ress in civilization, science, and art. The world's industrial expositions are dignifying mechanics and artisans. Farmers hold their state or district or county fairs for the purpose of improving their live-stock: they organize as "Grangers" to improve themselves socially and politically. Printers, carpenters, machinists, and laborers, all have their societies and trades-unions for defence and offence. The lawyers, the doctors, the dentists, the clergy, the Masons, the Odd-fellows, all have their societies for charitable or protective purposes.

If teachers would exert any marked influence, they must wield it through the consolidated power of organized societies, associations, conventions, and institutes.

VIII. EDUCATIONAL POWER.

In

The true teacher must have the faith of martyrs. the limited horizon of the schoolroom, he can dimly see only the beginning of the effects of his teaching upon his pupils. The solid results, the building-up of character, the creative power of motives, become evident only in the work of a lifetime in the wider circle of the world. Hence the power of the teacher, like that of the silent and invisible forces of nature, is only feebly realized.

I once visited a quartz mine of fabulous richness. Deep in the bowels of the earth, rough miners were blasting out the gold-bearing rock; above, the powerful mill was crushing the white quartz with its iron teeth. In the office, piles of yellow bars, ready to be sent to the mint to be poured into the channels of trade, showed the immediate returns of wisely invested capital and well-directed labor. An hour later, I stepped into a public school, not half a mile distant, where a hundred children were at work on

their lessons. What does the school yield, I asked, on the investment of money by the State? The returns of the mine are made monthly, in solid bullion; the school returns will be made in the far future, and they cannot be expressed in dollars.

I

go out from my school daily into the crowded streets of a great commercial city. I hear everywhere the hum of industry, and see the stir of business. The results of business are solid and tangible; but when I go back to my classes, after witnessing the mighty play of industrial forces, it seems as if the teacher were only a looker-on in the bustling life around. But when I pause to consider that intelligence is the motive power of trade; that the steamship is navigated by means of science, and is built as a triumph of art; that science surveyed the converging lines of railroads, and that skill runs the trains freighted with the products of industry and art, then I begin to perceive the connection between schools and the material results of civilization. I realize that the life of a nation is made up of the mothers that guard the homes, and the men who drive the plough, build the ships, run the mills, work the mines, construct the machinery, print the papers, shoulder the musket, cast the ballots; and it is for all these that the public schools have done, and are now doing, their beneficent work.

IX. THE COMMON-SCHOOL SYSTEM.

"Whatever you would have appear in the life of a nation you must first put into the schools," holds true preeminently in a republic. Our free-school system has its shortcomings and its defects; but, taken as a whole, it is the broadest and the best ever organized. It is the duty

of every true teacher to strive to remedy its defects, and never to submit to them as incurable. When taxes are high and times are hard, the school system will be subject to a running fire of criticism all along the line; but only timid and despairing souls are frightened into the belief that the foundations of society are breaking up on account of over-education in the common-schools. Neither representatives of the caste of Capital nor the caste of Culture can convince the American people that vice, crime, idleness, poverty, social discontent, are the legitimate results of an elementary education among the workers of society, or that the schoolmaster is a public enemy. The sentiment of most Americans is that of Daniel Webster, who once said, "If I had as many sons as old Priam, I would send them all to the public schools." If our schools fail to meet the needs of changing social conditions, the kind and quality, not the extent, of education must be changed. Neither the free high-school nor the free state university must be lopped off. "No system of education," says Huxley, "is worthy of the name unless it creates a great educational ladder with one end in the gutter and the other in the university."

It is only by means of skilled labor, wisely and intelligently directed, that a people can become or can remain permanently prosperous and happy; it is only by means of intelligent and honest voters that law and liberty can be preserved and maintained; and it is only by means of a still more complete education of all classes that humanity can rise into a higher type of social evolution. There is no slavery so oppressive as that of ignorance.

CHAPTER II.

PHYSICAL TRAINING.

I. ITS IMPORTANCE.

ONE of the most hopeful features of modern education is the growing recognition of the importance of physical training in school. By thinkers and educators the necessity of a trained body as the instrument of a trained mind is fully recognized, though by the mass of teachers it is, as yet, feebly acted upon.

"To the wise educator," says W. T. Harris, Superintendent of the schools of the city of St. Louis, "nothing is more certain than that the child is an animal with the possibility of reason." "To be a nation of good animals," says Spencer, "is the first condition of national prosperity." "No perfect brain ever crowns an imperfectly developed body," says Dr. E. H. Clarke, of Boston. That tough old sceptic Montaigne says, "We have not to train up a soul, nor yet a body, but a man, and we cannot divide him." "Physical training and drill," says Huxley, "should be a part of the regular business of school. There is no real difficulty about teaching drill and the simpler kinds of gymnastics. If something of the kind is not done, the English physique, which has been, and still is, on the whole, a grand one, will become in the great towns as extinct as the dodo."

"When we have mastered the laws of physical educa

tion," says Professor Youmans, "we have the essential data for dealing with questions of mental education, and those steps are the indispensable preparation for an enlightened moral education." It is true that the leading purpose of the public school is intellectual training, and true that physical condition depends largely upon home surroundings and inherited constitution. It may be true also that, considering education strictly as a science, physical health does not fall within its domain, but is to be assumed as an essential prerequisite of education. Nevertheless, though the teacher has no direct control over pupils in respect to diet, clothing, exercise, rest, sleep, work, or play, yet the school must not, on that account, shirk its appropriate share of responsibility in relation to bodily development. As an abstract proposition, no teacher will deny that sound health is the true basis of mental and moral culture; the difficulty is how to secure it.

There are certain negative duties which are evident and easy. Teachers should at least protect their pupils against impure air, too long confinement, over-work, and the deadening effects of mental worry, caused by severe competitive written examinations. A great deal more than this ought to be done; but in many schools not even this is attempted.

It is the duty of every teacher, whether in the primary, grammar, or high school, whether in city or country, to impress upon pupils, by emphatic iteration, the laws of health in relation to food, air, sleep, rest, exercise, play, work, and personal habits in general. Teachers should give attention to the encouragement of games, plays, and amusements, in addition to calisthenic drill.

66

'Play," says Froebel, " is the development of the human