N the Russian department, in the Art Building of the Chicago Exposition, at the north end of the gallery, there hung a picture that attracted much attention, and that has since been reproduced so often as now perhaps to be more widely known than any other of the fine paintings upon those walls. It told its familiar story simply and pleasantly, and one lingered, as loath to go, and came back day after day to look upon it, drawn by a spell deeper than the painter's art. And it has taken its place in the picture gallery of memory of untold thousands.

She comes hurrying from the kitchen, where she has been eagerly and lovingly busy, hand and head and heart at the service of an honored guest,-the most hospitable woman, shall we say, in all Bethany, and one of the best and most helpful to know, and to love, and to live with? So at least he seemed to think who knew to their depths the hearts of those about him, and longed for human sympathy and affection. If we may judge from the record, as we read between the lines, he seemed to regard this family, two sisters and one brother, as very attractive people, and among the best he knew in Palestine.

"Master, bid her that she help me. Mary is a good enough girl, but she's *Address by J. P. MCCASKEY, Principal of the Boys' High School, before the Teachers' Institute of Lancaster City, Pa., August 31, 1897.

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| leaving me to do everything just now. don't know what you're talking about, but it seems as if she can't tear herself away from it. You are tired and hungry, and I want to have something for you to eat as soon as possible." And, laughing, she kept on: "Mary is a good cook and a good housekeeper, and always ready to lend a hand when anything is to be done, but now-well, I've called her two or three times and she doesn't seem to hear me. Bid her that she help me."

He smiled as he looked into her truthful eyes, noted her quick, half-impatient manner which he knew so well, and the tones of her pleasant voice that had in them, one can readily imagine, the faintest suggestion of fault-finding. "Martha, sit down. You are one of the best women in the world; but Mary is better than you are." "I know that," she said impulsively; "I always knew that. But I would like her now to help me get this dinner." And she laughed good-naturedly at Mary's pleasant disclaimer that Martha was "the best woman" she knew-for they were friends, you know, as well as sisters, and appreciated and loved one another. "Don't worry about the dinner, Martha"-and in his fine eyes there beamed a light that spoke more than words might say-"nor much about anything else. All that in good time. We were talking of Eternity. But one thing

is needful." And the sisters together soon spread the generous table for their welcome guest.

Christ was no far-off teacher, cold in manner, didactic in method, but a beloved, and trusted, and familiar friend, good to live with. What a compliment did he pay to those women and their brother in his habit of going to their pleasant home in Bethany!

Good to live with! Of all people in the world, let this be said of wife and mother, then of husband and father, sister and brother. When and where shall we name the teacher? Always and everywhere. There hangs before you the portrait of a man who was good to live with anywhere, as thousands will bear loving testimony, but especially so in the school-room. He looks down upon us to-day an inspiration. "Being dead he yet speaketh". in this city where forty-five years ago he lived and taught. I have never known any boy who was under him, when Dr. Higbee lived with us in this High School, who does not recall pleasant memories of the man. We were always glad to go to his class-room, for there was life therein the man himself and in the outlook. He never seemed to be trying to teach us much; but everything was interesting to him. And as he looked at it, and thought about it, and spoke of it, and had so many outside connections to suggest, interesting to himself and to us, he aroused curiosity and gave impulse to something beyond. I have been grateful to him ever since for waking me up to a new thought one day when he came over from the mathematical room to hear our class in Cæsar. He drove his pick down into one of the paragraphs on the Helvetian war, and turned up a nugget in which I caught the glint of gold-and I've known since then a gold-field richer than any the Klondike will ever show. Ah! he was good to live with.

I cannot say, and I will not say That he is dead; he is just away, With a cheery smile, and a wave of the hand, He has wandered into an unknown land, And left us dreaming how very fair It needs must be since he lingers there. "Away!" Would we be good to live with-then let us keep that thought present in the minds of the children, and of the boys and girls growing on towards manhood and womanhood. It is better than the lesson in arithmetic or geography. It is the thought

of immortality, here beautifully put, which lingers upon the fancy like melody upon the ear. Just "away"-a Scotch expression for death. Ian Maclaren refers to it very tenderly in one of his books. I was struck with it first when a boy, in reading "My Schools and Schoolmasters," by Hugh Miller, the Scotch geologist. He speaks of the print of the feet of the little lambs upon the newmade grave of his child, and quotes some lines which he found long afterwards among the papers of its mother. I have not seen the book in many years, but have thought of the lines often. This should be the best "away" that we or our pupils will ever ponder or realize. Thou'rt awa' and awa' from thy father's side, Thou'rt awa' and awa' from thy mother's knee; Thou'rt awa' from our blessing, our care, our caressing,

But awa' from our hearts thou ne'er shalt be.

