told her friends as joyously as an eastern girl might tell of the recovery of a valuable cuff-button.

The poorest girl in this school was the one who always hid her lunch from the others, because she had nothing to eat but cornbread; and the boy who might perhaps have been called the richest was the doctor's son, as he was always well-dressed and rode to school either on a beautiful gray horse or in a neat new road wagon. He, of course, received the admiration and, perhaps, the homage of the school.

The school, too, had its "bad boy," and, strangely enough, his name was Jewell. This boy occasionally rode to school on an ox, which he had trained to obey him like a horse. He was fond of catching live snakes by their tails and cracking off their heads as one would crack a whip-lash. Having by a few bad acts won a bad reputation, he was charged with most of the mischief done in the neighborhood, without any one's having definite proof against him. He it was whom people accused of starting the big prairie fire, which illuminated the country for miles one night, and came so close to the school-house that the building was barely saved by the efforts of numbers of men who fought the fire all night.

One cannot but wonder what became of these pupils after they left the little prairie school of 1881, and wish it possible to trace their lives. Where are the talented ones? Is it not possible that in this school some may have received a training which has led them into lives of usefulness, and even distinction? A few of them had even then become known outside of the school. There were the two little sisters who sang at Ellsworth, for Governor St. John, during his prohibition campaign, and were called by the newspaper reporter, "the little temperance songsters."

What has become of the little five-year-old girl from Illinois, with golden hair and violet eyes, who sang like a bird at school entertainments, and recited in her clear baby voice,

"Mamma calls me little student,

I can cipher, read, and spell,
Draw a map, and bound a country,
And in Mental I excel.

"I will climb the hill of Knowledge,
To its very top I'll go;

Then success will crown my efforts, Teacher says, and ain't it so?" That bright face and sweet voice may now, as it did then, win its way to many hearts. The entertainments were an important feature of the school, and were of various kinds. The more elaborate, which really deserved the name, were given after weeks of preparation; while the "spelling schools" and "ciphering matches," held every few weeks, were gotten upon short notice. There was always a large audience, and on each occasion the distinguished person looked for

was the State Fish Commissioner, whose country home was a few miles away, and who, with one or more members of his family, rarely failed to be present. These spelling and ciphering matches were very popular. All the young people of the neighborhood came; and one had a suspicion that more than spelling matches were won on those moonlight evenings. At these matches the one who usually gave out the words was a prosperous young farmer of the neighborhood, with a voice as big as his body. One can, in imagination, hear him yet, as frequently after a rightly spelled word, he called out "Karect!" This young man soon afterwards married the attractive young lady who had come out from Ohio to teach the school.

The reader may judge from this, that the young lady teacher did not stay long in Ash Creek school. The men also who taught the school made this a stepping-stone to something beyond it. For this reason a number of teachers had come and gone who displayed as great a variety of characteristics and attainments as did the pupils. Although the school system and that of examination for teachers were good, yet, owing to the sparse population of the country, it was not always possible to secure professional teachers, nor were these prairie schools always conducted on the most approved plan. Ash Creek school might have been called "a school of methods," for probably in it were tried all the methods known or unknown at that time to the educational world.

During one term, a gray-haired old gentleman kept a school of "ye olden time." The whole school was frequently ranged along the four sides of the room for an exciting spelling lesson, and made to number down the line from the head, "primus," "secundus," "tertius," "quartus," etc.— and this bit of Latin really did prove of value to some who, in after years, went beyond the course of study given in this little country school. This teacher had a unique way of explaining the method of division, by saying, "Seven in two, nary a one!" Although he approved of punishing the girls as well as the boys, and rapped many a girl over the head with his pencil, yet he was not an advocate of co-education. On one occasion, not wishing the boys and girls to play together during the noon hour -and as the high board fence was unknown in that free, open country, there not being a fence within sight of the school - he directed the girls to go off over the prairie, "out of sight of the boys." Strange to say, the girls were delighted to do this. They not only went out of sight of the boys, but quite beyond the sound of the school-bell, and spent the whole afternoon in play. It is needless to say that they were never again sent "out of sight of the boys."

Young "Prof." G- also taught the school one freezing winter, when the prairie

was covered for miles with huge drifts of snow, and the pupils huddled nearly all day around the wood stove which stood in the centre of the school-room. The degree of "professor" was easily won in that country. A man need only walk through the doorway of a country school-house, and he had it. There was nothing remarkable about this man, except that his mind became unbalanced for a short time. Various reasons were given for this-one, that he had been "reading too much Shakespeare." But it is probable that the loneliness and poverty of a little sod house which he had built for himself out on the prairie, where he did his own cooking and housekeeping, and at the same time was bravely struggling alone to rise to prosperity against all the odds of the West, would have told the whole story.

