EDITOR'S DEPARTMENT. Robert Allyn, Editor. Sincerity. AMONG all the qualities or attributes that give value to the character, none exceeds in real worth and importance or in its power to give influence, that which we commonly name SINCERITY. The word is from the Latin, and it is undoubtedly a compound of sine and cera, meaning without wax. It is by no means difficult to trace the origin of its present signification, and if the "history of a word is often," as Coleridge truly says, "of more consequence to mankind than the history of a campaign," surely we need make no apology for what we shall say, although it may by no means be new to all our readers. can destroy it, or do anything worse than bring upon it a slight temporary suspicion. For this reason it is that the insincere man is always distrusted. Everybody feels that there is something in his nature, however good he may seem to-day, that leads directly to corruption. He is not made of one single simple substance composed of homogeneous and harmonious elements, that cannot ferment and decompose; but he is made up of qualities different and often antagonistic, always tending to decay or disease. There is a contrast between the sincere and the insincere man as striking as there is between the purest and most highly polished steel, and the common sort of pig iron, the first can be made to rust and corrode only with difficulty and under circumstances the most unfavorable, while the lat ter can by no human art be kept bright and sound. The one is without impurity, the other is full of it. Therefore it was that we said sincerity is one of the most important of human virtues or graces. It will make the man's character shine, and will enable him to ward off evil influences and to escape contamination on a thousand occasions where other men would be destroyed. But the From the very beginning children have been born, as now, with each "a sweet tooth" in his head; and these sweet teeth are not among the number of those that ache and get pulled with such agony. Hence men as well as children have always loved sweet things; and to compare anything to honey for sweetness has been the height of praise. Sugar was unknown to the an-insincere man has ten thousand points on the cients, and honey was almost the only sweet they could enjoy. But honey impure, filled with bits of wax and with the dead young of the bees, would be exceedingly annoying. When a person had heard of honey, and had fixed his thoughts on its delicious sweetness till his mouth was wa tering, and then should be offered such filthy, waxy, dirty honey, he would be plunged from anticipated felicity at once into the agony of disgust. Such would be able to appreciate the meaning of sine cera applied to the word honey; and nobody who does not understand this history in whole or in part, can fully know the meaning of SINCERITY. It means, therefore, in a man, that his good qualities, whatever they may be, are pure, unalloyed, sweet, and precisely what they are held out to be. Where you look for honey, you do not find wax, or worse. Where you look for truth, you do not find falsehood or equivocation. Where you expect honesty, you do not find fraud and deception. But everything is as it ought to be. All is pure and of one simple material. Sincerity, then, is therefore never guilty of passing off for one thing what it knows to be another. But again, it is opposed to all base mixtures, is simple, and hence lasting. Now honey with wax or impurities cannot be kept long without fermentation and decay. But when completely pure and unadulterated, it may be preserved a long time. So of the man's character. Make it sincere without wax or impurity-and no trial outside to attract the evil and to court harm, and within he has innumerable sources of corruption all working against the life of his soul. He must sooner or later fall a prey to these, and his memory must be offensive to all who know him. Sincerity is of the first importance to the young. For if a person is ever so much in error, if he be only sincere, there is hope of him. Not that error will do the sincere man no harm. By no means. Error, even sincerely held, will be extremely damaging to any one. But a man sincere is likely to embrace the truth whenever he sees it. On the contrary, an insincere man is injured even by his attempts to follow the truth, and is morally killed by following error. If this quality of sincerity is so important to the young, how much more so is it to those who teach the young! If the young ought to learn the things that they are to practice when they become men, how necessary that a teacher should be all that he attempts to make his pupils to be! An insincere, heartless, unconscientious teacher is worse than a nuisance in a school room, and he ought to be ashamed of himself for thinking of bringing his soulless body into the presence of warm-hearted, unsuspecting youth. SCHOOL