From "Little-Known Sisters." Dana Estes & Company, Publishers, Boston.

court beauty, sister to the flower of knighthood; Mary Ann Lamb, brilliant but afflicted, tenderly cared for, all his life, by her famous brother; Dorothy Wordsworth, who kept Wordsworth's house and inspired and comforted him till he married, and after; Elizabeth Whittier, determined and active ally of her brother and his friends in the anti-slavery days; Sarianna Browning, who believed in the poet's genius before he won his fame; Hannah Macaulay, Sarah Disraeli, Sophia Thoreau, and Eliza Parkman. We get chiefly the feminine, domestic side of their lives.

A Book of Nimble Beasts, Bunny Rabbit, Squirrel, Toad and Those Sort of People. By Douglas English, Fellow and Medallist of the Royal Photographic Society. With over 200 illustrations from photographs of living animals, taken by the author. 319 pages. Dana Estes & Co., Boston.

The introduction says that the book is for boys and girls, and haply grown-ups, who have never seen a weasel or a harvest mouse, to show them "God's Under-World; a world of queer small happenings; of sparkling eyes and vanishing tails; a whispering, rustling World."

It will be seen that Mr. English has the knack of selection, and of choosing the unique word or phrase. He is humorous, tender, reflective, by turns. His creatures are individuals, and his

From "Saddles and Lariats." Dana Estes & Company, Publishers, Boston.

to be found in Mr. Koebel's book. If you are self-convicted of ignorance of this extensive country, it is the book for you to read.

Saddles and Lariats-The Largely True Story of the Bar-Circle Outfit and Their Attempt to Take a Big

New York Has Doubts

These two items appear simultaneously in the newspapers. One is from New York:

The fact that a certain seat in the 4A grade of the Lincoln School in Flushing remained vacant when it should have been occupied at the beginning of the fall term by fifteen-year-old Anna Scocca led the truant officer to her home yesterday. When he asked why Anna was not at school, her mother replied with a smile:

"Anna is never going to school again. Anna is too busy to go just now."

The truant officer explained at great length that Anna would have to go to school or her parents would be summoned to court.

But Anna's mother only smiled more broadly. “Anna is going to be married," she said, “and she is very busy making the dresses she will need."

The local school authorities in Flushing said the case presented unusual features. They noted that the working papers of the board of education could not be issued to Anna, as she had only reached 4A; but they were not sure that a wife needed working papers.

Philadelphia Has No Doubts

The other is from Philadelphia:

John Palasis, of Logan street, must send his thirteenyear-old wife to school for another year or he will have to go to jail. The girl wife was reported by the truant officer, and her father was arrested. The smiling little helpmeet waved a marriage certificate before the astonished magistrate, and said:

Snobbery

The academic cap and gown will be welcomed at all exercises, and will be expected at the reception on Wednesday evening and at the dedicatory procession and exercises on Thursday afternoon.-From the invitation to the dedicatory exercises of the education building at Albany.

Shades of that good old democrat, DeWitt Clinton !

A Study in Terminology

A number of exceptional men and women have just held a congress for the discussion of exceptional children. It may be needless to say that in the preceding sentence the word exceptional is used in two different senses. This suggests the fact that a person has to keep mighty close track of books and speeches on education in order to understand the shifting use of terms. Mrs. Fondmater's frequent remarks about her own exceptional children do not throw any light upon the use of the word when teachers talk about exceptional children. A New One

One of the dear ladies at this conference read a paper to which she gave the title of The Borderland Child. That's a new one to me, though I may be somewhat backward-retarded-in my studies in pedagogical terminology. I found all the well-known expressions in the report of the proceedings-the defective child, the abnormal child, the more impressive sub-normal

Magistrate Boyle fined the father $14 and costs.

A queer country, this, that allows thirteen and fifteen-year-old girls to make a legal contract of marriage, while still under the workings of the attendance laws. Verily, some one will be saying, "What God hath joined together let no attendance officer put asunder"; or else they will say, "What attendance officer may put asunder, let not God join together."

