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of mind. In the older countries the cases of inherited insanity constitute at least one-third of all the cases recorded. In the lower orders of intelligence the decree of heredity is still more marked. Even one parent markedly weak in mind is sufficient to guarantee a large proportion of imbeciles in his descendants for many generations.

The heredity of the intellectual powers is most noticeable in the general bent of the mind of the offspring. Parents unusually gifted seldom have children more extraordinary than themselves. Particular lines of excellence are often inherited. A good memory may be characteristic of most of the children in some families. Imagination is also apt to distinguish many members of the same family. But the higher and more complex the function the less probable it is that unusual prominence will be inherited in the same or greater degree. The inheritance of strong intellect is proved, but it is doubtful if it is the rule, when the results are measured by attainment in the world of science and letters. The effort required to obtain such recognition is not conducive to health and bodily strength of offspring.

The application of the truths of heredity should be made by the individual teacher and parent. Specific rules and methods have no place in modern schools and homes. They are two-edged and are more dangerous than the proverbial "unloaded gun." In regard to heredity, the function of education is to draw out the possibilities, to restrain the undesirable, and to further the useful tendencies. These results depend entirely upon the forces (physical and spiritual) in the child's environment. We now know enough about education and heredity to warrant a study of their relations by every teacher and by every parent. Accessible references.

Th. Ribot, Heredity.

J. S. Kingsley, in Johnson's Universal Cyclo-
pædia, article Heredity.

A. Weismann, The Germ Plasm.
Numerous articles in the Popular Science

Monthly, for example vol. 44, pages 472 ff.;
vol. 47, pages 388 ff.; vol. 32, pages 688 ff.;
vol. 37, pages 359 ff.; vol. 48, pages 480 ff.
and 617 ff.; vol. 45, pages 175 ff.

A good popular presentation is by Mrs. A. M.
Holmes in the Arena, vol. 9, pages 571 ff.
F. Galton, Hereditary Genius.
F. Galton, Natural Inheritance.
A. R. Wallace, in Arena for January, 1892.
A. R. Wallace, in Fortnightly Review, vol. 59,
pages 490 ff., also 655 ff.

H. B. Orr, A Theory of Development and He-
redity.

II. Only in a slight degree are the changes of a lifetime inherited. We transmit what we receive with but slight modification. And yet in a long time this increment may work wonders. Knowledge, training, education are worth while, but they do not contribute greatly to the equipment of the infants of future generations. We have multiplied our learning many fold since Aristotle's time, but the modern infant is not, E. D. Cope, The Primary Factors of Organic on the average, much superior to the babes of Greece. The advantage of our age is in the rapidity with which we move after birth. And this is due to the implements of modern education, to our schools, our books, and to the en cyclopedic nature of our information.

Evolution.

G. J. Romanes, Darwin and After Darwin.
G. J. Romanes, An Examination of Weismann-
ism.

Guyau, Education and Heredity.

H. K. WOLFE.

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America where we boast of it most. One can third, knowledge of the absolute necessity of hardly find a community where the earnest teachers do not complain of this lack of co-operation. Communities are not uncommon either where the fact that certain teachers are employed is sufficient indication of this lack of interest and co-operation.

People in a vague sort of way expect their children to be trained to obedience in the school and fail ignominiously to train to such obedience in the home. They would not pursue such a policy in the training of a dog. They vaguely expect to have the school train their children to habits of courtesy and yet neglect to make the home an example of courteous living. They expect their children to be taught correct language and yet they themselves violate daily the commonest rules of speech. This is not a matter of rhetoric, but of grammar and common sense and common observation. Parents expect their children to be taught honesty, truth fulness, virtue, and honor in the school, and yet are openly guilty in the presence of their children of little cases of dishonesty, of many white and some slightly colored lies, and neglect all that teaching that can come from the home better than anywhere else, that teaching that makes for pure manhood and womanhood. It is a shame and a sin that in too many cases the home is but a house in which to eat and sleep. Probably the greatest danger in the world to day is the neglect of the children. The curfew ordinance is a most disgraceful confession. The failure of intelligent parents to properly teach and train their children is certainly the greatest obstacle to the progress of American schools. Parents do not realize as do the teachers that the information and language gained by the children on the street out of school hours more than counterbalances the teaching and training given within the school hours. It is evident to any careful observer that the children learn more bad language, more evil habits, on the street from four to nine in the evening than can be counterbalanced in the five school hours. A great course of education should be begun to arouse parents to the evident dangers and to bring about, first, training to obedience in the home; second, good language in the home;

keeping the children at home, in the home, and of making them realize that the average child needs fewer rather than more playmates; fourth, the absolute necessity of parents instructing their own children in certain rules of life, of purity, virtue, and honor, and in those great problems of physical life that are sacred if learned from father or mother, and nothing but evil if learned from playmates.

