the first slave ship was enabled to set up the Hampton Normal and Industrial Institute. Gen. S. C. Armstrong was the one man of commanding educational and executive genius developed by the war to meet the great call for a permanent method of training the colored race for its new-found American citizenship. By birth and early training in the Sandwich Islands; college life in Massachusetts under President Hopkins; service in command of colored troops, and as an agent of the Freedmen's Bureau for ten years, he was schooled like no other man for this work, and sent by Providence to the State and locality where slavery began to build an institution that should be an object lesson in the moral, mental and industrial schooling of these people. His method was radical; beginning with the training in obedience to law and order under military authority, and proceeding upward through industrial training according to the methods of free labor; instruction in morals, manners and religion by a social life itself the finest result of Christian manhood and womanhood, and a thorough drill in an English education under one of the most brilliant groups of instructors ever found in one American seminary. This great school was chartered and subsidized by the State of Virginia, and from the first worked in complete harmony with Dr. Ruffner in the upbuilding of the common school for the colored contingent,-one third the population of the State. Without Hampton and its great principal, General Armstrong, the establishment of the common school for the negro by Dr. Ruffner would have been a failure from the beginning. The annual reports of Armstrong to the State Board are like a search-light from a lofty point illuminating the entire field of operation. General Armstrong at Hampton developed the true American method of schooling the masses of this nation within a nation, now eight millions strong. His disciple, Booker T. Washington, has demonstrated the fact that it can be worked by colored teachers and adapted to even the lowest grades of intelligence. Every Southern State has now established one or more than one of these seminaries, combining the academical, normal and industrial department in the highest grade of the common school,

SCHOOLDAYS IN LITTLE RUSSIA.

GEORGE J. VARNEY, BOSTON.

UR Peterkin had his birth away off in "Little Russia," which is a real, not an imaginary country. The name has for a long period been often used to designate the southwestern quarter of the present Russia in Europe; because, while it was the earliest civilized of any portion of the Russian empire, its chief town, Kieff (also spelled Kief and Kiev), on the River Dnieper, was the seat of government for all which originally constituted Russia. It thus continued for hundreds of years; but about the year 1328 the government was transferred to Moscow, by the act of Usbeck, the Khan of Tartary, who, by the force of his armies, had made all Russia tributary to him. Kieff, too, was the scene of the introduction of Christianity into Russia, which occurred in A. D. 866.

The city has now about one hundred and twenty-two thousand inhabitants, having grown very rapidly during the last half century. The commercial quarter occupies an area of low ground between hills. Its buildings are irregular, and have little architectural adornment; but the new part of the town has many magnificent buildings, frequently with Moorish towers and domes and, too, plentiful gilding. But no factory chimneys are to be seen there, for Kieff is not an industrial but a commercial center. Several fairs for the purpose of trade are annually held there, the largest of which occurs in the winter, and is attended by local and foreign merchants in great numbers.

It was in this city that Peterkin's boyhood was passed. He has a less vivid recollection of school than of the good times he had in going and coming on the river in winter. The ice may have been rough at some times; but he remembers it most distinctly when its surface was smooth as a mirror, on which he and a dozen companions glided merrily on their skates, which they call konki, a word which, literally, signifies "ponies."

Kieff is in the latitude of the south of England; and while the warm and cold seasons are of about the same length in each, the weather in Kieff is hotter in summer and colder in winter than in England, with more snow, because of the greater remoteness of the country from the tempering influence of the ocean.

The coasting and other sports the little Russian boys have with the snieg (snow) is as varied as in America, while it continues for a longer period. Having so much use of the sled (sahnouskie, diminutive of sahnie, sleigh or sledge), the admonition which in America the boys sometimes give to a selfish comrade has in Kieff passed into a proverb: "Lyoubish katatsia, lyoubé sahnoushkie vouzite" (If you would slide you must draw up the sled).

During most of the winter the schoolboys wear a loose, thick coat or blouse over their school uniforms; and instead of the regulation cap, the bashlirt, a conical, comical cap of soft felt, the tasselled

peak of which hangs down between the shoulders, while a pair of wings of the same material, attached near the bottom, are long enough to wind twice about the neck and tie securely.

The uniform in which the boys in the public schools were required to appear consisted of gray trousers having a light blue stripe down the outside of the leg, with a waistcoat and military coat, both blue, and a blue cap. In hot weather they wore white duck trousers, a gray blouse with a leather belt, and a white yachting cap. On both styles of cap, just over the visor, was attached a silver ornament in the form of two divergent leaves, bearing the class number.

Of course very poor people could not dress their boys so well as this, neither could they pay the fee of sixty roubles required annually for the privileges of the gymnasia-the public school of Russian cities. Great numbers end their education with the preparatory school, and many others drop out in the first years of the gymnasia. A pupil failing in examination for the latter is allowed another in the next year; but if he fails the third time his public schooldays in that town are ended.

The

A certificate of admission to the fourth class (or year) in the gymnasia authorizes the holder to apply for the position of teacher in a village school or for admission to a technical school or to the army; while the diploma, with the title A.B., given on graduation, permits the owner to enter the university without a special examination. course of the gymnasia includes the French, German and Latin languages, as well as the native language, the modern Russian; while an hour in the morning twice or thrice in the week, in all grades, is devoted to Takona Bosina (Theology, or, literally, the Law of God), which embraces the ecclesiastical system of the Greek church. All the text-books on the subject of religion are in the Slavonic tongue, like the ritual of the church in Russia, that having been the language universally spoken in the empire when the Christian religion was established there.

