the hour caressingly holding her palsied hand with a loving grasp while he was writing the "Thirty Years." The power of habit thus God brings in to supplement our waning energies.

REMARKS OF PROFESSOR OREN ROOT.

Mr. Chancellor, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Convocation.- I was pleased, as were all of us, with the paper. But I regret that the author did not enlarge a little on definite practical suggestions near the close of his paper. I believe in the three-fold division of time as it suggested, but it has seemed to me that a three-fold division was hardly applicable in very many cases. I think that this notion of system in our mental as well as in our moral application should be carried into detail. I do not believe that there are any grand principles that cannot be made definite and practicable. They are about training the giant force of our Niagara so that it shall not merely be a source of delight in its grandeur for the continent, but that it shall be valuable in its power, and by and by they will so arrange it that that giant force shall turn the spindles that shall weave the gossamer threads for our wearing. I think we should so inculcate this notion of systematic habit that our boys and girls, young men and young women, in their school work, and because in the school work, therefore in their future lives, shall have this system in detail. Some twenty years ago in talking with two teachers then under my control, who claimed that they had not time to do divers and sundry things which they desired, I put to them on the instant the question, "How much time is there in twenty-four hours?" And when they looked somewhat aghast at what seemed the folly of my question, I pressed the question upon them. How much time is there in twenty-four hours, I want to know?" I followed that question, but by detailed questions as to how much time there was given for slumber and for dreams, how much time for the various requirements of their lives, how much in the school room, and I tried to bring them down to how many minutes in every day they could not account for. I think they were somewhat surprised to find that there were nearly four hours of every day of their current lives for which they could give no account at all. Now four hours is a fair fraction of the twentyfour, and those two earnest young women were simply losing about one-sixth of their daily lives, running out into what was apparently, so far as results are concerned, nothingness. It is just as it is with our dimes and quarters. Extravagance is not in paying out hundred dollar notes. At least the extravagance of the college professor is not in that line. We do not have enough of them. Our extravagance is in paying out dimes, nickels and quarters. And it is exceeding hard work to keep track of them. We only know there is a deficit at the end of the year. This systematic habit in our study and our work should be in some way so inculcated that

it shall touch the minutes as well as the hours. Of course we cannot give any definite rule.

I cannot say to the boy " A," who is in Hamilton College to-day, you shall study Greek from such an hour to such an hour, and Latin so and so, and rhetoric so and so, because the rule for to-day is not the rule for to-morrow. We must train scholars that they shall be judges for themselves what shall be the proportionate time to give to each and how their system shall be. With reference to this there is one thought which came to my mind with regard to the study of our pupils, not only as to their giving a fair proportion of time to certain definite work, and certain definite play, but that this portion so given shall be in itself rightly arranged. The old notion of cart first has not gone out of date yet. There are plenty of carts ahead of the horses in our education as everywhere else. The difficulty is that they go slow. I do not know what could be done better than to give to our students the notion that they are to make a systematic division of their time and bring that notion down to the subdivision of time itself. I have found that recitations and study are not like muffins. The are not best served hot. They are better when they are grown cold. One-half an hour of work given, with time after for the action of the unconscious digestion, is better than a whole hour given just before going into the recitation room. I see boys come to my recitation room, taking, when they come to the door, a last fond lingering look at some problem in trigonometry, and I know that look is not getting much good for the boy. He should think about it; he should have time so that he can come to the recitation room without the book and he can draw out in the room the formula or the solutions of his studies. That can be gained by systematic arrangement of study, and a portion of time assigned to it. The boys should be so taught to study the subject of their task that there shall be opportunity for their own mental power to act upon the subject. That is work digested. There should be two things before them. They should have an assignment of time first, and, second, this assignment of time should be so arranged as to have in it the logical sequence, first learning and then thinking. Each portion of the time so arranged will give, it seems to me, an increase in the value of the study hours for all of our pupils.

REMARKS OF INSTRUCTOR A. WHITE, OF CAZENOVIA SEMINARY.

Mr. Chancellor, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Convocation. The last department presented in this essay, appears to have been not sufficiently discussed. There is one habit more important than all those which have been mentioned, and that is the habit of telling the truth.

There are students who habitually cheat if they can. For a proof that this is so understood, consider the way in which our examination papers are made out, and observe with what guards they are

surrounded. There are good students, truthful and conscientious, but there are also students whose habit is to falsify everywhere. The number of these students is large, and they manage to create a sentiment which supports them in this habit of falsehood. That sentiment, expressed in words, would be somewhat like the following: "The moral law has no application to us in our relations to teachers; if we can deceive the teachers, all right; we are students, and are not required to tell the truth."

