charm or run through with that indecent flippancy which is an insult to any worthy volume. Why not leave the Bible on the teacher's desk to be used in the moral instruction, as the big Dictionary lies there for training in the mother-tongue? No wise teacher would undertake to improve the language of his class by a dry reading aloud, without note or comment, of Webster's Unabridged. I would give to the teacher the right to use the book in the way his broadest judgment should direct; as a brief opening reading for worship, hung up in mottoes on the wall, or written out on the blackboard, quoted at any critical moment of discipline, in any of the ways in which a wise instructor under suitable school regulations could devise for bringing it to bear upon the life. First the life; then the word; is the fruitful method of moral instruction in the people's school. The school literature, consisting of all the matter brought before the reading classes, affords an admirable opportunity for "pointing a moral" or directing the interest of the child to the upper region of human life. And here I feel moved to enter a protest against a tendency in the authors of our school Readers to lower the tone of school reading, and fill their books with lifeless pages made up to illustrate mechanical rules or selected from the lighter and thinner strata worked by the transient authors of the hour. I have read through whole volumes of School-Readers where there were not a dozen pages that would stir the blood of a noble boy; filled with that graceful twaddle which is spoiling the mental digestion of thousands of youth; or elaborately gotten up to dodge the prejudices of Priests and politicians and scientists till the whole Book reminded one of a hunted rabbit dodging in and out the lengths of a Virginia rail fence. And I could show you Readers so "fearfully and wonderfully made" that they would need no revision if constructed for use in a school of trained Dogs, learned Pigs, and white Mice; books from which you cannot extract a thought that the child who reads them has a nature above the world of pets amid which he lives; that there is any morality above the sunny good nature that he shares with the playful kitten and the twittering sparrow; that there is any such realm of existence as the immortal soul in man; where there is neither the name nor the remotest implication of the creating God. And, generally, our School-Readers seem constructed on the idea that the way to teach a child to read is to adapt a lesson to his lowest comprehension, making every sentence a sort of patent crutch for his languid attention. I believe no child ever learned to read in a way that stirred anybody's heart till his own soul was inflamed by some uplifting sentiment, and his whole body called to the front to express the noble thought that crowds his heart. Our children despise this puerility that we bring forth to illustrate our elaborate theories of approaching the infant mind. The way to find a boy is to go after him with something above his lower self; some challenge to the true, the beautiful, the good, the marvellous, the inspiring. Give him a readinglesson full of grand things to stir generous souls, and though he may not be able to spell or define every word therein, he will cut his way out of any everglade of words between the story and his impetuous awakened soul. No series of Readers ever made so profound an impression upon the character of a whole generation of school children as the National Reader and American First-Class Book, compiled by JOHN PIERPONT of glorious memory. Thousands of American men and women owe their noblest enjoyment of English Literature and some of the highest aspirations of their lives to the thrilling pages of those rare volumes in which the school-boy met and saluted almost every great author in his mothertongue.

Especially now, when our teachers have undertaken to direct the reading of the children in connection with the public library, can we make Literature the most effective teacher of morals and the finest artist in character. Never was the printed page so much a part of the spiritual life of youth, as to-day in our land. Our children will read; but what they read is often the index to the manner of woman or man they shall become. There are lines of reading which, like forest paths among the mountains, climb up to plateaus and summits whence life is beheld outspread in Providential order, and the spirit finds itself in lofty fellowship with Nature, Humanity and God. Up these lines may every wise and consecrated teacher conduct the children entrusted to her care; and woe to the teacher who fails to do it.

It is an old story that while the scientists of Europe were demonstrating that no steamship could safely go to sea, the first Ocean Steamer quietly crossed the Atlantic. So, while several classes of famous people have been wearying themselves with subtle reasonings concerning the religious question in the common school, our American Public School Teachers have been elaborating the only vital, natural and effective method of moral instruction, both through the discipline of life and the fit use of good books. And if it be objected that this method is useless unless worked by superior teachers, I reply ;-that the whole of morality and religion in any school district centres on the duty of placing a skilled teacher of high character in that school-room at all hazards. Better ride after a mule team and draw water from the town pump, and dress your boys in butternut and sheep's gray, and your girls in home-made flannel, and go back to the old meeting-house without a stove;-better be and do anything respectable and lay up your treasures in the Heaven of a superior schoolmaster or schoolmistress for your children; than live in all the glory and grace of modern refinement with your little child in the hands of a teaching man who never saw the vision of the new education and cannot say his soul is his own. Any teacher fit to be in the smallest district school can reach up to this ideal and achieve as much of it as is given to human imperfection in this very human United States of America.

