WESTERN FACES THROUGH ORIENTAL EYES.-Lafcadio Hearn writes in the August Atlantic of Faces in Japanese Art. Illustrating the striking difference between the drawing of Western and Eastern artists, he tells ef two experiments where he showed copies of European illustrated papers to some Japanese children.

The first was with a little boy, nine years old, before whom he placed several numbers of an illustrated magazine. After turning over a few of the pages, he exclaimed," Why do foreign artists like to draw horrible things?"

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'What horrible things?" Mr. Hearn inquired.

These," he said, pointing to a group of figures representing voters at the polls.

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Why, those are not horrible. We think those drawings very good."

"But the faces! There cannot really be such faces in the world," the child exclaimed.

"We think those are ordinary men. Really horrible faces we very seldom draw."

He stared in surprise, evidently suspecting that his Western friend was not in earnest.

"To a little girl of eleven," Mr. Hearn explains further, "I showed some engravings representing famous European beauties."

"They do net look bad," was her comment. "But they seem so much like men, and their eyes are so big! Their mouths are pretty.'

The mouth signifies a great deal in Japanese physiog nomy, and the child was in this regard appreciative. He then showed her some drawings from life in a New York periodical. She asked, "Is it true that there are people like these pictures?"

"Plenty. Those are good, common faces, mostly country folk, farmers."

"Farmers! They are like Oni" (demons) "from the jigoku" (Buddhist hell).

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No, there is nothing very bad in those faces. We have faces in the West very much worse."

"Only to see them," she exclaimed, "I should die! I do not like this book."

Practical Hints and Examination Papers.

SPELLING.

In noticing the spelling work of children from the first to the fourth grade inclusive, it seems quite evident that the great majority of the words which they misspell are the words which are entirely familiar in meaning, but to which their attention has not been especially called, and which they have formed the habit of spelling wrong in many cases. To, too, two are frequently misspelled, so also are new and knew, no and know, there and their. Then such words as dirt, turn, leaves, and stalk, words which the children constantly use and which occur in their written work are (I was about to say), usually misspelled. In looking over all these written exercises (the exercises from the lower half of the grades especially, and comprising all phases of work), I believe I am safe in saying that the misspelled words are, four out of every five, those which the children have frequently used from their earliest period of talking and which they constantly use in their common conversation.

Because, of this fact, we have undertaken to make our spelling work for the lower grades include, at least for one phase of it, those common words which the children use both in their talking and writing. We have undertaken, to begin with, the words which are most frequently used in written work, and to continue the spelling of such words as long as we find they misspell them. Each teacher is supposed to keep a list of the common words which her children frequently misspell, and to bring them into succeeding spelling lessons again and again until the correct form is fixed. These words are, of course, very different in form and sound. They comprise words that might be spelled according to rule and those which are "a law unto themselves."

The second idea in the spelling work in the lower grades (especially in the work of the latter half of the first year and all of the second and third years) has been to group words that have some particular sound and to study these words in the groups. No special attempt is made to dwell upon each particular word, but the entire group, or as many as it is practicable to take, are studied, and when

sufficient time seems to have been put upon these, if there are any exceptions to this common order of spelling, and if these exceptions are such that the children need to have their attention called to them at present, they are also taken. In the group of words, tool, school, spool, fool, and cool, the sound ool represented by ool. In connection with this, I do not think it is well to call their attention to such words as rule, where the sound ool is shown by ule-the u after r having the sound of long oo. The other words with the long oo had best be given fully and clearly, and no suggestion made as to any word that sounds the same, but is spelled differently. After this ending is pretty well associated with the particular words, then it is all right to suggest other words.

The third fact that we are also trying to insist upon as a key to spelling and pronunciation is what is commonly called some of the rules of spelling. We are trying to have little people see that c and g are hard and soft when they occur before particular letters; for instance, they are both hard before a, o and u, and both are usually soft before e and i. We also wish these little people to learn, if possible, before the close of their first year, that the final e in most words makes the preceding a, e, i, o, or u long. The knowledge of these simple principles is a very great aid in the pronunciation of new words learned in spelling.

