(Under this head Superintendent Hyatt will try to give some account of what he sees and hears and thinks in traveling about officially among the schools of California. It will be somewhat hasty and ill-digested, being jottings on the road. It will deal with personal experiences, and so may look egotistic. It will be subject to frequent change of opinion, and will seem inconsistent. It is done as a free and easy means of communication between the school people of the State and the central school office. If it provokes retort or comment, that will be printed, too, provided that it be brief and interesting.)

A Splendid Map

The United States Geological Survey has just issued a magnificent wall map of the whole United States, nearly six feet square, in colors, which it sells at the cost of paper and printing, namely, 75 cents. It would probably cost ten dollars if made by a publisher for gain and twenty dollars if "introduced" by a gentlemanly agent. The scale is 80 miles to the inch. The coloring shows the rocks the underlie the different parts of the continent. It can be had at any of the offices of the Survey, at Sacramento, for instance; and is also sold by many book dealers.

Sacramento Valley Map

The Geological Survey has also issued a topographical map of the Sacramento Valley that ought to be on the wall of every school room from San Francisco to Red Bluff. It is about four feet long and two feet wide, printed on white paper with topographic features in brown. I think its price is fifteen cents.

Every teacher in the State who teaches geography ought to be personally acquainted with these U. S. Topographic maps, ought to be able to translate them himself into the actual features of the landscape and able to teach his pupils to so translate them.

Gravel and Sand

It is a curious fact that the value of common, prosaic sand and gravel mined and sold in the United States is about the same as that of the precious metal silver. In 1910 it was over twenty-one million dollars.

Of course this is only another way of saying that our supply of timber is growing smaller and that concrete is taking the place of lumber as a building material.

The time is coming when people will not be allowed to build wooden houses in cities at all. It is a foolish and a suicidal thing, wasteful and destructive and dangerous. It is only a question of time when they burn. A city fire destroys, sends up in useless smoke, our personal fortunes and our nation's forests. In the large view, it is in

SAN FRANCISCO, DECEMBER, 1911

conceivable folly for us to build houses that are combustible.

Special Session

As this is written a special session of the Legislature is in progress. It was called for the specific purpose of passing enabling acts to put in force the Constitutional Amendments adopted in November.

Christmas Thoughts

The time has come for a new angle on Christmas. It has visualized the cross rather than the star. Gethsemane should be far removed from Bethlehem.

Gifts like the Fourth of July fireworks may be a nuisance. They are oftentimes an infliction. Gifts between friends should be simple. Charity gifts should have no place during Christmas festivities. The charitible should give gifts with freedom when and where they desire so long as charity is based on social justice, or on the Golden Rule. Christmas gifts should be tokens of love, friendship, and good will, not expensive luxuries, making the recipient unhappy on account of obligations that cannot be returned.

The civilization which uses the name of Christ in an adjective sense should be subjected to the severest form of criticism. A civilization of material and educational progress that does not eliminate anger, jealousy, envy, bigotry, prejudice and cruelty is lacking in the finer essentials of human requirements.

A civilization that maintains a double standard of morals, a civilization that permits unequal justice, a civilization that permits opportunity and temptation for the weak, a civilization that punishes as criminals, the men and women who are the resultant forces of modern society, is far from ideal.

A Christian civilization that has made its ideals in the material things, and has exalted the science that has promoted electricity, plant life and animal life, and yet has neglected the science of National Eugenics, will never breed a future race of men and women who will walk the highways with God.

A Christian civilization that maintains great navies and splendid equipment for war is far removed from the teachings of the "Sermon on the Mount."

The day is here when creed, dogma, institutional and legal restrictions on human happiness must be removed. Kindness, charity, justice, love and unselfishness must take the place in the individual, and the state of selfishness, injustice, unkindness, anger and jealousy. The false moon beneath the smooth surface of the water tells of the true moon somewhere.

-Harr Wagner.

The only point of educational interest in the session is a proposed Constitutional Amendment for the State to furnish free text books to the children of the State. It is so hedged about by plots and counterplots that

No. 12

its fate cannot be foretold at this time. For my own part I shall be glad to see it pass and shall not be critical or hard to suit as to the particular shape in which it is presented. If the principle is once established I am sure we can find ways to modify it into a good and satisfactory form as time goes on, however it may be at starting.

