progress, destroying the best motives to activity.

When our boys and girls are aware that their school privileges will be exhausted at the age of fourteen years, is it a wonder that they shape their lives to lower aims and grow content to be small people? Is it not evident that such a system forces many a youth into the battle for success when he should be engaged most diligently in developing that instrument, the intellect, which should be wielded most potently in the struggle? Is it not evident, also, that the possibility for a brilliant career of many a pupil, whose parents are not disposed or are unable to incur the expense of continuing his education at higher institutions of learning, is sealed forever by the school regulations which do not make provision for instruction in branches beyond the common school curriculum?

We would at once condemn the city or borough school regulation which has made ample provision for instruction in the common school branches, and no provision for a more extensive course of training. Why then foster such a system in the country, which certainly is possessed with richer and purer educational influences than the city?

The objections to the existing regulations are obvious. In cities and in the more progressive boroughs they have long been voiced by the establishment of well equipped high schools. If the pupil is so fortunate as to be the son of parents who are more disposed towards the intelligence and future welfare of their children than towards the inanimate dollar, he will have the benefit of an extensive course of training. There is, however, another class of pupils with capabilities as great and intellects as keen as those of their classmates, but whose parents are not disposed or are too poor to extend to them equal advantages. It is for the welfare of this latter class and for the welfare of children of indifferent parents, that we plead for district high schools, especially as the State owes every child the advantages of a thorough school training.

so extended?" By establishing district high schools is, in my opinion, the best. answer to the question. When we use the term high school, we refer not to a school that is a high school in name only, nor do we refer to a school that serves merely as a link between the common school and the college; but we refer to a school whose course is essentially English, offering an opportunity for business or college preparation to those who desire to enter business or college.

A high school should have a four years' course and at least two competent instructors. We, however, do not desire to discuss at this time what we consider a typical high school. We simply wish to intimate that we plead for establishing district high schools, whose influences for good are at once acknowledged by all intelligent people.

It is granted by all business men that greater intelligence, keener intellects, and better cultivated minds are required to transact any kind of business successfully to-day, to meet the fierce competition and to succeed in any calling of life, than were required a generation ago. It is also certain that still larger intelligence, keener intellects, and better cultivated minds will be required to attain success a generation hence than are required to day. Consequently the principal aim of education should be to discipline the mind and increase its powers, that greater ability and consequently greater success and usefulness may be attained in life. It is necessary therefore that a larger advance in the kind and complèteness of school work over the past is made, that we add to the generally accepted school curriculum, which can be accomplished most effectually in the country by establishing a well regulated high school in each district.

The most progressive step along educational lines which can be taken at present, in our judgment, is to extend to all the pupils of the rural schools advantages equal to those offered by cities and the more progressive boroughs.

That harmony might exist between the various schools and the high school, the schools should be under the general supervision of the principal of the high school, who should visit the various schools frequently. Thus every school of the county would be brought under the direct influence of one able to judge, to criticise, to suggest and to inspire.

The principals of the various high schools of the county should be in close touch with the county superintendent, and thus the school system of the country would have unity, without which the best results cannot be obtained.

Such a system will furnish teachers of higher grade of qualification than the present system. True, the district high school cannot furnish professionally trained teachers the supplementary work of the teachers' training school is required for that-but it can furnish teachers whose views have been broadened and whose love of knowledge has been deepened by a taste of a liberal learning and culture which renders possible the successful introduction of those improved methods of teaching which have lifted teaching from something less than an experimental art to the level of a science. For it has been well said, that "intelligent methods can be applied by intelligent teachers only; machine methods are necessary for machine teachers." A healthful emulation among the various teachers of the districts would naturally take place, as the uplook to the principalship as a reward for faithful service would be a constant incentive.

The

Under such a system each district would have its educational centre. district high school would be the place where the teachers would meet to interchange views on educational topics, the place in which the directors might meet to transact their official business, and the place where a district library could be established. The high school would become the pride of the citizens of the district, an institution towards which generous citizens would make contributions in the way of science apparatus and books for the purpose of enhancing the prosperity of the school.