COMMITTEES AND HOUSEKEEPERS are referred to the advertisement of Wm. H. Fenner & Co., who are agents for the sale of CHILSON'S NEW CONE FURNACE. Good Reading. THERE is not another school accomplishment, acquisition, attainment, acquirement, art, or grace, no matter what it may be, that is really so elegant and so capable of elegant and pleasing use, as the ability to read easily, naturally, gracefully, and intelligibly. We place it beyond à comparison with the other R.'s, Writing and Cyphering," by a long way; and as to singing and playing the pianoforte, fashionable as these are and really useful, it is far beyond them. To be able to read well, what is it? Why to be able to look on a page of letters, made by the spell of a master genius to be full of something better than the rich notes of the organ's sublime music, full of the high thoughts and kindling emotions of divine truth, and to translate those originally unmeaning marks into sounds "sweet as the harp of Orpheus," and suggestive of richer and nobler conceptions! To be able to render at once the dead forms of print into the living tones of power and pathos, and to cause them to stir the blood of all who hear, as the trumpet stirs the blood of the war horse! To make the grand conceptions of all time revive and live once more in a power more effectual than that of the magician's wand, and to make that power always give pleasure! Reading in the family circle, in the social gathering, at the tea party, in the lecture room, in the school room, on the pic-nic or excursion, how profitable and delightful is it! It adds a charm to literature to hear it read in golden tones, sweet, ringing, choice, appropriate, friendly and suggestive. It conveys a finish to poetry to hear its beautiful words and rymth falling elegantly go sadly astray in these. But when they undertake to read, it is almost a miracle if they do not fall at once into some very serious errors. They will slur over letters and syllables in words, clipping them at either end, calling them incorrectly as to accent or vowel sounds; they will give wrong emphasis and inflection, and thus spoil the finest sentiment and confound the plainest sense; they will strain and roar, or be dull and indifferent, just in the places where they ought not to be; and in fine, will read as if they verily imagined that nothing more was needed to be a good reader but to open the mouth and make indistinct and obscure sounds. We have not time to enumerate the faults of our readers. Some read in a manner as monotonous as a level prairie, without its gorgeous flowers; some mark every word with a strong and eager emphasis, and thus accomplish the same monotony, though this time it is the monotony of jagged rocks instead of smooth prairie; some begin strong in voice and lungs, and end weak and faint; some give to every sentence and important word the biting circumflex or the querulous upward slide; and some cut up all sentences into inch pieces by the grave and solemn downward inflection. Some read all things in the same tone and manner, and others make such a display of variety as is really painful. But few, very few, read so as to give the exact sense and convey it, too, in a smooth, natural, easy, delightful manner, at once instructive, comforting, elevating, and informing. There are two errors, exactly opposite, which it may be well to mention. Both are shocking, but the latter one is the more disgusting. Some read as though they were aiming to get to sleep themselves, and to bring their readers in that same, at times, highly refreshing state. Their voice and manner exactly resemble the demon in the Castle of Indolence : from lips whose silver sounds bewitch the ear and ravish the taste. The heart may be unmoved when the mind reads to itself only the words of tenderness and affection, or the deeds of heroism" and benevolence. But when these words are rightly joined to sound in reading, the heart must fill with emotion, the eyes must overflow, the soul must melt. Good reading! It is better than music or poetry, than literature or song! For whomsoever the villain takes in hand, Their joints unknit, their sinews melt apace, And of their vanished force remains no trace." And whatever reader comes under the spell of their voice is lost to all the sense of the reading at least. The other class "mouth it, as many of our players do, and tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of groundlings." Such readers "neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christians, Pagan, nor man, have But this is a rare art. Scholars in our schools can learn all other things before this and better than this. Not that they begin other things earlier or leave them sooner. But that in this, divinest of all the arts and accomplishments of the school room, they get bad habits, and abso-so strutted and bellowed, that I have thought lutely murder the innocent sense of the passage