A Journey East

I have just returned from a two weeks' journey to the East, attending the first meeting of a national committee of eleven, charged with the duty of making an inquiry into the conditions of rural education in the United States with the view of preparing a plan for harmonizing and standardizing the rural schools in the different States of the Union. This committee met for three days at the Auditorium Hotel in Chicago. The eleven members represented the whole United States, and included some of the well known educational people of the country, among them Professor L. H. Bailey, the agricultural expert of Cornell University, John R. Kirk, president of the Kirksville Normal School of Missouri, Presidnet Joyner of North Carolina.

What They Did

The committee held a series of discussions, comparing the conditions in the different sections of the Union, laid out a plan of action, appointed sub-committees to take up different parts of the prepared work and adjourned to meet again in February at St. Louis. The work of the committee will be chiefly concerned with the supervision, the course of study, the financial support, the grounds and buildings and general life of the rural schools. Many States are very backward, with schools in a starved and helpless condition, and it will be a valuable undertaking to bring such communities up to the firing line, to set some standard that may be attained and should be attined by every State in the Union.

The Beautiful Snow

I ran into a snow storm in the mountains two hours after leaving Sacramento and was in the snow practically all the rest of the journey. This was my first snow storm for thirty years and it was a strange and enjoyable experience. All through Nevada, Utah, Wyoming and the Mississippi Valley the white kept flickering down. The bare trees were loaded with snow, the buildings were covered, the fence posts were capped.

wore mittens and big boots and they moved about with difficulty. Groups of children with red mufflers round their necks were gaily dragging sleds about. When they first appeared skating on the ice of a pond I almost climbed off the train to join them, forgetful of my thirty years handicap.

Chilled to the Bone

The winter had not yet settled down and the weather was not really considered severe by the folks who had to stand it; but to me it was bitter cold. I rubbed my ears every little while, thinking they were freezing. I wore my overcoat all the time and shivered as the stinging wind sifted clear through me and chilled the marrow of my bones. I sympathized with Cook and Peary as never before and always cuddled as close as possible to the stove.

I rejoiced when the time came for return, and blessed my lucky stars when the train at last slid down the long slope of the Sierras into the genial, kindly sunshine of glorious California; and to all my friends I am saying: “You don't know what you miss. You don't realize the blessing you have a chance to enjoy. Don't forget to thank the good Lord that there is still room enough for you to live in California."

The Outdoor Schools

While in the East I visited schools during all leisure hours, making a special effort to look into the Outdoor Schools of Chicago and Cleveland, the second and the sixth largest cities in the United States. This outdoor idea is a splendid thing, and it is becoming important in this State. In fact, it is peculiarly appropriate and desirable in this State, and we shall hear much of it in the years to come. It will make our people bigger and stronger in body and in brain and it is worth our attention.

In the severe climate and the fierce winters of the Eastern States, however, the outdoor school labors under disadvantages. I found it very hard to find an actual outdoor school actually in session in the actual outdoors. The teachers and the children have been living indoor lives, in closed and heated rooms for these many years. It is an uphill job to get them out, in chilling winds and bitter weather. In spite of this, however, they show some surprising and wonderful results and I was glad to study the whole thing on the ground with the idea of passing on some hints to California later on, as occasions permit or demand.

No reform in school administration is well begun until the end is in sight.

The honor attached to the office of membership on the school board is hollow if the men who seek it are not honest and honorable.

All obstacles to school progress are the same size to the official with determination.

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On every side, in magazine, newspaper, on the lecture platform, and even in the teachers' institute, one hears the cry "we must adapt our school curriculum nearly to the needs of modern life." Then follows the question, "How?" "It should be simple," one says. "Our children must read and write, they must figure, and they must be taught how to preserve their health. After that our boys should be taught the essentials of manual training and our girls the principles of good housekeeping and the care of children. If the school authorities can find time to add anything else it will be appreciated." When we forecast the future of the children entering the primary classes of our schools this month of 1911, we know that five out of every six of them will be looking for jobs by 1920. Good health will be the chief recommendation of these youngsters, who will qualify for errandboys and counter-girls and apprentices in the trades. They will need to read and write, but grammar will be of little use to them in these days of modern slang. They will have use for only the simplest of mathematical calculations-and this about completes the list, when one comes to set it down in black and white.

The schools have these children eight years as an average, and the schools at present fail to give them the two great assets in starting their careers--a practical knowledge of health preservation and practical training in some trade. To put this instruction off till the high school is reached means to miss eighty-five per cent of the children. If the schools can not by a rapid process of evolution compass this need of our children, the public should demand that the more dangerous but instantaneous method of revolution be employed.

