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on the influence of dialects and learned words in forming the French language of to-day, should the teacher think it beneficial to explain them.

Can these rules be made of any practical use? Of course, they can never be as useful as Grimm's Law is to a German student, for even the best Latin student will always know less Latin than English. Still, with their help, a bright boy with Latin back of him and a fair knowledge of the English language and of French grammar should be able to read at sight such a paragraph as the following from Dumas:

A ces paroles, qui ne lui laissaient aucun espoir, milady se releva de toute sa hauteur et voulut parler, mais les forces lui manquèrent; elle sentit qu'une main puissante et implacable la saisissait par les cheveux et l'entraînait aussi irrévocablement que la fatalité entraîne l'homme: elle ne tenta donc pas même de faire résistance et sortit de la chaumière

The English words parole, levy, total, parley, force, sentiment, manual, implacable, seize, train, irrevocable, fatality, attempt and resistance would do half the work for him, while a knowledge of Latin palatals would give him laxare for laissaient and facere for faire; the removal of the prosthetic e would show spem back of espoir; changing au to al would produce aliquem unum for aucun and altorem for hauteur; substituting o for ou would give totum and voluit for tout and voulut; the law about Latin c before a would furnish him with capillum and calamum for cheveux and chaumière; back of puissant and homme he would see possentem and hominem and a little reflection on the meaning of the Latin noun sors, sortis would soon allow him to arrive at the meaning of the verb sortir. The only word of which he might find no trace in either English or Latin would be manquèrent, and for a first or second year student to have to turn to the dictionary for only one word in a paragraph of this size is remarkable.

In the following passage from Racine's Phèdre :

Que mon cœur, chère Ismène, écoute avidement
Un discours qui peut-être a peu de fondement!

O toi qui me connois, te sembloit-il croyable

Que le triste jouet d'un sort impitoyable,

Un cœur toujours nourri d'amertume et de pleurs.
Dût connoître l'amour et ses folles douleurs?

Reste du sang d'un roi noble fils de la terre,

Je suis seule échappée aux fureurs de la guerre :
J'ai perdu, dans la fleur de leur jeune saison,

Six frères . . . Quel espoir d'une illustre maison !
Le fer moissonna tout; et la terre humectée
But à regret le sang des neveux d'Érechthée.

of the words which are not closely related to such English cognates as avidity or semblance, cœur, chère, peutêtre, peu, toi, triste, soit, amertume, pleurs, dut, douleurs, roi, seule, échappée, fureur, fleur, jeune, espoir, fer, moissona, humectée and neveux are such as will give their meanings through their Latin cognates, either directly or by use of some of the simple philological rules which I have enumerated. This leaves only six words of the passage, écoute, connais, jouet, toujours, guerre and but, whose derivation presents any difficulties.

Now if any student may be freed from the bondage of a dictionary even to an extent much less than that indicated by these two passages, the little philological knowledge is certainly worth while. Either let the learning of the rules form an integral part of the student's work, or, better still, let them be driven home by the teacher by constant application during sight reading. It is only fair to a student who has gone through the necessary drudgery of a year's study of Latin to show him that, in addition to a well-trained mind and a fairly tight grasp on some of the penetralia of his mother tongue, he has gained most useful tool to aid him in the gigantic task of mastering the vocabulary of the French language.

The Bravest Flower

IDA G. KAST

November flowers in the meadow!
The branches, leaf-stripped, gleam bare,
And the grass, all frozen and yellowed,
Lies dead in the chilly air.

Where the cardinal flower haughty
Reigned in his royal pride,
Only dead stems are rustling

By the rippling brooklet's side.

But the brook goes dancing and singing
As when, in the August sun,

The elder's dead-ripe berries
Dropped into it, one by one,

And the touch-me-not, o'erhanging,
Flushing in saucy glee,
Cast at the cardinal haughty

A smile democratic and free.

And the sun of late November

Shines warm on the grasses sere.

"But the flowers are dead," I murmur,— "Are dead, ere dies the year."

