South work, publishing many of the Old South essays and lectures, and always noticing in its editor's table everything relating to the progress of the movement. The young people who have competed for these Old South prizes are naturally the best students of history in their successive years in the Boston high schools. They now number more than 100, and they have recently formed themselves into an Old South Historical Society. Many of the Old South essayists have, of course, gone on into college, and many are now scattered over the country; but more than half of their number, not a few of them teachers in the schools, are to-day within sound of the Old South bell, and the quarterly meetings of the little society, which by and by will be a big society, are very interesting. There is always some careful historical paper read by one of the members, and then there is a discussion. We have the beginning of a very good library in the essayists' room at the Old South, and this we hope will grow and that the society's headquarters will by and by become a real seminary. The society is rapidly becoming an efficient factor in the general Old South work. It has recently formed three active committees-a lecture committee, an essay committee, and an outlook committee-and its leading spirits are ambitious for larger service. The members of the lecture committee assist in the distribution of tickets to the schools and in enlisting the interest of young people in the lectures. The members of the essay committee similarly devote themselves to enlisting the interest of the high schools in the essays. They will also read the essays submitted each year, not for the sake of adjudging the award of prizes-that is in other handsbut that there may always be in the society scholarly members thoroughly cognizant of the character of the work being done and of the varying capacity of the new members entering the society. The office of the outlook committee is to keep itself informed and to keep the society informed of all important efforts at home and abroad for the historical and political education of young people. It will watch the newspapers; it will watch the magazines; it will watch the schools. It will report anything it finds said about the Old South work and about its extension anywhere. At the next meeting I suppose it will tell the society about Mr. Fiske's new school history and about any new text-books in civil government which have appeared. I hope it will tell how much better most of the series of historical readers published in England for the use of the schools are than the similar books which we have in America. It is sure to say something about the remarkable growth of the Lyceum Leagues among our young people lately, and it is sure to report the recent utterances of President Clark and other leaders of the Christian Endeavor movement upon the importance of rousing a more definite interest in politics and greater devotion to the duties of citizenship among the young people in that great organization. Especially will it notice at this time the Historical Pilgrimage, that interesting educational movement which suddenly appeared this summer, full grown-a movement which would have enlisted so warmly the sympathies of Mrs. Hemenway, who felt, as almost nobody else ever felt, the immense educational power of historical associations. It will tell the society what Mr. Stead has written about historical pilgrimages in England, and Mr. Powell and Dr. Shaw in America; it will speak of the recent reception of the pilgrims at the Old South; and it may venture the inquiry whether the Old South Historical Society might not profitably make itself a center for organizing such local pilgrimages for the benefit of the young people of Bostonpilgrimages, one perhaps each year, to Plymouth and Salem and Lexington and Concord and old Rutland and Newport and Deerfield and a score of places. That thought, I know, is already working in the minds of some of the more enterprising members of the society. Last Many societies of young people all over the country might well take up such historical studies as those in which the Old South Historical Society interests itself. They should also interest themselves in studies more directly political and social. We have in Boston a Society for Promoting Good Citizenship. This is not a constituent part of the Old South work; but it is a society in whose efforts some of us who have the Old South work at heart are deeply interested, and its lectures are given at the Old South Meeting House. Its lectures deal with such subjects as qualifications for citizenship, municipal reform, the reform of the newspaper. season the lectures were upon "A more beautiful public life," the several subjects being: "The lessons of the white city," "Boards of beauty," "Municipal art," "Art in the public schools," "Art museums and the people," and "Boston, the City of God." These subjects, and such as these, young men and women might take up in their societies, with great benefit to themselves and to their communities. Our young people should train themselves also in the organization