idea or theme, and then so to fashion his work as to send home to the mind of his reader or hearer, just that idea or essence of the whole. This all-important principle of unity in the author's mind will control the selection, arrangement and proportioning of his material, and less directly, the language itself.

I have endeavored to point out what I believe to be the paramount considerations in the teaching of English in the secondary schools. This liberal view, emphasizing vital realities in the subject, means that English, especially of all branches, must constantly be on its guard against the mechanical tendencies of school routine. The view does not mean, however, the lowering of standards in any particular. There shall be in the student who catches this vital spirit in literature and in composition, a growing sense for that perfection and finality of form, by which alone the living thought finds its true and ideal expression. In literature this trained sense of form will be one of the fine delights of his mind; in composition it will inspire his sincerest endeavor. And in the teacher of English who is possessed by this spirit, there shall be, not only no relaxation in actual attention to details in literature or composition, but in addition to this, and back of it all, there shall be the gracious concentration of all the faculties of mind and heart upon helping the student, through his study of the great life subject, to realize his own highest spiritual powers.

The School and College Counselor

SUPERINTENDENT J. STANLEY BROWN, JOLIET, ILL.

HEN Garfield said he could get a university education "if Mark Hopkins sat on one end of a log

W and he sat on the other," he used a homely phrase

to express a deep and far-reaching educational truth. We are so engrossed with the notion of doing things quickly that we are prone to lose sight of the method we use in doing them. The shipwrecked lives we daily notice are the incontestable evidence that the pilot either did not do his work at all, or very poorly. Years ago, when men took more time to think, and before our schools and colleges had grown so large as to be difficult to manage, the life of the student and the proper direction of that life were considered of first importance. We are not to-day far removed from the time when parents chose the academy or college to which they would send their sons, because of the personal and far-reaching influence of the man at the head of the institution. This was so because the institutions were small, and the head master or president, who had been chosen because of his fitness to direct the lives of young men and women, spoke with pride of the fact that he knew by name every student in the institution, and could tell you something of his family, something of his struggles (for all had struggles then), something of his ambition, something of his personal worth. Men took time then, yea, thought it worth while then, to sit down and talk with a student of his life's problems, and of his life's work. Institutions thought more then of the number of men they sent forth to grapple with all sorts of questions demanding an answer, than the number of diplomas signed, sealed and delivered as so many articles of merchandise. I do not wish to be understood as inveighing against our present educational system, but rather pleading that the good things we once had be not irrevocably lost.

We have enjoyed a marvelous growth, but we have not had a defensible evolution in our educational institutions. Once we recognized the need of an educational adviser, a sympathetic

counselor, a minister plenipotentiary, a pedagogic physician, whose riper years, broader experience and maturer judgment could guide the young man of inexperience, immature years, but unbounded ambition.

The need of such leadership is greater to-day in schools and colleges than ever before, because there are greater numbers to be led and they need leading, but there is only an occasional leader. Our schools and colleges have grown from thirty or forty students to two thousand and four thousand, and the man who could be head of the institution and lead the thirty or forty, can scarcely do more than lead the procession when it contains two thousand or four thousand.

At some stage of this growth, the president realized he could no longer do the life-directing work, and so he looked around the faculty and found a man who had to teach only four classes daily and made him dean, explaining to him that he was expected to do this particular work which had before attached to the president's office. It did not occur at this juncture that this man's regular work ought to be diminished in order to give time to do this extra work, and so we find in most of the very large institutions, that this work of conference with the individual student, is almost entirely left to the dean, who must either give it no time, or steal time from his classes to do it. In either case a very inadequate estimate has been placed on this work.

The need in all large institutions of learning to which students go from the high schools is imperative that some capable person be employed to give his whole time and his life to the work.

Our famous schools are creating new departments continually. Why not have a new department created and call it the "Department of Student Life." Our complex civilization, our strenuous life, our wish to do the most for the individual in the formative period, demand that we give those problems more serious attention than we have recently given them.

Young men and young women are entering college or university now in their teens, and some are even completing their college courses and graduating before reaching their majority. All this seems to be in keeping with the demands that the young

men must get into the active work of life sooner. We are told that this is an age of young men ; that Roosevelt is the youngest president our country has had, and one of the great college presidents is to-day insisting that when our educational schemes are perfected, we will be sending boys to college at sixteen years of age, and graduating them before they are old enough to vote. The educational process of making men to-day does not differ much from that of a quarter of a century ago. The timber we use to-day to make men is fresh from the woodman's ax, while that of the preceding period was more matured and seasoned; that we have to-day is in great abundance, but we often wonder how long it will take to get through the sap.

Now the educational counselor takes the student as he finds him, not asking why he is thus and so, but with a keen insight, born of training, interest, sympathy and devotion to his work, he creates a ground of confidence and makes the student feel, ere their first interview closes, that come what else will, he certainly has one man on the campus who will extend him a helping hand when he needs it.

No one can measure the far-reaching power of such relationship in school and college life, but we are so commercial we do not care to do this kind of work, or our department demands that our attention be concentrated there, or we have a natural revulsion against doing such work, or we say we believe in the survival of the fittest, and only the fittest ought to survive; or we let Horace say it for us, "Every fellow for himself, and devil take the hindmost."

The personal touch between the student and his life director will never be belittled nor rejected, because such party looks upon it as something sacred. All things intellectual, social, ethical, financial and religious may be discussed, and advice bearing on these be given in a manner no less serious than the counsel of a father to his son.

From the time the boy enters high school till he graduates from college he is an adolescent. This means the age of trial, of experimentation, of hallucination. It is during this period that boys and girls run away from home; they are filled with adventure; they are unsettled. This is the period when habits

of great portent are formed. They seem like rudderless ships on unknown seas, and are driven now here, now there, by every attractive or distractive force.

It is such an individual that we often set afloat in a great school organization, and offer no guidance, no direction, no suggestion of a better way to him. Is it then surprising that such a small per cent of those entering the secondary schools and colleges are able to hold on to the end? It was my lot to spend six years on the same campus, and I must confess that I have the greatest admiration for the class of institutions to which that small Ohio college belongs; but my pleasantest memories are not directly of the college, but of the two or three men on the faculty, who once during my student life called me aside and offered a word of suggestion and direction. I have forgotten most of the college songs, all of the college yells, many of my fraternal associates, and most of the college widows; but those words of personal touch are indelible.

It is commencement day in a large Eastern university. A young, interesting, cultured woman approaches her father with this expression: "Father, I think I'll go down to the exercises this morning, because they say the president appears to-day, and I want to see him. You know I've been in college here four years, but I have never seen the president." All this, if you please, in a country of democratic simplicity—no casts, no classes.

Think of this kind of personal interest. Has it any place in a system of education where all are equals? I imagine his office was easy of access, and the young women would always remember him with great singleness of mind.

This, to be sure, is an extreme case; and yet it is to prevent this kind of thing, and to throttle the spirit and the conditions which permit such things to take place, that I am pleading for a school counselor, a director of life.

The need of this work is greater in some respects in the secondary school than in the college; but here we do this work at short range, while in the higher institutions it is done at long range, and the plan of study, recitation, etc., make it much easier to get to one than to the other; and yet, the intense and