that they attempt to read. They cannot acquire such bad habits in regard to addition or multiplication, or any arithmetical process if they try. So of geography, or grammar, though they may some of nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably." But to read exactly according to the sense, to convey the precise meaning and no more, to please by the gentle tones of the voice, and the "And darest thou, then, To beard the lion in his den," &c., We talkers, out of the books in their hands, and the work is done-they will be GOOD READERS-and better than good singers or good orators. Railway Manners. We do not love grumbling, and that, too, when it will do no good, but we deem it to be somebody's duty to grumble about the manners of our dear, never-to-be-enough-loved-and-prized ladies who travel. And, since the one who grumbles always get cursed and grumbled at in turn, we may as well be that unfortunate individual as anybody. And let us further say, that we don't expect to produce a reform. By no manner of means. We only calculate to put on record our till our ears ached, and then heard them whisper opinion, and leave other people to begin and "so gently, so peacefully "-oh! oh! our heart complete the reform. If we can keep ourself as well our ears ached while we thought of the good natured and tolerably mannerly in the railbad tastes they were forming. Now let us say way cars, amid the dust and annoyances of travel these things are useful, but they are not good-if we can avoid spitting on the floor-as our reading. They are good as mere exercises to conscience prompts us-and opening windows train the voice to flexibility and compass; but just at our own backs, so that they throw all the when they are brought into the school-room for dust and current of air into the face of the man the ordinary reading exercises, or into the parlor, on the seat behind, we shall begin to be satisfied they are very bad. Reading, to be pleasing and with our performance of duty. profitable, should be nearly like conversationnot mimetic conversation, for that only pleases when done uncommonly well-but the ordinary graceful, animated conversation of the drawing room-rising into dignity, or subsiding into gentleness, kindling with scorn or flashing with fire, according to the topic and the occasion. Such reading is not what many will call the rhetorical. It is the simplest, the least noticeable of all kinds of reading. It leaves the mind entirely free to forget the reader and the voice and the manner completely, and to bestow its undivided attention on the sentiment and the ideas. Such reading is the natural way of reading, and if the child could be induced in any way to forget that he is reading, and to think only of telling the story or the subject of the reading lesson, there would be no And first, if we have a lady or two with us, and difficulty in making all persons good readers. find, on going into the car, that a dozen menWe now in schools aim to make readers, and as they have a right to do, and, let us add, as scholars soon become afraid to try to read lest they ought to do if they are all strangers to one they should make mistakes. But do not attempt another-have taken seats alone, and we ask one to make them read well. Let them only tell you of them to take another seat, and he complieswhat is in the book, and tell it without being as any gentleman will, with our request-if, we made to expect that they will fail. Lead a child say, we do not thank him very heartily and to expect he is going to fail, and he will necessa-kindly, we always feel that we have done a mean rily fail. But let him fear no failure, let him not thing. We asked him in preference to any other dream there is such a thing, and he will be quite of the dozen to give up a roomy seat with a proslikely to read naturally and appropriately. We pect of being comfortable, and to sit with a stran-say to teachers, then, do not scan your readers-ger, one, perhaps, who smokes, and is disgustdo not attempt to make them stage players, nor ingly redolent of bad segars, or with one who mimics; but make them plain, simple, graceful spits, or has a bad breath, or who is fidgety and But to our topic, from which we have wandered. There are no places where gentle manners and good breeding better display themselves than in a crowd or in the cars. We have never travcled much. We have been kept at home by the pressure of business, and have therefore seen but little of the world. We have, however, been on the look-out to learn something by observation. Among other things, we have tried to study good manners a little, both because our advice and opinion is often asked on these matters, and because we should be glad to practice good manners on all occasions. And we have found that if we do two or three little things-very trifling they are-we always think meanly of ourselves when we reflect on what we have done. nervous