Province of the minister of religion.

The most imbecile thing in the world to-day is the ignorance and indifference of most ministers to the real problems of the education of children. Usually they content themselves with sermons for adults and allow the devil to continue his work with the boys and the girls, without even protesting to the parents in the home, or from the pulpit. We say continue, because every teacher knows that the average sermon has little or no effect upon the average child, either before or after he may be drawn into the church as a member. It is impossible to select from the unruly and disturbing young people on a certain back row in the gallery, those who are members of the church and those who are "sinners." Who ever heard of a sermon from the pulpit on the training of children? Who ever heard of a minister who talked plainly to his people about the neglect to train their children in good habits, or in the knowledge of the gospel and morality. A minister will talk of the neglected children of the slums or in Africa, when probably one-half the parents within the sound of his voice are uncertain where their children are,-whether in some remote corner of the church or out on the street; whether they do or do not use profane language; whether their boys do or do not use tobacco. And yet these same parents who never have time to counsel with their children sit up and pray that these children may in some peculiar way become Christians, and in some remote time members of the church. Ministers have a work to do and it is not all done when they visit and criticise the schools. It is high time that the powerful force of Christian ministers were turned to the great problem of a better home training of the child.

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ALL CAINE'S new book, The Christian, has done much towards establishing its author's right to the first place among British novelists of the day. Dr. Watson, at least for the moment, drops behind, and Crockett seems to share in the decline of his Scotch compeer. Barrie is manifestly the nearest rival, but nowhere equals the touch, the variety, and the power of the volume now in hand.

The Christian develops the fortunes of John Storm and Glory Quaile, two young souls who sail out from the Isle of Man for Liverpool and London as the story opens. Storm is the son of the Earl of Erin, and nephew of the Prime Minister of England.

"Two years before John's birth the brothers had quarrelled' about a woman. It was John's mother. She had engaged herself to the younger brother, and afterward fallen in love with the elder one. The voice of conscience told her that it was her duty to carry out her engagement, and she did so. Then the voice of conscience took sides with the laws of life and told the lovers that they must renounce each other, and they both did that as well. But the poor girl found it easier to renounce life than love, and after flying to religion as an escape from the conflict between conjugal duty and elemental passion she gave birth to her child and died. She was the daughter of a rich banker, who had come from the soil, and she had been brought up to consider love distinct from marriage. Exchanging wealth for title she found death in the deal. From that time forward Lord Storm con

sidered himself the injured person. He had never cared for his brother, and now he designed to wipe him out. His son would do it. He was the heir to the earldom, for the earl had never married.

"To this end the father devoted his life to the boy's training. All conventional education was wrong in principle. Travel was the great teacher. 'You shall travel as far as the sun,' he said. So the boy was taken through Europe and Asia, and learned something of many languages. He became his father's daily companion, and nowhere the father went was it thought wrong for the boy to go. Conventional morality was considered mawkish. So the boy was taken to the temples of Greece and India, and even to Western casinos and dancing gardens. Before he was twenty he had seen something of nearly everything the world has in it.

"He passed through the world now with eyes open for the privations of the poor, and he saw everything in a new light. Unconsciously he was doing in another way what his mother had done when she flew to religion from stifled passion. He had been brought up as a sort of imperialist democrat, but nów he bettered his father's instructions. England did not want more Parliaments, she wanted more apostles. There was room for an apostle-for a thousand apostleswho, being dead to the world's glory, for its money or its calls, were prepared to do all in Christ's spirit, and to believe that in the renunciation, which was the 'secret' of Jesus, lay the only salvation remaining for the world.

"He tramped through the slums of Melbourne and Sidney, and afterward through the slums of London, returned to the Isle of Man a Christian socialist (to whom all men were commoners and all men were noblemen) and announced to his father his intention of going into the church."

That in substance is the history of John Storm up to the point where this book begins. Glory Quaile is almost an antipodal personality.

"Her father had been the only son of Parson Quaile, and chaplain to the bishop at Bishopscourt. It was there he had met her mother, who was lady's maid to the bishop's wife.

The maid was a bright young Frenchwoman, daughter of a French actress, famous in her day, and of an officer under the Empire, who had never been told of her existence. Shortly after their marriage the chaplain was offered a big missionary station in Africa, and, being a devotee, he clutched at it without fear of the fevers of the coast. But his young French wife was about to become a mother, and she shrank from the perils of his life abroad, so he took her to his father's house at Peel, and bade her farewell for five years.

