vide a reference department, supplementary reading for schools, and the expense of administration, from the special school fund, a library with a reading-room, that will double the value of the schools may soon be secured.

It is not creditable to the school authorities that so few corporations have availed themselves of the wise legislation. Superintendents, teachers and others specially charged with the educational interests should acquaint themselves with the facts tending to show the immense value of a circulating library. The wonderful literary activity in Indianapolis is a fact in point. What is true there will be true everywhere if the people are provided with free reading matter, judiciously selected.

It is not too late, if the county auditor will place the levy on the duplicate, to begin this year. Those places which have so far failed to move in this important matter, if not too far behind to be conscious of their comparative ignorance, must feel the humiliation of a contrast with the communities that are truly alive to the interests of all, whether young or old.

As to the management, seek information from the established libraries. The Library Bureau, 30 Hawley St., Boston, Mass., will cheerfully respond to inquiries. The Bureau is under the able management of H. E. Davidson. Melvil Dewey, chief librarian of Columbia College, and secretary of the American Library Association, will gladly make suggestions. So would Mr. Hooper, of the Indianapolis Library.

In a place where the inhabitants number from five to ten thousand, one hundred dollars a year at least should be expended in periodical literature, including newspapers. The magazines, after the appearance of the latest number, may issue the older numbers with safety in the smaller places. A school township has no authority to levy a tax unless there be a donation of one thousand dollars. Then one mill on the dollar may be levied by the township trustee. The township in which the city of Richmond is situated has a library on this basis.

There yet remains for all neighborhoods a law for the organization of voluntary library associations. The Grant County Educational Library is under this law.

MUNCIE, INDIANA.

THE MODERN SCHOOL TEACHER.

[Boston Courier.]

It was Saturday night, and a teacher sat
Alone her task pursuing;

She averaged this, and she averaged that,
Of all that her class was doing;
She reckoned percentage-so many boys,
And so many girls all counted;

And marked all the tardy and absentees,
And to what all the absence amounted.

Names and residences wrote in full,
Over many columns and pages;
Canadian, Teutonic, African, Celt,
And averaged all their ages.
The date of admission of every one,
And cases of flagellation;

And prepared a list of graduates
For the county examination.

Her weary head sank low on her book,
And her weary heart still lower;
For some of her pupils had little brains,
And she could not furnish more.

She slept, she dreamed-it seemed she died,
And her spirit went to Hades,

And they met her there with a question fair:
"State what the percent of your grade is!"

Ages had slowly rolled away,

Leaving but partial traces;

And the teacher's spirit walked one day
In the old familiar places.

A mound of fossilized school reports

Attracted her observation,

As high as the state house dome and as wide

As Boston since annexation.

She came to the spot where they buried her bones,

And the ground was well built over;

But laborers digging threw a skull,

Once planted beneath the clover.

A disciple of Galen, wandering by,
Paused to look at the diggers;

And, picking the skull up, looked through the eye,

And saw it was lined with figures.

"Just as I thought," said the young M. D,
How easy it is to kill 'em!

Statistics ossified every fold

Of cerebrum and cerebellum."

"It's a great curiosity, sure," said Pat;

"By the bones you can tell the creature !"'
"Oh! nothing strange," said the doctor, "that
Was a nineteenth-century teacher."

THE SCHOOL ROOM.

[This Department is conducted by GEO. F. BASS, Supervising Prin. Indianapolis schools.}

T was once very fashionable to have mottoes in the school

I'

room. When these mottoes mean something to the pupils it

is well. "By their fruits ye shall know them." One of the most careless schools in work that I ever saw had this inotto on the black-board in a permanent form; "What is worth doing at all is worth doing well." The motto did not make the school careless; neither did it prevent the school from being careless. There was no teacher behind this motto. He did not impress his pupils with the spirit of doing their work well. He might have made a little talk on the value of doing work well the first time, and then have placed this motto on the board -or better, had the school commit it. Afterward, a mere reference to the motto would call up the whole discussion. This would, eventually, create a spirit of carefulness in the school.

But to place mottoes in the room or have the school learn them without getting the spirit of them is a mockery.

The opening exercises may frequently be used for work of this kind. Quotations may be given and discussed with great interest and profit to the pupils. Sir Philip Sidney said, "They are never alone that are accompanied with noble thoughts.” They are not only not alone, but they are in good company. Some one has said that we are known by the company we keep. Certain it is we are liable to become much like our company.

We change the company a little, while it may change us a great deal.

To have noble thoughts for our company, we must associate with the great and good. This is most easily done by means of their writings. These can be had for almost nothing. During a school year by using a part of the opening exercise time, the pupils might become somewhat acquainted with at least thirty of the good and noble that have lived and are yet living. In eight years of school life many such acquaintances might be made through these mottoes and quotations.

OPENING EXERCISES.

Ill habits gather by unseen degrees

As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.

-Dryden.

Habit is a cable, we weave a thread of it each day, and at last we can not break it.-Horace Mann.

WRITE these on the black-board and talk about them with the pupils. Talk with the pupils, not to them. Lead them to see the meaning of the above. Incidentally tell who Dryden and Horace Mann were,-when and where they lived. What kind of habits are referred to, good or bad? Are they formed suddenly? Are we conscious of forming these habits at the time they are formed? Are good habits formed in the same way that bad ones are? Can a habit be broken? Is it as easy to break a bad habit as a good one?

Such questions will bring out a discussion. Pupils will think about what these quotations mean. The pupils will be led to notice their own actions and guard themselves in the formation of habits.

Do not make a severe testing recitation of this kind of work. Be ready to say something on your own questions. The chances are that, at first, the pupils will be somewhat diffident. The teacher will need to say enough to get them interested. He will also need to see that certain notions are corrected. They may fail to properly interpret. For example, they may say a habit can not be broken, and refer to Horace Mann's saying as their authority. Here the teacher will need to explain. The author

was trying to impress us with the fact that habits were formed gradually, and that they could not be suddenly changed.

We may break a habit as we made it-by breaking a thread each day.

ON PRONUNCIATION.

A copy of Webster's Unabridged Dictionary was offered at a teachers' institute in Pennsylvania to any teacher who would read the following paragraph and pronounce every word correctly according to Webster. No one succeeded in earning the dictionary, although nine made the attempt. Any one will be surprised upon looking up each of the test words here given to find how many are commonly mispronounced:

"A sacrilegious son of Belial, who suffered from bronchitis, having exhausted his finances, in order to make good the deficit, resolved to ally himself to a comely young lady of the Malay or or Caucasian race. He accordingly purchased a calliope and a coral necklace of a chameleon hue, and securing a suite of rooms at the principal hotel, he engaged the head waiter as his coadjutor. He then dispatched a letter of the most unexceptionable caligraphy extant inviting the young lady to a matinee. She revolted at the idea, refused to consider herself sacrificeable to his desires, and sent a polite note of refusal; on receiving which he procured a carbine and bowie-knifie, said that he would not forge fetters hymeneal with the Queen, went to an isolated spot, seviered his jugular vein, and discharged the contents of his carbine into his abdomen. The debris was removed by the Coroner." -Center Table.

OPENING EXERCISES.

TEACHER. Come here, Emma,-let me wrap this thread around your fingers. Can you break it? E. Yes ma'am. Tr. Now I'll wrap it around twice. Harry, can you break it now? H. Yes ma'am.

Tr. Now I'll wrap it around a great many times. Now, Willie, can you break it? W. No ma'am.