and by thus asking him we put him in to make not the slightest possible return. It is a situation to lose much ease and to be subject dishonest, unladylike, ill-bred, selfish and mean. to great annoyance, and for this we propose to A fourth case is this. A gentleman-in shape, make him no return whatever. Can we do less we mean-takes a seat in a car. He chews tothan thank him cordially and smile on him be-bacco enormously. You would think he meant nignantly? We feel mean if we do not at least to sprinkle the road and thereby lay the dust, so say as much as a good gentleman-a stranger-liberally does he expectorate. He sits in one said to us on some such occasion not long ago: seat and makes a pool at his side. By-and-by he My good Sir, you have done us a great favor. leaves the car, and a lady wishes a seat. This is I am obliged to you, I cannot say how much." the only vacant one, and she spoils whatever Now that man was a gentleman, we know; and dress she wears. The skirt goes into the pool. his kind thanks in behalf of himself and wife and and comes out destroyed. Now if we had been daughter, who looked more thankful even than that man-well, we cannot imagine how we the father, made the whole journey of fifty miles should feel-we don't believe the reader would a pleasant one to us. We had done a disintersee us afterwards. But we have said enough for ested act, and had received more gratitude than ourselves. We did not mean to write so long. we really deserved, and we really felt clever, as Here is a letter that came to us the other day, and we Yankees say, all the way along. we insert it. This letter gave occasion to our moralizing above, and we give it place, hoping that it may give rise to moralizing in the minds of our readers that shall profit them more than our moralizing has done. Second. If we happen to be one among the aforesaid gentlemen sitting cosily in a whole seat, and if we should see a single lady- a stranger-come into the car and walk the whole length of it, evidently too bashful to sit down by “P ————————, July —, 1857. the side of a strange man, and if there was no "DEAR MR. SCHOOLMASTER :-As you pretend to be other seat the whole of which was vacant, and a censor of manners and morals, as well as of literawe should sit still and allow her to walk back to ture, will you allow me to ask your opinion on a matter the other end of the car without offering her our of much consequence to the fairer sex? Let me give a seat, we reckon we should feel meaner than be- history: A few days since I entered the cars at fore. We confess we have never tried this, and station, a half hour before the time, in order to be sure of a seat, as I was tired. When I went in I found every we don't intend to do so soon-neither have we seat occupied. I noticed two seats-facing each other tried the first experiment-but we know we-occupied by an aged lady who appeared to be going should feel as though somebody ought to be kicked, and that it was a man close behind us. This sitting still and seeing a lady looking after a seat is not doing as you like to have your wife dealt with. You would like to have her treated like a queen. Why not, then, treat another man's wife so? And do it, too, without being asked? But a third case comes up here. If we were a in the cars and a gentleman-so I call every well-dress- But he did not stir. At length a very dirty man in the corner came all they way to me and asked me very kindly to go and take his seat while he stood up. Now something to help me another time? which was the most of a gentleman? Cannot you do MARY. "P. S. When the cars started, the first man went out, as I supposed he would. Was he not a brute ?" We say no; he was not a brute. He was a mean man, which we take to be meaner than a brute. woman, and had asked a man for a seat, or if he had, as we have known to be done, offered us his seat on the shady side of the car and taken one on the sunny side, we should feel as if it would do the poor man a little good, at least, to be told in pleasant tones and polite words that we really appreciated his kindness. And if in that case we had forgotten to do so insignificant an act of courtesy, we should be troubled to our journey's end with the idea of our meanness. "Why use POTTER & HAMMOND'S WRITING BOOKS.