"He lived four, and during that time they exchanged some letters. His final instructions were sent from Southampton: If it's a boy, call him John (after the Evangelist); and it it's a girl, call her Glory. Glory was a little redheaded witch from the first, with an air of general uncanniness in everything she did and said. Until after she was six there was no believing a word she uttered. At ten

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she was a tomboy, and marched through the town at the head of an army of boys, playing on a comb between her teeth and flying the vicar's handkerchief at the end of his walking-stick. In these days she climbed trees and robbed orchards (generally her own) and imitated boys' voices, and thought it tyranny that she might not wear trousers.

"He [John Storm] had already awakened the young girl in her, and thereafter he awakened the young woman as well. He was her big brother, her master, her lord, her sovereign. If he smiled on her she flushed, and if he frowned she fretted and was afraid. He was a serious person, but she could make him laugh until he screamed. Excepting Byron and 'Sir Charles Grandison,' out of the vicar's library, the only literature she knew was the Bible, the Catechism, and the Church Service, and she used these in common talk with appalling freedom and audacity. The favorite butt of her mimicry was the parish clerk saying responses when he was sleepy.

"The parson: O Lord, open thou our lips' (no response). 'Where are you, Neilus?'

"The clerk (suddenly awakening in the desk below): 'Here I am, your reverence-and our mouth shall show forth thy praise.''

It is pretty evident what kind of a woman Glory will develop into. She holds the master-key to John Storm's destiny. The life of self-immolation that John Storm would fain devote himself to wholly, the life of a fairy worldling that Glory Quaile would fain live fully are in contention from the beginning to the end of The Christian. Storm is too fanatical to take the right use of the world as a gift of God to be thankful for. Glory is too full of the joy of living to give up the world utterly for John's sake. So each misses the existence the other is fitted to complete. But the book is too full of tragic meanings to be spoken of as devoted to these lovers only. In England is found to-day the loftiest renunciation, in England is found to-day also the most degraded selfishness. The solution of the chief problem of social existence in the twentieth century lies in "renunciation" on the part of the higher or more privileged classes for the uplift of the lower. With set purpose The Christian exhibits to us the forces now gathering for the coming battle. It is a book that will be criticized as fervid, but life as it is now lived in the great ganglions of society is even more fervid than here shown. Indifferent folk should avoid this book, for it will irk them. But all real men and women who are partaking directly of the life of the times should read it faithfully. (D. Appleton & Co.; $1.50.)

Another novel, but of very different fiber and texture, is The Forge in the Forest, by Charles G. D. Roberts. This author has published a history of Canada, and here uses over again some of the same materials. It is a story of Acadie after the deportation of its French settlers, being in fact confined to the years 1746, 1747. It has a simple plot, and is told in a stirring and pleasing way. It will help young readers to a clearer notion as to the development of social life in colonial times, and as to the details of the struggle which was waged so bitterly until the capture of Quebec. To older minds the book will bring but temporary or doubtful diversion. There is no clear grasp of character; there is no complete accounting for the chief personal phenomena set forth. To edify, in these days, a novel must reveal new knowledge of life and of the soul, or interpret sentiments and motives common to all men better or more effectually than they have been interpreted hitherto. To do these things the novelist must be an acute and complete observer, and must be able to exhaust his meanings when he attempts to write. Howells is expert in imparting his utmost meanings, but is too nearsighted to espy the highest and the deepest things in human nature. There are many profound observers, many of them outside of literature, who lack power of imparting the secrets they observe, but who, with this gift, might shine. Sienkiewicz, and Thackeray, and James, possess in their degree the double gift which alone makes Shakespeare supreme. The author in this case belongs to the second, or Howells, class. (Sampson, Wolffe and Company; $1.50.)

* **

Among educational books, I am glad to call attention to Europe in the Middle Age, by Dr. Oliver J. Thatcher, and Dr. Ferdinand J. Schwill. It is not a text for high school classes, nor for the mere pedagogue in any grade of work. It is devoted to principles and not to facts, and gathers into a compass of less than 700 pages the results of early as well as recent historical research. The authors have designed this manual especially "for the use of the freshman and sophomore classes in the American college," but it is also well adapted for the general reader who has got beyond thinking of history as mere narrative. The style of the work is not condensed or abstract beyond the point of practicableness for young readers. The following is a fair specimen of the authors' manner.

