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ing thing. Not long ago, in a Western school, a boy received such savage and merciless treatment from his mates that he died a day two after from his injuries. What sort of education is it that does not teach children to feel themselves degraded by brutality like this? It is folly to leave all moral training to home and parents; the hours in which a child comes under those influences are more than balanced by the hours of school and play. Instruction in good living, if it be not continuous, like daily bread and sunshine, is of small account; and instruction in good living, given constantly, with simplicity, with heartfelt sincerity and kindness, is what children especially need to receive from their teachers. What shall it profit a boy, if he leaves school skilled in figures, but untaught in the manly honor that would make him an upright man of business? Or a girl, if with her grammar and rhetoric she has not learned to speak the words of truth, of unselfishness, of Christian charity.- N. Y. School Journal.

MORAL SUASION AND COMPULSORY EDUCATION.

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Moral suasion is the best of school-masters, but how will he manage compulsory education? This is a serious question. Does not moral suasion need to be reinforced now and then by Mr. Hickory-HazelCome-Along? Would it not be better for certain obstreperous youths, whose ears are not open to the gentle tones of love and reason; would it not be better for society, to exercise a little coercion to force such youths to school, and make them behave themselves when there? Strange as it may seem, a large proportion of the friends of compulsory education laws are opposed to corporal punishment in the common schools under any circumstances. Unruly boys have no alternative but to "be good” or go into the streets.

An Indiana teacher has just been fined two dollars and costs for chastising a pupil. If the boy was as insufferable a torment as we have known, the privilege of trouncing him would be cheap at ten times this cost. But the generally approved method now, in all cases of insubordination, is to suspend the pupil and report to the directors, who lecture the youth, and send him back or expel him from school. Without doubt, this is the easiest course for the teacher; simply to open the door, and turn the bad boys into the street, to find their way in time to Bridewells, reform schools, and county jails. What say the champions of compulsory education to this? Is this what you

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want? If not, will it not be best for coercion and moral suasion to compromise, so as to keep school together?

If anybody has followed the history of the boys who have been suspended and expelled from public schools, in any of our large towns or cities, he will confer a favor upon the tribe of naughty youths just fledged, and upon community at large, by giving them the benefit of his observations. Moral suasion is the best of school governors, but will some one please tell us how it is to benefit the boys who are bounced into the streets before they have made the acquaintance of this gentle spirit? There are still a good many people, including a number of school boards, who believe that the most of these boys would learn to take moral suasion, with a mild decoction of hazel bark at rare intervals, while without this corrective they would never acquire a taste for it. There is certainly very little moral suasion in the reform schools to which so many unschooled boys are driven. Herded with thieves and pickpockets, they must learn to submit to jail discipline. A school board assumes a fearful responsibility when, in the name of moral suasion, it thrusts the youth of the commonwealth into lanes and alleys to avoid the disagreeable task of disciplining them in their schools, as good parents would do at home. "The whole need

. not a physician,” and if no children are allowed to remain in public schools except those who have been well governed at home, the task of the teacher and school board is greatly lightened; but how seriously are the benefits of the common school restricted ? Now, that men are asking how far our system of education is responsible for the vices of the troublesome elements of society, would it not be well to revise some of our school rules which relieve teachers from educating the very class of girls and boys who receive least wholesome training at home, and therefore need public school training the most? ---Chicago Weekly Journal.

SCHOOL GOVERNMENT. - It requires coolness of judgment, evenness of temper, a sunny disposition, considerable knowledge of human nature, and ripe experience, to govern the primary school. The discipline there is not the rod, the frown or angry word, but love. The heart of the little pupil must be reached; but you can never possess it by harshness. The human disposition is so varied that the means you would employ to secure the earnest attention of one child would utterly fail you with another. Your resources must therefore be as varied as the dispositions with which you have to deal. Discipline in such a case, whilst being a lively reality, must not be perceptible to the eye of the child. You must seem to govern, not by the rule of authority, but by the mild and tender dominion of love. When once confidential and loving relations are established between teacher and child, you are on the highway to success, for the same knowledge and skill by means of which you reached its heart will enable you to reach its mind. Such ability comes largely by nature alone, and sometimes from intelligent observation and practical experience, and whenever such ability is found, it should be placed where it can be made the most effective.

The young teacher, just fresh from her own studies, is accustomed to the method of instruction through which she has just passed, and is generally oblivious to the fact that the tender minds committed to her charge cannot comprehend the mode of speech which it is but natural that she should adopt from her own experience. The result, too often, is that the judgment of failure is pronounced upon her. Intelligent relations cannot exist between her and her pupils, and the children, failing to become interested in her efforts, allow their minds to wander, and soon their little bodies sympathize with their minds and wander too, resulting in a perfect bedlam, with the school room in a state of anarchy. - SAMUEL HARPER, Esq., before the Pittsburg (Pa.) Teacher's Institute.

