Some teachers, in giving instruction to classes, take no special pains to help the dull and backward pupils. They hold that their function is to teach those who are teachable under the ordinary methods and that the rest are not worth spending time on.

It must be confessed that a teacher who has a large class may, with reason, be perplexed to decide how much the bright scholars are to be delayed or to be deprived of the instructor's inspiring help for the sake of the backward pupils. But surely he is not justified in refusing to give some special attention to the most needy section of the class. A skillful teacher can do much for them without seriously retarding the progress of the better scholars. Many a devoted instructor has found a rich reward for giving them special help outside of the regular hours of school.

If children are very backward, doubtless it is best for them to have the special services of a private teacher for some time. Although they thus lose the inspiring aid of companionship, which affords so much joy and stimulus in a school, yet they escape the depressing and mortifying influence of seeing their dullness exhibited at every recitation to that most merciless of audiences-a company of school children who are outstripping them and ridiculing their stupidity.

But what shall the private teacher do? He must begin at the beginning, at the zero point of the pupil's knowledge, and with patience proceed only so rapidly as the slow mind can master each step; and he must lend interest to this tardy march by all the resources at his command.

Often, if the child lacks interest in the studies first taken up, it will be found on trial that he can readily be interested in some other study. Then begin with this last study and link it, if possible, in some way with the less interesting pursuit. A boy who abominates grammar may have a passion for some branch of natural history. Be sure that he has a chance to gratify this passion. Apt teachers may sometimes save a boy by discovering a talent which none of his elementary studies has tested.

I once knew a boy in college who evinced no interest in any of his regular work. He was generally busy making caricatures of his fellow students and of the professors.

One day a caricature of a certain professor, which had much amused the students, fell into the hands of the professor himself. He summoned the young man to his room. The student went with some trepidation, supposing he went to be reprimanded. But the wise. teacher said to him: "You seem to have a talent for drawing. No

one of the faculty has been able to find out what you were made for. All have despaired of making anything of you. But evidently you are

intended for an artist. You ought to go abroad and study art."

And then, having himself lived many years in Rome, he gave his astonished and gratified hearer suggestions concerning the best method of pursuing art studies, and tendered him letters to distinguished artists at Rome. This indolent student followed the advice given him and became a painter of distinction. The timely counsel of his teacher was the making of the man.

We should not be too easily discouraged at finding the mental operations of a child slow. I know a man of advanced years, one of the most eminent scholars in one department of learning that I have met, whose mental process has always gone on with a slowness which is surprising, but with an accuracy and sureness equally surprising. He sometimes has difficulty in following a speaker, because his mind cannot keep pace wth the speaker's utterances. But his attainments are so ample that he is justly considered an authority in the branch to which he has given the leisure of a long life.

Still less should we be disheartened at a lack of precocity in our children. Many a man of great intellectual force has ripened late. Sometimes very rapid physical development seems to absorb all the vital force in a boy so that his mental development lags. One need not be unduly disturbed by such a phenomenon. After a little the intellectual growth will be resumed. The observant teacher or parent will wait with patience for this result.

But do what we may, we shall, of course, find a certain number of children who can never become eminent scholars or even passably complete a college course. We must then honestly recognize the fact and inquire what they can best do in life. Not unfrequently they have executive talent which fits them for some worthy career.

We must, with patience and persistence, strive to impart to them, by however slow a process, such an amount and kind of training as will enable them to fill, without discredit, the place alloted to them in life. JAMES B. ANGELL, IN THE Youth's Companion.

PRIZE ESSAY.

The following Essay won the Youth's Companion prize in Pennsylvania. It was written by Miss Mary A. Martin, of the Chester City

High School:

Patriotism is that feeling of loyalty and love of one's country which animates the breast of every true-hearted citizen. The flag is often the means of calling forth many instances of such a feeling. During the Civil War, a Chester company were engaged in battle, the sergeant at the head. Twice the flag was assaulted; he then placed it in his bosom; it accompanied him in battle and in prison, and at the close of the war was returned safely to Chester. Comrade McNamee, of the First Pennsylvania Reserves, has long been at rest, but his memory still lives; and his comrades, looking at the tattered remains of the flag, always think of that noble hero.

As the flag has called forth patriotic feelings, so if placed before the public school children it may have the same effect and arouse in the future rulers a love for their country. The sight of it will inspire them to write on patriotic subjects, to declaim patriotic selections and to sing patriotic songs. Education means that the people grow more patriotic, more self-sustaining and more defiant to the crowned heads of the world. The object of education is to Americanize. Our fathers fought for self-government, and through the providence of God it was given them; we must now be educated that it may be governed aright. If educated right, we need have no fear for the future prosperity of this country.

