SPOKEN ENGLISH. It may be superfluous to say, since it is conceded, that the English language is generally better-that is, more clearly and correctly-spoken in the United States than any other language is spoken in its native country. We all know what the English tongue is in the mouths of the uneducated in Great Britain. Indeed, simple, pure, elegant spoken English is so rare here it is still rarer in the mother country-that it distinguishes the speaker at once and delights the cultivated ear. What lover of nice English has not felt an involuntary interest in a perfect stranger, on overhearing him use, in a public place, such words and phrases as we have a right to expect from every educated person? Who has not instinctively lingered in the street, in a shop or at a hotel, charmed for the moment, by the easy employment of a fastidious tongue? What a pity it is that all of us who can, do not cultivate the fine art of speaking our own strong, rich, unequaled language as it should be spoken! It is a sort of patriotic, philologic, ancestral duty to do so. To say that it is sufficient for us to express our thoughts intelligbly to those about us is not true. That is a necessity and belongs to civilized men of every grade. We are more than civilized; we are enlightened and should show our enlightenment by the choice of our speech. Nicety of speech is the soul of manners, and manners mark the difference between the barbarian and the man of breeding and accomplishment. We are not less strong because we are fine; in fact, we are stronger for our fineThe highly tempered steel will do what the solidest iron can not. Nicety of speech comprises pronunciation and enunciation, as well as selection of words, those being neglected often when this is not. How very few think at all of the way they pronounce or enunciate — enunciation being, as a rule, wholly disregarded. College students, one might think, would be specially trained in this respect. But are they? The fact of their writing makes them more or less exact in the oral employment of words; but writing does not instruct them either in pronunciation or enunciation. They learn generally to pronounce through the ear, if the ear be heedful. They enunciate either by heredity or by constant attention thereto—and such attention is commonly wanting. Many young men are graduated whose pronunciation and enunciation are conspicuously bad. To hear them, you would not ness. suppose that they had more than a rudimentary course. What is the advantage of an academic education which leaves the academics still ignorant of how to speak their mother tongue? A graduate should be known by the ease, grace and fitness of his vernacular utterances. If he have not these, any amount of knowledge of Latin, Greek, mathematics, logic, literature, political economy can hardly recompense him for their lack. And how many there are who have them not! No man ever appears to be thoroughly educated who can not speak fluently and elegantly his native tongue. Mispronunciation is as bad as blunders in syntax, and want of enunciation will spoil the cleverest phrase or the most ingenious thought. As we have no caste, no special grades of society in the Republic, we do not get the auricular education that the upper classes do in Europe from continual contact and association with one another. This, though anti-democratic, materially helps lingual accomplishment; imparts a distinctive and distinguished mode of utterance bearing the social flavor of the rank or set. Here, as individuality rules, each man must, to a great degree, be self-observant and self-critical. We are so afraid of seeming to be priggish, artificial or pedantic, that we incline to the other extreme. We do not value properly the simple in expression, which never tires and is seldom noticed. There are those who talk words, selecting such as are uncommon and polysyllabic. They are ignorant, conceited, unconscious of their own ridiculousness. No one afflicted with this petty weakness fails to be a consummate bore. Anybody who has once grasped ideas will never knowingly descend to the trick of decorative verbosity. One of the greatest obstacles to easy, pleasant speech is the habit of employing set phrases—especially slang-which are intolerable to a delicate ear. Many women who lay claim to self-discipline and refinement are guilty of this, and get so accustomed to it as to be unmindful of its offensiveVarious exclamations and expletives are such feminine favorites that their utterers would be deprived of half their vocabulary if compelled to relinquish them. If these mean anything, as they are employed, it might be partially excusable. But they are wholly insignificant, worse than superfluous, merely serving to consume time— to further dilute dilution and augment emptiness.