should not have compelled him to divulge his secret just then. Byand-by, when he is ready, I know he will tell me all about it." And sure enough in a day or two I saw Harry piloting his mother, all by herself, out to his barn closet to confide to her preparations he had been making to have a little circus, to which he had invited several boy companions, which explained the notes sent to the Postoffice. He had wanted to surprise his brothers, and through his mother's confidence in him he was enabled to carry out his plan. How much surer way was that to win and retain a boy's confidence than to have manifested suspicion and distrust, and compelled divulgence of what proved to be only an innocent boyish secret. I Speaking afterward with his mother on this subject, she said, "I never compel my children to tell me about their own little affairs. am always ready to listen and sympathize with them, and they know I love to have them tell me of their thoughts and doings, but I never suspect them. I never open their letters nor ask to see those they write, nor look in their private drawers or boxes. I let them know that I regard their private affairs and possessions as sacred, although I show them that I appreciate any and every confidence they place in me. As a consequence, I feel that I am made the recipient of their most sacred confidence whenever the time and their hearts are ripe to give them." In these last words lies a profound suggestion-when the time and the hearts are ripe. All who have observed the workings of their own hearts know that a confidence cannot be given except under certain conditions. There are thoughts and feelings and experiences, conflicts, doubts, fears, temptations, which we cannot bear to share with any human being, no matter how closely bound to us by the ties of nature and affection. Any attempt on the part of any one to wrest a confidence from us only shuts our hearts and lips more tightly. Yet the time comes when we need and seek a loving heart into which to pour the sorrows and perplexities or the joys and hopes of our own. Το whom do we naturally turn under such circumstances? To the critical, the censorious, the self-constituted adviser, the curious minded? By no means, but to the unsuspicious, incurious one, whose love for us is constant and vivifying as the sunshine; to the one who will sorrow with us or rejoice with us, as the case may be, but who will not take advantage of our confidence to impose upon us his or her own decisions, opinions or will-power, or in any way infringe upon that spiritual liberty to the body. One very common cause of the withholding of confidence on the part of children in regard to their doings or plans, is the habit on the part of parents of wishing to dictate or control in matters that are really of no importance except to the child. Every child likes to plan its own affairs, and where there is no question of wrong or right involved he should not only be allowed, but encouraged to do so. Yet there are many parents-and we find the same obtrusive quality in many who are not parents-who cannot hear any plan proposed or discussed without at once wishing to suggest or dictate, and who attempt to impose their will or their ideas on their children and every one else. To children of a sensitive nature, with, perhaps, weak will-power, it is really exasperating and often has a most injurious effect upon their tempers, to be constantly taking their affairs out of their own hands and directing them. Mary wants a new spring dress of a certain color and made a certain way. There is really no reason why she should not be allowed to have it as she wishes, but the mother, fond of directing other people, objects to the color, and argues against and finally vetoes the pattern desired. The young girl's wishes are overborne in the matter and she has a dress that she does not like and cannot enjoy wearing. The mother, perhaps, never thinks of the matter again; it really was of no moment to her in the first place; it was only her love of dictating and directing that caused her to interfere at all. But the young girl will long for the time to come when she need no longer consult her mother about her dress. Willie is fixing up his play-room and has certain plans for putting up shelves and hooks for his tools and other possessions. In an unguarded moment he confides his plans to his mother or father, and is at once overwhelmed with advice to change the whole plan and arrange everything in an exactly different way. The result will be that his next plans he will keep to himself. In As a teacher I have often been called upon to study the characters of children or young girls who seem to wear an impenetrable mask, concealing their real feelings, wishes and plans from every one. nearly every case I have had reason to believe that the cause of this lay in the too constant surveillance and dictation of parents, who, in their mistaken solicitude, wished to oversee and direct every trifling act and plan of the child's life. Shrinking from opposition and argument, the child finds refuge in concealment, and thus is destroyed the element of frankness which is such a safeguard and also such a beautiful trait in the young.