-Our the word meanness in connection with a lady?" readers are referred to the advertisement of Because there is no other word to express the Messrs. Potter & Hammond, on the second page idea. Rudeness may be consistent with honesty, of the cover of our magazine. It gives us great but such a transaction is not possible for an hon-pleasure to recommend the enterprise of these est person. She asks for and receives something gentlemen to all interested, and we know a trial of real worth and comfort to her, and she deigns of their books will prove satisfactory. Commencement at Brown University. will accomplish the result with ease and with certainty. But when the visitor enters with a THE exercises at the next anniversary of our design of behaving improperly, as visitors have University promise to be unusually attractive. done we hope they never do so now-it will On Tuesday, September 1st, at 11 o'clock A. M., often be much the better way to pass it by withthe oration before the Alumni will be delivered out apparent notice, and yet indirectly and efby Hon. Samuel S. Cox, a graduate of the class fectually to check the evil tendency. In cases of 1846, and a member elect of Congress from like these the indirect method is best for nine Ohio. On the afternoon of the same day, an cases in ten. In the other there will be necessity oration will be delivered before the Philermeuian for personal reprimand, yet this should be so kind and United Brothers' Societies, by Wendell as not to awaken anger in the offender. When Phillips, Esq., of Boston, and a poem by Rev. such cases occur, however, tact and kind firmness Dr. S. Dryden Phelps, of New Haven. In the will be better than advice. But what of such evening, Rev. Dr. W. S. Plumer, recently of Bal-visitors as do not behave themselves when they timore, and now Professor in the Presbyterian go into schools? We have no patience to write Theological Seminary at Alleghany City, Penn- about them, and indeed the question does not sylvania, will address the Society of Missionary concern them. It only asks what is the teacher's Inquiry. Wednesday, commencement day, will duty in certain circumstances. And we will only of course be devoted to the exercises of the grad- say that his duty can be but very little changed uating class, and to the dinner of the Alumni. by the bad conduct of any other person-meanOn Thursday afternoon, an oration will be pro-ing by his duty, that he is to keep his temper nounced before the Alpha Delta Phi Association, by George William Curtis, Esq., of New York, and a poem by Alfred B. Street, Esq., of Albany. On Friday afternoon, Rev. Edward S. Atwood, of Grantville, Mass., a graduate of the class of 1852, will deliver an oration, and Edwin P. Parker, Esq., a poem, before the Delta Kappa Epsilon Society. We are requested to state that the candidates for admission to the University will be expected to pass written examinations upon the studies required for entrance. The examinations will be held on Thursday and Friday, Sept. 3d and 4th, beginning at 8 o'clock A. M. of each day. The candidates are requested to assemble at that hour in the lecture room of the President, on the first floor of University Hall. Questions and Answers. Suppose visitors enter a school room and persist in behaving improperly, what is the teacher's proper course to pursue? This is so unaccountable a case that we do not know exactly how to answer. It may have occurred. But to suppose that it will occur again, is to have very little faith in human nature. We will, however, answer it as well as we can. And we think that it will generally not require any words. The visitor may be young and thoughtless. In this case the teacher's look and manner, if they are true and natural, will show his mortification and evident disapprobation, and will check improprieties at once. By a very simple method of directing the visitor's attention to the influence of his conduct on the school by a look or a motion, will set him to thinking, and cool and to mind his own business, remembering that he is not responsible for the good conduct of any besides his scholars. How many times should a teacher tolerate his scholars in making mistakes which he has corrected in them? The principle, as we understand it, is never to tolerate any error. You may excuse or pardon it as many times as you think will be kind and just, and even loving and forgiving, but never tolerate, or bear it entirely with resignation. The habit of making mistakes is a great detriment to every person, and scarcely any one is free from them, at least occasionally. But if he endures them, or tolerates them, he will fall into the category of those who, according to the oftquoted lines, in relation to vice: "Vice seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace." So with mistakes tolerated. Not exactly so where they are noted and then freely pardoned. Whenever, therefore, your scholars make a mistake, tell them of it honestly, openly and kindly, but do not let them blunder along without any notice of their blunders, to fasten the habit of blundering upon them irretrievably. THE following truthful poem we clip from a paper, where it is published uncredited, and therefore we are unable to give, as we should be glad to do, the author's name. Are there not many, even in our very midst, to whom the allusions herein contained are truly applicable? It is really a sad reflection that it is so, but it is, we fear, nevertheless true. We would kindly call the attention of all such to the first portion of |