with an earnest endeavor to excel in its practice, tinually harassed by the thought that fortune and that, with other necessary qualifications to has been unkind to them in not making them sustain him, he will meet with a measure of governors, or justices of the peace, instead of merited and gratifying success. Good men will schoolmasters. Occasionally they are borne praise him; the children who have been guided away upon the wings of fancy to dally with by his hand, like the children of a good mother, some new aspiration not born of the schoolwill rise up and call him blessed; his own heart room,-one of which is that the common school will whisper, Well done! system has been abolished, and their pay orderBut, if the young teacher enters the school-ed to run on? Hard is their fate. They do not room with a negative answer to our question follow teaching as a profession; it follows them. upon his lips-if the desire to obtain a fair The pupils of a teacher of this class generally salary without having to work very hard for it, have a good time, intellectually and physically. forms the key-note to his professional inspira- They are not overtasked with study, nor is the tion- who will say that the right man is in the teacher so ill-natured as to prohibit a little whisright place! How can he bend all the energies pering while he is looking over the village paof his mind and body to the accomplishment of per or a copy of the New York Ledger. Hapthe great work set before him, if he resolve at pily for the pupils, their good time does not last the outset of his teaching experience that, in a long. Teachers by accident, generally fill short professional sense, the school-room shall not be engagements. his continuing city! How can he truly love his But it is not only with reference to the good school, if he has determined, in advance of his of his expected pupils that the young teacher entrance upon its duties, that he will abandon should at once meet and answer the question it the moment his eager vision discerns some- under consideration. He should do so with rething promising greater pecuniary reward! It ference to his own good. As has been already needs no remark of ours to convince the reader intimated, to make teaching your calling or prothat a school so taught must prove to be a fail-fession, if duly impressed with the magnitude ure in the highest and best sense of its organiza- of its responsibilities and inspired with a love tion. There may be partial progress by the pu- for the good that it will enable you to do, is pils, but the animus of the teacher is not the honorable in man or woman. To teach school true afflatus, and in the nature of things true merely because it pays to do so, is dishonorable progress will still be wanting. And, when the and mean. To teach school because you happen good that should be done by a faithful teacher to find yourself in a school-room and don't exand the evil that may be done by an unfaith- actly know how you got there, is ridiculous. ful one, are taken into consideration, it cannot As it is proposed in this article, and in the artibe regarded as less than flagrant and inexcusable cles which may follow it, to address only those turpitude for a teacher to commence his work who belong to the first class here named, or with no higher conception of his mission than who hesitate about entering it, the gentlemen that which relates to dollars and cents and the who belong to the other classes will henceforth personal benefits they will secure to him. Men not occupy our attention. And now, my young sometimes preach the Gospel of Peace because it friend of the honorable purpose, a few words is respectable to do so, or because their preach-in your private ear: ing brings with it a competence, but Heaven is closed to all their prayers and their hearers feed upon husks. How much less is he to be censured who, from mercenary motives, undertakes the instruction of a congregation of youth And how much less harm does he do !

I take it for granted that you have passed that age when, in the spirit of the Roman custom, the gown of youth is put off and the gown of strength and manhood put on. Every young man should choose a profession or calling when he changes his gown, and to teach school is to A few teachers may here and there be found practice one of the noblest professions. If, then, who do not possess sufficient decision of char- upon arriving at the age of manly responsibility, acter to enable them to determine the question you find yourself on the threshold of a schoolwe have presented. They enter the school-room room of which you have serious thoughts of because they find the door open, and continue being chosen "master," it becomes your duty there in a state of irresolution and inaction, to ask yourself the question, Do I intend to until some power which they have not evoked make teaching my profession? In all probabilipushes them out of it. While in it they are con- ty, as is the decision of that moment so will be

your destiny for life. "The most important lihood in any legitimate profession or calling. thing in life is the choice of a profession," wrote But, whatever you do, having determined in the good Pascal. Every man is, under Provi- which direction your duty lies, set about its perdence, the builder of his own fortunes. One formance immediately. Waste no time in idle false step may dissipate all the bright prospects lounging or foolish waiting for something to turn of youth; whereas, a step in the right direction up. Be sure you're right and then go ahead. will send the youthful spirit bounding on the With a clear head, a pure heart, a firm purpose way to honor and usefulness. It is for you to and a strong faith in yourself, launch your own canoe and paddle it bravely to the end.

