ashamed to confess that they have no zest for health-giving exercise secured in the practice of out-of-door sports unsuggestive of danger to life and limb, the loosening of moral fiber, and the palsy, if not death, of all Christian character.

Town ball, a popular game in my boyhood days, was participated in by all the boys of the school. The ball, a home-made product, was of yarn wound by deft fingers about a small piece of rubber or, in lieu thereof, a marble. The leather covering, when the ball had one, was taken from the top of a cast-off boot. The bat was usually a pine paddle so fashioned as to present, when wielded by the batter, a broad surface to the ball. None of the players was encased in sheet iron or upholstered with cotton batting. All padding obtainable was used to make less effective the downward curves of the teacher's paddle. The rules of the game made it permissible for the catcher to use his hat if he were not expert enough to stop the ball with his hands. The batter could demand high or low ball and dictate the speed of its delivery. Simple as was the game, it was thoroughly enjoyed by all who participated in it. There was no demoralizing of study, no danger to health, no incitement to gambling, no provocation to idleness, no wrecking of morals in its practice. I have not forgotten some of the open-air recreation in which I indulged when a college student. Baseball was the popular sport. Match games, wholly within college circles, were not infrequent. I was pitcher in one of the college nines nearly three years and, within that time, never played a game outside of the college grounds or one that awakened any one's fighting or gambling enthusiasm. Our victories and defeats were accepted pretty much in the same spirit. There was whole

some relaxation from study unattended with bodily harm, loss of interest in any phase of our literary work, or any infraction of college discipline. Many of what we now call field day exercises were in vogue. It was thought some honor to be a swift runner or a good jumper, but no hideous chapel din welccmed the winner of a race or the victor on the jumping ground. Such athletic sports as found favor were indulged in with moderation and with scarcely a ripple of excitement on the current of student life.

It must be enforced upon the public mind that the college is not a sporting arena. Its mission is not to demoralize character but to build it up. Games and contests that interfere with legitimate college work, that bring close in their train forces strong to work harm to body, mind, and soul, must find no favor with college patrons, no apologists in college faculties. What kind of athletic sports may students indulge in? and to what extent, and under what limitations, shall such sports be practiced? these are the burning questions to be considered to-day by college authorities and the public.

the air", to use the expressive language of a newspaper reporter, and "indications of a mutiny" unless the "obnoxious order" was revoked. The students were quoted as being of "the opinion that they reside in a country whose inhabitants enjoy the luxury of personal liberty." It was reported that any attempt to suspend the refractory and rebellious students would make the school authorities defendants in suits at law. This statement presupposed that the pupils' parents would stand by them, to the utmost, in their rowdyish, senseless, and law defying course. In this there was an evident error, as football in the high-schools of Denver has fallen into "innocuous desuetude" and the Goddess of Justice has not had to bare her arm or lift her sword in defence of the right of school youth to have everything and everybody turn to the right when they cry gee.

Attorney-General Carr, of Colorado, quotes with words of approval, the language of a Texas court: "Teachers have the right, the same as boards, to prescribe reasonable rules for the government of the school under their charge and to enforce, by moderate re

straint and correction, obedience to such rules. This authority of the teacher over the pupil is not, in our opinion, necessarily limited to the time when the pupils are at the school room or under the actual control of the teacher. Such authority, we think, extends to the prescribing and enforcement of reasonable rules and regulations even while the pupils are at their homes."

The education of the future, no matter where or to whom given, must make prominent the meaning of such words as law, order, and decency. Liberty is not license. No one, so long as he forms one of a community, can govern his actions solely by his own will, often untaught and undisciplined. His liberty, for which he will contend the more persistently, perhaps, as he is the more ignorant, does not mean any right he has to do a given act irrespective of the statute and the just rights of others. Liberty protected and bounded by law, is the birth-right of every citizen of this country; and high or low, rich or poor, strong or weak, cannot, with right, claim any wider freedom than that.

The Critic of November 13th has in it an interesting and very just editorial upon "The Harvard Report on English." It shows the importance of the discussion which resulted in a provisional scheme of study, not only for composition and English, but for other subjects embraced in the work of preparation

for college. It does not altogether approve of the manner in which the committee attempted to get at the root of the difficulty and distribute the blame for its existence; and in a courteous but straightforward manner it objects to unfair criticism of the work of the teachers in the secondary schools.