and procedure of our local and general government, as presented in the text-books on civil government, now happily becoming so common in the schools. The young men in one of our colleges have a House of Commons; in another college-a young woman's college-they have a House of Representatives. Our Old South Historical Society has talked of organizing a town meeting for the discussion of public questions and for schooling in legislative methods. Why should not such town meetings be common among our young people? Why, too, will not our young people everywhere, as a part of their service for good citizenship, engage in a crusade in behalf of better music? Good music is a great educator. Bad music is debilitating and debasing. That was a wise man whom old Fletcher quotes as saying: "Let me make the songs of a people and I care not who makes the laws." How many of the young men and women in the high schools have read what Plato says about strong, pure music in education, in his book on The Laws? Indeed, it is to be feared that not all the teachers have read it. I wish that a hundred clubs or classes of young people would read Plato's Laws next winter, and his Republic the next, and then Aristotle's Politics. Do not think they are hard, dull books. They are fresh, fascinating books, and seem almost as modern, in all their discussions of socialism, education, and the rest, as the last magazine-only they are so much better and more fruitful than the magazine! They make us ashamed of ourselves, these great Greek thinkers, their peaching is so much better than our practice; but it is a good thing to be made ashamed of ourselves sometimes, and we need it very much here in America in the matter of music. We are suffering in our homes, in our schools, in our churches, our theaters, every where, from music of the trashiest and most vulgar character. Let us go to school to Plato; let us go to school to Germany and England. We aim to do something in behalf of this reform at the Old South. Our large choruses from the public schools at many of our celebrations have sung well; but we wish to do a real educational work, not only as touching patriotic music strictly, but as touching better music for the people generally. If in some future the ghosts of some of the great Greeks stroll into the Old South Meeting House we hope they may find it the center of influences in behalf of pure and inspiring music, which shall be as gratifying to them as the devotion to the State which has been inculcated there in these years would surely be. THE OLD SOUTH LEAFLETS. The Old South Leaflets, which have been published during the last thirteen years, in connection with these annual courses of historical lectures at the Old South Meeting House, have attracted so much attention and proved of so much service, that the directors have entered upon the publication of the leaflets for general circulation, with the needs of schools, colleges, private clubs, and classes especially in mind. The leaflets are prepared by Mr. Edwin D. Mead. They are largely reproductions of important original papers, accompanied by useful historical and bibliographical notes. They consist, on an average, of 16 pages, and are sold at the low price of 5 cents a copy, or $4 per 100. The aim is to bring them within easy reach of everybody. The Old South work, founded by Mrs. Mary Hemenway, and still sustained by provision of her will, is a work for the education of the people, and especially the education of our young people, in American history and politics; and its promoters believe that few things can contribute better to this end than the wide circulation of such leaflets as those now undertaken. It is hoped that professors in our colleges and teachers everywhere will welcome them for use in their classes, and that they may meet the needs of the societies of young men and women now happily being organized in so many places for historical and political studies. Some idea of the character of these Old South Leaflets may be gained from the following list of the subjects of the first sixty-four numbers, which are now ready. It will be noticed that many of the later numbers are the same as certain numbers in the annual series. Since 1890 they are essentially the same, and persons ordering the leaflets need simply observe the following numbers: No. 1. The Constitution of the United States. No. 2. The Articles of Confederation. No. 3. The Declaration of Independence. No. 4. Washington's Farewell Address. No. 5. Magna Charta. No. 6. Vane's "Healing Question.' No. 7. Charter of Massachusetts Bay, 1629. No. 8. Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, 1638. No. 9. Franklin's Plan of Union, 1754. No. 10. Washington's Inaugurals. No. 11. Lincoln's Inaugurals and Emancipation Proclamation. No. 12. The Federalist, Nos. 1 and 2. No. 13. The Ordinance of 1787. No. 14. The Constitution of Ohio. No. 15. Washington's Circular Letter to the Governors of the States, 1783. No. 16. Washington's Letter to Benjamin Harrison, 1784. No. 17. Verrazzano's Voyage, 1524. No. 18. The Constitution of Switzerland. No. 19. The Bill of Rights, 1689. No. 20. Coronado's Letter to Mendoza, 1540. No. 21. Eliot's Brief Narrative of the Progress of the Gospel among the Indians, 1670. No. 22. Wheelock's Narrative of the Rise of the Indian School at Lebanon, Conn., 1762. No. 23. The Petition of Rights, 1628. No. 24. The Grand Remonstrance. No. 25. The Scottish National Covenants. No. 26. The Agreement of the People. No. 27. The Instrument of Government. No. 28. Cromwell's First Speech to his Parliament. No. 29. The Discovery of America, from the Life of Columbus by his Son, Ferdinand Columbus. No. 30. Strabo's Introduction to Geography. No. 31. The Voyages to Vinland, from the Saga of Eric the Red. No. 32. Marco Polo's Account of Japan and Java. No. 33. Columbus's Letter to Gabriel Sanchez, describing the First Voyage and Discovery. No. 34. Amerigo Vespucci's Account of his First Voyage. No. 35. Cortes's Account of the City of Mexico. No. 36. The Death of De Soto, from the "Narrative of a Gentleman of Elvas." No. 37. Early Notices of the Voyages of the Cabots. No. 38. Henry Lee's Funeral Oration on Washington. No. 39. De Vaca's Account of his Journey to New Mexico, 1535. No. 40. Manasseh Cutler's Description of Ohio, 1787. No. 41. Washington's Journal of his Tour to the Ohio, 1770. No. 42. Garfield's Address on the Northwest Territory and the Western Reserve. No. 43. George Rogers Clark's Account of the Capture of Vincennes, 1779. No. 41. Jefferson's Life of Captain Meriwether Lewis. No. 45. Fremont's Account of his Ascent of Fremont's Peak. No. 46. Father Marquette at Chicago, 1673. No. 47. Washington's Account of the Army at Cambridge, 1775. No. 48. Bradford's Memoir of Elder Brewster. No. 49. Bradford's First Dialogue. No. 50. Winthrop's "Conclusions for the Plantation in New England." No. 51. "New England's First Fruits," 1643. No. 52. John Eliot's "Indian Grammar Begun." No. 53. John Cotton's "God's Promise to his Plantation." No. 54. Letters of Roger Williams to Winthrop. No. 55. Thomas Hooker's "Way of the Churches of New England." No. 56. The Monroe Doctrine: President Monroe's Message of 1823. No. 57. The English Bible, selections from the various versions. No. 58. Hooper's Letters to Bullinger. No. 59. Sir John Eliot's "Apology for Socrates." No. 60. Ship-money Papers. No. 61. Pym's Speech against Strafford. No. 62. Cromwell's Second Speech. No. 63. Milton's "A Free Commonwealth." No. 64. Sir Henry Vane's Defence. Title pages covering Nos. 1 to 25 (Vol. 1) and 26 to 50 (Vol. II) will be furnished to any person buying the entire series and desiring to bind them in volumes. Address Directors of Öld South Studies, Old South Meeting House, Boston. WOMEN AND MEN-THE ASSAULT ON PRIVATE SCHOOLS. [Contributed by T. W. Higginson to Harper's Bazaar.] When Matthew Arnold, who had spent much of his life as an inspector of schools came to this country, he found with surprise that our public schools were not what he had supposed. He had thought them schools to which all classes sent their children; but he found it otherwise. In cities, he said, they seemed to be essentially class schools-that is, the more prosperous classes avoided them, sending their sons rarely to them, their daughters never. What then became of the talk of our orators in favor of these schools as the most democratic thing in the whole community? In the country it might be so, but population was tending more and more to the cities, tending away, that is, from the public schools. All the alleged danger to our system from religious interference seemed to him trivial compared with this silent social interference, which was going on all the time. Matthew Arnold was in many ways, for a man so eminent, curiously narrow and even whimsical, but his perceptions on this one point were certainly acute. As one evidence of it we see a movement brought forward in the newspapers, from several different quarters, to crush this particular evil, by one sweeping measure, with the absolute prohibition of all private schools. Either abolish them all and force every child into the public schools, or else place all private schools under direct public supervision and allow at their head only publicly trained teachers. There is little chance that any such measure will ever be seriously brought forward. The amount already invested in private or endowed schools and colleges-and the plan, to be consistent, must include colleges-is too immense to allow of its being very strongly urged. But it presents some very interesting points and is worth considering. To begin with, it has the merit, unlike the attacks on merely denominational schools, of being at least logical. Those attacks in some parts of our land have needed almost no probing to show a hopeless want of logic. They always turned out to be aimed, not at denominational schools in themselves, but at some particular denomination. At the East this was naturally the Roman Catholic body, and to some extent the Episcopalian. In certain Western States it was the Roman Catholics and Lutherans. But these attempts to prohibit sectarian schools invariably fell to pieces when it appeared that most of the opponents had not the slightest objection to denominational schools if they only belonged to the right denominationthat is, their own-and only objected to them in the hands of some other religious body. The crowning instance of this was when the late Rev. Dr. Miner, an excellent and leading clergyman of the Universalist order, appeared every winter before the Massachusetts legislature to urge the utter prohibition of parochial schools; and yet spent one of the last days of his life in giving out diplomas at an academy of his own sect, and, moreover, provided for several similar schools in his will. Now no such inconsistency stands in the way of those who would prohibit, without distinction, all denominational and all private schools. Unwise they may be, but not illogical. Indeed, the step they propose is only following out consistently what the others urged inconsistently. If it is right to coerce one mother, who takes her children from the public school through anxiety for their sonls, we should certainly do the same for another, who withdraws hers for the sake of their bodies; or perhaps, after all, only out of regard for the welfare of their clothes. There are several prominent religious bodies which believe that religious education of their own stamp is absolutely needful for children. Most of the early public schools in this country were on that basis, and began instruction with the New England Primer. We may say that this motive is now outgrown; but it is certainly as laudible as when a daughter is taken from one school and sent to another, that she may be among better-dressed children or make desirable acquaintances. Grant these reasons frivolous-and they are not wholly so-there are ample reasons why the entire prohibition of private schools would be a calamity to the educational world. The reason is that they afford what the public schools rarely can, a place where original methods may be tried and individual modes of teaching developed. Private schools are the experimental stations for public schools. A great public school system is a vast machine, and has the merits and defects of machinery. It usually surpasses private institutions in method, order, punctuality, accuracy of training. It is very desirable that every teacher and every pupil should at some time share its training. In these respects it is the regular army besides militia. But this brings imitations. The French commissioner of education once boasted that in his office in Paris he knew with perfect precision just what lesson every class in every school in the remotest provinces of France was reciting. We do not reach this, but it is of necessity the ideal of every public system. It has great merit, but it kills originality. No teacher can ever try an experiment, for that might lose 1 per cent in the proportion of the first class able to pass examination at the end of the year. The teacher is there to do a precise part; no less, no more. Under this discipline great results are often achieved, but they are the results of drill, not of inspiration. Accordingly every educational authority admits that the epoch-making experiments in education-the improvements of Pestalozzi, Fellenberg, Froebel-were made in private, not public schools. Like all other experiments, they were tried at the risk of the inventor or his backers, and often to the impoverishment of all concerned. Mr. A. Bronson Alcott's school was starved out, in Boston, half a century ago, and he himself dismissed with pitying laughter. Yet there is no intelligent educator who does not now admit the value of his suggestions; and Dr. Harris, the national superintendent of education, is his admiring biographer. His first assistant, Miss Elizabeth Peabody-esteemed throughout her beneficent life a dreamer of the dreamers-yet forced upon American educators Froebel's kindergarten. He began it with a few peasant children in Germany, and now every city in the United States is either adopting or discussing it. In many things the private school leads, the public school follows. Every one who writes a schoolbook involving some originality of method knows that the private schools will take it up first. If it succeeds there, the public schools will follow. To abolish or impair these public schools would be a crime against the State; to prohibit private schools an almost equal crime. It would be like saying that all observatories must be sustained by the State only, and that Mr. Percival Lowell should be absolutely prohibited from further cultivating his personal intimacy with the planet Mars. HUMANE EDUCATION. The objection of the American Humane Society, as stated by its president, George T. Angell, 19 Milk street, Boston, is "to humanely educate the American people for the purpose of stopping every form of cruelty, both to human beings and the lower animals." For the accomplishment of this worthy purpose it seeks to enlist the aid of public and private school teachers, the educational, religious, and secular press, and the clergy of all denominations, in order to build up in our colleges, schools, and elsewhere a spirit of chivalry and humanity which shall in coming generations