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them. It all depends on knowing how. One resorts to diversion in overcoming a belligerent child; another tries amusement; another "breaks down all opposition" by kindness. It would be strange that a teacher or a parent could not out-general a child and conquer him without resorting to violence.

Children of different dispositions are found in the same family. One child, taking after the father, will be brave, curt, plucky, positive, proud, persevering and rash. Another child, resembling the mother, will be meek, timid, sensitive, submissive, magnanimous and sympathetical. Another child may resemble the parents in about equal degree, and will be a happy medium of the two; will be less brave than the father and less timid than the mother; and we can imagine a combination often seen in the same family-one child resembling largely the father, and in a medium degree the mother; and another resembling largely the mother, but moderately the father. Thus there may be five children in one family, no two of whom would be so nearly alike that the same treatment would produce similar results in each.

The child with the meek and timid, tender and sensitive nature, would be found with a broad head outward from the crown on each side, in the region of caution, and well developed in the middle of the top-head, in the region of veneration. At the crown of the head, also, there would be flatness, where selfcsteem, if large, would round it out. The head would also be narrow in the region of the ears, where combativeness and destructiveness are located.

A glance at such a head teaches at once that the child is to be tenderly and considerately treated; is not to be harshly or rashly spoken to; that subjects involving discipline or reproof should be carefully and quietly suggested, rather than peremptorily and recklessly urged in a mandatory spirit.

We have seen children of that stamp boisterously addressed in school, or by inconsiderate parents or nurses, when the little thing would tremble, turn first red and then pale; and become so flustered in mind as not to know the truth or how to utter it, if it was remembered, and the child would stammer and contradict himself, and therefore be charged with all manner of duplicity and depravity. On the contrary, a gentle suggestion to such a child would have been all-sufficient to restore it to rectitude of conduct and awaken its lasting confidence and love toward its parent or teacher.

Such children need encouragement; should never be talked to about real or imaginary dangers. People may be wiser to-day than they were forty years ago, relative to frightening little ones in respect to the dark, witches and malign agencies, but we now occasionally hear such talk, even in intelligent and respectable families.

--Reader, if you are not a subscriber to THE ECLECTIC TEACHER, Consider this number as a messenger to solicit your subscription, and forward your address, with one dollar. Your patronage and influence is part of our success. The price of a single subscription may be sent by mail at our risk.

-Could it be believed that a child should be forced to learn the rudiments of a language that he is never to use, and neglect writing a good hand and casting accounts?-Locke.

WAYS OF SAYING "YES."

BY M. B. C. SLADE.

Characters-Dr. Twist, the School Committeeman; Miss Belle, the teacher; Scholars-four boys, two girls.

Scene-A school-room. Miss Belle seated at her desk; scholars laughing and talking outside the open door; Dr. Twist, knocking at the door.

Miss B. (opening the door): Good morning, Dr. Twist, I'm sure it is a pity My school is just dismissed, since you are school committee.

Dr. Twist (entering): Never mind, my dear Miss Belle, another time will do ; I like it just as well, to make my call on you.

Miss B.: Loss to my girls and boys, but I shall be the winner;

You must excuse their noise, so many stay to dinner.
Be seated, Doctor.

Dr. T. (taking a seat): Thanks. Have you a pleasant place?

Miss B.: Yes; I like the teacher's rank. I shall serve here all my days.

Dr. T.: Perhaps not so, Miss Belle; it may, ere long, be voted

You fill this place so well, you ought to be promoted.

How do you find the school?

Miss B.: Oh, Doctor, they are queer,

They do pronounce so strangely out in the country here;
For instance, it is funny-you'd think so, too, I guess-
The many different ways they have of saying yes.

Dr. T.:

Call them and questions ask; my interest is up.
Miss B.: John Jones, your morning task, have you prepared it?
John J. (enters, cap in hand, bows, replies, goes out):

Yup.

Dr. T.:

Ha ha! Have in another, that little Duchman raw.
Miss B.: Peter Boggle, is your mother a little better?
Peter B. (enters, replies, retires,):

Yaw!