-Julius Henri Browne, in the St. Louis Globe Democrat. ness. MISCHIEVOUS PARENTS. One of the most vexatious phases of a teacher's life is the direct and indirect influence of mischievous parents. They are not all of a class. Some from one cause and some from another are mischievous. It would be well for parents to consider carefully the situation. How would a parent get along with the family management if the children once a day or even once a week, heard uncomplimentary remarks made about their parents? How long would a community stand if the teacher talked to the children about their fathers and mothers as the teacher is talked about in the home? Any parent is mischievous who listens to the foolish complaining of the child about the teacher. Many incidents occur in the school life of a child that are not pleasant to him, but if these are not mentioned they are soon forgotten, while if recalled in detail, especially if magnified by the imagination and encouraged by the interest and attention of the parents, they are fixed in his mind and become of much moment. Parents have no moral right to the recital of unimportant incidents in the school life of their children. Any parent is mischievous who discusses socially, "gossipily," in the street car or in any private group or public place, peculiarities of the teacher. This is being done continually to the great detriment of the schools of the community. As a mere business matter it ought not to be indulged in. The community has a large financial interest in the schools, and the return for the outlay is dependent largely upon the receptive condition of the community as well as of the pupils. Any parent is mischievous who criticises the methods of instruction of a teacher. This is the affair of the teacher and the school officials. The methods are rapidly changing. No man who has not kept in touch with the school work of the past ten years is in any condition to appreciate modern methods. It is practically impossible for any teacher to bring his methods up to the times in any community if there be one man who is base enough to rally all the "mossbacks" of the community against the innovations. As matters now are it is a part of a teacher's work; it is one of the leading features of her . business as a teacher to conteract the vicious tendencies of these meddlesome parents.-American Teacher. UNIVERSITY AND COLLEGE EDUCATION. EXTRACT FROM U. S. COMMISSIONER ST. PAUL. W. T. HARRIS' ADDRESS AT Perhaps the greatest lesson that we learn in college education is the knowledge of our possibilities. Learning or the industry that acquires it, is a sort of talisman which may lift us out of our vaulted past and place us on heights of directive power. There is a promise and potency in the study of those branches which are learned in the college-a promise and potency to enlighten us and produce in us a sort of metamorphosis out of ourselves as puny individuals into our great self as the race. Our first birth gave us life, feeling and locomotion--gave us individuality. Our second birth gave us community with all fellow-men through thought, and secured for us our heritage in the wisdom of the race. It gave us personality in the place of mere individuality; in fact, individuality which reinforces its single might by the might of all. What is a liberal course of study? This question is a most important one for those who advocate university extension. The youth may not gain the stimulus of direct personal contact and the self-knowledge that comes by seeing the growth of one's equals, but he may still master the course of study which gives him the most insight into the world of nature and the world of human civilization. The extension scheme for colleges and schools may lay out courses of study and hold severe examination tests that will be sufficient to stimulate the aspiration and guide the labors of vast multitudes of youths and adults who have been debarred from the privilege of college residence. Higher instruction differs from lower instruction chiefly in this: Lower instruction concerns to a greater extent the mere inventory of things and events and has less to do with inquiring into their unity. Higher instruction deals more with the relation of things and events. It investigates the dependence of one phase upon another and deals with the practical relation of all species of knowledge to man as an individual and social whole. Our colleges and schools of a higher class have preserved a semi-monastic character in their organization and live in an artificial society of their own. In the university extension scheme we cannot have these accessories of self-estrangement; but what is more essential. we can have the training in the classic languages-a sufficient amount of such development to give each person an insight into his spiritual embryology. The university will, when it is fairly inaugurated, give better occupation to the negative phases of culture by directing it to the study of the origin of the institutions, and to the more humanizing work of interpreting art, literature and history. THE POINT OF VIEW. If things go crooked don't despair, And change the point of view. A dawn succeeds the darkest night- The man who worries never gets If he were only half-way wise The thing that he would do And change the point of view. |