Three others ruled in Ash Creek school during those two years. The child who was a pupil there holds in memory, in these after years, the picture of a sweet-faced young teacher, with pretty white hands, who was kind to the little girls, and who, one recess, taught them this bit of poetry (?) to write in one another's autograph albums:

"Long may you live,

Happy may you be,
Courting over wood piles,

And drinking onion tea."

Then there is a remembrance of a capable, energetic teacher, who had left her eastern home, and gone "out West," because her lover was there, and afterwards they two established a cosy little home on the prairie. The last is the picture of one the child knew and loved best of all-the mother, who before her marriage had been a happy seminary girl and a successful teacher in Pennsylvania, and who had left the culture of the East for this wild though not uncultured life of the West. For where will not culture and refinement, even in the midst of poverty, draw to itself others of like nature? And even here were the cultured few making the best of life, living up to a high standard, with that courtesy and kindness which change life from drudgery into blessing. This mother, coming into the privations of western life and bravely taking up again her work of teaching that she might assist in the support of her family, found herself surrounded by helpful, cultured friends. The school can thank her, perhaps more than any other teacher, for raising it to a high standard; and no one may know the influence for good which she exerted over those boys and girls.

Looking back over those days, so many pictures come up-how the little children gathered and pressed the beautiful wild Howers, how they searched over the prairie for horned toads and grasshoppers, harnessing them to threads, and calling them horses and ponies; how these children, who could not afford to buy valentines, exercised their inventive and artistic powers, by mak

ing and sending to their school friends valentines which were really pretty; how the little girls exchanged locks of hair, and how the superstitious girls of the school were frightened when one of them read "Mother Shipman's Prophecy," published in the Chicago Inter-Ocean, which read: "The world to an end shall come,

In eighteen hundred and eighty-one." There arises almost the desire to see this school again just as it was at that time; but when, in these later years, stories of the wonderful development of the West come to us, it is pleasanter to hope that that little school was the beginning of far better and far greater things for Ash Creek.

GRADING AND CLASSIFICATION.

BY HON. W. T. HARRIS.

HE chief care in the management of a system of city schools is to grade or classify the pupils in such a manner that the interests of some are not sacrificed for those of others. The effect of placing pupils of different degrees of advancement in the same class will be to unduly urge the backward ones, while the pupils in advance of the average in the class will have too little work assigned them. When bright scholars are kept back for dull ones they acquire loose, careless habits of study, When pupils of lower temperament are strained to keep pace with quick and bright ones they become discouraged and demoralized.

Even when pupils are well classified at the beginning of the year differences begin to develop from the first day, and after two or three months of good instruction a large interval has developed between the advancement of the slow ones and that of the bright ones. Besides difference in temperament, there is difference in regularity of attendance on account of sickness and family necessities; these things affect the rate of progress. Moreover, the degree of maturity and amount of previous study develop differences.

Classification in a school is never absolute. No pupils are of exactly the same degree of progress. There are probably no two pupils alike in ability to do the daily work of the class. From this it is evident that there should be frequent reclassification. There should be promotions of a few of the best ones from below into the class above, and a few promotions from the best of that class to the next class beyond.

After such promotion has been made through all or a portion of the classes of a school from the lowest, each class will find itself composed of fair, average, and poor scholars, together with a few of the best from the next lower class in place of the few that each has lost by promotion. New hope will come to those pupils who were before the poorest in all the class, and there will be new stimulus given to the best pupils who have been promoted to a higher class, for they will have to work earnestly to attain and hold a good rank in the new class. But the quick and bright ones thus promoted will gradually work their way toward the top of the class again. The slow ones in the class may be passed by successive platoons of bright ones introduced into the class from below, but they will pick up new courage on every occasion when they find themselves brought to the top of the class by the process of transferring the bright ones, who had begun to lead them into too fast a pace.

This sifting-up process, as here described, corrects the disease known as "lock-step" in the graded schools. The sifting should take place as often as there develops a decided difference in degree of advancement between the best and poorest pupils of a class. In practice this is found to occur once in two or three months.

The rural schools, when small, do not find it possible to make classes to any great extent, except in reading, writing, and spelling. In the larger rural schools, however, there is an attempt to introduce the city plan of classification; but as a matter of course, the classes have to be very small. What is bad about these small classes is, that the intervals from one class to another, instead of being ten to twelve weeks, as in a city school, are from one to two years. This works a great evil. It leads to careless teaching on the part of the teacher, who has to adapt his instruction to the average of the class, knowing at the same time that such instruction lacks interest to the best pupils, because they are already familiar with the subject, and knowing, secondly, that it is too difficult for the least advanced pupils, for the reason that they lack the insight which a year or a half year's more study has given to the pupils of average advancement.