Dr. T.: Ask next, yon black-eyed gipsey, that stands the window near.
Miss B.: Bessie Lee, do you like apples, would you like to have one?
Bessie L. (enters, takes an apple, answers and retires,)
Miss B.:

Ye-ah!

I'll call my little Pad, who is never known to miss,
Do you love books, my lad? Tell me, truly.
Pad (enters, answers, retires,):

Miss B.:

Faix, ma'am, Yis!

Come here, you curly pate, do you want to be a Mayor,
Or a President so great, or a School Committee?
Small boy (enters, replies very slowly):

Dr. T.:

A-er!

They give us so much fun they certainly repay us. Miss B.: Kate, is your problem done, have you the answer?

Kate (enters, replies, retires):

A-us!

Miss B. (closing the door): Is it not a curious class—a comic recitation?

Dr. T.: Yes; and it surely has my official approbation.

Will you my pupil be, while I a question ask?

Will you pronounce for me if I give you the task?

Miss B.: Of course, if all the rest have not been fully ample,
I'll do my very best to please with my example.

Dr. T.:

I came to seek a wife. If now my suit I press,
Will you leave your school for life? What is your answer?
Miss B. (emphatically):

Yes? -New England Educational Journal.

A WORD FOR THE GIRLS.

THE

BY M. C. FAIRMAN.

IERE was a coarser fiber in those wives and maidens of old English birth and breeding than in their fair descendants, separated from them by a series of six or seven generations; for throughout that chain of ancestry every successive mother has transmitted to her child a fainter bloom, a more delicate and briefer beauty, and a slighter physical frame, if not a character of less force and solidity than her own.

Our inimitable Hawthorne has told us this sad truth so gracefully that, at first, we hardly recognize it as a fact to be deplored. And we fear it would be difficult to convince some of these "fair descendants" that "a faint blood" and slight physical frame are not the things of all others to be most earnestly desired and eagerly sought for; not content with their fatal heritage, the labor to increase it, working with a perseverance so wonderful, enduring self-inflicted tortures with a fortitude so superhuman, one is tempted to think them inspired by the Prince of Darkness. Who but he could give a woman, whose corsets are evidently bisecting her, strength to smile serenely and say sweetly, "O, yes, I am perfectly comfortable. I never wear them tight !”

It is a fearful truth that the majority of American women are nervous, fretful, helpless invalids-made so, in most cases, by their wicked violations of God's physical laws.

Would that they alone were the sufferers. But the evil that they do lives after them in their frail, delicate children. And what hope is there for the offspring of these sick and silly mothers, if, in school, they are not the most practical and important of all the natural sciences? From whom but their teacher can they gain the knowledge that will enable them to make the most of their small stock of vital power?

If the boy could learn but one, it were better for him to learn hygiene than arithmetic. A knowledge of the latter science might help him earn his "meat.” The practice of the former would assuredly help him retain the life that is more than meat. The customs of society are in his favor. Teach him the fundamental laws of his being, and how to wisely direct the self-protective instincts of his kind, and his chances for health and happiness are comparatively good. For the little girl, hers is a more evil case, yet not beyond the aid of the wise and faithful teacher. And just here let me call to mind the oft-repeated truism, “Examples educate more than precepts." If the pupils see the teacher sacrificing health and comfort to vanity and fashion, the most valuable advice will be well nigh thrown away. But, if the teacher possess what every true teacher

must, to be successful, a sound mind in a sound body, she may be the means of doing an incalculable amount of good.

The frail little girls may be taught to love the pure air and bright sunshine so well that not even the fear of freckles shall make them hide their faces from it. They can learn to keenly enjoy the healthful exercise they are so prone to neglect. They can learn enough of the nature and functions of the digestive organs to realize that chalk and slate pencils are not their natural aliment; and to prevent them "when they come to have homes of their own" from preparing "messes" almost as indigestible, as food for their families. They can be so thoroughly imbued with the knowledge that cleanliness is verily akin to godliness, that it shall be a blessing to them all the days of their life. And they can be taught that clothing should be a comfort and not a torture, and that the women who believe in fitting girls to their dresses, are suffering from a deplorable hallucination. They can be taught that real grace and beauty cannot exist without health. They can be made to know there is no happiness without this priceless treasure, and to realize that that will not sacrifice their all on the altar of vanity, when school-days are ended.-New England Journal of Education.