And, while we urge the establishment of all fit schools and agencies to train our teachers for their mighty task, the last word in Normal Instruction, in family, in church, in school, in life, is to point to the one sovereign Teacher of humanity who, lifted up in the far-off time as the divine object lesson in all that man should become, has drawn all men unto him, recreated History, awakened hidden powers in the human souls, and, simply, by being himself, is now changing the kingdoms of this world to the kingdom of Heaven.

The papers in this volume prepared by E. A. SPRING, J. M. GREGORY, J. C. GILCHRIST, G: P. BROWN, W: T. HARRIS, MARY W. HINMAN, E. O. VAILE, W. N. HAILMANN, J. L. PICKARD, Mrs. LOUISE POLLOCK, F. А. MARCH, and CHAS. FRANCIS ADAMS, Jr., are printed by their desire or consent with the following variations from ordinary spelling:

1. From a word ending in ogue, ue is dropped, when ogue is pronounced og. When ogue is pronounced og the ue is retained. Examples:-dialog, catalog, pedagog, etc., and vogue, rogue, prorogue, etc. Tongue is changed to tung.

2. From a word ending in e silent, e is dropped when the dropping does not suggest a wrong pronunciation of the word. Examples of dropping the e:-definit, respit, infinitiv, etc. Examples of its retention : -finite polite, invite, etc.

3. From a word ending in ette, te is dropped; as in coquet, gazet, etc. 4. From a word ending in amme, me is dropped as in gram, program, etc. 5. In a word in which the digraph ph represents the sound of f, it is changed to f; as in alfabet, filosofer, etc.

6. From a word ending in a double letter, one of the double letters is dropped when the dropping of the letter does not suggest a wrong pronunciation of the word; as in eg, stil, till, shal, clas, etc. Both the s's are retained in preceptress because preceptres would suggest the pronunciation precepters. In all, ball, call, etc., both l's are retained to preserve the sound of a.

7. From a word containing the improper diphthong ea, a is omitted when its omission does not suggest a mispronunciation of the word; as, helth, heth, deth, welth, stelth, erth, etc.

8. In a word ending in ed sounded like t, ed is changed tot when such change does not suggest a mispronunciation of the word; as, wisht, heapt, leapt, etc. When there is a double letter before the ed one of them is dropped; as in, slapt, mapt hist, past, etc., for slapped, mapped, hissed, passed, etc. The ed is retained in closed, placed, liked, hoped, etc., in order to preserve the sound of the radical vowels.

9. In a word ending in ed having the sound of d, e is dropped when the dropping does not suggest a mispronunciation; as in reformd, alarmd, steamd, charmd, doomd, etc. The e is retained in prorogued, qualified, replied, etc., to preserve the pronunciation. When the e is preceded by a double letter one of these letters is dropped when the dropping does not suggest a mispronunciation; as, cald, bald, feld, referd, conferd, etc. In willd, filld, etc., the double letters are retained to preserve the pronunciation.

10. Letters are also dropped from other words such as givn, tho, thoroly, etc., for given, though, thoroughly, etc.

E. O. Vaile of Illinois by application in person or by letter to the readers of papers at Chautauqua, obtained the consent of the above-named persons to print their papers in a partially-reformed spelling. The consent was given in some cases in accordance with a strong desire, and in others with a simple willingness to aid the reform. No guide has been furnished the secretary as to the extent that changes should be made, except an allusion to the five rules suggested by the Spelling-Reform Association. He has been unwilling to follow these rules in all respects, because in some cases they suggest mispronunciations. He has therefore made a set of rules of his own embodying these and also those used by the Home Journal, but stated in such a way as to make the proper exceptions to their applications.

EDWARD A. SPRING, of Perth Amboy, N. J., then spoke as follows upon MODELLING IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND IN THE KINDERGARTEN.

The erliest years of the child ar claiming more attention than of oldas of paramount importance in the development of the perfect man.

