life must count in opportunity to use exceptional talent, marked abilities, or extraordinary wealth as constituting a duty, to neglect which is a sin against God and man. Money is one of man's forces. The man who never gives of his life-forces freely and generously for the uplifting of humanity lives a low and sordid life. The man. whose greatest force is his money, fails signally of the highest ideal benefit of others. added power of a of living if he does not use that force for the There are so many "causes" which only need the liberal endowment of money to become forceful for good to vast numibers of men and for indefinite future periods. We cannot help feeling that the man who sets in operation with his money forces that will continue to operate for the improvement of thousands of human beings through scores and even hundreds of years, erects a far grander and more enduring monument to himself that he who builds up a private fortune to colossal proportions and dedicates it to family pride. THE HE resignation of Mr. Samuel B. Capen from the Boston School Committee is an event of more than local significance. For several years past, he has given freely of his time and strength to the public service and has made himself a leader of educational reforms and improvements. His work has been peculiarly successful along the line of the development of public interest in manual training schools which may now be said to be a permanent feature of the public school system. It has been demonstrated largely through Mr. Capen's efforts that the hand deserves cultivation as well as, or better, along side of the brain, and that the best development of the brain itself can only be secured when brain and hand culture go side by side. The public school must take cognizance of every muscle and every faculty of the child and afford the best training to each. In emphasizing this great truth and bringing it to public notice Mr. Capen and others, who like him are broad minded and far seeing educators, have laid the foundation for a better average of citizenship in the future. Not only will every pupil be more symmetrically developed by the public school training but the opportunity will be afforded by numerous trade schools for the children of the poor to perfect themselves in a practical way for the business of life. We shall have better carpenters, mechanics, milliners, cooks and nurses. Having given much time, strength and money to the public service for the past five years, without remuneration, Mr. Capen now retires to attend to numerous private duties. Such men make life better worth living for all who view their noble examples of self-sacrificing devotion to highest ends. WI HAT a majestic object lesson has recently been seen in session in Chicago, under the name World's Parliament of Religions. Such a gathering of great religious thinkers marks an epochal moment in human history. This year, 1893, is likely to be looked back upon by future ages as a mile stone marking the upward movement of the race. Such momentous events are of the greatest interest to every thoughtful educator. The advance in religious thinking means an advance in educational progress. Religion and education are indissolubly linked. If one suffers both suffer. If one moves forward both advance. Let us rejoice that we live in a time when both education and religion are making such rapid progress. Men are coming nearer together. Truth triumphs over error. The brotherhood of man is coming to be practically understood and emphasized. Grandly did. Dr. John H. Barrows welcome the delegates saying: "We were not here merely as Baptists and Buddhists, Catholics and Confucians, Parsees and Presbyterians, Methodists and Moslems; we were here as members of a parliament of religions over which flies no sectarian flag, which is to be stampeded by no sectarian war cries, but where for the first time in a large council is lifted up the banner of love, fellowship, and brotherhood." Well did the Chinese Secretary declare, "This is a great moment in the history of nations and religions. For the first time men of various faiths meet in one great hall to report what they believe and the grounds for their belief." Vivikananda of India dwelt eloquently upon the idea of toleration which this gathering emphasized. A vast audience listened day after day to great thoughts, grandly expressed, by the most virile speakers of all the great religious bodies of the earth. HOW THE NICKEL-IN-THE-SLOT IS EARNED. IT T may have occurred to some of our friends, when inserting the end pieces of two little rubber tubes in their ears and hearing reproductions of stage songs by prima donnas, stirring marches and thrilling martial music of famous orchestras and bands, to reflect that the little machine in the corner of the station-waiting-room which ground out this surprising result, was getting something for nothing, or that somebody who owned it and "who toiled not, neither spun" was reaping a harvest in nickels. It may be interesting to know how the phonograph records, or little wax cylinders technically known by that name, used upon the Edison Phonograph for recording and reproducing speech, are charged with these choice selections of classic. The pro music for the public who have nickels to drop in the slot. cess is to place the singers or instruments as close to the large mouth speaking horn of the phonograph as possible, in a room from which all other sound is as carefully excluded as possible. If there are more than one singer, or instrument, they are grouped in a semi-circle as closely to the receiving horn as possible. Four or five, sometimes as many as seven, phonographs, arranged also in a semi-circle, are used. The sounds are recorded on all simultaneously, but not with equal perfection, some of the cylinders being better than others. By this process if a larger number of cylinders are needed to supply all the phonographs controlled by the company, the music is simply repeated as many times as necessary. After testing, the cylinders are then ready to be placed upon the phonographs at the railway stations, seaside resorts and other public places, where the curious auditor drops a nickel in-the-slot and then smiles to himself and wonders. why every one else doesn't smile in enjoyment of the feast of song. A much more rapid process is used