DEAR BROTHER FINDLEY :-While loitering on the college grounds at Delaware toward the close of Association week, I chanced to find by the way a small leather-covered note book, the property no doubt of some fellow teacher.

There is no name to indicate to whom the book belongs, but I send a few of the notes found therein, and if these should meet the eye of the one who wrote them, he may address the editor of the MONTHLY and the book will be forwarded to the owner at once.

Gray Chapel :- Handsome assembly room. Fine mural decorations. Pictures near the top symbolical and suggestive,-but hardly "up to the times."

The owl should be in the background, and the crucible, the scalpel and the journal of science well to the front. Beside that star should be a telescope.

In place of that "old lamp of science" should be a cluster of incandescent Edison burners.

That wheel with wings should be displaced by the engine and the bicycle.

Remark of the old man as the young superintendent came out to read his paper: "Now we shall hear how it ought to be done."

"Striving to better, oft we mar what's well."—Shake.

Just had a talk with Have long viewed him from a distance and thought him to be cold and selfish. A warmer heart and a more noble man I never met. I am humiliated and doubt if I can ever trust my judgment of human nature again.

Bro.

brings his little boy to the Association. The hope of his declining years. Why don't get married? Answer: Fear, Prudence or Poverty.

When will teachers cease to berate one another, as if they were to blame for all the evils in the world?

"Sad souls are slain in merry company, and love goes toward love as school-boys from their books."Shake.

Modesty! What a virtue in a teacher !

Meeting with the "boys and girls" in some way binds us more closely to the profession. Am not sure now that I want to leave the ranks."

Wonder if he remembers the letter I wrote him ten years ago when I was struggling to get a start? Never got an answer. Sent a stamp,

too.

We admire those

"Who neither in their hearts, nor outward eye,

Envy the great, nor do the low despise." -Shake.

"The child has rights that even the teacher should respect." Great truth.

Bro. "A stricken deer who left the herd long since."

"The young idea how to shoot " was heard but once, and "the expulsive force of a new affection" heard not at all.

Resolved: To be careful of remarks about others.

is soon to be my brother-inlaw, he would not have spoken to me of him as he did.

"Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice."—Shake.

Case of proportion: H is to Y as "Hyperion to a satyr."

Story: Parrot, sitting outside the door, called the dog to her and then said, "Sic 'em!"

Dog seeing nothing else near, sprang upon poor Poll and almost killed her.

The bird, after lifting up her broken wing and adjusting her crumpled feathers, mournfully remarked, "I know what's the matter with me, I talk too much."

This

"He hasn't any heart." remark was made by a teacher who was talking to another about a third.

The idea of a teacher, either man or woman, who is without a heart! Yet there are such. Time was when physical strength was thought to be the principal requisite of a good teacher. To-day some think intellectual strength and shrewdness to be enough.

How few there are with heart and heart power, and who have learned to rely upon these as the source of the greatest good!

"A veteran in the cause. Honesty and goodness personified."

This was said of one who sat day after day during the sessions just in front of the speaker's stand.

Only yesterday I read in "Reveries of a Bachelor" this: "A strong mind, or a cultivated mind may challenge respect; but there is need of a noble one to win affection."

As we grow old may it be ours to be in character as Dr. O— who is now speaking, or as is this "veteran in the cause " whom we all love.

May we cease to think of time as "An iron door, urged onward by a screw, forcing out life."

Many other notes this little book contains, but space and professional courtesy will not permit more to be given here. C. S. C. Sandusky, O., June 30, '94.

In the last article of the series, "Over the Tea-cups," written for the Atlantic Monthly by Oliver Wendell Holmes, the poet discourses on the evil effects of intellectual over-feeding, and truly remarks: "There is something posi

* * *

tively appalling in the amount of printed matter, yearly, monthly, weekly, daily, secreted by that great gland of civilized organism, the press. It is just as well to recognize the fact that if one should read day and night, confining himself to his own language, he could not pretend to keep up with the press. He might just as well try to run a race with a locomotive."

A short study of Eleanor Kirk's "Periodicals That Pay Contributors" gives the following statistics for the secretive power within the United States of this so called "gland of civilized organism."

To say nothing of the overwhelming literary floods which hebdomadally inundate our country in the form of local and county newspapers, we find there are in present circulation in the United States sixty three literary periodicals, twenty juvenile and fifty newspapers of national reputation, besides five that are devoted exclusively to humorous articles, twenty-six to religion, ten to household affairs, ten to fashions, fifteen to education,

nine to agriculture, four to sporting, and eighteen that are of a wholly miscellaneous character, thus making a grand total of two hundred and fifteen periodicals of national repu

tation.