To quote from the article: "It is always desirable, even in reforms, to be just; and particularly desirable to be just to a large body of men and women whose devotion to immediate and exacting duties is quite as useful as that of the college instructors in English, and whose practical assistance in the discussion has made possible, a reform that was only 'in the air', mild and chaotic, whose early movement into shape was much hindered by false misdirection on the part of the college."

Agreeing with every word of this, I am struck with the thought that high school teachers after reading it once as it is, ought to read it, substituting the word "high" for "college," stopping with the word "instructors," and making the statement apply to all elementary work. We all so need to cultivate the virtue of justice toward the schools preparatory to our own.

The Critic in describing some of the early attempts to build up a system for the study of English says: "But it was not a wise leadership that set the untrained youth to noting the errors in the English of Walter Scott and Thackeray, that spent its days and nights in ringing the changes on 'shall' and 'will', when it had taken away from the pedagogue the 'shall' and from the pulpit the 'will'."

After describing some other features of the new method now at the service of secondary schools the writer says: "A careful tasting of

the literature which has become classic is both new and old. The daily use of the pen and pencil in the classroom may be said to be modern, and while injurious to the handwriting when the letter is not yet fully settled, is so useful an adjunct to the instruction in spelling and in composition, that it should be accepted."

With the deepest kind of interest in high schools, having spent fourteen happy years in teaching in them, I wish the teachers of the primary and grammar schools in our towns and cities, and the teachers in our district schools to adapt much that I have quoted and shall quote to their own work, for I am of the opinion that to have the use of good English at all general, we must begin back of the secondary schools. For years we have had a considerable amount of written work in the city schools, but has it been of the right character? Have we had a sufficient amount of writing in the country schools? Report of the Harvard Committee says: "More practice, more daily drill and severe discipline are required. The difficulty is to find time for this practice, drill, and discipline.

The

*The solution seems

to be simple: English should be taught in the preparatory schools not, as now, altogether objectively, but incidentally, and in connection with other studies-mathematics, geography, history, and, especially, foreign languages and the classics." In most of our elementary schools

we do not have the foreign languages and classics, but we can apply all that is said with the exception of what relates to these subjects. It seems to me that the introduction of more written work into the country schools instead of increasing difficulties there would lessen them. Educative silent work would be provided for some while others were engaged in oral classwork. I doubt the value of spending much time in filling out forms, as is sometimes done in parsing, and when we are aiming at correct spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and clear expression, abbreviations should be sparingly used and entire sentences should be the rule. No one should ever do his work in such a way as to need to apologize for it by saying "I didn't know you were going to take it up."

It is not at all necessary for the teacher to exhaust time and energy by examining all the slates or papers of his pupils every day. He should manage within a fixed time. to get an idea of how each pupil is doing his work, but his system should not be so rigid that the pupil could determine its workings. By noting common errors, the teacher can plan blackboard work that will lead to clear discrimination on the part of pupils and be very effective in showing why a thing is wrong and what ought to take its place.

In conclusion, I must come back again to the Report and quote from

it with the exquisite pleasure that one has when he finds the opinions he has previously expressed, upheld by high authority: "Furthermore, the instructor, in altogether too many instances, does not know how to do his part in the work, and consequently the study of literary models, as now carried on in our schools of secondary education, not infrequently does more harm than good. Not only, as the papers show, is it marked by a pitiful waste of valuable time, but it leaves behind it a sense of weariness and disgust rather than mind hunger. For instance, what possible benefit can immature boys derive from devoting a large portion of a whole school term to the analysis of a single oration of Webster's by paragraphs, sentences, and clauses; or what but a sense of repulsion can result if children, needing assimilative nutriment and craving the stimulant of interest, are daily dosed with long and to them nauseous, because unintelligible, drafts from Emerson, Ruskin, Cardinal Manning, Matthew Arnold, and Walter Pater? The province of the preparatory schools is to train the scholar, boy or girl, and train him or her thoroughly, in what can only be described as the elements and rudiments of written expression, they should teach facile,clear penmanship, correct spelling, simple grammatical construction, and neat, workmanlike, mechanical execution. And this is no slight or simple task."

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