determine whether to teach school would be to take a right step or a wrong one. If you are I assume that you have decided to teach wise you will not venture upon the profession school for your profession, and, for the present, of school teaching without at least understand- one of the common schools of Pensylvania. Going some of its cardinal requirements and your ethe said: I love God and little children." own qualifications to meet them. Be that your motto, as you enter the schoolEvery calling in life has its own peculiar char-room and for the first time address your pupils. acteristics, and requires in those who would embrace it the possession of corresponding qualifi

J. M. S.

Or the beautiful comet lately visible in our hea

"The train extends over an arc of one hundred

and six degrees (106) from the head of Ursa Major to a point ten degrees beyond Alpha Ophinchi. Besides this long, narrow ray, projected almost in a straight line from the nucleus, a mass of diffuse light sweeps faintly towards the stars in the tail of Ursa Major. This is intersected by two or three faint straight rays not discernible to the naked eye.

"The vicinity of the nucleus resembles in its aspect, through the telescope, the famous comet of 1858, showing three or four misty envelopes.

cations. Scientific attainments, aptness to teach, vens, which seems to come from a strange region, genius for command, industry, patience, and and of which so little is at present understood, love for the work, are the leading requisites of Prof. Boud, of Cambridge Observatory, writes as a good teacher. If you find that you possess follows: these, and have at the same time concluded that "The magnificent comet which has suddenly you can be contented with a teacher's honors come in view, has taken astronomers, with the and a teacher's pay, do not hesitate to enter the rest of the world, by surprise. It is not the exprofession and devote to it all the talents God pected comet of 1264 and 1556, or any whose rehas given you. But if, after a careful study of turn has been anticipated. the teacher's duties and a searching look into your own heart, you discover that you do not possess the essential qualifications we have mentioned, and that you could not be contented with a teacher's lot, at once turn your back upon the school-room you had thought to enter, and seek elsewhere for honorable employment of your hands, your head and your heart. Do not, under any consideration, do violence to the better impulses of your nature, and lasting injury to that portion of the rising generation which would come under your influence, by entering a profession for which you possess no special qualifications and which you do not love for its own sake. Justice to yourself, the respect of community and the approbation of your own conscience require that you should in A Texas editor, in a dispute with his neighbor this matter, as in all other circumstances in life about a political election, offers to bet a sea-serwhich are under your control, do that which is pent upon the result. The neighbor declines this, right. It may be that your forte-for every but says he is quite willing to go twenty large alliman has his forte - lies in the law, civil engi- gators. They seem to have rather curious kinds neering, literature, the fine arts, agriculture, of a circulating medium in those parts.

66

Drawings of the appearance of the comet to the naked eye, with the neighboring stars carefully sketched, have a scientific value, and I should be glad to receive such from any one who may communicate them. The date and the time when the drawing was made should be noted."

Natural Science.

COMMUNICATIONS for this Department should be ad| dressed to I. F. CADY, Warren.

For the Schoolmaster.
The Brook.

- es

ness. Hence I love to revisit those old scenes, and, as it were, live over some of my boyish hours; to leap across the brook where I used to go mid fog and rain to beguile the speckled trout, and start in alarm at the fierce-looking dragon fly, that I have since learned is so perfectly harmless, and carry home a bouquet graced with the superb scarlet of the Cardinal flower; where in my very child

ABOUT a year since it was my privilege to visit hood I had learned to trace the development of the Old Homestead. Who does not love to make the tadpole, from the small black egg imbedded in such a visit? and who, on reflection, will not allow its rope of slime, through its successive changes, that many of his most valuable life-lessons as it passed from its habits of a fish, with gills and pecially if that homestead is in the country-were tail, to the use of its newly acquired feet, until it treasured there, with nature within him and around had become a perfect frog. I did not then know, him for his teacher? Sir Humphry Davy used to what I have since learned, that tadpoles are notocongratulate himself that he was "left much to rious cannibals. But in my observations upon the himself" in his boyhood, and that he was confined tadpoles, and in my experiments in making mudto no particular routine of study. To this circum- pies, I discovered many other denizens of the stance he attributes, to a great extent, the special brook which I have found interesting subjects for course which he pursued in his after life and his study since. success in it. And whoever has read Hugh Miller's only one of which would succeed in extracting blood. entertaining and instructive work, "My Schools This variety were excellent swimmers. and Schoolmasters," will hardly fail to concede to The other were always found sticking upon stones, him what Sir H. Davy claims for himself. It tortoises, frogs and other objects, and were dismay be said that these men were exceptions to the gengusting in their aspect. Perhaps some of my eral rule; that their own native tastes and instincts readers may entertain the same opinion of the whole race. were to them a law. To some extent, doubtless, If so, let us not quarrel; only let me

may

man leach.