WAR-CRY AND WATCHWORD.

Is the teacher always looking out for himself, his own little preferences, and petty interests? He is not good to live with. The subtle influence of disposition and character will make itself felt among his pupils, unconsciously it may be to himself but none the less certainly and harmfully. He will not be good to live with here, and still better to get away from hereafter. "Look out for No. I is the war-cry in Hell. "Look out for No. 2 is the watch-word in Heaven. Here on this battle-plain of Earth and Time we hear both war-cry and watchword. The finest gentleman that ever walked the earth-the model gentleman of all human history-leads the hosts upon whose banner this latter inscription stands emblazoned forever. The war-cry is everywhere. But more and more the watch-word is caught up by gracious souls and passed from one to another in increasing volume of tone, as increasing thousands learn the new name written in that white stone of the apocalyptic vision. It grows like the steady, swelling strains of that celestial harmony in the titanic strife between devils and angels shadowed forth in the great tone poem of Tannhauser. At first the music is all wild, rapid, fierce, exultant, discordant, demoniac-"Look out for No. 1." Then, at intervals,-now drowned by the tumult of the instruments, then heard again through all the uproarcomes the hint of a better music. Faint

and sweet, but growing stronger and holding longer. Now it is here, and here to stay-until at last the whole magnificent orchestra is swelling triumphantly upon what seems an echo of that celestial music-that chorus of the innumerable company, and those harpers harping upon their harps beside the glassy sea. Apollyon and Michael have met in deadly conflict and selfishness and wickedness are driven from the field.

GOOD BOOKS AND GOOD PEOPLE.

We need to know a few good people living-but very many of the dead. Books! In them we find most of the people we revere, and many for whom we feel a personal affection. Do you know Hannah, in the Old Testament? She is one of the women I want to see in the next life. Do you know Roxana Foote? She is another. Deep-souled mothers both, three thousand years apart in time, but kindred souls, and so three thousand years are nothing. If they have met they have learned long since to know each other, and the later born has doubtless sought her elder sister. Books! What, indeed, were the world of men without books!

Hear Alexander Smith: "Across brawling centuries of blood and war, I hear the bleating of Abraham's flocks, the tinkling of the bells of Rebekah's camels. O men and women so far separated yet so near, so strange yet so well known, by what miraculous power do I know you all! Books are the true Elysian fields where the spirits of the dead converse and into these fields a mortal may venture unappalled."

And John Ruskin: "All the while this eternal court is open to you, the chosen and the mighty of every place and time! Into that you may enter always; in that you may take fellowship and rank according to your wish; from that, once entered into it, you can never be an outcast but by your own fault. No wealth will bribe, no name overawe, no artifice deceive the guardian of those Elysian gates. Do you deserve to enter? Pass. Do you ask to be the companion of nobles? Make yourself noble, and you shall be. Do you long for the conversation of the wise? Learn to understand it, and you shall hear it. But on other terms? No. If you will not rise to us, we cannot stoop to you. Bread of flour is good; but there is bread, sweet as honey, if we would eat it, in a good book."

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Good books are often good people at their best and so-very good to live with. 'Such as are thy thoughts," says Marcus Antoninus, "such also will be the character of thy mind, for the soul is dyed by the thought.' the thought." How to influence thought wisely is then the grave question. You and I stand where it is the one serious business of our lives to give direction to the lives of others. How shall we do this, how can we do it, best? No command of yours or mine will cause boy or girl to abandon any evil habit, profanity, obscenity, dishonesty, idleness, folly of any sort. Such command is from the outside only, and, to be regarded even in appearance, must be supported from the outside by dread of penalty. We must go deeper, and by other means than this, or we fail.