Yet notwithstanding the advantages which such a system would insure, objections would be offered. Among the objections, the expense incurred by such a system and the selection of a con

venient site for the high school would be the most prominent. The impetus which such institutions will give to the cause of education is sufficient to remove the first objection. The second objection could often be met satisfactorily, and is not sufficient to discount the system.

Whether the young man selects the shop, the counting house, the farm or any of the ordinary industries, his work will be the more efficient for having had a thorough high school training; and for the same reason he will make a better citizen, a better father, and a better Christian.

Such a system will advance the refinement and culture of the community, nay, rather shall be the chief source of the increased progress of civilization.

a dollar I will give you what you want."

A rich cynic thus answered a woman who had come to him for aid to help the poor of their city. He hoped to silence her and send her away.

"Will you come with me?" said the woman challenged in this novel manner.

The man consented, and in a few minutes the two entered an unsightly tenement. The lady, who knew her ground, led the man up two flights of stairs into a cheerless room. The floor and walls were absolutely barren. The only piece of furniture, besides the bed, a chair and a dilapidated table, was a small stove, in which a scant fire was burning.

There was a middle-aged man in the room, with two children, each poorly and thinly clad. The few dishes were empty. Destitution could hardly be more complete. The woman, accustomed to such pathetic sights, soon learned what was most needed, and from long experience she knew just what to purchase.

"Please wait," she said to the rich man, "while I run around to the store."

Full of compassion for this mute suffering, the gentleman waited. In a quarter of an hour a large grocer's basket, filled to the brim, was brought into the room. Soon the little stove threw out comforting heat, and the odor of food gave grateful cheer.

"Do you think this charity well bestowed?" asked the woman, as they left.

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"Well, here is the list." He took it and read. We quote it word for word: 25 pounds coal. 2 bundles kindling Half pound tea. 2 loaves bread 2 pounds oatmeal.

05

15

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$1 00

Without hesitation the man of money took a dollar bill and handed it to the good woman, and the next day she received his check for a thousand like it.

The knowledge of what $1 can actually accomplish to relieve distress and bring happiness to the poor may restrain our hands from foolish extravagance. Iu these days, when honest poverty is crowding about us, it is nothing less than cruel to throw too many of our dollars away for purely selfish luxuries. Extravagant expenditures hold the germs of disaster. In their full fruitage they give birth to effeminacy, lower moral standards, stimulate envy, and incite revolution.

THE TEETH AND HEALTH.

MONG the most interesting of the addresses delivered before the Medical Association, in session in Philadelphia recently, was the paper by Dr. R. R. Andrews, of Chicago, on the care of the teeth of school children. The point brought out by Dr. Andrews was the danger children run of contracting tuberculosis through decayed and neglected teeth. He did not exaggerate when he said: "The connection between bacterial growth in the oral cavity and severe disturbance of the general health is to-day well known. There are those who carry more filth in their mouths than they would tolerate on their skins, and this is the condition of the mouths of many school children."

Dr. Andrews brought out one of those conditions so common in ordinary child life, but which go so far to determine the health and usefulness of the individual in later years. Parents who often wonder why their children are unhealthful never

teeth. The farmer who would buy horse without looking carefully into the condition of its teeth would be considered as recklessly throwing away his money. And yet the farmers who condemn such a transaction will permit their children to sit in hot, close schoolrooms with decaying teeth which, as Dr. Andrews claims, offer one of the best mediums for the growth and multiplication of bacteria. The only reasonable conclusion to be drawn is that the farmer cares more to have a healthy horse than a healthy child.