There are many arguments for separating our boys and girls during the years from thirteen to fifteen. This is the period when the changes of puberty cause the first real consciousness of sex. It is the period when our boys need the influence of a strong, fine man as their teacher, and our girls need the sensible mothering of a woman who knows how to teach them the principles of homemaking. Some of us believe that the seventh and eighth grades of of the grammar school should be the place for radical changes in the curriculum. At the beginning of the seventh grade the boys and girls might be placed in separate rooms of the school, or in separate buildings where practicable, and enrolled for half-day sessions, the morning and afternoon sections to be reversed at the half-year point. Under such an arrangement the boys could be taught during the half-day session the essentials of manual training, of business dealings and of leading healthful lives. During the other half of the day they could work as an actual apprentice in some trade.

By arrangement with employers and labor organizations the half time of two boys could count for the full time employment of one boy. Our boys apprenticed to the trades receive now from one dollar to one dollar and fifty cents per day. If a boy of this age could actually work for half his

time receive credit in school for the high quality of his work, he would have a stimulus to remain in school and do his best, which is utterly lacking now.

Our girls can only learn how to be practical and resourceful wives and mothers by practicing domestic science and the care of the baby. The same half-time plan suggested for the boys could be adapted to the girls, their home time being devoted to actual practice in applying the sewing, cooking and house management lessons given during their school session. Through nurses' associations and similar agencies all the assistance necessary to supplement the resources of the schools could be obtained.

At first thought such an argument may seem far afield in discussing health conservation, but further consideration will convince any one that adequate preparation for living is a major factor in the prevention of disease. The boy who learns his trade early will establish himself and marry early. The girl who learns how to care for a baby before her own child is born will be a great factor in reducing the infant mortality of her community. The young couple wh› have had the practical training which will enable them to provide the essentials of a sanitary healthy home, no matter how limited their income may be, will not be likely to appear among the victims of tuberculosis five or ten years after their marriage.

Our schools are the most powerful agency that we can enlist in the business of saving lives and health. Those educators who are trying to break the traditional sequence of grades and studies in order to introduce manual training and domestic science should be encouraged. If necessary, the public should stand ready to "buck the center," so to speak, of the old inflexible curriculum in order to make an opening for them.— From Bulletin Cal. State Board of Health.

Resolutions by Santa Clara County Institute

The Santa Clara County institute, Superintendent Bateman, presiding, the following resolution in referring to the question of pensions was adopted:

Whereas, Justice to the teacher demands that she be protected from dependence on others for support after her period of usefulness as a teacher has passed; and

Whereas, Teachers' salaries are not adequate to furnish such protection; therefore, be it

Resolved, That we earnestly request the Council of Education to see that a bill for the pensioning of teachers be prepared and presented to the Legislature at its next regular session. Concerning free textbooks the teachers said: Whereas, The proposed legislation in the interest of free text books is a most important and vital matter to the school, and will make a radical change in the State; and

Whereas, Some of the most meritorious and important school legislation of the last session has proved cumbersome, burdensome and defective in important details because passed too hastily and without careful consideration of its practical bearing; therefore, be it

Resolved, That we, the teachers of Santa Clara County in Institute assembled, fear the results of too hasty action on the part of the Legislature, and therefore earnestly petition your Honorable Body to postpone final action on this matter until the regular session in 1913.

The Secret of Influence

No one can go through life, James Bryce, the British Ambassador at Washington, has observed, without noticing that there are persons whose gift for attracting and influencing others is greater than their power of intellect or force of will seems to account for. So, too, no one can read history without becoming aware of the fact that brilliancy and commanding personality have often been outstripped by gifts of a much. less showy sort. Something other than striking intellect and strong will would seem to go to the making of the thing we call influence. What is it?

In answering this question, Mr. Bryce begins by admitting that in the case of many of those who have been foremost in the sphere of action or in that of thought, intellectual force, coupled with force of character, or even perhaps taken alone, sufficiently explains the ascendency they have exercised. "When a man appears," he says, "so conspicuously fit to lead and rule that he succeeds in all he undertakes, a man like Trajan, or Constantine, or Richelieu, or Cromwell, or George Washington, or Bismarck, not to speak of such extraordinary beings as Julius Caesar or Napoleon Bonaparte, the mere fact that he has been successful and that he actually exerts immense power dazzles the eyes and subjugates the wills of other men, whether or not they come into direct contact with him. They are ready not only to obey him, but to believe that what he does is right and that what he says is true, just because he says it and does it. Such is the prestige of success." So also a great thinker whose ideas penetrate and stir men's hearts becomes, when he is widely read and discussed, a shining figure and a guiding force to many who know little or nothing of him as a person. He has given the impression of greatness, and "greatness is so rare, and the average man is so glad to get some sort of leading, that he is ready to accept what his leader of thought tells him, merely on the ipse dixit of the leader." Luther, Calvin, Rousseau, Mazzini and Leo Tolstoy are cited as men who exercised this sort of power. They cast a spell over humanity quite irrespective of their own personal characters. Persons so unlike one another as Saint Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Carlyle and Dr. Phillips Brooks moved by their written or printed words persons ignorant of the lives, characters and careers of each of them. "Their virtues or their failings," Mr. Bryce remarks, "made no difference. It was the voice, not the man; and the thoughts were their own best credentials." Mr. Bryce continues (in Chamber's Journal):

"When the thinker or prophet is also a leader whose own life illustrates and justifies his words, the effect he produces is both more widespread and more intensified. This is especially the case with the great religious teachers or reformers. They must be, if they are to succeed, men who live up to their ideals. They must be seen to be penetrated by their convictions, and to have such faith in them as to face danger and even death for their sake. The prophet who

blanches in the moment of supreme trial is lost. If Luther had submitted at the Diet of Worms, his arguments would have remained just what they were before, but his personal influence would have vanished. The death of Socrates consecrated him to posterity, and the unparallaled stimulus he gave to philosophy and to morality derived its force not merely from the profundity of his thought, but also from the example of his whole career and his constancy to the end."

Turning from the great luminaries of history to ordinary life and daily experience, Mr. Bryce points out that there are at least four elements that give a man a direct personal influence among his neighbors in city or country. The first is intellectual indeThe second is pendency and initiative. tenacity of purpose. The third is sound judgment. The last is sympathy. No one of these qualities, Mr. Bryce reminds us, is of these qualities, Mr. Bryce reminds us, is Each of them may be possessed by persons little above the average. But they are rare in combination, and "it is the combination of the power of inspiring personal attachment with the power of diffusing the attachment with the power of diffusing the impression of independent force that especially makes a man the center of a group or a multitude that is ready to think and feel and act with him." Mr. Bryce proceeds:

rare.

"We have all known such persons. Sometimes their sphere may be a narrow one, yet the qualities which made others gather to them are just as visible in the small as they would have been in a larger area. I remember two instances in two English cities, instances dissimilar in some ways, but both illustrative of the springs of authority. and attraction. One was a person of singular firmness and sagacity, a man of few words, but kindly in his quiet way, and ready to help those who sought either counsel or any other help from him. He had no ambition, and refused all the honors and the posts of prominence that were offered to him. But everybody who was anybody knew him and trusted him, and to quote his opinion was, in that city, better than to quote the views of all the officials and all the newspapers. papers. That he said a thing was enough. The other was a lady who had devoted herself to philanthropic work with an inexhaustible ardor and tenderness. Her judgment was sometimes at fault, but the charm of her earnestness and the atmosphere of fervid aspiration which she diffused drew disciples and followers around her, eager to hang on her words and do her bidding. Unselfish ideality and zeal, coupled with sympathy, were the spring of influence in this instance, as wisdom and force, coupled with uprightness, were in the other."

In bringing his inquiry to an end, Mr. Bryce reverts to the cases of great men and notes how the same qualities found operative among ordinary people operates on a large scale to give power to famous leaders. He names, in American history, John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster and Henry Clay. The first had the influence which belongs to the man that stands out as the most clear and cogent creator and expounder of a logical body of doctrine which a great party embraces and fights for. The second had the influence which follows a majestic intel

lect, a striking countenance and a splendid gift of oratory. But "neither of these men," Mr. Bryce comments, "exerted that special kind of influence which wins devotion from the followers and makes them rejoice to follow." Henry Clay stood intellectually beneath Calhoun and Webster, but he had the gift they lacked. He drew people by a personal quality that was irrespective either of will or of intelligence; he possessed the genius of personal magnetism.