So it seems to me there are three ideas to be kept in view in primary spelling, and these are the three which I have just given. First, that children should learn to spell the common words which they constantly use in their written work, and the teacher should make a special effort in seeing that all these little words are completely mastered by every child in the school. Second, it is a great saving of energy to teach words in groups; for instance, head, dead, spread, dread, and thread can all be learned by taking them in a group almost as quickly as any one can be learned alone. In the third place, the very easy and common principles of pronunciation should all be taken as quickly as the child can understand them. By learning that c before o is hard, and that there is not a single word which they ever use (or which any of them will probably use for several years) beginning with the letter k before the o, the child ought to know how to begin the spelling of any new word that begins with this particular sound.—Indiana School Journal.

INJUDICIOUS PUNISHMENTS.

In reproducing the following notes on injudicious punishments, from "Raub's School Management," the Educational Journal says:-"We seriously question whether the word 'punishment' is not a misnomer in this case. We doubt whether the teacher has anything to do with punishment. Punishment is pain or penalty inflicted for past wrongdoing. What has the teacher to do with that? His duty is, we hold, simply to prevent repetition of offences. What he should seek is to obtain sureties that the annoyance or wrongdoing shall not be repeated. The first requisite to this is to bring about such a state of mind and will in the offender that he will not desire to repeat it. Whether this

or anything like this is the normal result of the so-called 'punishments' about which so much is said, let the thoughtful observer judge. To our thinking, one of the soundest and best test-questions, with regard to any given act of discipline-and discipline must, of course, be maintained-is, What is the temporary or permanent effect of the treatment adopted in the direction of bringing about such a state of mind and will in the pupil as will take away the wish or inclination to repeat the offence? No disc pline which does not conduce to this end can be salit ary or permanently effective. In other words the thing to be chiefly aimed at in all discipline is to change the will of the offender, not momentarily, through fear, but permanently, through the action of mind and heart and conscience-in a word, the moral nature."

The number of injudicious punishments is very great. All of them ought to be avoided under all circumstances. The following may be named as the most prominent:

1. Scolding. This is never a proper punishment Indeed, a scolding teacher soon loses the respect of his pupils. The less the teacher scolds and the less he threatens, the greater the number of friends he will have among the students, and the easier will he find the discipline. When threats are made they should be executed without fail. Both scolding and threats soon lose all force except to irritate a class and make it noisy and disrespectful.

2. Ridicule.-The teacher has no right to ridicule either the defects or the mistakes of a child. Such conduct makes a teacher deserving of all the contempt that pupils can

heap upon him. It is the teacher's business to encourage, not to discourage-to help to correct mistakes and train the pupils, instead of making sport of them. Sarcastic remarks with reference to a pupil's ability, calling him a dunce, a numskull, an ignoramus, or other equally offensive names, is contemptible conduct in the teacher.

3. Confinement.-Solitary confinement in a cell is among the most severe of prison punishments, and it is applied only to hardened criminals. Shutting a child in a closet, putting him in the coal cellar, and like punishments, are no less cruel. To a child of vivid fancy or nervous organization serious injury may be wrought by a punishment of this kind. Solitary confinement is not only injudicious as a school punishment, but it is also unwise.

4. Personal Indignities.-Among personal indignities may be mentioned all those annoying punishments which, though not severe in themselves, serve to irritate a child, such as pulling the ears, snapping the head, pulling the hair, compelling the child to wear a dunce-cap, and the like. All of them are improper.

5. Personal Torture.-All kinds of torture are improper punishments. Many of the old-fashioned punishments were little less than barbarous. Such punishments as compelling a child to stand on one foot, hold a book at arm's length, kneel on the sharp edge of a piece of wood, walk barefooted on peas, hold a nail in the floor without bending a knee, etc., ought to belong to the dark ages.

6. Performance of Tasks for Misconduct.-No pupil should ever be asked to study a lesson for misconduct. There is no connection between the two, and a love for learning is not instilled in this way. The boy who is required to write two hundred words after school as a punishment for pinching his neighbor or whispering in school does not see the relation of the punishment to the offence, and he must come to regard his teacher in the true light, as being tyrannical or ignorant of the art of school discipline.

7. Degradation of the Offender.-No pupil has ever been reformed by degrading him. One of the chiefs ends of punishment is reformation, but this end is directly defeated by attempting to visit on the pupil a punishment which will degrade him either in the eyes of his associates or in his own estimation. His self-respect must be cultivated, not destroyed. Teachers who subject pupils to degrading