earth) which the city of New York devotes annually to the education of its boys and girls.

You may say that the pupil with artistic ability who has latent talents that will enable him with proper training to make beautiful pictures, to model graceful statuary, to become a finished musician or to write thrilling romances, does not need to be able to do sums in mental arithmetic, and has no call to worry about such petty things as the price of eggs.

Suppose this is granted, the fact remains that only an infinitesimal percentage of the boys and girls of this age, or any other, have in them exceptional artistic, musical or literary possibilities. And

even if every one of them by training could be taught to paint like Raphael, to model like Phidias, to compose and play like Liszt, or to write like Dickens, still only a few could find a market for their wares, while the remainder would have to make their way along old-fashioned, humdrum lines in spite of their genius.

The number of youngsters graduated from our public schools and colleges, too, I am forced to say, who cannot write clear, concise and readable letters is much larger than the number who have not mastered the simplest rules of arithmetic. And here I can give examples from more direct personal observation.

The financial institution with which I am connected requires written applications from all who desire to enter its employment, and these letters are kept on file. Here is one of them, from one who has been trained in two colleges, besides, presumably, in the common schools. It will be noted, too, that part of his schooling was obtained outside New York, and I mention this in order to show that not ail the inadequate schooling of the age can be charged to the metropolis.

SIRS: Applying for admission into your employment, I wish to state that I have never been in business, being to school at college in Maryland, and in in New York. My father's position is a bridge carpenter on the railroad. I live at . I refer to Yours respectfully,

and

This letter gives no information whatever that would be of value in determining the young man's fitness for a place as bank clerk. It does not even tell his age, and, besides, it is badly composed.

I am sure the most ardent opponents of sordidness in education will agree with me that this young man's training in the

| elementary subjects have been sadly neglected; that so far as rendering him capable of making a demonstration that he has an education it is an utter failure. Here is another letter of application, more specific in some ways, but decidedly of the sort that causes the judicious would-be employer, to grieve. I say would-be " employer because it is true that bankers, merchants, manufacturers, even soulless corporations, are quite as anxious to get good employees as men out of work are to get good jobs.

GENTLEMEN: Enclosed you will find my ap plication. I wish to state I am twenty- (27) years of age, and would like to receive a salary of $12.00 per week at start, as I am at present holding a situation which pays me $15 per week, but the only objection I find is that it is not steady employment.

Remember, I can furnish the best of references from the time I left school until the present day. Any kind of a position will be satisfac tory to me, providing I receive steady work. Thanking you in advance for your kindness, I am, yours sincerely.

This young man says he can, but does not "furnish the best of references." He says in one place that he is "twenty," and immediately afterward that he is "(27)" years of age. He does not give his business experience. His English is inexcusably bad, and his handwriting, like the handwriting of the other young man whose letter I have copied, is ragged, labored and unattractive to the eye.

Now, I have a permanent quarrel with the modern school authorities practically everywhere, because of their inexcusable neglect of the art of handwriting. When I was of school age we were obliged to learn to write at least legibly. We had copy-books with engraved copies printed at the head of each page. We were required to devote a certain space of time each day to imitating these copies, which were really beautiful specimens of chirographical skill. Many of us were not able to attain the beautiful in our own handwriting, but none save the really incorrigible were allowed to leave school with the unformed handwriting that is so common among people of all sorts at the present time.

Why, even in our own bank the number of clerks who can write a good, clear, legible hand is ridiculously small. It is simply impossibie to get employees who can write handsomely, and from what I am told this is true of most banks, both in New York and elsewhere.

Indeed, I hardly need be told the facts in this matter by anybody. I see much correspondence written by bank employees, even in this day of the typewriter's almost universal use, and nine-tenths of the handwriting that comes before me is unpleasant to the eye and much of it is positively illegible.

I have heard it said that the typewriter is responsible for the bad handwriting of the present younger generation, but this cannot be true. In spite of the prevalence of the writing machine, the families that do not possess one are very much in the preponderance.

Anyway, were the subject of handwriting given the prominence it deserves in the public schools, the handwriting of the pupil would be formed in spite of the typewriter. Its very prevalence should make the authorities more insistent upon first-class chirographical instruction in the schools.

I remember quite well the good-natured ridicule that used to be poured out in print upon the copy-books of other days, and the goody-goody sentiments of the the lines; but their abandonment has cost too much. I remember very well also the beginning of the anti copy-book movement, if I may so term it.

This began with the young women who started in some years ago to acquire what they termed the English hand. The characters thus affected are long, cramped, sprawling and irregular, and their production has cost thousands of fair creatures much pain and trouble and worry of mind, with the net result of illegibility, ugliness and the utter ruination of much good writing paper.

In the old days, too, we gave much time and attention to spelling. We had written spelling lessons and oral spelling lessons, and the spelling school, held on specific evenings, in which the grownups took active part, were a regular feature every winter. But now the "wordmethod" has come in. Children are taught to recognize each word by its general appearance without regard to its component parts. I have heard teachers speak with elation of pupils who had actually gone through school without knowing the order of the letters of the alphabet, without knowing anything at all aboat spelling as we understood it in my younger days.