And then-
-"Is the summer over?"
For here, at my very feet,
In the midst of the frozen grasses,
The bravest of flowers I meet.

Blue as the blue of the rainbow,
It smiles from the frozen grass-
Brave little blue closed gentian-
Happily as I pass.

Brave is the early snowdrop

That pushes through frozen ground, And opens her fair white chalice

Though the snows lie deep around.

But she feels the earth grow warmer
As the sun mounts higher each day,
And knows that her frailer sisters
Are even now on their way.

But the blind little flower of November,
When the others have come and gone,
Stands bravely here in the meadow
Facing the winter alone.

All honor to thee, brave gentian!

I gather my courage anew,

To face the world as bravely

As the blind little flower of blue.

F. N. SPINDler, professor of PSYCHOLOGY AND PEDAGOGY, STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, STEVENS POINT, WISCONSIN

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EARNING to spell correctly seems to be largely a matter of personal temperament. In a wellknown article published in the Forum on the Futility of the Spelling Grind," J. M. Rice sets forth the results of his investigation of a large number of schools as to methods of teaching spelling and the results. He says that in many cases the spelling faculty is weak, and perfection could never be attained, for many children cannot learn in eight years to spell even one thousand words correctly, and the ordinary person uses at least fifteen thousand words in adult life; hence perfection for many is impossible.

Some bright people, he says, can never learn to spell correctly, many dull ones can. Environment had no influence, for slum children learn to spell as readily and correctly as the children of the rich. Previous training he found made little difference, for in the eighth grade results showed that previous training in the lower grades had little or no effect. He claims maturity is a great factor rather than any one method; a claim sustained by more recent investigation. He qualifies this, however, by admitting that the best spellers were often found among the youngest and brightest pupils of any grade.

He insists that there was no relation found between methods and results, the results were the same under all methods. His conclusion seems to be that results are not due to any one method, but to the intensity and the ability of the teacher and the correct use of the chosen method. Many of these conclusions we may assent to, but it would seem that all these different results with the same methods, and same results with varying methods, would show that learning to spell is a matter in which the psychological temperament of each child is the most important factor, and the factor most generally overlooked. No one method will be best for all of any ten children; this is the keynote of this article.

When we consider the psychology of learning to spell it does not inspire us with much enthusiasm for the spelling grind rendered necessary by our obsolete and absurd spelling, as F. A. Fernald says in Popular Science Monthly: "The spelling of each word must be learned by an act of sheer memory; reasoning must be subdued. Logical following of rules, so necessary in life and so useful, only brings confusion, trouble and distrust in spelling, all tendency to reasoning is suppressed; the child becomes a blind and slavish follower of authority, and gets the idea that cramming is better than reasoning, and that reason is a bad guide. He gets wedded to mere form of words, and thinks they are more important than thoughts.”

Let us examine more carefully the mental processes involved in spelling. As suggested by Lloyd Morgan, let us take any common word as 66 flag." Of course at first to the child the visual impression of the word is a mere sense impression. He may be led by seeing the word written or printed to have an idea of the word as a whole, so that he can sound the word and thus associate sound and motor articulatory feelings with the visual impression. He now is able when he sees the word to perceive it as a vague whole, but he has not yet a true, logical percept of the written or printed word.

So far we have sensation, perception and memory; we have visual and auditory and motor images of a crude sort, and no great trouble as yet. Now we wish to lead the child to a clear, definite, logical, complete percept of the word. We analyze it into its elements; these elements are of course, in a sense, strictly artificial-a construction of civilization. We make "f" predominant, and note relation to "lag," then "1," and note position and relation to "f" and "ag," and so on, making predominant the visual forms, and at the same time the sounds and articulations of the letters. He thus associates visual forms, sounds and motor throat feelings in a certain definite order; he thus perceives more or less consciously particular relations. Now he synthesizes these elements of sight and sound and motor feeling into a whole word and whole sound and whole motor feeling, and has a clear, definite, complete percept of the word "flag."

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