substitute ballots for bullets, prevent anarchy and crime, protect the defenseless, maintain the right, and hasten the coming of peace on earth and good will to every harmless living creature, both human and dumb." This work of this society should commend itself to all well-disposed persons. One phase of the society's activity is its pronounced opposition to the vivisection or the indiscriminate dissection of animals in the public schools. It is felt that such practices have an unfavorable effect on young and undeveloped minds-tend to blunt the edge of their finer sensibilities. The agitation of this subject in Massachusetts led to the enactment of a law in 1894 prohibiting the vivisection of animals in the public schools, or the exhibiting of any animal upon which vivisection had been practiced; also regulating the dissection of dead animals. The States of Maine and Washington require their teachers to spend at least ten minutes each week in teaching kindness to animals. WHY EDUCATE? MISSISSIPPI. WHAT IS THE PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION? [An address delivered at the second annual commencement of Millsaps College, Jackson, Miss., June 12, 1894, by Hon. William H. Sims, of Mississippi.] Gentlemen of the Faculty and Student Body of Millsaps College, Ladies, and Gentlemen: My appreciation of the honor of occupying this place to-day, in an institution whose success is very near my heart, will not, I trust, be measured by the modest contribution of thought and learning which I am able to bring to this occasion, but rather, let me ask, by the willingness I have shown to obey the summons of this faculty in coming a thousand miles to discharge a duty which the invitation of a Mississippi college imposes upon a Mississippian. In appearing before you in this beautiful new home, the thought very naturally arises in my mind, Why was this building built? Of course, its dedication to present uses and the fame which has gone abroad concerning its origin would seem sufficiently to answer the inquiry. And yet, it has occurred to me that it may be useful in presenting what I have to say to-day to endeavor to center your attention upon what the answer to that question involves. Why was this building built? Do you imagine that this inquiry will have more of interest to a beholder of this structure a few centuries hence, as perchance he may look upon its venerable walls, stained by the mold and decay of time, when its architectural design may have become antiquated and obscured, amid the changeful fashions of later days; when its mission, then in part fulfilled, its history or many of its chapters written, the good that it shall have accomplished then made manifest, the seed that shall have been winnowed within these walls and distributed to the sowers scattered across the face of the land, yielding a fruitage excellent and a harvest abundant? And, may I ask, is there no good to be gained from such presuppositions? Does the forecasting of the possible outcome of a great benefaction to mankind inspire thoughts less of interest and of profit than the looking back upon the good already accomplished? Is it better to seek inspiration from the things of the past than from the hopes of the future? Is it better that our oyes be turned to the setting than the rising sun; to the goldcrowned summit of Solomon's Temple; to the land of promise which has been traversed, or to the shining pinnacles of glory which gleam ahead beyond the rugged hilltops and invite to the sun-burst splendor of the New Jerusalem? But think on this as we may, I invite you back to the question suggested: Why was this building built? Did not its founder know before the work was begun why it was to be begun! Did not an intelligent benevolence conceive the object of its erection before its foundations were laid? Would the noble benefactor of his day and generation, whose name it bears and without whose munificent generosity its existence was not possible, have parted with his great endowment and led others to emulate his example without a definite object and what seemed to him a wise end in view, carefully and deliberately considered, which lay back of the giving of the gifts? Those who know him well and those who know the manner of men from whom large charities habitually come will answer, nay-verily! What was that purpose? Why was this building built? I answer: It was built for the noblest of human purposes; for the highest earthly object this side of heaven for which any building can be built. It was built for a schoolhouse; for a college to enlarge the opportunities of Mississippi boys for high education, for sound, broad, conservative mental training, along the lines of Christian ideals. And was this a wise investment of a great sum of money? Let us consider this: Around these suggestive inquiries I purpose to group the facts and reflections This prelude, I trust, will acquit me of seeming irreverence when I further say that no animal being on earth seems to have been less prepared for his natural environments, according to our knowledge of his introduction on this earth, than man. H |