In the larger schools it was the aim to have a teacher for every branch, so that in many instances the salary was scarcely sufficient for what was there regarded as a decent living. In the smaller villages the teacher had usually to rely for his compensation on such gifts as the parents thought themselves able to make.

It will be noted that the schools, though public, were not free; but as school attendance has gradually been made compulsory, the cost to the student has been reduced.

The discipline in school is strict, but, contrary to what we might suppose from the reported use of the knout in punishment for certain civil offense, corporeal correction is not favored in schools. Retention after school for additional study and recitation, solitary confinement in the dark for an hour, or over night, or a duplication of these, are the usual inflictions, which, if not successful, are followed by expulsion.

The persons of Russian children are strenuously guarded by law. An Englishman residing in Kieff caught a boy pilfering from his fruit trees and cuffed his ears (or shook him-Peterkin does not dis

tinctly remember which); and for this the injured householder was arrested and locked up for three days. He had known that if he complained to the police the boy would be punished beyond what such a trivial offense justified, and he had deemed it in the interest of the urchin, as well as of owners of fruit trees, to himself administer a slight punishment. Such inflexibility and severity in the administration of justice in the smallest matters seems to be inherent in despotic systems of government.

In the Kieff gymnasia a few years ago the furniture of the schoolrooms consisted of seats of plain board, each backed by a desk for those on the next seat behind it, of a length sufficient for several pupils, so that the capacity of the apartment was adjustable to a large variation of numbers, according to the degree of crowding, without any increase or diminution of the furniture. The schools for girls are quite separate and distant from those of the boys; but in family premises and in the streets the children of the two sexes mingle freely.

One day when Peterkin was about five or six years old he saw two girls going down to the shore near his home. They lived in the next house, so that the trio were slightly acquainted. With a little boy's curiosity and love of companionship he followed down after them. They stowed away a package of luncheon and one or two others, and Peterkin felt sure that in one package there was a ripe watermelon,— of which he was extremely fond. With this impression on his mind it was not difficult for the girls to coax him to get into the boat with them, though he was quite fearful of the water. The girls were about sixteen and eighteen years of age, and should have known better than to have carried away the child without the consent of his parents. They were high-spirited and rather reckless, but they handled the oars well. Their boat went down stream at a rapid rate, the voyage being for the purpose of visiting some friends who lived near the river several miles below.

Peterkin has a vivid recollection of this incident, for he not only had a watermelon for luncheon, but fared sumptuously three or four days as a guest. He also remembers his discovery, on his return home, of the distress in which his parents had been on his account.

This adventure and his subsequent enjoyment of the ice when he became able to skate, are not his only memories of the river. In a very warm and rainy spell one spring the Dnieper overflowed its lower banks. It lifted and bore away fences, the rude little boat wharves, hencoops, pig pens, and even some small wooden dwelling houses which had stood near the shore. Peterkin saw several of these float slowly away on the flood. On some the cat and hens had perched upon the window sills and on the roof of the sheds attached to the main house; while in one shed there was seen through the open side the sturdy peasant wife calmly washing out the family clothes by beating them with a long flat staff as they lay on a plank, wet as possible from their frequent dippings in the convenient water.

Young Peterkin had, as a boy, the instinct of the wanderer in him, I think. During the last summer of his residence in Russia (his

eleventh) he and a schoolmate explored the purlieus of the convent where nuns of the Greek church had their home, and also taught daily many girls of aristocratic families. The boys admired the beautiful garden, with its fruit and shade trees. Being polite, and not intruding on specially private precincts, the elderly nuns did not object to their presence, while the younger ones were delighted to have the youngsters there; and many times they brought them fruit and cake, as they sat reading in shady nooks.

Up on the long hill which presses out upon the river overlooking the convent, too, is the extensive and very celebrated monastery Pecherskoi Lavra, to which, during the summer, pilgrims (mostly very indigent people) come on foot, in groups and in great companies, for hundreds of miles from all surrounding parts of Russia, their number altogether in any season being said to exceed the population of the city.

The Russians have a great many holidays,—one hundred and eighty is the number stated by a statistical traveler-but the people, as a whole, refrain from work on a few only of these days. Many are civil holidays, the anniversaries of the birthday of the reigning czar, the day of his coronation, and great events in the history of the empire,—but the larger number are religious, relating to Old and New Testament events, the early saints and those of the Russian church. Christmas and Easter, as in all other Christian countries, are the days of most elaborate ceremonies and social enjoyment. On Easter day children, singly or in groups, meeting in the streets greet each other with kisses and the phrases, "Kriestos voshkries" (Christ is arisen), which is met with the reply, "Vo estinou voshkries" (Christ is arisen indeed, or, literally, We know he is arisen).

The Russian language appears quite amusing to many persons who are acquainted only with English and Latin; but it is not so difficult to learn as it seems. There are thirty-four letters in its alphabet, but these, unlike some of the English letters, have rarely more than one sound-by which one prolific source of difficulty is avoided.

I

FACE THE FACTS.

S. GRAHAM CROZIER, CINCINNATI, OHIO.

N the "Reply" that was made in the last April number of EDUCATION to Superintendent Carroll's paper of the previous February, two tendencies are easily observable that are seriously retarding our advancement in educational matters. The first, to which no further reference will be made, is a certain tone of invective, or at least reprimand. The second, a matter of more moment, is the assumption, or rather statement, that "our grammar-school teachers are men and women with big hearts, and our high-school teachers are not behind." Self-gratulation has little weight, to be sure, with the general public, but it does tend to invalidate the claims of the gratulator, and our profession has suffered too much of it to pass unnoticed.