Now It Certainly Will Be Read

Mr. Ernest C. Moore has handed in a little paper on the subject of the New York board of education, a report in fact of the commission on school inquiry. The refusal of the board of estimate, one of the big wheels of New York machinery, to publish this same report is altogether proper. In the first place there is in the document a lamentable lack of statistics, which in this day of riotous figures is unpardonable. In the next place the bald facts stated can be easily assimilated by a public that is altogether too ready to believe such statements.

plain ungraded or backward child and the child of low mentality. These are not synonymous terms, by any means; certainly not. There are just as many different childs-we must have a new plural for the pedagogical child-as there are adjectives. The variations and gradations may be slight, but they exist, and one shows his ignorance of pedagogy who jumbles up these terms. Moreover, since few of the great ones agree in their use of these words, it behooves us to know who is the reigning authority in pedagogical nomenclature and govern our language accordingly.

suggests limit; but the limited child is too prosaic and, of course, it would never do to say of our dull children that they are the limit.

Ruled Out

Just as there are hundreds of euphemistic expressions to use in place of the word death, and unpleasant subjects generally generate a varied vocabulary, so witless children of varying degrees are sure to beget an ample terminology. The number of words that are ruled out of the teachers' vocabulary by the conventions of pedagogy is large. Witless itself will not do. We must not talk in pedagogy of the witless child; nor yet must we hyphenate half, short, dull or blunt to witted and use the resulting terse and expressive adjective. Foolish, idiotic and brainless are taboo. Weak might do, but it may be taken in the physical sense, and weak, when it is hyphen-linked to headed, minded or brained, gets too close to the fact. Beetle-headed might serve in talking over our classroom troubles with acquaintances, but in the papers that we read before the teachers' associations it will hardly pass. Even if its Anglo-Saxon harshness were to be allowedand Anglo-Saxon words must always be avoided in pedagogy-some nature-study teacher would be sure to get up and inform us that the beetle has in reality a massive brain and is far from being a good zoological example of retardation. These nature-studyists are forever upsetting our good old figurative expressions. They say the ass is quite intelligent and the owl, upon which ordinary mortals are ready to confer the degree of Ph.D., is really back in the ungraded class.

Other Words That Won't Do

The dull child is not to be spoken of; dumb, stupid, stolid, doltish, thick-skulled, addlepated, muddy-headed and scatter-brained must be reserved for private conversation; while imbecile and driveling are to be confined to our innermost thoughts. Unteachable sounds well, but it is pedagogically illogical. Passing now from adjectives to substantives, ass and booby, dotard and dunce, dunderpate and half-wit are likewise verba non grata. Bull-calf, limited to rural districts, and moon-calf, heard in the vicinity of Shakespearean plays, will never do; while the expressive word, stick, is not to be tolerated. Nincompoop is hardly to be suggested.

Plenty of Novel Terms Left

Let no one be discouraged that so large a vocabulary is prohibited. There are still many succulent and novel terms left, as the lady with her borderland child has shown; and there is still opportunity for pedagogical fame by dressing up the old idea in some new hobbleskirt fashion.

For instance, why continue to talk about the atypical child, learned as it sounds, when there is left the uncomformable child to write and

talk about? One who uses that term will be surely credited with deep knowledge of uncomformable strata and other geological lore. Anomalous is impressive as well as a deviation from the general rule; amorphous combines science and imagination; and heterocliticalmuch more hypnotic than heterocliticis a mouth-filler. The unorthodox child is an evident metaphor; and now that there is little left in religion that is really orthodox, we may properly transfer the word from church to school. The wandering child strays off too far perhaps into the realm of the figurative and might lead to spoiling the effect, if some sister should strike up the hymn, "Where is my wandering child to-night?"

Still Others

The defective child has easy variations. There is the incomplete child, or, better, the unfinished child, suggestive of the duty of the teacher to go ahead and put on the finishing touches. The insufficient child or the inadequate child are worth considering; but one should be careful not to drop down to such an expression as the scant child, as if it were a dress pattern of too great limitations. And that brings us around to the limited child again; and there are a ready score of others along the same lines.

A

The backward child is properly giving way as an expression to the retarded child; for the former suggests some fault of his own, while the latter puts the blame where it really belongs -on the teacher who does the retarding. suggested improvement for the now popular word, retarded, one that will indubitably fix the crime upon the criminal retarder, is retardee. There are immense possibilities in retardee.

But these words are only the beginnings of a vocabulary. Suppose with reference to pace we talk about the leisurely, the deliberate or the slackened child; or with position in mind. we refer to the stranded child, the eleventhhour, the-day-after-the-fair or the ex-post-facto child. By the way, the Latin is great, and so why not the sine-die child, if only it wouldn't be taken as referring to the children in the night school. Again having in our thoughts the pedagogical labors involved, we can say the difficult child, the arduous, the formidable, the aye-there's-the-rub, the hic-labor-hoc-opus child.