I found two varieties of the leach,

it was so. But if nature did much for them, much hope that they will not reject the first good opporwas also done for them by what we call circum-tunity that may offer for examining the quality of stances; and peculiar or favorable as these the lancets which they employ in their surgical have been, they could have availed but little in giv-operations. Mind, I have no reference to the huing a bent to character, or in shaping any peculiar His lancets, under the microscope, development, had they not been freely enjoyed. will bear no comparison in delicacy and temper I would not be understood to disparage or under- with those of the nice little surgeon of the brook. value the culture and discipline of our schools. But I used to find other creatures and other Far from this. But when I reflect how large a things in the brook and on its banks. There were proportion of our most original and scientific men several varieties of small shell-fish, mostly unihave grown up in the country, in, perhaps, straight- valves, some white, some brown and some of other ened circumstances, and with what are usually con- colors. I had not learned to classify them then. sidered meagre educational advantages, I find a Then there was a species of water lizard, a pretty, doubt flitting across my mind whether, after all, active little animal; but the boys-how many curimore of the natural and less of the artificial in our ous notions find their way into the heads of the educational systems would not secure for our youth boys they used to denominate the dragon flies a fuller, more valuable and more efficient develop-"Devil's darning-needles, ' " and said that they ment. For at least three months of the twelve, I would sew up people's eyes - but the boys said incline to believe that our pupils would be more that the bite of the lizards, "evits," they called benefitted physically, intellectually and morally by them, was certain death. They might have said the spontaneous and unsystematic study of trees, the same of a carrot, with equal truth. Probably rocks, green fields and changing skies, birds, quad- they first got the notion from some ignorant granrupeds, butterflies, caterpillars and tad-poles, than dam, or from some one who took pleasure in exby all the books that could be thumbed and dog-citing their fears. And so now of multitudes, eared in twice the time by the manipulation of the both old and young, who suffer themselves to be school-room under the most judicious and faithful greatly terrified at the presence of some little, of pedagogues. Call it fancy or what you may; I harmless serpent. I well remember how the old ascribe to such sources some of the lessons that woman, that as literally "lived under the hill" have stood me best in stead, amid the earnest and as an old woman conveniently can, who told me laborious toil of later years. I would not lightly how dreadfully poisonous the common grass snake, part with the simple tastes developed in child- whose color is of such a glossy green as to make hood's country scenes, - - those tastes that have him "a thing of beauty" in spite of his form acopened for me sources of pleasure for what would cursed, was, when he did bite! Appropos the otherwise have proved hours of anxiety and weari- question, "Who struck Billy Paterson?" I have

yet to learn from reliable authority, that any ven- direction from those issuing from the eastern slope. omous serpent except the rattlesnake is found in A knowledge of these facts prepared me for a New England and these last have become, at clearer understanding of several important fealeast for those who do not read Latin, "raræ aves.' tures in physical geography, when I came to finalThe brook also furnished two species of water ly study the subject, than any mere written debeetles; one of an elliptical shape with glossy scription or pictorial illustration could have possiwing covers of black, the other of a slender elong-bly done. In fact it was just the kind of knowated shape without wings, and having backs of a ledge to render these intelligible and interesting. dusky blackish brown, and the under side of their It has since been my privilege on the same spot,― bodies white. It was a wonder to me how these by the side of the same crystal fountain, where, last could skip so easily, with their feet at the ex- at the base of the tall granite rock, in the birch tremity of their long legs, resting upon the surface trees' shade, I had often, in boyhood, slaked the of the water as though it had been of glass. The thirst of a sultry summer's day, and from the top former would glide rapidly over the surface, in any of the same mountain where, through the first teldirection, without any perceptible means of loco-escope that I had ever seen, I had been able to motion. They seem to have been constructed for count the window panes in the church at Hardwar times, with their paddles beneath. wick, thirty miles away, and to descry old Wachu

The brook also contained " creeping things, in- set in the dim distance, -to direct, as I hope, numerable." There were the serpulæ, that lived more successfully the thoughts of my own youthin crystal houses, which they constructed for them- ful son into these interesting and useful channels, selves from fragments of variously colored quartz through which my own have been wont to flow stone, chiefly white, which had become disintegrat- with pleasure that never fails.

