is far more and hence our hero experienced a sensation akin to consciousness. This was the beginning.

The certificate (which seemed one of the Beatitudes) and its possessor became at once the rallying point for a host of relatives and friends, who by processes distinguished rather for perseverance than for glory, secured for the candidate the crowning bliss of joys supernal a school, with specified emoluments. Then there was a great calm. The protocol was signed, peace was proclaimed, and the erstwhile serried hosts returned to their wonted avocations, flushed with the pride of victory.

mark out the path through the gloom, some subtraction might have been made from the horrors of that day. That night he dreamed but such dreams as only Dante could portray or Doré illustrate. Never was the light of day more welcome and likewise more unwelcome than on that Tuesday morning for he must return to the scenes of the previous day. No middle course but inexorable Fate held him fast and impelled him to his task. Never did galley slave take his place with such dire forebodings. Never before had such a halo of glory hovered over the hour of four o'clock. To him, indeed, there was a pillar of cloud by day, and of fire by night but — the cloud was ominous, and the fire burned but did not illumine. He shrank before the eyes of his pupils, for their every look convicted him of ignorance and, therefore, impotence. He saw, as if it had been a vision, that the one thing needful was knowledge that learning was the "open sesame" to success-that “Knowledge is Power." Then the Star of Hope dawned upon his soul and he took courage. He must work. School went on - but teaching

was but throwing a sop to Cerebus to still the monster's ravings till his own desire had been attained. As a miser hoards his gold, so he hoarded knowledge. He must work to force his way back from the chasm that yawned at his feet. He must drink at the Pierian Spring, he must delve in the mysteries of science, and follow in the foot-steps of the Sages of the Past. He must wrestle with the Abstract and the Abstruse as Jacob wrestled with the angel with the same words upon his fevered lips, "I will not let thee go till thou hast blessed me" hast given me knowledge. Knowledge was the light toward which he wrought as he tunneled his way from his prison Knowledge the beacon upon the shore toward which his gaze was ever bent as he struggled and fought his tardy course across the maddened and maddening waves. Like Dame Rumor he grew by motion, and gathered vigor as he sped along. With no lawless impulses to be held in check his energies were all focused upon the pursuit of Knowledge, and everything that could contribute in any degree to this end was laid under tribute. Language, Science, Mathematics all came at his bidding and laid their richest treasures at his feet. He welcomed the evening shadows for they invited him to his studies. He hailed the breaking light of morn with gladness, for it ushered in

But it did not come. His scholorship awed, but it did not attract

and his pupils seemed no less anxious for the closing hour of school than he himself had been in the days of old the days of old. In spite of the coruscations of scholarship with which he dazzled their bewildered gaze; in spite of oracular utterances delivered in declamatory style; in spite of dramatic appeals to them to scale the heights of Parnassus they stood aloof. He laid siege to their ramparts with shafts of brilliant repartee, wit, eloquence, raillery and sarcasm but there was no capitulation white flag showed upon the battlements. After using all these arts in vain, they seemed to him to be veritable ingrates, steeped in rudeness and coarseness, with no appreciation of the True, the Beautiful and the Good a band a crowd a gang of degenerates, and he told them so. As he thought he was "casting pearls before swine" and told them so. They came from homes that were superlatively boorish and uncouth

no

and he told them so. He soon became the subject of conversation

at firesides at social gatherings - in shops and on the street. Then ensued interviews with parents interviews in which elegance of diction was not a prominent feature. Then a report was current that he was weak in discipline that he was a good scholar but a a poor teacher that he understood his subject but was deficient in ability to impart instruction. When this rumor reached his ears he was indignant, and resented the imputation with all the vehemence of his ardent, honest nature. The idea that boors should presume to sit in judgment upon a scholar and cast aspersions upon that of which their own narrowness precluded any adequate conception. But maturer reflection convinced him that a full and complete understanding of methods of educational standards could, at least, do no harm and might prove to be the talisman he sought.

be revealed only in Heaven. Then began a pilgrimage to the West following the stream whose source he had so recently discovered. Barely discernible in Italy - he found it reappearing beyond the Alps and in France and especially in Germany he must needs make a long pause in order to a thorough survey of the course he was pursuing. At times he was dazed but always in a transport of rapture as he traversed the lesser streams that issued from or into the main current. Sometimes he struggled through places of darkness, that would have appalled a less intrepid man and sometimes through heaps of rubbish most uninspiring but he was ever buoyed up by the belief that clear water would be found just beyond. Across the Channel into England and there found his stream running strong and often pellucid thence to the Atlantic shores and found no diminution

but rather a delta of streams that rejoiced his heart. He reveled in the treasures of Pedagogy now with fulness of joy - finding in it a sovereign panacea - and thence. into child-study with a zeal that knew no abatement. The nomenclature of these studies became so familiar that they seemed to have been learned in his cradle. Concept - apperception, correlation — assimilation were terms no less familiar than the words of his mother's lullaby. He was an en

thusiast in this work as in everything. Moreover he was honest and honest enthusiasm can work wonders. Thus it came to pass that he was recognized as authority and was in demand. He lectured and wrote directed others in their work and conducted a voluminous correspondence and being human, exulted in the greatness that seemed thrust upon him. All this for glory. He taught school as a means of gaining a livelihood. But teaching was irksome. He had had a taste of ambrosia and ordinary edibles were insipid. He yearned to show others how to teach, rather than to do the work himself - and the success that he had so fondly hoped for and worked for seemed a vanishing quantity. "Better," thought he, "stand upon the lofty eminence. I have attained, and point out to others the paths they ought to travel. Better to be an oracle on the subject and accept the homage of earnest devotees, and merit their grateful acknowledgments and reverence."

But while waiting upon the mountain top for some agency to transport him into or beyond the clouds that a message came called him down into the valley among the people. Heeding the call, he devoted himself assiduously to this mission, following a line of activity that led him into homes of all grades of society. In a single day he visited homes that were sur

trying

feited with luxuries they could no longer enjoy, and homes where poverty and squalor and disease had begotten sheer indifference and despair. He saw the wan, discouraged mother trying to soothe to rest her helpless baby as it writhed with pain that she had no means of alleviating. He saw a mere child haggard from hard work, and want of food as best she could, to prepare food for younger brothers and sisters — whose clamorings even the curses and reviling of the father had not been able to still. He saw this same child forced from her home in the cold of winter with clothing scarce worthy the name, by a besotted father, to beg the food for which he would not work. He knew of the presence of the Angel of Death in the home not by crape on the door which had been interdicted by the decree of Poverty but by the joy of the father that there was one less to be fed. He saw children huddled together in bed seeking the warmth there was no fire to bestow. He saw shivering mothers and children waiting in the snow for broken bits of wood that came from the hand of Charity while the husband and father slept by the fire of the saloon across the street. He saw mothers ambitious for their children striving day and night to make good their claim to respectability, depriving themselves of necessities that their children might be clothed, fed