"Probably about the middle of the fifth century the city of Mecca was founded, although there had been a temple there a long time before. This temple was called, from its shape, the Caaba (Cube), and contained a great black stone which was probably of meteoric origin. It was in the hands

of the family of the Koraischites who had charge of all the religious rites connected with it. They were not priests, however. By collecting all the idols of the country there and establishing ceremonies in connection with them, they had made Mecca the most important city of Arabia. At the same time the various stories connected with Abraham were attached to it. It was said that Hagar and Ishmael had come to this valley of Mecca when driven out by Abraham, and that the well Zemzen, in Mecca, was the one which the angel had pointed out to Hagar when she and her son were about to perish with thirst It was added that Abraham and Ishmael had built the Caaba, and the angel Gabriel had brought them the black stone. This stone had been perfectly white, but it had become black from the sins of the people who had since touched it."

It is of course undesirable to confine work in history to a single manual, and books as well-made as this tempt the teacher to persist in memorizing and recitational methods. The work seems easily to displace the translated and antiquated text-books in recent use. (Scribners; $2.00.)

Haw

The University Publishing Company is issuing a series of English classics of prime interest to teachers and others having to do with books of this kind. The list is well selected and well edited; and the price is less, much less, than is quoted, so far as I know, by other publishers for the same texts. Single numbers, some of them including as high as 184 pp., sell for 124c, double-number issues, 20c. thorne's Wonder Book and Twice-Told Tales, Tennyson's Enoch Arden, Irving's Tales of the Alhambra, Sketch Book and Knickerbocker Stories, Scott's Lady of the Lake, and Longfellow's Evangeline, are representative titles. The plan contemplates the addition of other works used like these in class work, as also the publication of a large list of books, like The Spy, Rob Roy, Ninety-Three, Horse-Shoe Robinson, for supplementary reading. These, being mainly double numbers, are sold at the maximum price of 20c, clothbound, 30c. There seems no reason why with standard literature offered at such cost, any country schoolhouse should fail to have a library. The same house publishes also a children's series, called the Golden-Rod Books, designed to supplement the first reading books, and of equal excellence with the other lists. Discounts from above retail figures are quoted to schools and dealers.

* **

The types made me say some strange things last month in the notice of Quo Vadis, of which I did not see the proof. The author of this work is Henryk Sienkiewicz, not Henry K. In line nine, third paragraph of p. 149, "mistress of love" should be, "mistress of Rome." This work, by the way, will soon be ready in a holiday edition, two volumes, cloth, $6.00.

Some Recent

The republicans in Cuba have elected a new president, Dominago Hendez Capote....Henry W. Sage, the well known benefactor of Cornell University, died recently. Mr. Sage contributed altogether over $1,000,000 to Cornell University....Most of the cotton mills in Fall River, Mass., which had stopped temporarily, started on full time on Aug. 16. In the new Congressional Library, there will be a department filled with books for the blind....A commission in Russia is to consider the question of universal and compul

Events

sory education....The Czar has decided upon the partial abolition of the exile to Sibera for criminals....A forest fire near Anaconda, Montana, has destroyed over 10,000 acres of timber....The American Bar association passed resolutions in favor of international arbitration, and committees were authorized to investigate and report upon forms of legislation to meet the evil of bribery and to provide separate federal judges for district and circuit courts....Seth Low has been nominated by the Citizens' Union for mayor of New

York....Lord Kelvin believes that the time is not far distant when the entire volume of water passing over the Niagara Falls will be utilized for manufacturing purposes.. All France is pleased over the reception accorded President Faure in Russia.... It is reported that the Nestorian Christians have resolved to adopt the doctrine and discipline of the Russian orthodox church....The miners' convention at Columbus, Ohio, Sept. 8-11 decided to close the great coal miners' strike....The Hawaiian Senate is now in session and discussing measures relating to the proposed annexation treaty with the United States....Yellow fever has again broken out in the South, many deaths being reported from several cities in Alabama and Mississippi....Harvard University, together with the Boston Institute of Technology, the Boston Art Museum, the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Homoeopathic Hospital, are to receive $70,000 each under the provisions of the will of the late Henry I. Pierce....The revolution in Nicaraugua has been declared suppressed....Canada and Russia and Japan have appointed expert delegates to attend a conference at Washington on the preservation of seal life. England, of course, has been expected to send a delegate, but the last report is that no

THE MAGAZINES.