ed and ground down from the seams of broken rocks by the continual action of the elements. The grinding process had been such as to leave but occasional traces of the original crystaline forms, but these were still apparent in the unopened seams of the stones in the bed of the brook, and those projecting from its banks. Such observations as these gave me my first notions of mineralogy and geology; so that while I was still a boy

I contrived to procure a book upon each of these subjects to gratify still farther my curiosity, and extend the limits of my knowledge. When some

On my last visit to the old brook, I set myself upon a new series of observations. I subjected the muddy water from the bottom of its still pools to examination with the microscope, and found it teeming with life. Time and space would fail me to describe the various forms that came to view. Some of them appeared truly formidable, so that I could easily forgive the sudden exclamation of

alarm that escaped from the lips of some of my fair friends before they had time to consider that they were looking at mere mites, the like of which cubes of Pyrites were found in a neighboring stone they might swallow, with decided relish, in the next goblet of water from the cool spring, simply quarry I found its only claim to the name of gold because they were ignorant of the presence of such was that of "Fool's Gold." inhabitants in their favorite beverage. Some of The brook also gave me my earliest conception the sediment from the bed of the old brook I preof what is termed a "water-shed." Its springs served in a bottle and brought to my Rhode Island were furnished by a chain of hills, the highest of home. This I have since examined, and have which attained an elevation of one-fourth of a mile, and was appropriately dignified with the title of mountain. From a spring near the southeastern base of the mountain, whose eastern declivity was very steep, which bubbled up from beneath a rock whose perpendicular face then seemed forty feet high, but has now apparently diminished to scarcely more than fifteen, overshadowed with birch and maple, the little brook had its origin. Receiving

found that it contains more than a dozen varieties of microscopic shell-fish. Many of them are exdian's birch canoe, but infinitely more graceful. quisitely beautiful. Some have the form of an InMany of them are covered with flutings of almost inconceivable delicacy, surpassing the most beautiful of parlor ornaments. All these shells are composed of silex, and hence are indestructible in

acids. But here must end my “indigested" story

of the brook.

I. F. C.

several tributaries as it flowed southward, five miles below it received the name of Willimantic, which latter finds its way into the Thames, and finally reaches Long Island Sound. But a few THE Report of the Superintendent of Public rods from this spring - less than a fourth of a Schools of New Bedford has just come to our tamile - another furnishes the beginning of a stream ble. It evinces rare ability on the part of the auwhich falls into the Chicopee, and thus also finds thor, as well as a real and living interest in the its way first by a northerly course, then westward, great cause of public instruction in that goodly and finally southward into the same sound, ming- city. He boldly states the truth without fear of led in the accumulated waters of the Connecticut. offence to any sect or class of people. We would On the westward of the range of hills alluded to like to make extracts, but space forbids in the I knew that several brooks flowed in a different present number.

Mathematics.

COMMUNICATIONS for this Department, if relating to the higher branches, should be addressed to J. M. Ross, Lonsdale; otherwise to N. W. DEMUNN, Providence.

For the Schoolmaster.

Ir is an interesting problem to determine what portion of the Earth's surface is visible from any given height, and one so simple as to be within the comprehension of any of our mathematical read

ers.

E

F

D

Let DHOE be a great section of the sphere, and V a position of the eye in the same plane. Draw tangents VD, VO, and VDO is a section of what is called the visual cone. DO represents the circle of contact, and is the boundary between the

visible and the invisible And so it would go on increasing as the distance portions of the surface. increases, and approaching one-half, but never Put radius CO=r, and equaling it. the distance of the eye from the centre CV. We shall first show that the visible zone DEO is to the invisible zone DHO as x-r: x+r.

H

But may, of course, be any number, whole or fractional, and of any unit of measure, r being of the same denomination. When we view a heavenly body, as the Sun or Moon, we never see quite will ena

By similar triangles COV, CFO, x:r::r:—=CF. half the surface. This formula,

2x

expresses the ratio of the visible to r— r

x + r

= .49774, which is the fractional part

the invisible zone; but it can never become a ra- of her surface visible.
tio of equality, which is evident both from the
form of the expression and the nature of the case.

For greater convenience, we will change this the Moon; therefore, putting x = 60, formula into another, which shall express what

part of the whole surface is visible, thus: add the .49+; hence the lunarians see only about fortwo terms of the ratio for a denominator, and re-ty-nine-hundredths of the surface of the Earth. tain the numerator; but if we wish to express the No account is taken in this article of the oblateratio of the invisible part to the whole surface, ness of the Earth, etc. take the denominator for a new numerator, thus: