announcement as: "The examination which you are to take three days hence is more for your own benefit than mine. By your daily work you have shown me your standing. Make a careful review of this portion of the subject and the examination will show you what you have gained and what you still lack." When reviews are thus made examination marks will be found to agree surprisingly with those of daily recitations.

But why are these frequent tests, or any tests, desirable?

If we could only be examined upon every book, magazine, or paper which we read, how little of this destructive, slipshod reading would exist!

We might obtain this discipline by pursuing the course of William Lloyd Garrison. If he could find no one to become his examiner and listen to what he had absorbed from his readings, he would each night make a mental analysis of whatever he had read during the day. An excellent memory was thus developed from a very poor one. As children cannot be expected to exercise sufficient self-discipline to do this themselves, frequent examinations will accomplish the same for them. As conversation clarifies and sets the ideas in order, so will examination questions, acting as a second person in a dialogue, enable one to judge of his standing in any particular study.

But a word on the subject of questions. Examination papers are, I fancy, much like the examiners. There are questions which if fully answered would require whole volumes. A pupil who is poorly prepared is pleased when he sees them. He can conceal his ignorance by wandering at his own sweet will over a wide field of superficial acquirements. Then there are those short, sharp questions which stare you in the face and demand a yes or no. They are like some positive people whom you either like or dislike with great intensity. There are those malicious catch questions which pop up from unexpected corners and laugh fiendishly when they floor you. Then there are the interrogations which are pronounced "just right," but as no two persons agree in a definition of these, it will be wisest to leave them for each one to define for himself.

THE GOD OF MUSIC.

TO E. T. G.

BY ELIZABETH PORTER GOULD.

OUT

UT from the depths of silence
The god of music came,

To echo heavenly cadence

On earth's fair shores of fame.

Full-orbed, with heavenly glory,
He met the lords of earth.
But 't was the old, old story,
They blind were to his worth.

So back to depths of silence

He flew on wings of light; "To bide their time of nonsense," He sang when out of sight.

And as rolled on the ages,

He ever and anon

Sent down to earth his pages,
The lords to breathe upon.

At last he felt vibrations,

From Germany's fair clime,

Of sweetest modulations

E'er heard in realms of time.

So forth he flew in rapture

To that dear fatherland, To seize, ere earth could capture, A spirit pure and grand, To which he could surrender Himself with perfect ease, And weave the music tender

Of heaven's own harmonies.

He found the child Beethoven,
On him his blessing fell,
And in his soul was woven

The sounds we know so well.

THE

EDITORIAL.

HE celebration of the birthday of the poet Whittier, December 17, by the school children in various parts of the country emphasizes a fact which many of our literary men have not yet appreciated — the function of the public school in training a fit constituency for the literature of the period. Fifty years ago the young poets and novelists - indeed, the whole literary fraternity of the country were almost entirely dependent on the limited sale of their books for even the knowledge of their existence, the limited circulation of the literary press being a very ineffective instrumentality of publication. But now in all good schools, public and private, language and literature are coming to the front as a leading branch of instruction. Multitudes of children not only hear the names, but come to know something of the writings, of leading American authors. In many places a vital connection is made between the public library and the school, and children are trained from the beginning to a habit of good reading. The celebration of authors' birthdays - whch did not originate in the East, where most of the authors abide, but in Cincinnati, Ohio, at the time the virtual center of population - has given a new impulse to the literary side of school life. On the seventeenth of December several hundred thousand American children and, through them, other thousands in the home circle were introduced to the quiet old gentleman who for so many years has been casting his leaflets on the waters, now to be overwhelmed by the mighty acclaim of the coming generation of American youth. It is another illustration of the true grandeur of republican institutions, when the author, instead of being crowned by the verdict of the learned few, is welcomed by a whole people and often receives his most touching congratulation from the humblest of his admirers.

IN

N our last interview with Mr. Longfellow, a year before his death, he spoke with great feeling of the happiness that had come to him from this observance of his birthday in the schools of the far West. He also alluded to the children now being trained in

our public schools to become the literary men and women of the coming generation. Yet, strange to say, no class of people in the country, save the high-church priesthood, have shown such lack of appreciation of the real function and best work of the public schools as the majority of the American literati. The literary and scientific magazines and reviews have been distinguished by their ignorant and shallow criticism of the public school system. From Lowell down to Gail Hamilton, these critics, with rare exceptions, still fail to grasp the American idea of the common school-the training of a whole people into mental activity, broader intelligence, self-control, and the industrial skill that always follows when the head and heart get their rights. One would think the fact already noticed, of the wondrous development of an intelligent reading public in our country, would open the eyes of American authors in this direction. Unhappily our literary and artistic classes are still under the spell of imitation of the European type of cultivated society and too often prefer to huddle in the narrow club-life of cities, or dwell together in mutual admiration, to placing themselves in vital contact with the American people, from whom, after all, the suggestion of their highest work must come. Such has not been, however, the habit of the poet whose eightieth birthday has just been celebrated. For Whittier has always been, in the broadest sense, an American citizen -a reformer, statesman, and broad-church Christian, holding communication with his countrymen through that magic instrumentality of verse which will live when platform, congressional, and pulpit eloquence have done their work and passed away.

CHAI

HARLES SUMNER once said to William H. Seward: "Do you answer the hundreds of letters that come to you in Washington from boys and girls in every part of the country?" "Yes," said the most philosophic of American statesmen, “I answer every one, whatever else I neglect. The country will need all the influence that you and I can exert on these children, even before we are dead." How few distinguished persons know how to treat an enthusiastic boy or girl who, for a year, has been scheming for a five minutes' interview and will look deeper, study more intensely, and take in more completely the great celebrity, in that brief opportunity, than many a daily acquaintance. One of the most imperative duties and most precious privileges of

celebrity in the higher realms of life is to put one's self in genuine human relations with the younger generation, that is naturally attracted by a prominent personality. For these are the providential pupils of the man or woman who has attained to honorable eminence in the upper stratum of life the most important constituency of the present and the inevitable court of final appeal in deciding the permanent status of the great man or woman of to-day.

OURI

We

UR teachers, especially in public schools, are not yet halfalive to their duty and privilege in keeping a hold upon their scholars after they leave school. They too often forget that the best things they have done for these children are only appreciated as they ripen with the growing experience of life. Never do we really understand our best teachers until we get away from them and the reason of their finest work and highest influence is revealed to us, sometimes after many years. never see a wornout, fretful, despondent "relict" cast off from school-work into a dismal maidenhood or an unsatisfactory marriage, without the feeling that her present affliction is largely the retribution for her neglect to improve the most precious opportunity of life, to tie herself up in the beautiful bonds of personal interest with several hundred children, representing every "sort and condition" of women and men. If any successful teacher of ten years' standing would keep a record of every child that had passed through her school-room, she would be amazed to learn that there had been the chief social opportunity of her life: to attach to herself a large number of persons from the highest to the humblest station, through that peculiar sentiment, the admiring affection of a child for an honored and beloved school master or mistress. So far from being shut out from social advantages, the competent teacher has a wealth of opportunity granted to no other person in society.