There is one light, however, in which Dr. Andrews did not consider the results of decayed teeth. That is their effect on the sense of hearing. The most advanced aurists contend that many cases of defective hearing can be traced directly to the presence of decayed teeth in the mouth, and especially what are known as wisdom teeth. The late Dr. Samuel Sexton, of New York city, who gained an enviable reputation as an aural surgeon, made it his duty to examine the hearing and teeth of a large number of school children in that city, and in nearly every case he found defective hearing accompanying badly decayed teeth. In one school there were seventy-six cases of defective hearing, all the marked cases having bad teeth. Physicians in other cities who have made similar examinations have been struck with a like coincidence. It is probable that some of this bad hearing came from the same neglect of the ear which has left the teeth to decay, but the frequency with which the two go together and the intimacy of the nerve of hearing and the nerves supplying the teeth leave no doubt of why the harmful effects go together.

The suggestion of Dr. Andrews is that boards of education appoint examining dentists to each school, and he urges dental societies to take action to this end. A thorough examination of the teeth of all school children would doubtless result in saving the health and a full use of the faculties of many. The neglect or ignorance of parents has resulted in burdening a considerable percentage of men with poor health and impaired senses. When parents fail to perform their duty it is the right and duty of the State to step in and supply the neglect. There is no higher duty to perform than to preserve the health and faculties in full

working order. Dr. Andrews' suggestion is one aid in this direction, and it merits the sympathetic consideration of the medical fraternity and of the school authorities.-Philadelphia Press.

PROTOPLASM.

Pand constitutes the basis of all plant

OTOPLASM is a living substance

and animai life. In appearance it is clear, granular and jelly-like. The protoplasm is the only living part of an organism, and it is the "machinery" by which the entire plant or animal has been built up. It is very complex in its chemical composition, constantly forming certain organic compounds and constantly breaking up others. Protoplasm is always in chemical activity; when this activity ceases, death ensues, and, strictly speaking, the substance is no longer protoplasm, but merely a disorganized collection of dead organic compounds. Protoplasm has never been analyzed by the chemist, but analyses have been made of its dead constituents, such as the proteids, carbohydrates, fats, etc.

The word cell, which literally means a room or space surrounded by walls, was originally applied to the minute spaces in the structure of wood and the bark of trees, the woody wall being considered the essential part of the cell; but the word has lost its original application, and as now used in biology it means a mass of protoplasm containing within it a small body which consists of another kind of protoplasm called the nucleus. A cell usually contains other constituents besides protoplasm, and it may or may not be surrounded by a cell wall. A cell always leads a more or less independent life, whether it lives alone or as a part of a higher organism. Plant and animal cells are fundamentally alike, differing only in some of their constituents.

Chlorophyll is a remarkable substance, found only in the protoplasm of plants. By the aid of chlorophyll, protoplasm is enabled to extract the energy or power from the rays of sunlight and store it in the form of starch and sugar, which constitute not only the food of plants, but also largely that of animals. Plants elaborate starch from inorganic substances, but this they can do only by the aid of chlorophyll and in the presence of sunlight.

Exogenous and endogenous are both obsolete terms, and are now known to be untrue in the sense in which they have been used. Monocotyledon and dicotyledon are better terms, and have a much more fundamental significance than merely a difference of fruit leaves.

Metabolism includes all the chemical changes which take place in the body of a plant or animal. These changes are of two kinds, those which are building up protoplasm, constructive metabolism, and those which are breaking down protoplasm, destructive metabolism.

There is no true circulation in the stems of plants. Crude material absorbed by the roots ascends to the leaves, where it is elaborated. This "ascent of the sap" is the only process in the plant which is in any sense a current through the system and branches.-Inter State School Review.

THE

POLITICAL LANGUAGE.

HE true inwardness of some methods of teaching was perhaps never more clearly shown than by a conversation with a group of school-boys last week in New York. The boys ranged in age between ten and fifteen years, and had spent their school life in the public schools of lower New York. A conversation the preceding week with a group of voters, all educated in the public schools, had opened the eyes of the writer to the task laid upon the Citizens' Union, which frankly admits that its success depends on the workingmen of the Greater New York.