Now I believe that a student who grows up with the habit of deception in him, will carry it with him through all his life. I believe that he is lacking in one of the essential elements of a man. There may be teachers, also, whose practice toward pupils is a little tainted with dishonesty.

suppose

If a man has told me a deliberate lie that he is a student if I know that he has told me a deliberate lie, can I ever have confidence in that man when grown up? Could I trust him with my business, if a lawer? Would I go to hear him, if a preacher? Would his preaching do me any good? It does seem that there are some men who cannot do good, for the reason that they have no solid character.

No question pertaining to school management is more important than this. How shall we revolutionize that vicious sentiment? How shall we cultivate and strengthen thoroughly right moral habits?

XI.

SHOULD GEOMETRY BE TAUGHT BEFORE ALGEBRA ?

By Principal C. T. R. SMITH, of Lansingburgh Academy.

It is impossible, to be sure, to frame a course of study for the secondary schools of this State, that shall satisfy every one. There are too many kinds of schools, the needs and the circumstances of the students vary too widely, the views and the favorite branches of teachers are too different. Yet there are probably few principals who do not feel certain that the lines of study suggested by the regents and made the basis of the award of certificates and diplomas, have been of great service. Both pupils and teachers find their ideas of the scope of academic work broadened and their tendencies to specialties held in check. Secondary teaching in New York State aims more generally at producing a well-rounded mental development than before the regents' course of study was instituted. Especially is this true in the 222 academies and union schools having less than seventy-five academic pupils each. The great high schools of the cities are not so much in need of the stimulus of the regents' examinations and the checks and guidance of the regents' course of study as the smaller schools. If any discrimination is to be made in satisfying their respective wants it should be in favor of those that most need this stimulus and oversight. For the State to do otherwise would be as unjust as for a teacher to neglect his younger and less gifted pupils and frame his rules and his program chiefly for the benefit of those whose talents or advantages would enable them to go on rapidly without his assistance.

Without doubt most of us will agree as to the excellence of the present regents' course of study. It was originally prepared by men of rare qualifications for such work. It has been revised from time to time after consultation with some of the best teachers in our ranks and has been improved with each change. There ought to be a degree of permanence about such a schedule after it has been in operation for years and schools have become adjusted to its requirements. Changes should occur only after the most careful consideration of all their probable effects. Nevertheless, I venture to propose for your consideration one change, which I have thought for several years would be an improvement.

To see the reasons for the change proposed it is necessary to consider briefly the uses of mathematical studies and the principles which should regulate their sequence. Perhaps their most import

ant use is to give the power or form the habit of continuous voluntary attention. As to the importance of this power there can be but one opinion, and that opinion cannot be better stated than in the words of that prince of American teachers, the man whom President Garfield so delighted to honor, Mark Hopkins. In the course of an address last week marking the fiftieth anniversary of his appointment as president of Williams College, Dr. Hopkins used these words, in defining the expression "a disciplined mind: " "By this I mean" said he "a power of concentrating attention for a long time on one subject. I do not mean the power to hold the attention thus on some one subject to which the person may have a bent, and to which the tendency may become so strong as to mount the man on a hobby, or to become an insanity, but Ĩ mean the power of so commanding the mind as to be able to give concentrated attention to any subject when it is required. Only thus can there be profound thought, only thus can all the relations of the subject, within and without, be seen. Now this power of concentrated thought which Dr. Hopkins described as the one essential of mental discipline can be obtained by few, if any, other studies so thoroughly as by the study of mathematics.

Another effect of such study is to exercise and strengthen the faculties employed in demonstration and make the mind quick at detecting fallacies. In other lines of investigation the mind is largely, if not mainly, occupied in establishing the premises of its reasoning-the facts on which reasoning is based. But mathematical demonstration has nothing to do with facts or with anything that actually exists. It begins with a hypothesis and proceeds to a conclusion that is necessarily true, true without a doubt. Hence, many metaphysicians have decried the study of mathematics as a discipline for the mind, claiming that, in the words of Sir William Hamilton, "by it we are disqualified for observation, either external or internal, for abstraction and generalization, for common reasoning, nay, disposed to the alternative of blind credulity or of irrational scepticisin."

No one would claim for the studies in question that they discipline the ordinary powers of observation and perception by the senses, but there is a kind of observing power which they do cultivate the power which perceives relations among ideas and thoughts. The importance of exercising and strengthening this power, I think, no one will be disposed to deny. Certainly habits of close thinking and of looking out for fallacies are engendered by mathematical studies and these habits are among the most valuable which school training can give.

A third advantage is that well conducted recitations in mathematics give to the student habits of precise expression to a greater degree than recitations in most other studies. The ideas which form the subject-matter of these recitations are usually capable of precise definition, and for each there is a particular expression - a