Among the illustrious ones of the distant past who possessed the same sort of power, Mr. Bryce mentions Ignatius Loyola and Saint Francis of Assisi. Ignatius was a man of such intense conviction that he energized all with whom he came in contact. In Saint Francis, religious and humanitarian emotion swelled into so full a tide that it overflowed into the souls of others. There is no more remarkable instance of the power of personality than that exerted by Guiseppe Mazzini. He had the temperament of the prophet, an intense faith in his own beliefs, an unselfish devotion to his own ideals, a fortitude nothing could daunt; and he kept the light of Italian patriotism alive through twenty years of trial, discouragement and repeated failure. Mr. Bryce con

cludes:

"Force, fervor, intensity-these are the qualities which have given their power to great leaders in all the movements by which the world has been swayed. Sometimes they have been present in men who left so little written memorial or whose efforts were so foiled by adverse circumstance that we can note only the fact that they must have been remarkable because their contemporaries admired and followed them. They possessed the secret of influence, it. They are among the riddles history.' From December Current Literature. though we cannot tell how they manifested

Teachers and Parents Organize a Home and School Club

Lodi (San Joaquin So.) Dec. 7-The teachers and parents have organized the Home and School Association, which is to be a permanent organization. A constitution has been adopted and the work of the Association outlined.

Professor Inch was present at the organization and gave an interesting talk on the subject of the Union High School, showing the necessity and the advantages that would accrue to Northern San Joaquin County. He told the parents of the evils of cigarette smoking, said the habit of loitering in the pool rooms, as some of the pupils are accustomed to do, should be stopped.

The third Friday of each month will be the meeting day of the association. A full ticket was nominated and the following officers will be chosen at the next meeting. The candidates are as follows: Mrs. J. H. Williams, Mrs. Addine Beckman, for president; Mrs. A. Burson, R. J. Custer, for first vice president; C. A. Black, Mrs. G. L. Meissner, Mrs. J. M. McMahon, for second vice president; Mrs. P. O. Rindle, Mrs. Emma Fink, Mrs. Ed Spickerman, for secretary; J. M. McMahon for treasurer.

*

E. D. Burbank and wife are on a tour of the Orient. Mr. Burbank has been the successful representative of Ginn & Co. in Southern California for several years.

The Montessori Method in

Education

Miss George of Chicago recently visited Rome, and thus describes her visit to a Montessori School at St. Angelo. The Montessori Method is causing comment in all parts of the world. This article, an extract from McClure's Magazine, will be of special interest to all students of education.-Editor

An American Teacher's Impression of a

Montessori School-room "There was no formal morning opening of school, and it was a surprise to me, while I stood talking with the teacher in the empty classroom, to turn suddenly and find a group of little girls in clean aprons behind me. They had come in quietly, and were waiting to wish me good moring. These were children from the Ghetto, but, aside from the pallor that arises from inadequate nourishment, the faces before me. had nothing in common with those of the poverty-stricken inhabitants of the streets along which I had picked my way. The happiness, the intelligence, and the ease with which the children welcomed me showed that some better force was at work within these natures. And, as I watched, my wonder grew. With a directness and simplicity which showed that she knew what she wanted and how to get it, each little girl took from the cupboard of her miserable little desk the materials with which she wished to work. In this class of forty-five children I saw not one idler. Two little girls brought from its corner a square of carpet,, old, cheap and shabby, but obsolutely clean, and this they spread in a narrow space in front of one of the desks; then, bringing a box containing the cut-out letters and words, began with joyous eagerness to form these letters into words and phrases. One of these phrases, made seriously enough, interested and amused me. The child composing this sentence pronounced each word sotto voce as she selected the letters from the boy, and then put them carefully in their place in the words she was forming on the old carpet. The sentence was as follows: 'Teresina does not like to bathe, but her little dog goes gladly into the fountain.' Signora Galli found, upon inquiry, that this spontaneous bit of composition had been inspired by an counter the composer had that morning had with the unregenerate Teresina and her dog.

en

"The children in the Montessori class of this public school take great pride in their clean bodies, and have learned to respect themselves and their class-room too much ever to come into the school unwashed. They wipe their feet so carefully, before coming into the hallway, that the janitor, unaccustomed to such habits, is in a constant state of marvel. If, in their homes, the mother fails to have ready the clean apron which she is expected to furnish, her child protests and shows such a true distress that the repetition of such carelessness on the part of the mother is very rare.