The Chautauquan for October.-Awheel in Germany, by Prof. H. E. Northrop, A. M.; Luther's Influence on Literature, by Prof. Dana Carleton Munro, A. M.; The Building of the German Empire, by Hamblen Sears; Sunday Readings, selected by Bishop Vincent; Fake Businesses, by Dr. Ludwig Fuld; Colors of Autumn in Leaf and Flower, by F. Schuyler Mathews; Imperial Germany and Imperial Rome, by Prof. George E. Vincent, Ph. D.; A Gentleman of Dixie (story, chapters VII to X), by Ellen Claire Campbell; Electricity in the Household, by George Heli Guy; GoldFields of Alaska and the Yukon, by Cyrus C. Adams; Two Months' Outing on a Farm, by Theodore L. Flood; Individualism, by President J. F. Goucher; Are Women Hurting the Chances of Men in Business? by Hon. Carroll D. Wright, Ph. D., LL. D.; A Vegetable Patriarch, by Ada Sterling The Fruit Cure, by Felix L. Oswald, M. D.; Little Girls in Factories, by Florence Kelley; The Art of LetterWriting, by Emily Huntington Miller, Current History and Opinion, Talk About Books.

:

Scribner for October.-The Wreck of Greece, by Henry Norman, illustrated from the author's photographs, and with drawings. The Workers, by Walter A. Wyckoff-An Experiment in Reality; III-A Hotel Porter (to be continued), full-page illustration by E. Potthast. Some Golf Pictures, by A. B. Frost, six full-page illustrations. The Business of a Newspaper, by Lincoln Steffens (the conduct of great businesses-sixth paper), illustrations by W. R. Leigh. The Unquiet Sex, by Helen Watterson Moody, second paperWomen's Clubs. "The Durket Sperret," chapters VI-XII, by Sarah Barnwell Elliott, author of "Jerry," (to be concluded in November). The Life of a College Prosessor, by Bliss Perry. The Point of View-Religion in Hard Times, Ineffectual Reserve on the Stage. The Field of Art-A Newly Discovered Venus, with illustrations. About the World-Klondike Gold Discoveries, Telegraphing Without Wires, The British Navy.

The October Atlantic (Anniversary.)-Two Principles in American Fiction, by James Lane Allen, author of "A Kentucky Cardinal," "The Choir Invisible," etc. The French Mastery of Style, by Ferdinand Brunetiere, editor of the "Revue des Deux Mondes." Caleb West.-A novel, I-IV, by F. Hopkinson Smith, author of "Tom Grogan," etc. Twenty-five Years' Progress in Equatorial Africa, by Henry M. Stanley, author of "In Darkest Africa." The Latest Discoveries Touching the History of the Universe, by Dr. T. J. J. See, author of "Researches on the Evolution of the Stellar Systems." "A Russian Experiment in Self-Government, by George Kennan, author of "Siberia and the Exile

delegate will be sent because Russia and Japan have been asked to the conference....T. V. Powderly, commissioner of immigration, is planning methods to keep anarchists out of the country....President Diaz, of Mexico, narrowly escaped assassination while in a parade. The assassin was murdered by the mob at the instigation of the chief of police, who, after being arrested, committed suicide....A school building in New Orleans was selected by the board of health as a hospital building, but the indignant citizens immediately set the building on fire....The present harvest in Ireland is the worst since 1879, and a famine is threatened.... United States Minister Woodford presented at the Court of Spain and submits a letter from this government pertaining to affairs in Cuba. Much excitement and anger felt by Spain ....Our state department has been informed that as a result of the Turkish occupation of Thessaly there are now over one hundred thousand Thessalian refugees scattered throughout Greece....It has been reported that the Chinese have subjugated Thibet and organized a government with Chinese administrators....The Secretary of War has sent a company of soldiers to Alaska to preserve order.

System." Gabrielle D'Annunzio, the Novelist, by Henry D. Sedgwick, Jr. Martha's Lady, by Sarah Orne Jewett, author of "The Country of the Pointed Firs.' The Upward Movement of Chicago, by Henry B. Fuller, author of "With the Procession,' "The Cliff-dwellers,' etc. The Training of Teachers: the Old Point of View, and the New, by Frederick Burk, of Clark University. Penelope's Progress in Scotland, by Kate Douglas Wiggin, author of Marm Lisa," etc. Forty Years of the Atlantic Monthly. Poems, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Edmund Clarence Stedman, and Stuart Sterne.

PUBLISHER'S ANNOUNCEMENT.

1. This magazine is the official organ of the Nebraska Department of Public Instruction, the Nebraska State Teachers' Association, The Nebraska State Teachers' and Pupils' Reading Circle. It has been adopted as the source for material for educational courses of the Nebraska Federation of Women's Clubs. It does not desire nor will it accept any recognition except for educational material from any other state or national organization.

2. The subscription price is $1.50 in advance. In clubs of ten or more $1.25.

3. The magazine will be stopped at expiration of subscription.

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J. H. MILLER, Publisher,
Lincoln, Neb.

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