful heart in all this broad land of ours-the goodly heritage which the Lord our God has given us, and for which he has made us responsible in this our day and generation, to possess, to enjoy, and to safely transmit to generations yet unborn.

Columbus Day has come to us with its grand suggestion. Let us heed it as the voice of God. Let us from year to year upon "Columbia Day," on each recurring 21st of October-a new National holidayimpress in the schools the glorious Lesson of the Flag. Let us not lose it for ourselves, nor suffer our children to lose it. Let millions of voices, an ever-increasing number, ring out upon our national songs and hymns as they never rang before. shall the sentiment of patriotism be instilled into the hearts of the children, while it is deepened and intensified in the hearts of their parents. And love of country, and love of liberty, and reverence for God and humanity, shall be taught in the schools as Lever before in the history of the world.

So

CLASSICAL STUDIES IN OUR HIGH SCHOOLS.

THE

HE criticism by Prof. Hamilton, of Easton, upon the lack of classical training in the High Schools of Pennsylvania, and upon the fact also that hardly more than one teacher in a hundred throughout the schools of the State in city or country has enjoyed the advantages of a good college education, has arrested attention and caused much comment. "Are these things true?" is the question that is asked. Prof. Hamilton is deeply conscious of the value of liberal learning, he believes the status of Pennsylvania in this regard to be much too low, and desires to bring about such discussion of the subject as shall be in the interest of broad scholarship.

"There are those who love learning, and

long for it more than for bread." They are few, it may be, for not to the multitude does God seem to have given the ten-talent capacity of this great desire-a passion which, once aroused with all its divine discontent, yet satisfies beyond wealth, or power, or any other worldly acquisition whatsoever. Of such gifted souls there are many who never reach the light, but feel through all their lives only the blind movings of desire and wonder. And this because of opportunity wholly wanting, or, if ostensibly at school, because there never came such teacher-soul into contact with their own as Horace Mann, or Elnathan Higbee, or D'Arcy Thompson, or other kindred spirit of great heart and fine scholastic attainments, to guide their feet into the pleasant ways of knowledge and of wisdom, into the goodly company of the sages over whom Death has had no power. These souls thus highly endowed are Matthew Arnold's "remnant." They are the choicest spirits of the earth. The world can ill afford the loss of one of them, and the broader the education of our teachers the less the risk of such loss.

Again, there are souls, a much more numerous class, less fine in quality, who have excellent capacity for acquisition of knowledge of many kinds, and who will do their work in the world all the better for having passed through a high-grade course of study. Our more advanced schools should give to such the fullest opportunity for the beginnings of a broad and liberal education, not confine their work to the ordinary branches of instruction-which latter are however ample for the great bulk of the pupils in the schools, who seem to have neither wish nor capacity for such advanced intellectual training.

Teachers who have had the advantages of a good college or university course of training, as well as the best graduates of our State Normal Schools, are needed more especially for such pupils as are here indicated, and the greater the proportion of such teachers the better for the State and the Nation. Instead of being merely one per cent. of the teaching and supervising force in Pennsylvania as at present, this class of teachers should be from five to ten per cent. of said force. It will cost money to secure their services, but if it is at all possible that money can be so used as to bring them into the work and retain them in it, where or how can it be expended to better purpose? The influence of such teachers, men and women, must be to leaven the