City schools, village schools, and rural schools that grade their pupils with intervals of a year or more between the classes

are to be criticised chiefly for this fault. They are called "stiflers of talent," because they do not provide sufficient work for their ablest and brightest pupils, but keep them marking time with less advanced pupils. Moreover, they discourage the slower pupils by requiring more work of them than they can accomplish.

This difficulty in regard to classification exists not only in public schools, but often in a more dangerous form in private schools. It is, perhaps, the greatest evil at present existing in the organization of the schools of the United States, rural and urban. In the first, second and third years of primary work classification does not present serious difficulty because of the greater number of pupils of eight years and under. About sixty-nine per cent. of the pupils in the cities and villages of the country are in the first three years' work. Twelve per cent. are found in the fourth year's work; seven per cent. in the fifth year; four per cent. in the sixth year, three per cent. in the seventh year, and two per cent. in the eighth year. To form classes, and thereby produce economical instruction, the pupils beyond the fourth year must be brought together in central schools, and it is to this problem that the state boards of education are giving serious attention.-N. Y. School Journal.

SONG IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM.

A

BY RHODa lee.

MONG the "tried receipts" for happiness and good work in primary classes, none find greater favor with me than singing. I wish every teacher of little ones could thoroughly appreciate the assistance it affords. There is nothing more refreshing and restful after a period of steady work than a song. The effect is sometimes magical. Pencils are placed by tired little hands that look as though they could go no farther. But look again a minute or two later. Fingers are moving as rapidly as muscles. can make them, as the snow comes "falling down so pure and white." The music and motions put new life into the children.

Languor and lassitude fly before a bright song, and often when a spirit of unrest and disorder seems to possess the class, it disappears entirely when the

THE

BY DR. LEWIS R. HARLEY,
Central High School, Philadelphia, Pa.

HE United States, alone of all the great nations of the world, has not, as yet, established a national university, although the subject has been a matter of discussion from the founding of the government. In the Constitutional Convention, Charles Pinckney and James Madison both proposed that Congress be given power to establish and provide for a national university at the seat of government, but this was opposed by Gouverneur Morris, who said: "It is not necessary. The exclusive power at the seat of government will reach the object." The idea was finally abandoned on the ground that Congress already was invested with sufficient power to establish a national system of education. Washington, in his first message to Congress, and again in his message in 1796, displayed his far-reaching wisdom by advocating the establishment of a national university. In his last will and testament he bequeathed fifty shares of stock held in the Potomac Company toward the proposed university. Thomas Jefferson also manifested great zeal on this subject, and, in 1795, he wrote a letter to Washington, laying before him a plan for the transferring of the Geneva University to the national capital. Washington rejected this scheme, as he desired an American university for Americans. President Madison urged an amendment to the Constitution, making a national university compulsory. Reports were made by committees to Congress at various times during the century, all favoring the proposed university. The measure was again introduced in 1893 and in 1895, but it has not advanced beyond the preliminary stages.

From the beginning of our national existence, higher education has been left to the care of the several States. Jefferson, failing in his scheme to transfer the Geneva University to Washington, turned to his native State and labored zealously to establish the University of Virginia. Massachusetts performed well her part by creating

the first public school system in America. The comprehensive University of the State of New York was organized with the idea of including all chartered institutions of learning in the State. Michigan has established a system closely unified from the kindergarten to the university, and supports it with pride and zeal. The constitutions of the western states nearly all make provision for universities as well as public schools. As a result of our American educational

policy, we have forty-five State school systems and nearly as many State universities, some of which have attained a world-wide reputation. The object in establishing a national university would not be merely to add one more to these institutions, but to crown a system based upon the public schools, and create a federal head to the State universities, thus closely unifying all our educational work.