Owing to our Revolutionary ancestors, it has been left for us to preserve the Nation; and not we alone, but our children and the children of foreigners should be taught to do it.

The fact that thousands of foreigners, who do not mingle with those who are loyal to the American idea, are yearly added to our population, deepens the sentiment that in the public schools, where are found the children of all classes of people, should be taught true patriotism, that the fathers of the future will be willing to vote, and die if need be, for the American idea.

:

Some may ask "What is the use of teaching patriotism? We are in no immediate danger." But liberty is the price of eternal vigilance; hence the children should be taught to be vigilant and ever faithful, and the American Republic will stand forever. To-day is father of to-morrow. With the flag before them, the scholars should be taught the history of our country. First, the landing of the Pilgrims; then the settlement of the colonies. They should be told of the Revolutionary war, when the flag floated over the Atlantic; of the Mexican war, when it was firmly planted on the summit of the Rocky Mountains; of the Civil war, when the loyal citizens of the republic fastened it to masthead and fort, swore allegiance to it, fought under

it; and, as long as one such patriot remains, it will be protected. The flag now floats over an undivided country, and, as cities formerly swore allegiance, so every mother's son should place his hand on the Bible and swear to protect it as long as his life-blood lasts.

In guarding the flag he guards the next most sacred thing to the ballot-box. Bereft of patriotism, the heart of a nation will be cold and cramped; society will degenerate, and the mean and vicious will triumph. Patriotism is not a wild and glittering passion, but a glorious reality; it still lives to console, to sanctify humanity; then let it be patriotism first, last and always. Patriotism in history, in the reading lesson, in the general exercises, in the flag that adorns the school room.-Pennsylvania School Journal.

FREE EDUCATION.

According to an English correspondent there is a strong opposition to free education in Great Britain as attempted to be established on the American public school plan. The leaders of the opposition are averring that the results of the American attempt at free public education has been most unsatisfactory; that the attendance upon our public schools is sparse and irregular; that the standard of attainments is low and that a high percentage of illiterates exist among our population.

Where these English critics of our public school obtained their statistics we do not know, but it is certain that they are grossly false and misleading. The public school system of the American States is their pride and boast and bulwark, and where they are best maintained the percentage of illiteracy is very low. In fact the number of nativeborn Americans who are illiterate is too small for statistics. If there is illiteracy in any of the States of this country it is not due to the public school system at all, but to two well-known causes. One of these is the large immigration of ignorant Europeans which annually pours into the country. The other is the presence and increase of the negro race in the Southern States. It looks very much as though the only knowledge or information the English critics of our public school system have has been obtained from reading Senator Blair's speeches in favor of his Educational bill. They had better be sent some more authentic literature by the Washington Bureau of Education.-San Jose Mercury.

A TEACHER'S REFLECTIONS.

It is not to be doubted that there are powers in me acquired by a different experience, which were not specifically in my ancestry. It is not to be doubted that many lives are totally different from what they might otherwise have been, because of those powers in me, by means of which, I have put out my hand-as it were on the keys and stops of an organ, and changed the tune for all time.

To the impulses and powers born within me I am bound-if I would live and die a self-respecting creature-to add other powers and talents that shall go on muitiplying themselves infinitely—by intellectual and moral influence, unfailingly, absolutely; by natural transmission and differentiation, as may be.

The formularies of a faith have no life except in their practical working out. It is idle for me to reiterate what I do not stand for in action. The time is not fooled by a few words nor by a multiplicity; it sits with deep-seeing eyes on a throne of judgment; it looks into what is and sees what is to be. And therefore it must be relentless with you and me; and therefore the work we do shall not stand unless it have within it a permanent, onlooking quality; mere temporary utility will not do. To have all that we do shoved aside among the chaff of the day-that will be to have achieved a miserable mortality— if not a worse thing—a miserable immortality. I should like to live on in impulses I have aroused. I should like to live on in the blood I have stirred to a noble seeking. I cannot write epics nor great lyrics that shall go on moving men to the end of time to a lofty life. then, move now, some clod-like spirit that comes into my way stir of might" until it "climb to a soul" in some near or far-off generation.

Let me

to a

It is a joy to think that centuries hence there may be alive and brave in the world-some soul who owes the best that is in him to impulses set in motion by me-to whom, nevertheless, he is not indebted by natural inheritance. This is the spiritual parenthood before which nature herself must stand in awe; she has no compensations, no consolations for the toils and griefs of parents in the flesh, comparable to this. F. L. HARTJAN.