Those who believe in the word method" declare that pupils educated

under the new plan spell quite as well in actual practice as those who were educated under the method of yesterday; but, so far as I can judge, the facts do not warrant the declaration, and my view of the matter is borne out by the observation of many of my friends.

An editor of my acquaintance, for instance, showed me the other day a manuscript on a technical subject by an expert on that subject, who was also a graduate of a standard university and had passed through the best technical school in his line. The article was admirable as an exposition of the subject, but its English was labored, unwieldy-in some instances positively ungrammatical-and the whole was disfigured with many errors of spelling.

As to the handwriting of the expert I can not speak, since the manuscript was done on a typewriter. The errors in spelling were his own, however, for he had learned to use the machine, and had pounded the stuff out" with his own hands.

As a horrible example of "spelling as she is sometimes spelt," I am going to add a letter of endorsement which I received the other day, though it is only fair to say that I do not know whether the writer was an old or a young man, a product of the schools as they are or as they were:

DEAR SIR: this will enerduce my friend. aney thing you can do for him I will apresit it very much.

I have none him for years an upright and Yours verry truly.

onest man.

This brings me to that one of the elementary studies that were made so much of in the public schools that I knew as a boy, which was placed first in the proverbial list of the" three R's "-reading.

In the old days the reading exercises were first in the order of classes, and the pupils were taught enunciation, pronunciation, distinctness and expression. You have to listen for half a minute only to the average young man of twenty or thereabouts to know that reading alone had small place in the public school routine for him. I am happy to learn, though, that this art is again receiving more attention in the schools, and that in some cities it is being taught with more intelligence than ever before.

In conclusion, then, I wish to say that for all the flaws I have seen in the prac

tical workings of the public school system, I am by no means of the opinion that there is no improvement therein. On the contrary, I believe it is better, more thorough, and more progressive on the whole than it has ever been in the past.

But in their eagerness for general culture, so-called; for "universal art education," for varieity and novelty and breadth," the authorities have temporarily neglected-I am sure the neglect is only temporary-the solid and deep foundations upon which only can true cultivation, real breadth, be builded. For one, I shall be glad when there is less dissection, less modeling, less wood carving in our public schools and more real, downright hard work devoted to the three R's of other days-readin', 'ritin' and 'rithmetic.-Thomas L. James, in New York Sun.

PRESERVING FOREST GROWTH.

THE passage by the Senate of the Na

tional Appalachian Forest Reserve bill is a new departure in forest legislation. The National Government has reserved certain portions of the public domain from preemption or sale, and set them apart as forest reservations. This wise provision, which cost the Government nothing, has nevertheless aroused a good deal of opposition from land sharks, timber thieves, and from some honest men of narrow mind and feeble understanding. It is only in the West, however, that the Government has forest lands to reserve. The bill which passed the Senate proposes to make a great forest reserve on the top of the Appalachian Mountains by the purchase of 4,000,000 acres of mountain land, extending from the southern part of Virginia and West Virginia, between the Blue Ridge and Unaka Mountains, to the northern part of Alabama and Georgia. It includes land in the States named, and also in North and South Carolina and Tennessee. The region is described as "containing the greatest mountain masses east of the Rockies, the finest scenery, the richest forests, the mightiest river, and the great est variety of geologic formation."

The land which it is proposed to keep forested forever by this bill is the watershed from which come the headwaters of the James, the Roanoke, Yadkin, Ca

tawba, Savannah, Alabama, Chattahoochie, Holston, French Broad, Little Tennessee, Kenawha and many smaller rivers. It has a rainfall of 100 inches a year, which is greater than any other section of this country except along Puget Sound. Trees of many kinds grow luxuriously there. Northern and Southern varieties mingle and grow in great profusion. The lumberman with his portable sawmill is destroying these trees in a wasteful manner. Forest fires, fed by the brush, lick up what the lumbermen leave. The small farmer plows the mountain side and raises a few crops until the loosened soil is all washed into the valley below by the heavy rains. To strip this region of its forest in the usual way would in a short time remove the humus and undergrowth which hold back the water, and would send each rainfall with precipitate haste into the valleys. This would cause destructive floods in all the rivers draining this section, and on this ground the United States is asked io protect it.

It is a wise step, and we hope to see it carried into effect. We have had several centuries of forest destruction, and we have come to a point when we must consider forest preservation and restoration. The National Government has latterly taken this up in a broad spirit, and much good will come of it if persisted in. But it rests with the States to do the chief work. Pennsylvania was once an unbroken forest from end to end. Most of this forest is gone and the need of providing for another crop of trees has pressed itself upon all who look ahead in the least degree. There are millions of acres of land in this State that are worthless for any purpose except timber growing. Much of the land left to nature is attempting to reclothe itself with timber, but the volun. tary crop is not usually of the best kind of timber, and forest fires keep thwarting the effort of nature to restore the mountains and hillsides to their original treeclad condition.

Under its very competent Commissioner of Forestry, Pennsylvania is making progress both in checking forest fires and in reclothing the waste places with trees that are worth growing. The movement to preserve and restore our forests began in Governor Pattison's second administration, and has been given intelligent and effective support and assistance by both Governors Hastings and Stone. Commissioner J. T. Rothrock, under the