NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. To the Educational Press: Secretary's Office, Winona, Minn., Nov. 22, 1905. The Executive Committee of the National Educational Association authorizes the announcement that the Forty-fifth Annual Meeting of the National Educational Association will be held in San Francisco, Cal., July 9-13, 1906. The lines of the Transcontinental Passenger Association have authorized a rate of one lowest first-class limited fare for the round trip plus $2.00 N. E. A. membership fee, via direct routes; this provides for going one route and returning another. For tickets routed via Portland, Oregon, in one direction the rate will be $12.50 higher. The dates of sale will extend from June 25 to July 7, and the return limit will be September 15. Stop-overs will be allowed west of the Missouri river and St. Paul on both the going and return trips. Steps will be taken immediately to secure the concurrence of the lines of all railway passenger associations in the action of the Transcontinental Association and the extension of the usual rates to all parts of the United States. The teachers of California and the citizens of San Francisco are deeply interested in the next convention. They unite in expressing the most confident assurances of characteristic California hospitality in the reception and entertainment of the members, and of the most liberal co-operation in all matters essential to making the convention successful. A permanent organization of committees to prepare for the convention and to care for the interests of the Association will soon be completed and announced in a special circular. It is believed that the decision of the Executive Committee will be approved, not only by the members of the Association, but also by teachers generally who wish to visit the Pacific Coast under exceptionally favorable conditions. * PAPERS. During the meeting of the California Teachers' Association, which convenes in Berkeley on December 26-29, there will be a social reunion of the alumni of the Chico Normal. It is proposed to hold the reunion on December 28th, but the meeting place will not be decided upon until the Teachers' Association meets, when it will be announced and given publicity. There are many graduates of the Chico Normal teaching in the Central California counties, and they will doubtless be delighted to have this opportunity to meet socially so many other graduates of the same school. President Van Liew and many members of the Faculty will attend and the officers of the Alumni Association are working to make the reunion a social success. A GRADED SPELLER. By Alice Rose Power of the Edison School, San Francisco, California. 176 pages. J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia. Men and women who can remember when it was held an honor to be the best speller in a school will smile over more than one feature of this speller. The arrangement of words according to vowel and consonant sounds, the review of difficult words at the end of each grade, and best of all, the dividing of words into syllables will meet with their unqualified approval. After all, to insure correct spelling, is there anything equal to dividing words into syllables? A teacher in San Francisco and an old publishing house in Philadelphia, whose noble motto is "Droit et avant," have joined their efforts to give the school-world this book whose "essential aim is to use the minimum of time of pupil and teacher, and to bring out the maximum of practical results." May it meet with marked success, since spelling is in our day no longer a matter of private judgment.-"School Board Journal," November, 1905. The Government of the Philippine Islands OFFICE OF THE CHIEF OF BUREAU Harr Wagner, President, Playa Vicente Rubber Plantation and Development Company: My Dear Sir-I have sent in my resignation as Superintendent of the Tropical Farm, San Ramon, to take effect October 1st, in order to accept your proposition to become Assistant Manager of your tropical plantation at Vera Cruz, Mexico. I will visit Ceylon and Straits Settlement and investigate the plantations of cultivated rubber trees and report for duty January 1, 1906. Yours truly, GEO. M. HAVICE, Superintendent Government Tropical Farm. An investment in our rubber lands means 5 per cent. on your money now and large future profits. Write for particulars. The Playa Vicente Rubber Plantation and Development Co., 484 Parrott Building, San Francisco. SPECIAL-To teachers, I allow all teachers a special discount of 10 per cent on Trunks, Bags and Suit Cases. I am sole agent for the "Stallman' Dresser Trunk,-they hold "a thousand and one" things so you can find what you want quickly. Write for prices to any of my 3 stores. Oppenheimer the Trunk Man, No. 1 Ellis St., No. 227 Montgomery St., and 638 Market St. A FEW IMPRESSIONS OF THE GRAND CANYON OF ARIZONA, COMPILED FROM VARIOUS SOURCES By C. S. R. GOSLING "No one can describe it to you. It must be seen-not once, but many times. Only by frequent visits may a small portion of its ineffable loveliness be apprehended. For a distance of nearly 500 miles (from the junction of the Grand and Green Rivers in Southern Utah to the mouth of the Rio Virgin), the Colorado River flows through a series of deep canyons, culminating in the Grand Canyon of Arizona." "This latter chasm begins near the mouth of the Little Colorado River and extends southwest 217 miles. The granite gorge section