What Children Six Years Old Have
Accomplished

"I saw other children composing words with these same cut-out letters, and placing them with the greatest solicitude on the slanting planes of the narrow desk-tops, so that they might not slip to the floor. Others were writing on the blackboard, and some had slates on which they were drawing letters in chalk. Some were sitting on the benches, some on the floor, and some on the few comfortable little chairs that Signora Galli had placed, at her own expense, in some of the corners of the crowded little room. With all this activity there was no noise or disorder. Instead, there was everywhere joy in work and a happy comparison of tasks. Occasionally, as I stood watching, a child would come to call Signora Galli to some word that she considered particularly well written, or to beg her to pronounce slowly and distinctly some other word that she wished to write. In the attitude of the children toward their teacher and their dire stress I observed most beautiful reverence, the warmest affection, and the greatest respect.

see

"The thing that struck me the most forcibly was the even, or, to speak in school parlance, the perfectly graded condition of the entire class. The greater number of these children were six years old when they entered in the fall, and they had, through the preparation which was done through the month of waiting, established their ideas about sense education. So it seemed, at the time they received their materials, we might consider that the children in this school presented somewhat the same problem we might face in offering these toys to one of the first grades in America. They accepted the simpler exercises easily, and spent much less time in mastering them than the younger children. Over the games with the geometrical figures and insects, through which the sense of form is trained, these children spent a much longer time; and the exercise of filling in the spaces drawn by the conventional shapes, which directly precedes the act of writing, was continued by them throughout the year.

"So much for the progress of this school, as measured by ordinary public-school standards. But of the life, the joy, the individual independence which I saw in the children themselves and in everything they did, and which made their work valuable, I can give no adequate description. To sit for an hour in the little brick-paved court with its narrow strip of garden and two eucalyptus trees, and to watch the children at work, was to feel that, during the year spent there, these little waifs of the Ghetto had found that personal liberty and self-control that alone make it possible for any human being to do his best work and to adapt himself to the conditions of the life about him.

Holding School Out of Doors "One morning, sitting among the children in their school-room, I heard Signora Galli's assistant say quietly: 'Let's have school in the court now.' That was all she said. Yet I have seen many teachers fail, with a dozen explicit commands, to achieve the result that I witnessed after this simple sentence. The

effect was immediate. There was no scrambling, no confusion. Quietly, tranquilly, and with the security that results from knowing how to do things, forty-five little girls put themselves to work getting ready to go down into the court. Each one supplied herself with what she would need for her work. Three children who at the time were composing sentences on the little carpet placed all the letters carefully in the large flat box made to receive them, and then one of them put on the cover and held it carefully, while the other two brushed the strip of carpet and rolled it into a bundle which they could carry downstairs between them. Several other children, who were using pen and ink for the first time, dried their freshly written lines, wiped their pens, and, holding the inkwells with the greatest care, made ready to follow their companions. There were others who furnished themselves with chalk, slates, boxes of letters, counters and rods for the number work, and cases of metal geometric forms with colored pencils for filling in the designs. There was no pushing nor disorder, though much happy talk and laughter. When all was ready, the teacher did not give a command for silence; she only smiled and moved toward the door: then, quite naturally and in perfect order. the children followed her. There was a hall to cross, two doors to open, and three flights of narrow, awkward stone stairs to descend. I, who have taken classes up and down stairs for many years, could only feel, when I saw the security and patience displayed in the movements of these children, that the sense-training exercises had given them a control that I had ever attained with children and have seldom seen in grown people. At the second flight of stairs we came upon the janitor, who was sweeping down the steps with wet sawdust. The line halted voluntarily while he brushed a tiny path clear, and then, with evident pleasure, each child daintily picked her way through this cleared space.

The Montessori Method Popular With the School Janitor

were at

"Giuseppe, the janitor, is very fond of the children in this class. He told Signora Galli an incident that gives a good example of the social and spiritual effect of such an education. It so happened that he one day brought his ladder and bucket into the school-room while the children. work, and washed the windows and ventilators. The children watched him with friendly interest; and when he had finished, and was about to depart with his buckets, several of them, gazing admiringly at the shining glass, said to him: 'Grazie tante, Giuseppe; ba fatto molto bene.' ('Thank you, Giuseppe; you did that wonderfully well.') The old man's astonishment and pleasure were extreme; and when one considers that these children come from homes where rudeness and scolding voices are accepted things. it is easy to understand his surprise.

In teaching these children of St. Angelo in Pescheria, neither reading nor writing nor the use of the materials were the main aim or desire of Signora Galli and her assistant. Had these inferior ambitions been allowed to influence the work in the school,