This discovery may go far toward solving the mystery of the origin of the Egyptian and the Maya races, as well as other mooted questions, historical and geological.

J. E. M.

THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE USEFUL.

I do not agree with Goethe that we should encourage the beautiful because the useful encourages itself. Beauty has inherent attractions, as is proved by the very term, which implies "to be admired." But the useful is often a very hard subject, to be sought with toil and tears. A boy grubs his way through the tangled forest of philology and grammar. You may direct his attention to a lofty spire that glitters a long way off, and assure him if he perseveres he will cut his way through this very hot and dry tropical jungle. But he may faint by the wayside, or even desert before he reaches the goal of his labors.

We must make the useful easy and attractive. We must conceal from the youthful mind the labor required, and so distribute that labor along the line of learning that the highest altitude is to be attained by the easiest grades. (It is thus that the Pacific Railroad attains the Sierra Madre summit, and the surprised passenger looks down on the land below without being sensible of the force that has been applied to attain it.) Interest his mind in the elements of learning, and mix this labor with that recreation which his tender years require. A badly warmed, ventilated, or lighted schoolroom; school furniture uncomfortable or unsuitable; an incomprehensible book of grammar, in which the small pupil is assumed to comprehend all that the wise author has taken a lifetime to acquire; long hours and savage. severity in the teacher-these tend greatly to discourage the youthful mind from pursuing the useful, and incline it to suspect that the beautiful must be out of doors: when the birds sing and the brook warbles and the wind waves the summer leaves, or when other little boys wade through snow to slide down the hill, or blow their fingers in glee as they slide upon the glassy ice; in a word, to sigh and suspect that the beautiful is where the useful is not. J. M. SAUNDERS, PH.D., LL.D.

NEW CENTURY IDEALS.

To weigh the material in the scales of the personal, and measure life by the standard of love; to prize health as contagious happiness, wealth as potential service, reputation as latent influence, learning for the light it can shed, power for the help it can give, station for the good it can do; to choose in each case what is best on the whole, and accept cheerfully incidental evils involved; to put my whole self into all that I do, and indulge no single desire at the expense of myself as a whole; to crowd out fear by devotion to duty, and see present and future as one; to treat others as I would be treated, and myself as I would my best friend; to lend no oil to the foolish, but let my light shine freely for all; to make no gain by another's loss, and buy no pleasure with another's pain; to harbor no thought of another which I would be unwilling that other should know; to say nothing unkind to amuse myself, and nothing false to please others; to take no pride in weaker men's failings, and bear no malice toward those who do wrong; to pity the selfish no less than the poor, the proud as much as the outcast, and the cruel even more than the oppressed; to worship God in all that is good and true and beautiful; to serve Christ wherever a sad heart can be made happy or a wrong will set right; and to recognize God's coming kingdom in every institution and person that helps men to love one another.-William De Witt Hyde, in the January Outlook.

DR. CAULDWELL says that everybody has consumption, which is a somewhat more radical statement than Dr. Hamilton's that every Christian Scientist is insane. When a doctor sets out to be an alarmist he never stops half way. Whatever things the Christian Scientists do that are reprehensible from the doctor's point of view, it must be admitted that they accomplish good in "demonstrating over fear." Fear has slain its tens of thousands, not to mention the brown-stone habitations it has built for medical men.-Editorial in New York World.

THE FAMILY CIRCLE.

Conducted by

FLORENCE PELTIER PERRY AND THE REV. HELEN VAN-ANDERSON.

FOR THE PARENTS.

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

Mrs. T.-Do not feel discouraged at what you call the "lack of order" in your restless little girl. You say she seems exceedingly fond of beautiful things, yet will take no care of anything, even of expensive clothing or toys. Perhaps you have not been discriminate in the choice or quantity of her possessions. Too great an abundance fatigues rather than stimulates the mind. A child cannot at once grasp the relation between many parts and the perfect whole; hence, a few things well chosen and harmoniously related will often teach order and appreciation of beauty a hundredfold better than the most elaborate "preachment" on the vice of carelessness.

There is much to be taught by environment; and a child. surrounded by objects that suggest the ideal will often become intuitively cultured in all that tends to real art, whether the Fine Arts-music, literature, painting, etc.-or the simplest and finest of all: the art of true living.

Children are both imitative and creative: imitative because of their keen observation, and creative because of the innate desire to make into form or to express what they inwardly feel. It is this sense of beauty and desire to express

that begins to stir and thrill toward outer form when the child draws pictures on the parlor wall, or in the spacious margins of books. But too often thoughtless mothers have scolded and shaken the little would-be artist into rebellious tears and outraged feelings, which, more than anything else, break that tie of sympathy and fellowship which should bind, through all the years to come, the child to the mother heart. And thus what to the child is the delight of original creation is to the mother simply the exhibition of tantalizing destructiveness. This misunderstanding results, naturally, in the child turning from the subjective or soul side of his being to the objective or sense side. His dream is ended, his work destroyed, and Think of this, in all its far-reaching sugges

he an outlaw.

tiveness.

When the child knows that order must be preserved because that is the only way to keep the beauty of the home, and at the same time is encouraged to give expression to his own thoughts of the beautiful, he is as eager to take his part in making and keeping visible harmony as any one else. When the environment and home atmosphere are ideal, even the restless children will unconsciously yield to the subtle influence and gradually become orderly and artistic. Make all voiceless things speak of beauty, of order, of rest, of purity, of truth. You will notice the evolution of the moral sense, also, through these means. As surely as "cleanliness is next to godliness," so is beauty next to truth.

About your four-year-old boy, Mrs. C.: Under no circumstances allow him to argue with you. It makes no difference how cunning his baby reasoning, his shrewdness in evading the question, or his clamoring insistence on an explanation, do not allow one instant's parley over what you

have decreed. This is a point that cannot be too strongly emphasized. In the first years of a child's life the parent stands as the embodiment of Law as well as Love. Law is inexorable. Its decrees are absolute. An infringement brings sure penalty. Without law there would be no order in the universe, no harmony in the home-no symmetry anywhere. If you, as the voice of Law, issue an edict, see that it is obeyed. You have a reason for its utterance, or you would be silent. You are the supreme authority. Let no entreaty, persuasion, or argument tempt you to be moved, else, alas! you are no longer Law. This is the beginning of chaos in your domain, and, saddest of all, the perversion of your boy's respect. Do not be harsh; be simply firm and patient. If you begin on these principles, you will lead your child easily into the way of humility, obedience, reverence, and love. Without these virtues in his disposition, he is, or sooner or later may become, that often-seen and much-to-be-pitied object in the chaotic home-a "spoiled child"; and this means often a spoiled man or woman. It means lack of self-control; it means a want of reverence for the "powers that be." Since Nature is seeking through every means in her power to teach the lesson that Law only brings order out of chaos, why should parents not work according to her example?

Speaking of governing children, Susan Blow, in her book, says most admirably: "Are you clearly conscious that the method of force means to its victims a life oscillating between slavery and anarchy, while the method of explanation fosters irreverence and conceit, and is practically an appeal to the inexperienced and ignorant child to sit in judgment upon the action of his parents? Not in force, and not in appeals

to reason, but in quickening faith must be sought the point of contact."