We ar studying the proposition that the individual develops as does the race-and when we notice a strong instinctiv tendency common to young children and savages, we ar lerning that there is a point for the educator to consider, and perhaps turn to good account.

From the erly centuries of our era, comes the sweet legend of the child JESUS-He and and his playmates modeld doves of clay-and his dove flew. But the fact of children's modelling eighteen hundred years ago was not remarkabl-they always show the intensest eagerness to work in any plastic material.

At the meeting of this Association in Washington (The Dep't. of Superintendence-Feb. 6, 1879) our president, Mr. WILSON, offerd a resolution drawn up by WALTER SMITH, which was unanimously adopted. It recognized the necessity of industrial education in the public schools of America-and declared that industrial drawing should be taught in the day schools, "and that industrial drawing, modelling, and applied designshould be taught in free evening classes."

There ar doubtless many peopl who would be surprised at a proposal that school children should lern modelling. For modelling, until Froebel placed it among the occupations of the Kindergarten was only recognized as a technical process of the Sculptor, or as an objectional pastime from which children wer to be restraind.

Now I would not propose to add to our present school cours a branch of the fine arts-we hav too many branches alredy. As Prof. JOSEPH PAYNE says: (I quote at second-hand from Consul HITZ.) "Some think the standard may be raisd by the addition of new subjects to the curriculum of elementary instruction. If, however, the machinery of our education is defectiv-and the results prove that it is giving it more work to do is surely a unique device for improving its action. The mill grinds badly, and the grist is unsatisfactory; and the remedy proposed is to put more corn into the hopper."

Here is an easily-obtaind material employd for thousands of years as the best for making certain forms, and still used as before, in technical branches of sculpture and pottery. FROEBEL saw its possibilities and gave it an important place in his system. Had he been a sculptor, potter, or dealer in clay-as I am, peopl would hav said that was but natural. Many a shoemaker, wer he founding a system of education, would make the old claim;" " there's nothing like lether!" But FROEBEL, with an excellent combination of philosophy and common sense, used clay in the Kindergarten.

In a substance so plastic and grateful as clay the making of a desired form is reduced to the least mechanical difficulty. If it is complicated, the less the shape is clear to the mind, the greater the need of a substance easy to work. That is simply why sculptors have followed the practice of making a model in clay, in order to secure in the easiest way the subtl forms they attempt, before committing them to harder substances. Now what I would suggest as practicabl is, that in our Schools we should giv this same material, this plastic clay into the children's hands-and starting thus with Mother Earth let them shape it into forms such as they ar already familiar with, and progress to forms desirable to have them lern.

It may be many years before the majority of children hav the benefits of the Kindergarten; but any teacher now, with a few cents worth of clay from the nearest pottery, can giv a school some of the advantages possesd by the prehistoric savage. There are tribes among our Indians where a practice in rude clay work givs facility to the fingers, and endless enjoyment to the Indian children as they portray in their clay attempts, the life of the village and the chase.

We should try to giv the activ growing minds fuel to consume, both in and out of school. Start in our schools an interest in subjects adapted to the daily life of the pupils. The school children of any given neighborhood hav the practical aspects of life presented to them on the road to and from school that should, and do raise innumerabl questions in their tireless heads.

They ar well aware that some of the things that they ar told for the sake of teaching them, in the school, in the home, or in the church, may be mere theory; for, hav they not known the most positiv assertions of their elders disproved? "Did not Mr. XYZ declare that it was going to be very cold; and yet the wether turnd warm?"

But the daily facts of life, and work, and accident, which our pupils know ar not prepared with a view to influencing them, exert more force for that very reason, in forming their lives, than any amount of exhortation.

Still more, if possibl, ar they influenced, when under favorabl conditions, by what they themselves do with their hands.

I do not believ I can urge too strongly here, the importance of letting the pupil do the clay work himself; for there comes at once a curiouslystrong feeling of the rights of property in a child when modelling; and in many ways advantages which this work affords may be lost if the teacher touches the clay. Try the letting alone, and you will often hear the triumphant, "I did it all myself!"

We need some way of giving our children general principles in regard to the properties of matter-and an alfabet of hand-work-while the fingers ar young. The advance schools where special trades might be taught would then begin with fingers possessing skill-insted of being "all thums."