-HELEN E. STARRETT in The Interior. NOTIONS ABOUT BOYS. I have often wondered why intelligent people who have trouble with their boys do not learn the power of sympathy and comradeship. Boys, on the average, are an exceedingly docile, tractable material with which to work, given the tools; these are sympathy, which will give insight; good comradeship, which will put one on the same level and make the insight practical; and real affection, which must grow out of the exercise of these powers toward any being; for the rest, patience will be enough. Boys are not usually credited with a certain fineness of perception and appreciation of personal effort in their behalf which they are almost sure to have. It is always a mistake to say or to imply, "I do that for you, now you ought to do this for me," in order to induce a boy to do his duty; this is an argument, at best, that receives but reluctant assent. If he does not consider such things without being reminded, it is that he needs training further back and further down. I have observed that many people put their boys off with the second or third best of everything in the house and the poorest of themselves, for no other reason than that they are boys; they seem to be afraid to spend the best that is in them on the boys, lest it should be wasted. (I am not by this objecting to the essential discipline of giving way for others, of self-sacrifice, of politeness, of place aux dames and noblesse oblige and the dozen other beautifiers of behavior which it is the right of boys to have taught to them). I have observed that others make as serious a mistake on the other side; they spend themselves so injudiciously, so wastefully, that they create selfishness and a certain heartless disregard for themselves in the boys they pamper and indulge to the ruin of the noble nature in them. One mistake comes from under appreciation of boy-nature and an underestimate of responsibility regarding its training; the other, from the subordination of the intellect to the mere animal function of parent-instinct, "I cannot deny him this, because I love him so." I know an admirably endowed boy whose generous soul lacked definite direction, because nobody in this busy world had time or thought it worth while to pay attention to his moral and spiritual necessities; lacking this, his intellect wasted itself in futile and fitful effort, his nature was rasped and hurt against the injudicious and un equal restraints put upon him at intervals by the blind shalls and shall nots of his absorbed guardians; and hurt again by the as injudicious license given, where happy liberty would have been enough Had he not been fortunate in his moral inheritance, and protected by his love of the beautiful in nature, his splendid powers might have gone to waste before his maturing judgment could have come to the rescue, and so have been lost to the world. If a boy is chronically lazy there is always sure to be a good reason for it, which should be looked up and considered before trying to deal with the case. I have known lazy boys who were the younger sons of overworked, worn-out mothers, and these were the most difficult of all to do for ; I have known others who were lazy for a few years because they were growing too fast to do anything else, and it was mere cruelty to compel them to great activity during this time; others still, because they were brought up in shiftless households and trained to nothing, absolutely nothing; a few others still, whose laziness was owing to a semi-poisonous condition of the blood from living in malarial districts. The worst case I ever had was a seventeen-year-old boy -in a grade years younger, whose soul and body had been soaked in tobacco since he was seven years old; I think I did little for him. The last I knew of him, he was silently and stupidly driving a dray; and he was not born a dunce. Alas, if I had not loved to teach, I should be the most miserable of beings, thinking over the blunders I must here make; as it is, they cannot have been so many as those of the mere functionary on the school platform, who is satisfied there and happy because he earns his bread by the least possible sweat of his brow, and no anguish of soul. F. L. HARTJAN. FROM FOREIGN SOURCES. GERMANY.-Three hundred and ninety languages. Prof. Friederich Mueller, well known as a distinguished philologist and ethnographer, says, in his report upon the journey around the world, which he made in the Austrian frigate "Novarra," that all the languages of the world may be classified in twelve groups. Naturally he disregards the dialects and refers to languages as we commonly accept the term. The groups mentioned by Prof. Mueller are as follows: 1-Papna, with two languages. 2-Hottentottish, with four languages. 3-Kaffir or Bantu, with twenty-five languages. 4-Negro, with fifty-eight languages. 5-Australian, with nineteen languages. 6-Malay Polynesian, with thirty-six languages. 7-Turanian or Mongolian, with fifty-nine languages. 8-Arctic, with eight languages. 9-American (North and South American Aborigines), with sixty-one languages. 10-Dravidian, with ten languages. 11-Nubian, with ten languages. 12-Mediterranean Group (comprising all modern civilized languages, like the English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, as well as the Persian, Hindostanee, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Slavic, etc.), with ninety-eight languages. Total, 390 known languages. A Prussian School Inspector appeared in the office of Burgomaster of a little town for the purpose of asking him to accompany him on a tour of inspection through the schools. The Burgomaster, rather out of sorts, muttered, Does this donkey come again?" The Inspector awaited his time for a proper answer, according to the immortal advice, "Vengeance is a dish that must be eaten cool." When the Inspector was introduced to the teacher, he said that he was curious to see how well punctuation was taught. The Burgomaster, the local supervisory authority, said, "Never mind that; we care naught for commas and the like." But the Inspector ordered a boy to go to the board and write. The Burgomaster of R. says, "The Inspector "is a donkey." Then he ordered the boy to change the comma by placing it after R. and inserting one after Inspector, thus: "The Burgomaster of R.," says the Inspector, "is a donkey." It was a cruel lesson, but it is reasonable to suppose that commas rose in the estimation of the "local supervisory authority." A MESSAGE. She wasn't on the play-ground, she wasn't on the lawn, |