ferently, colored dress, not previously worn, a pretty white apron, a brightly colored tie, or a white collar even and notice the children's faces as they come into school in the morning, she would begin to see a pedagogical bearing of her dress upon her school work. When she passes down the aisle and feels the little hands put out to touch "the hem" of her pretty dress and to hear the whisper in her ear, "You look so pretty to-day," it would make her see she has a new hold upon her pupils.

The clothing worn may not be nearly so expensive, but it is in accordance with the old, old law of the mind's demanding variety; and when the child has been accustomed to see the teacher as a black or a brown spot, it is a positive pleasure to him to look some day and in. stead to see a red or blue one.

It is one means of securing better order. There is a sort of correspondence between the inner and outer man, and other things being equal, the children will have a deeper respect for and will give a more cheerful obedience to a teacher who externally answers all such requirements.

SELECT SCHOOLS.

This is the season when teachers of select schools in the country districts are around engaging pupils. This brings to mind some features of the laxness of our school system. Many of the teachers of select schools are those who have failed to procure a license from the county superintendent and thus teach a regular term of school, or those who are quite young and have not yet taken a county examination.

So long as we permit persons to teach without a certainity of their proficiency, so long there is one great

element of weakness in schools. In France no person is allowed to teach, not only in the public schools, but in private schools, and even in families, who has not passed the required State examinations and who has not attended some one of the schools for teachers which the different divisions of the country are required to sustain. And more than this, all pupils, taught at home or in the private schools, must pass the same examination as a test of their proficiency and the standard of the work done as is required in the public schools and no pupil can receive credit in the public schools for work in the home or in private schools unless he can show he has passed the required examination.

Nine times out of ten the only reason for the select school is that the teacher wishes a little extra money, and both the teacher and her friends think that the failure of the select school teacher to collect all her money is the one and only great hindrance to the work. This is the least unfavorable feature in it. The select school idea seems to be that the school exists for the teacher rather than that the teacher exists for the school. No doubt there are excellent teachers, fully qualified and who are teaching excellent select schools, but these are the exceptions, and the rule is that we have an inefficient teacher, one not held by any authority to any standard of work. The discipline is lax, for if careful or severe, which might really be of benefit to the child, the pupils quit the school. The same is true of the work. It is the tendency to make it as light and easy as possible, thinking to keep the pupil pleased and insure his attendance which is necessary to the financial side of the enterprise. The tendencies both as to discipline and proper methods of study leave the child in a far more deplorable condition than, as a rule, is the teacher if she were to fail to collect a cent of the tuition.

U. S. HISTORY, ADVANCED.

It may not be amiss before leaving the History work to say a few words concerning the advanced phase of the subject. By advanced History I do not mean a certain advanced or philosophical view of historical material that may be taken in a college or university, but the work usually begun about the seventh and eighth year of school following the primary (and intermediate) phase spoken of in previous papers. It shall be the attempt to show how some of the ideas so frequently emphasized in the primary phase and which were said should characterize all history work show themselves and may be followed out in the advanced.

One of these ideas is this-that the event as a mere external thing has little significance, but that there is a hidden content or meaning, a spiritual result or condition that must be reached by means of the external, forma! side of the event. It means that in the study of Bacon's Rebellion we are not to stop with a knowledge of the time and place, the immediate cause and the results, and the parties engaged, but that we must translate each of these facts into the life and consciousness of the people of that time. We must see what this event shows as to the way the people were thinking in regard to their social, commercial, political, religious and educational life and destiny. This point will be treated from another standpoint a little farther on.

Then we must remember that growth in the individual, in the community, and in the State, takes place along five lines-social, religious, governmental, educational, and business. These five in their manifold forms make up the complete life, and history attempts to show the dissatisfaction with some existing state of affairs, the

struggle to change it, and the full outcome.

No history work is complete that considers but one line only; yet a full consideration of all would involve so much timemuch more than our common school affords that it has seemed best to give the main discussion to that of government and to make the others largely incidental to that.

So in the study of United States History we wish to see the full life of the people as to the main ideas of growth that have characterized certain of their great periods. It is not meant that the main ideas of growth are the five great lines spoken of, as those characterize all periods, and besides, putting the stress upon the governmental phase, main ideas of growth refer mainly to ideas relating to the political life. Setting forth the idea of the thing to be mastered helps us to decide the question of what points properly belong in United States history. Are the explorations and discoveries a part of the life of the people of this country or do they more properly constitute a phase of European history? The discoveries of the Norsemen-where do they belong? Certainly they constitute no feature whatever of our American civilization, either as cause or effect. What shall be done with the Mound Builders? Is there any question as to the Revolutionary war or Purchase of Louisiana? Is this sufficient to indicate that determining upon the subject-matter or exact nature of what you are going to teach will help to decide what facts to teach and what not to teach? Then, too, when does the history of the United States as, of course, a distinct people, begin? They can be traced back and back until one is lost, but the point is, What really seems to be a distinct marking of the establishment of the separate people we call people of the United States. Not the setting up of the nation as a distinct recognized nation, as that time is

certainly marked by the date of 1776 and 1783, but what particular event seemed to mark a little different trend in thought and feeling that later developed into this nation? Was it indicated in 1492, 1607, 1620 or 1776? Space is too limited to give reasons for and against all these each teacher must do that for himself-but let us assume for the sake of further explanation that it was in 1607, that in 1607 there was a planting or establishing in this new world of a set of ideas. (Why not take 1565, the Spanish settlement at St. Augustine?) It might be said that the whole period from 1607 to 1893 is one long struggle, the struggle to realize their freedom as inen. It was not in the first part of this period to realize their freedom as Englishmen, nor is it now to realize their freedom as Americans, but from the beginning to the end it is to realize their freedom as men. At first they tried to attain this freedom by using English institutions, but in attempting to reach this freedom of the individual man, they modified and remodified these English ideas until they have become so different that they are called American, but the real essential thing sought is still the same. James Russell Lowell has put the idea so well I can do no better than to give his own words:

"Man is more than constitutions,

Better rot beneath the sod,

Than be true to church and State,
And be doubly false to God.

Our country claims our fealty;
I grant it so; but then

Before man made us citizens

Great Nature made us men.'

And a little further on he says"Whenever wrong is done

To the humblest or the weakest

'Neath the all-beholding sun,

That wrong is also done to us,

And he is slave most base

Who thinks that right is for himself

And not for all the race."