is sixty-five miles long. Here the plateau level varies from 6,500 to 8,000 feet above the sea. The river has carved a winding channel through the uplift more than a mile deep and from ten to thirteen miles wide. In this titanic trough are hundreds of mountains more imposing than Mount Washington, yet none of which project their peaks above the canyon's rim. The ages-old rock strata are many-tinted, creating a rainbow sea of color. There are safe trails at three points on the southern side from rim to river." Leaving the Santa Fe transcontinental train at Williams, Arizona, we changed to a local train of the Grand Canyon Railway. The railroad track to the canyon is built across a slightly rolling mesa, in places thickly wooded, in others open. The snow covered San Francisco Peaks are on the eastern horizon. Kendricks, Sitgreaves and Williams mountains are also visible. Red Butte, thirty miles distant, is a prominent local landmark. Before the terminus is reached the train climbs a long, high ridge and enters Coconio Forest, which resembles a natural park. A most unique, comfortable and costly hotel has recently been built at the railway terminus and not far from the head of Bright Angel Trail. It is named El Tovar, after Don Pedro de Tovar, a Spanish conquistador whose name is linked with the discovery of the Grand Canyon by Coronado's men in 1540. Down Bright Angel Trail. The trail here is perfectly safe. It reaches from the hotel four miles to the top of the granite wall immediately overlooking the Colorado River. The trip is commonly made on horseback, accompanied by a guide. "As seen from the rim. Stolid, indeed, is he who can front the awful scene and view its unearthly splendor of color and form without quaking knee or tremulous breath. An inferno, swatched in soft celestial fires; a whole chaotic under-world, just emptied of primeval floods and waiting for a new creative world; eluding all sense of perspective or dimension, outstretching the faculty of measurement, overlapping the confines of definite apprehension; a boding, terrible thing, unflinchingly real, yet spectral as a dream. The beholder is at first unimpressed by any detail; he is overwhelmed by the ensemble of a stupendous panorama, a thousand square miles in extent, that lies wholly beneath the eye, as if he stood upon a mountain peak instead of the level brink of a fearful chasm in the plateau, whose opposite shore is thirteen miles away. A labyrinth of huge architectural forms, endlessly varied in design, fretted with ornamental devices, festooned with lace-like webs formed of talus from the upper cliffs and painted with every color known to the pallette in pure transparent tones of marvelous delicacy. Never was picture more harmonious, never flower more exquisitely beautiful. It flashes instant communication of all that architecture and painting and music for a thousand years have gropingly striven to express. It is the soul of Michael Angelo and of Beethoven." "Only by descending into the canyon may one arrive at anything like comprehension of its proportions. For the first two miles it is a sort of Jacob's ladder, zigzagging at an unrelenting pitch. At the end of two miles a comparatively gentle slope is reached, known as the blue limestone level, some 2,500 feet below the rim, that is to say for such figures have to be impressed objectively upon the mind-five times the height of St. Peter's, the Pyramid of Cheops, or the Strasburg Cathedral; eight times the height of the Bartholdi Statute of Liberty; eleven times the height of Bunker Hill Monument. Looking back from this level the huge picturesque towers that border the rim shrink to pigmies and seem to crown a perpendicular wall, unattainable far in the sky. Yet less than one-half of the descent has been made." "Overshadowed by sandstone of chocolate hue the way grows gloomy and foreboding, and the gorge narrows. The traveler stops a moment be neath a slanting cliff 500 feet high, where there is an Indian grave and pottery scattered about. A gigantic niche has been worn in the face of this cavernous cliff, which in recognition of its fancied Egyptian character, was named the Temple of Sett by the painter, Thomas Moran." "The way narrows now to a mere notch, where two wagons could barely pass, and the granite begins to tower gloomily overhead, for we have dropped below the sandstone and have entered the archaean-a frowning black rock, streaked, veined, and swirled with vivid red and white, smoothed and polished by the rivulet and beautiful as a mosaic. It is very still. At every turn one looks to see the embouchure upon the river, anticipating the sudden shock of the intercepted roar of waters. When at last this is reached, the traveler stands upon a sandy rift confronted by nearly vertical walls many hundred feet high, at whose base a black torrent pitches in a giddying onward slide that gives him momentarily the sensation of slipping into an abyss." "With so little labor may one come to the Colorado River in the heart of its tremendous channel, and gaze upon a sight that heretofore has had fewer witnesses than have the wilds of Africa. Dwarfed by such prodigious mountain shores, which rise immediately from the water at an angle that would deny footing to a mountain sheep, it is not easy to estimate confidently the width and volume of the river. Choked by the stubborn granite at this point, its width is probably between 250 and 300 feet, its velocity |