Now consider the influx of foreign publications, the annual inundation of the modern novel and special professional works, besides the classics, scientists and historians of all nations, ages and civilizations, and do we wonder that Goethe "tried during half a century to learn how to read," and at the end of the time acknowledged his failure.

Many a young literary aspirant has grown weary in the contemplation of the thousands and thousands of musty tomes written on every imaginable branch of science and art, which lie unstudied before him, and longs for a friendly adviser who knows his wants better than himself, to tell him just what works he must peruse in order that he may become in every sense a man of culture, and, on the other hand, what ones it is fully as important he should let alone.

The curve of knowledge is indeed a parabola whose arcs will never meet; and as our powers of investigation become stronger and more versatile, our acquirements more varied, we find that the extremities of our own little individual curves, instead of joining to circumscribe

the field of knowledge, diverge farther and farther apart until each finally loses itself in the great infinitude of the unexplored regions beyond, and our curve is never a circle. But when we remember that the fractional value of the wisest shows only a small numerator divided by an infinite denominator of knowledge," we rightly infer that it was never intended one should know everything, and our only fear of error must lie in the selection of material.

All reading should be directed systematically and with two definite objects constantly in view, viz: The acquisition of knowledge and the strengthening and sharpening of the mental faculties. Discussion and desultory reading is almost as evil in its effects as no reading at all.

Every person, no matter what may be his occupation, should appropriate a certain amount of time for reading, and whether it be three minutes a day or three hours, should bring all his faculties to bear with the closest attention upon the subject of investigation.

Francis Homer, in his "Rules for Reading," strenuously insists upon the habit of continued application to one subject for the purpose of thoroughly mastering it, and advises the reader to confine himself to but few books, which should be of the highest class, and committed to memory almost verbatim et literatim, while every approach to the habit of desultory reading he resists with

the greatest firmness. This mode of reading is not only profitable in the highest degree, but is at the same time enjoyable and consti tutes the most interesting feature of our lives.

In the investigation of any particular subject let the reader feel that he has for the time being a hobby.

His course of reading must be directed wholly upon it. All the faculties, both perceptive and retentive, will then be aroused into vigorous activity; while the mind will receive impressions as well defined and lasting as those of the chisel upon the monuments of Egypt. The habit of reading entirely for amusement, or in order that we may say we have read such an author is most pernicious and may prove an injury rather than a benefit.

The mind becomes a passive recipient rather than an active agent, the faculties are dulled rather than sharpened, and instead of becoming cultured we are only forming for ourselves slothful characters of ease and inactivity.

A great many also in hurrying through too many books at once, become victims to that disease which invariably follows as a result of intellectual as well as physical overfeeding, dyspepsia.

John Abernathy, the noted English surgeon, was of the opinion that there was a point of saturation in his own mind, and if it became

over-filled something else was necessarily pushed out in order to make

room.

Whether this be true or not, we know from experience that the mind will only receive and retain a certain amount of knowledge in any given time, and that one page thoroughly digested is often more valuable than the mere tasting of

volumes.

But Bacon has told us that some books are only to be tasted, while others may be swallowed, and some few are to be thoroughly chewed and digested.

The tasting process may, we think, without any serious detraction from a man's or woman's intellectual attainments, be safely applied to nine-tenths of our modern novels, and it may be a very slight taste at that; yes, a mere touch with the tip of the tongue, I'm afraid will leave the taster better off intellectually than if he had taken a whole dose.

By this we do not mean to say that all novel readings is pernicious. On the contrary, a good novel now and then may be quite elevating in its effects, and there is no one, however stern and practical he may be, who at times does not long for the idealities and glamour of life and delight to lose himself in unsounded depths or upon unmeasured heights.

Emerson's dictum is a wise one, and in the case of novels has its true application: "Never read a book that is not a year old." By

so doing we are pretty sure to read nothing but standard works, for they alone will stand the "sifting of relentless time."

Oliver Wendell Holmes advises all people to "try to know enough of a wide range of subjects to profit by the conversation of intelligent persons of different callings and various intellectual gifts and acquisitions."

One may pursue this course with advantage so long as he does not pursue it to the neglect of a diligent and faithful pursuance of that line of work for which his talents specially adapt him. Of course we would not advise any one to be a smatterer. Neither is it advisable to fasten the attention upon a single aspect of truth, and apply ourselves to that alone for a long time; for then the "truth becomes distorted and is not itself but falsehood.”

"How wearisome," says Emerson, is the grammarian, the phrenologist, the political or religious fanatic, or indeed, any possessed mortal whose balance is lost by the exaggeration of a single topic. It is incipient insanity."

As a matter of general intelligence every one should be familiar with a few of the eminent classics of all leading nations.

A few volumes of Victor Hugo and Balzac, in connection with Guizot and Taine, will help us to form a vivid idea of the social life and genius of France.

Goethe and Schiller are the land