Washington had two great objects in view in urging the establishment of a national university. He was opposed to sending youth abroad to secure their education, and he hoped that sectional pride might be turned into national feeling by the mingling of youth from all parts of the republic. In 1743, when Benjamin Franklin drew up the plan for the Academy of Philadelphia, he stated among its objects, "that youth may receive a good education at home without being under necessity of going abroad for it." Like Washington, he also pointed out that it was a mistake for Americans to allow their children to be trained in Europe, as it was hardly possible to avoid their being trained there out of sympathy with all the conditions of life they must encounter bere. To-day the civilization of Europe is closer to our shores than it was in the days of Franklin and Washington, and it is a serious matter for so many of our young men to get their training in the university atmosphere of Europe. It is a patriotic purpose to try to develop in this country opportunities so good that nobody need be obliged to go abroad. The second object of the university proposed by Washington was to unify national sentiment. When Prussia was humbled, crippled and impoverished by French invasion, the moral and intellectual elevation of the whole nation was decided upon. It was then that men like Stein, William Humboldt, Niebuhr, Schleiermacher, Wolf, Savigny, Fichte, Steffens and others established the national university in Berlin for the avowed purpose of quickening and raising German nationality. In less than seven years that maimed kingdom rose and became one of the leading powers in the greatest military struggle on record, calling for unheard of national efforts. The new system of education served well, and proved efficient in the hour of national need. We are not to-day, like Prussia at the beginning of the century, crippled and humbled by foreign oppression. Our greatest enemies are at home, in the

shape of the demagogues who are continually keeping kindled the fires of sectional feeling. For a century the sections have been arrayed against each other on every great economic interest. This is well illustrated in the recent agitation of the currency question, when many political leaders were appealing to the passions and sectional feelings of our citizens. We need a stronger national sentiment, and the words of Dr. Francis Lieber are appropriate: "Should we, then, not avail ourselves of so well proved a cultural means of fostering and promoting a generous nationality as a comprehensive university is known to be? Shall we never have this noble pledge of our nationality? All Athens, the choicest city-state of antiquity, may well be said to have been one great university, where masters daily met with masters; and shall we not have one for our whole empire, which does not extend from bay to bay, like little Attica, but from sea to sea, and is destined one day to link ancient Europe to still older Asia, and thus to aid in completing the zone of civilization around the globe?"

A national university would serve as the great exponent of American liberty, for universities in all ages have been the natural nurseries of liberty, and their history is the history of freedom. In the Middle Ages, these specialized schools of learning, with republican constitutions, grew up and became more and more powerful until they led the thought of Europe. The moment the masters of learning became organized, they formed potent centres of resistance to ecclesiastical and civil despotism. They not only upheld their own corporate rights of free thought and free organization, but they sent out thousands annually into every part of Europe to fill the various professions, animated with the same independence of mind. When nations become despotic, they begin their assaults upon popular liberty by closing the universities. After 1820, when Prussia again drifted toward despotism, professors were continually deprived of their office, and the freedom of the press and of the universities was cramped in every way.

tion. Civilization is carried forward by the great thinkers of the race. These have never been numerous, but when they appear, they never fail to lay all humanity under obligations to them. A great service is rendered to the masses by training some men to the furthest possible point. A democracy more than any other form of government needs the services of such men. Referring to this fact, Prof. Newcomb says: "Take a few physical investigators out of each generation, and we should know nothing of the force of steam. Take away a few professors who during the last century amused themselves with investigating the curious properties of electricity, and we should have no knowledge of the practical uses of that agent. Take out a few philosophers, and we should not have our present ideas of human rights, liberties or popular government. Had one man in a million been taken from each generation, we should reach the end of the nineteenth century with the world in the condition of the sixteenth." Dr. Charles F. Thwing in his book, "American Colleges," admits that it is the duty of the government to foster elementary education, but he claims that the permanency of the government does not hinge upon universities. A very casual glance at the course of history would convince the reader of the fallacy of Dr. Thwing's argument. In the important epochs of history, men of intellectual power have, as a rule, led the affairs of state. Referring to the state papers of the Continental Congress, William Pitt said: "I must declare and avow, that in all my reading and study-and it has been my favorite study: I have read Thucydides, and have studied and admired the master states of the world -that for solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion under such a complication of circumstances, no nation or body of men can stand in preference to the General Congress at Philadelphia." A large number of these distinguished men had studied within walls of learning of a high grade. Of the fifty-five men who were charged with the work of framing the constitution of the United States, nine had studied in Princeton, four in Yale, three in Harvard, two in Columbia, one in the University of Pennsylvania, seven in the College of William and Mary, one in three universities of Scotland, and one in Oxford. The Geneva tribunal of ar

acy, they regarded all the benefits of higher education as matters of private concern only. Such a policy is wasteful to the best treasures of the state and to the powers and faculties of its citizens. Nations are paid back the money which they expend on institutions of a high grade of learning. When nations need on some great occasion the services of men of intelligence and culture, they are enabled to call upon citizens who have passed through a higher institu

nearly all of whom were graduates of American or European institutions. More than two hundred members of the fifty-third Congress had received collegiate instruction.

The influence of higher education upon public life is well-illustrated by two small colleges in Pennsylvania, Dickinson College and Washington and Jefferson College. Dickinson College was founded in 1783. The whole number of alumni is 3500, distributed in the walks of public life as fol