HOW TO USE TEACHERS' INSTITUTES.

First. Take a note-book and pencil with you to the Institute.

Second. Make a careful study of your own deficiencies as a teacher, and write down the supposed remedy for your admitted defects.

Third. Go early to the Institute, and remain until its close.
Fourth. Be punctual at each and every exercise of the Institute.
Fifth. Give close attention to the exercises.

Sixth. Make a mental comparison of each speaker's matter and method, with
your own idea of what should be said, and how it should be said.
Seventh. Behave as you think the other members should behave.
Eighth. Behave as you desire your own pupils to behave in school.

Ninth. At the proper time ask questions upon those topics about which you desire to know more.

Tenth. Pay special attention to those exercises which relate to your admitted defects.

Eleventh. Be willing to do anything requested by the instructors, and to aid in making a good Institute.

Twelfth. Use your note-book freely and judiciously.

Thirteenth. Enter in it such questions and topics as you desire to examine more fully.

Fourteenth. Seek to learn how to use your opportunities to better advantage. Fifteenth. Strive to learn how to get your pupils to study more.

Sixteenth. Endeavor to learn how to get your pupils to study in a better

manner.

Seventeenth. Talk freely and frankly with other teachers during the recesses. Eighteenth. Review the more important exercises between the sessions. Nineteenth. Write out at length such suggestions as you decide to adopt. Twentieth. At the close of the Institute make and write out an estimate of

the value of the whole session to you, and the influence it will have upon your teaching.

Twenty-first. Remember that you are personally responsible, to some extent, for a good Institute.

Twenty-second. Remember that the amount of good you receive from the Institute will depend entirely upon yourself.—J. A. Cooper, Principal State Normal, Edinboro, Pennsylvania.

THE TEACHER'S KNOWLEDGE.

TEACHER whose acquirements are limited to the text books he uses, can

A never achieve conducting recitations.

master," says Guizot, "must know more than he is called upon to teach, in order that he may teach with intelligence and taste." It is a question worthy of consideration whether the ambition and love of study inspired in a class by a scholarly, skillful and enthusiastic teacher are not worth more to the pupils than all the studying they are able to do. What is more contagious than example? What is more glorious than a noble example as an inspiration to worthy deeds? The teacher who does not show that he can go beyond the text book in his search after truth, and enrich the knowledge which his pupils have acquired by copious additions to it from his own well furnished store-house, is lacking in the first element of power in his great work. This fact, one of the true secrets of power in teaching. It secures the confidence, it arouses the interest, it commands the respect and admiration of the class, and supplies the most needful conditions to its progress. Hence, let the teacher ever go before his pupils in the class-room full of his subject, all aglow with its spirit, ready to meet every difficulty, to answer every objection, and supply every omission which may arise in the course of the sharp drill that is to follow.-Minnesota Teacher.

is, in

-The subscription price of THE ECLECTIC TEACHER is but a little more than half that of any other educational journal, yet you get the essence of all the papers from the ablest writers of the country. One copy, one year, one dollar; six copies for five dollars. The peculiar character of the journal commends itself at once to thousands of teachers in all parts of the country.

-In teaching children, especially boys, there is danger that teachers will forget that they are likeneses of God himself. Especially those that see them in their "lost estate," liars, and not ashamed of it; thieves, and glorying in it; filthy in word and person, and loving it. In dealing with this class the experienced teacher knows that counsel is called "preaching" and softness of heart "greenness," she must improve them-but How. We believe no question has received more attention from the conscientious teacher than this. It is easy to ignore the moral and esthetic side, and it is generally done; but it is wrong,nay, positively inhuman, to omit the greater and do the less.-New York School Journal.

-The common fluency of speech in many men and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter and a scarcity of words; for whoever is a master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt to hesitate upon the choice of both.

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