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ENCOURAGEMENT. - Pupils need encouragement to sustain, instruction to aid, and direction to guide them. This is the legitimate work of the teacher. But how shall the teacher encourage? How shall he instruct? How shall he guide ? How much encouragement would there be to a pupil in giving him a long rule in arithmetic to commit to memory, and then in keeping him after school hours to get it over, because he could not repeat it in the exact language of the book? How much instruction is there in such a course? In what way will such teaching help a pupil to become a better man or woman? The devil wants no better place to commit his most hellish deeds — that of blasting and stupefying and rendering thoroughly impotent the minds of children and youth — than a school room where such teaching is done. He wants no better servant than the teacher who persistently follows such a course.

If such a system of teaching were the prevailing practice, it would not be long until

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we would be a nation of incarnate fiends. May God help us to root out the of profession of all such rote teachers. — Normal Teacher.

WHAT STANLEY DID FOR GEOGRAPHY.

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Stanley gave nine months to the exploration of the Lualaba, or rather to the Livingstone, as he called it, and as it must be called for all time. Before he went out on this mission we knew there were two rivers — the Congo and Lualaba. We knew that the Congo ran into the Atlantic Ocean, but its source was lost in cataracts. The Portuguese were content to scatter a few settlements about its mouth, and trade for gums and ivory along its banks. But it was an unknown river beyond the cataracts. We knew there was a river in the middle of Africa called the Lualaba; we knew it had a swift current, that it was a river of large volume. But beyond that we knew nothing. Some had one theory, others had another. Livingstone was convinced that it ran into the Nile, and who would question even the theory of so great a master? What Stanley did was to show that the Congo and Lualaba were one and the same; that the Congo, instead of losing itself among the rapids, was to force itself into the very heart of the continent; that the Lualaba, instead of going north and submitting to the usurping waters of the Nile, was to turn to the west and force its way to the sea; that these two rivers were to disappear from the map, and be known as one river - the Livingstone; that this river was to be 2,900 miles in length; that for nearly ten degrees of longitude it was to be continually navigable; that its volume was 1,800,000 cubic feet a second; that the entire area it drains is is 800,000 square miles — in other words, that here was an immense waterway 3,000 miles into the center of Africa, navigable, with the exception of two breaks which engineering science can easily surmount- a waterway into a tropical empire, rich in wood and metals and gracious soil, in fruits and grains, the sure home of a civilized empire in the years to come. As Petermann, the eminent German geographer, puts it, Stanley's work was to unite the fragments of African exploration — the achievements of Livingstone, Burton, Speke, Du Chaillu, Baker, Cameron, of all the heroic men who have gone before him — into one consecutive whole, just as Bismarck united the fragments of the German people, lying about under various princes and dukes, into one grand and harmonious empire.

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Even as Bismarck had created Imperial Germany, so Stanley created geographical Africa. — John RUSSELL Young, in Harper's Magazine.

LECTURES IN JAPAN.

The lecture course in question has been in operation for about two years, and is certainly a most laudable enterprise, originating in the intense desire on the part of some of the younger men to popularize modern knowledge and modes of thought. Indeed, upon the young men of Japan rests its success or failure in the wonderful effort now being made to open it to Western civilization in its broadest sense, and there are many here who comprehend the immensity of the task and are resolved on its accomplishment. The lecturers in the course have hitherto been natives, but in the series to be given this year, Prof. Morse and myself have been invited to take part. The experience of my introductory address was so novel that I can hardly ever expect to be placed in a condition more peculiar with surroundings more unusual to me. We rode in our jinrikishas to the theatre, the distance being two or three miles. Arriving at the door we removed our shoes, as shoes are never worn inside the houses here. The wonderfully clean and soft matting which covers the floors, takes away any unpleasantness which you may feel in falling into this custom, and, indeed, rather induces you to believe that it is the proper thing to do. Near the door we noticed a great number of small wooden tablets, with strings attached and numbers upon them. These were the “checks" given for the shoes left at the door by the natives. One does not wonder at this custom after seeing the Japanese shoe, which is almost universally a kind of wooden clog, consisting of a wooden base, upon which the foot rests, elevated by two transverse wooden strips, which elevate the foot about four inches from the ground. I do not imagine that they tend to increase the ease or grace of pedestrianism, but they possess many advantages as regards cleanliness. They are secured to the foot by means of two bands or ropes crossing over the front part of the foot, and secured by being held firmly between the great toe and its next-door neighbor. These shoes are quickly slipped off and on, and if the streets are quite muddy, the stocking or bare foot, as the case may be, may remain quite immaculate.

We were taken in by the rear entrance, and after being led up a

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