by Mr. Edison in his works. What is called a master record is made upon a single cylinder, which is used similarly to the matrix in the stereotyping process for reproducing or multiplying the number of cylinders as many times as may be desired. C. NOT THE ATMOSPHERE. OT the condition of the external air as regarls heat and cold and the rest, but the condition of things inside to which children are so keenly susceptible, the condition which they read as certainly in the teacher's face as in a weather-vane or barometer. Happy the children who need send no such troubled glances of inquiry, because their fortunate lot is cast in a place where the wind is always. west, the skies always fair! Two or three school rooms always rise before me as memories of what should not be. The children sit in watchful erectness with patient faces. Some very exact mathematical work goes on, in which a long and intricate formula of explanation is repeated till you are inexpressibly weary of it, and are sure everybody else must be. Now and then a biting sarcasm makes your blood boil, but the children receive it as an everyday occurrence. If an unlucky victim stumbles, he is seized and held (figuratively speaking) with peculiar tenacity. The teacher holds herself in an utterly antagonistic, unsympathetic attitude, and applies the drawing-out process till the sufferer is brought within sight of the right conclusion. He makes a frantic dash at it, and dashes himself against his stone wall of a teacher, who asks with pitiless non-committal, "You are sure of it, are you ?" This shakes what little sense remained, out of the stumbler, and the scene is repeated till he and his comrades who suffer in sympathy reach a degree of stultification not to be easily expressed. One of the best comments on this style of proceeding that I ever heard, was made by the victim himself after he was free. "She picked me up and threw me down, and picked me up and threw me down," was his metaphorical description of the process! I have another memory picture for a companion piece to this, a school room in the poorest quarter of a great city. The presiding genius was an unassuming little person without the bright dress and personal graces that are believed so important in winning the heart of childhood. But that she was a lady and had a loving heart, one glance at her quiet face or one sentence from her' quiet voice would have told you. I never saw a better room or better work than her's, and her children went in right paths for the delight of following her, not because they were driven. These are both pictures from life, and they suggest a great many things. One is, the importance of seeing other rooms than our own four familiar walls, and so gaining new standards of comparison. The originals of pictures like the first are usually unconscious of their true colors. Naturally deficient in sympathy and love of children they can know how much they fail, only through the advice of master or superintendent, or through seeing a school in which a different. spirit reigns. If we go in the right spirit, visiting is of great benefit. We cannot fail either to see merits that we know we have not, or defects that we may fear to share. I hope you have all read the touching confession of a British schoolmaster whose pages breathe every where the ideal spirit for which we may all strive. He relates that he had one boy among his pupils who was very dull and uninteresting, who often tried his patience severely. There seemed very little about him to attract either master or schoolmates, and sometimes he was away for long absences for which nobody knew the reason. One day his failure had been great and the master's displeasure heavier than usual. At the end of the dreary lesson with its dreary result, the boy said timidly, "I know I'm very dull, Sir, but I am very weak; you have no idea how weak I am." A very short time after this word, which stirred the master's heart with new pity, the boy was absent. You remember if you have read, "Day Dreams of a Schoolmaster," how at last the master quite by accident learns of the boy's illness and death, and how as he stands by the little coffin, a painful vision confronts him of the harshness and gloom he put into the boy's days when he might have made his short, hard life so much happier. Let us borrow enough of the shadow of his grief, to spare ourselves a share in such regret. F. A. C. DEPARTMENT OF PROFESSIONAL STUDY: SECOND YEAR OF THE TEACHERS' INTERNATIONAL READING CIRCLE. SECOND MONTHLY SYLLABUS. PREPARED BY DR. CHAS. J. MAJORY, NEWTON, N. J., SECRETARY. For the Use of Correspondence Members. HE full benefit of a given course of reading does not come from the prescribed reading above, but largely from the collateral reading, and from the independent thought and the original experimenting and observation, that may be induced. It is not within the province of these monthly syllabi to outline any course of collateral reading, but each correspondence member is urged to follow up in other volumes such lines of thought as may especially interest him. In connection with the reading of the International Series there is also a wide field for observation and experiment, and the Secretary will gladly welcome any account of such work in lieu of detailed writing upon the questions or topics presented in the syllabus. The whole aim of the International Circle is to broaden educational thought, not to restrict it. I. BOONE'S EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES. PAGES 43 To 78. 11. What provisions for an educational system were made by the Massachusetts laws of 1642 and 1647 ? 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. What were the characteristic features of the Connecticut law of 1650 ? What were the earliest recorded movements toward establishing schools in New York? From what origin in each case have Columbia College in What was the attitude of the southern colonies toward the establishment of free public schools? What class distinctions interfered with the progress of the early public schools? What were some of the earliest notable text-books? II. BALDWIN'S APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY. PAGES 43 TO 92. CHAPTER III. 14. Education of sense-perception consists not in training the sense but in developing the power to interpret sensepercepts. |