The winsome lady who holds court in her modest school-room, her courtiers seldom forgetting that they are little ladies and gentlemen, does this only because she has their hearts; and their hearts she can have only as she can control their thoughts; and their thoughts she controls only through her own fine personality, and by constantly putting into their receptive minds suggestions pleasing and wholesome. She lives out her own beautiful and earnest life with them. By quiet example, by personal appeal, by song and story she reaches them. She knows the best in literature and in life, and she gives them of her best, and they go out from her with a wealth of treasure in heart and mind that for not a few of her pupils will be cumulative for a life-time. She holds, with Froebel, that "all education not founded in religion is unproductive ;" and, with Warner, that "Good literature is as necessary to the growth of the soul as good air to the growth of the body, and that it is just as bad to put weak thought into the mind of a child as to shut it up in a room that is unventilated." does not try to teach so much, but she has many an immortal poem and many a good thing in prose, from the Bible and elsewhere, as familiar in her school as is the old multiplication table. Is such a teacher good to live with?

She

SUGGESTIVE IDEAS: OLDER CLASSES.

If I had the choice of where the early school years of my child should be spent, I would say, without hesitation, in an ungraded school under a good teacher.

A good ungraded school, with a good teacher in love with learning-especially if it be near a stream, not far from the woods, and the teacher be on speaking terms with nature is an ideal place for the early years of school life. The graded school of the city is a necessity of the situation, and of course a very good thing, but in it the average pupil is usually at a disadvantage as compared with his country cousin under a good teacher. In the ungraded school the young pupil has the chance of hearing the recitations of the older classes, and the remarks of the teacher as to many things quite beyond his class grade that may awaken curiosity, arouse interest, stimulate inquiry, afford knowledge. Let me illustrate.

From the advanced class in reading a little fellow hears the sentence: "One needs to cherish the splendid ideals of the poet and the evangelist." He doesn't know what it means. It is discussed; he is interested; and he gets its meaning "as through a glass darkly." Then the Then the teacher says: Look at that work cherish. The first part of it, cher, is a French word, and means "dear" (as cher ami, dear friend), it comes from a Latin word, carus, dear." "Cherish,' therefore, means "to hold dear,' 99 One needs to 'hold dear' the splendid ideals," etc. The little fellow feels a thrill of pleasure as he sees the light flash that reveals to him a new thought.

The class reads: "We should accumulate all kinds of useful knowledge." He knows all but one word in the sentence, and, lacking that, he knows nothing. He listens. The boys have been studying some Latin. The teacher inquires, "From what does that word 'accumulate' come?" A lad answers: "The Latin words, ad 'to,' and cumulus, a 'heap,' or 'pile.' It means 'to add to the stock we already have.' More light-these words are interesting.

Another reads: "Saturate their minds with wholesome thought, so far as they can or will absorb it." "What does this mean?" asks the teacher. The little fellow listens; he is eager now. The class knows fairly well the meaning of the sentence, but nobody can give the derivation of the unusual words. They refer to the dictionary: "Saturate" is from satur, "full of," "make full of;" and "absorb, from ab, "from," and sorbco, "to drink in," as a sponge absorbs water; and the

meaning: "Fill their minds with wholesome thought so far as they can take it in."

Nobody had observed that the little fellow was interested or listening, but from that chance recitation he had got what started him upon a new line of thought, and did much towards shaping his career. He knew later in life that that teacher had been good to live with, and that school a blessed place for him. In any school words are one of the most interesting subjects that can be talked about every day, if possible, especially in the spelling and reading lessons, by teacher and pupils. Dr. Holmes says: "There is more poetry in words than in sentences. And the child, who lives so largely in the world of the imagination, is always more or less a poet.

We want but little work attempted in formal science among the children. The show of gain here is very deceptive. It vanishes like the light snow from the ditch in the spring sunshine. These are years when the splendid faculty of the imagination is awake. In these years we want symbolism and parable, fairy tale and fable. We want language, spoken and read and written, all that can be acquired, of our own and other languages. We want much that is best in literature stored in the memory for present good and for the time to come. We want old-fashioned spelling and arithmetic and music; not much history or geography; not many branches, but suggestive instruction in many things. Let us have in these important years as much as possible of thoughts and things everlasting, things that we can take with us gladly on through life down to the end, and probably beyond it.

In this connection let me recall a pleasant thought of Bayard Taylor, a name familiar to you all. He began to study Greek when about fifty years of age. Howells tells of how he met him once with a Greek author in his hand. Taylor said he was beginning to read the language. Howells was surprised that be should take it up so late in life. Taylor replied, "Oh, but you know I expect to use it in the other world." That made it worth while, but was he sure of the other world? "As sure as I am of this,” said Taylor. And Howells adds: "I have always kept the impression of the young faith which spoke in his voice, and was more than his words."

Is it good to live with people who hold