The older group were being given spelling and language lessons from the columns of a leading evening paper, the words being taken from the accounts of the affairs of Crete, Greece and Turkey. The use of the word "Ambassador " produced such an expression of blankness that the writer concluded to probe for the idea that the word expressed to the minds of these voters. Not one had the faintest idea of the meaning of the word, and all declared that they had never heard the word before. A reference to the President's Cabinet revealed the fact that two of them thought it was a large and peculiar desk in which the President kept important papers. Evidently the idea of form and ceremony was connected with this desk; it was a kind of attachment to

a Presidential throne. This experience led the writer to use a mental probe on the intellectual possessions of the group of school-boys referred to.

The conversation began: "Boys, when you hear or see the word municipal, what does it mean to you?" There was a wrinkling of brows. Finally the oldest boy responded, "It means good manners." "Can you spell it?" Three did promptly. The meaning of the word was then explained.

"What does municipality mean?" "Fine," promptly answered the big boy. "If I say to you that William L. Strong is the chief executive officer of this municipality, what do I mean?" Silence. "What is the chief executive officer of a city called?" Silence. The answer was given and the question put again. It required hints and suggestions to get an answer. "If I say to you that there is an improvement in this municipal government, what do I mean by municipal government?" It took three minutes for the older boy to think out an answer. The others made no attempt. "What is the meaning of federal?" Three boys in unison,Small sums of money." "What do you understand when you hear the President's Cabinet referred to?" "It means the President's men," responded one boy. Not one could give the titles of the members of the Cabinet, nor even after the titles were given could they state what was the special business of each, except that of the Secretary of the Treasury and of the Secretary of the Navy. boy, with every evidence of pride in his knowledge, announced that Roosevelt was head of the Navy. Another boy said Grant was Secretary of War, and blushed, not at his mistake, but because he had to be reminded of the recent parade, the reference to which brought out a number of personal experiences on the day the Grant tomb was dedicated.

One

This it is that makes it so difficult to reach a certain class of voters. The ward heeler, the ward boss, uses the vocabulary of the voters in the district where he votes. The majority of the reformers make their earnest attempts to reach the voters a few weeks or months, as the case may be, before election. They come laden with a foreign language; with moral and political standards as foreign to the hearers as the language used. Frequently the hearers are left without one idea unchanged, without one new idea, but re

sponsive perhaps to a charming personality, or an effective voice, or a sense of a higher manhood, born of that which is beyond their reach.

The field in which to do the active and impressive work in developing good citizenship is in the school-room, and a good medium for beginning is the spelling lesson, for through it the boy receives his vocabulary, the only true medium of exchange between citizens of all classes. The Outlook.

READING AND THINKING.

F. W. OSBORN, BROOKLYN.

THERE is a very general consensus of

large part of the youth who are pursuing a course of study in the high school, and even in college, there is a noticeable lack of the reflective spirit. Not only have they not formed the habit of looking into the relations of things, except in the most superficial way, but they do not take kindly to suggestions which invite them to such inquiry. Facts, phenomena, general laws, perhaps, interest them, but they show little desire to search for their causes, or connect them with a system of things. Although they have attained an age when the philosophic spirit should at least begin to manifest itself, they are disinclined to such inquiries as would naturally stimulate the spirit. Their intellectual life revolves around objects of immediate personal innterest; it has not been stimulated or enriched by that wider view of things which always reveals the thinker.

Various explanations are offered of this educational phenomenon; this discussion will be limited to a notice of two of these. So far as this defect is due to a late development of the reflective spirit it may be ascribed in part, at least, to an excessive reading of fiction. Such habits of reading as the majority of young people have formed, have been acquired by familiarity with short stories in the current magazines, or with the standard novels. The greater part of this reading is not done under the wise direction of a competent instructor, or as an aid in the formation of a literary taste, but simply for the pleasure that comes from the indulgence of the passive imagination, or from an idle curiosity in the termination