we needed it, for I dont see any use of ary. I know a lady who can spell only 180 of them right. She steers clear of all the rest. She can't learn any more. So her letters consist of those constant spelling a word right, and never did. I mean I don't see any use in having a uniform and arbitrary way of spelling words. We might as well make allly recurring 180 words. Now and then, clothes alike and cook all dishes alike. when she finds herself obliged to write Sameness is tiresome; variety is pleas- upon a subject which necessitates the ing. I have a correspondent whose let- use of some other words, she-well, she ters are always a refreshment to me; don't write on that subject. I have a there is always such a breezy unfetter- relative in New York who is almost ed originality about his orthography. sublimely gifted. She can't spell any He spells Kow with a large K. Now, word right. There is a game called that is just as good as to spell it with a Verbarium. A dozen people are each small one. It is better. It gives the provided with a sheet of paper, across imagination a broader field, a wider the top of which is written a long word scope. It suggests to the mind a grand, kaleidoscopical, or something like that, vague, impressive, new kind of a cow. and the game is to see who can make Superb effects can be produced by va- up the most words out of that in three riegated spelling. Now, there is Blind minuets, always beginning with the inTom, the musical prodigy. He always itial letter of the word. Upon one occaspells a word according to the sound sion the word chosen was cofferdam. that is carried to his ear. And he is an When time was called, everybody had enthusiast in orthography. When you built from five to twenty-five words, give him a word he shouts it out-puts except the young lady. She had only all his soul into it. I once heard him one word-calf. We all studied a mocalled upon to spell orang-outang before ment and then said, "Why, there is no an audience. He said, "O-r-a-n-g, 'l' in cofferdam! Then we examined orang, g-e-r, ger, orangger, t-a-n-g, tang, her paper. To the eternal honor of that orangger, tang!" Now, a body can re- uninspired, unconscious, sublimely inspect an orang-outang that spells his dependent soul be it said, she had name in a vigorous way like that. But spelled the word "caff!" If anybody the feeble dictionary makes a mere kit- here can spell calf any more sensibly ten of him. In the old times people than that, let him step to the front and spelled just as they pleased. That was take his milk. The insurrection will the right idea. You had two chances now begin.-Educational News. at a stranger then. You knew a strong man from a weak one by his ironclad spelling, and his handwriting helped you to verify your verdict. Some people have an idea that correct spelling can be taught and taught to anybody. That is a mistake. The spelling faculty is born in a man, like poetry, music, and art. It is a gift; it is a talent. People who have this gift in a high degree only need to see a word once in print, and it is forever photographed There are two classes of teachers that upon their memory. They cannot for- I observe: One class is pedantic, pompget it. People who haven't it must be ous, self-contained, magisterial. When content to spell more or less like-thun- he stands before children he fills them der-and expect to splinter the diction- with awe, instead of playing on their ary wherever their orthographical heart-strings by the mighty power of lightning happens to strike. There are love. Such teaching has few results. 114,000 words in the unabridged diction- | The child looks up with awe; the little Wise Teaching. At the foundation of all instruction is this principle: "To train up a child in the way he should go, you must walk in it yourself." You must ever be exemplars as well as teachers. To make others true you must be true yourselves; to make others wise you must be wise. If you preach temperance and practice drunkenness, no one will heed you. delicate tendrils of his infant mind can- | men and women you may be proud of in not reach up and grasp instruction from after life. While they are young, teach such a teacher. them that far above physical courage, The second class of teachers bring which will lead them to face the cansunshine into the school-room. Chil-non's mouth-above wealth, which dren turn to them as flowers to the light. There is an atmosphere of sunshine around such a teacher. His own light attracts all to him for their good and growth. Above all things, teach children what their life is. It is not breathing, moving, playing, sleeping, simply. Life is a battle. All thoughtful people see it SO. A battle between good and evil, from childhood. Good influences, drawing us up toward the divine; bad influences, drawing us down to the brute. Midway we stand, between the divine and the brute. How to cultivate the good side of our nature is the greatest lesson of life to teach. Teach children that they lead these two lives; the life without and the life within; and that the inside must be pure in the sight of God, as well as the outside in the sight of men. There are five means of learning. These are: Observation, Reading, Conversation, Memory, Reflection. Educators sometimes, in their anxiety to secure a wide range of studies, do not sufficiently impress upon their scholars the value of memory. Now, our memory is one of the most wonderful gifts God has bestowed upon us, and one of the most mysterious. Take a tumbler and pour water into it; by and by you can pour no more, it is full. It is not so with the mind. You cannot fill it full of knowledge in a whole lifetime. Pour in all you please, and it still thirsts for more. Remember this: "Knowledge is not what you learn, but what you remember." "It is not what you eat, but what you digest, that makes you grow." "It is not the money you handle, but that you keep; that makes you rich." "Its not what you study, but what you remember and reflect upon, that makes you learned." One more suggestion: Above all things else, strive to fit children in your charge to be useful men and women; would give them farms and houses, and bank stocks and gold—is moral courage; that courage by which they will stand fearlessly, frankly, firmly, for the right. Every man or woman who dares to stand for the right when evil has its legions, is the true moral victor in this life, and in the land beyond the stars. —Schuyler Colfax. IN every school room there is a self appointed infallible dictator. If the order is poor, the infallible head is disgusted with the incorrigibility of "these children." If the lessons are uniformly bad, it is on account of the impenetrable dullness of "these children." Whether it be languor or indolence that drowns their senses, or the demon of unrest that possess them, it is equally the fault of "these children." Is whispering or gum-chewing epidemic, it is because of some mysterious infatuation of "these children." The truth is, that under these circumstances, "these children" are more sinned against than sinning. Where a fault is general in a school the master of that institution is somehow at the bottom of it. It is easy to be infallible when the decision rests with ourselves; but by a little self-examination and self-criticism we often find that the faults of our school are but the result of causes found in our own character or method. It is even possible to have sixty-one dunces in a room of sixty pupils. "O wad some power," etc. EVERY man is born for heaven; and he is received in heaven who receives heaven in himself while in the world, and he is excluded who does not.Swedenborg. HAPPINESS doats on her own works, and is prodigal to her favorite. As one drop of water hath an attraction for another, so do felicities run into felicities. Active and Passive---What is the spent by John. And as an active verb Difference? is all that a neuter verb is and nothing more, except that it must be followed by an external object without a preposition between, so it may in the active voice be followed by two objectives, the one internal to it (just as "life" is internal to "lived" above) and the other external. And this external object is the usual and proper of its passive voice. Of course, then, an active verb may take two passives. And many of them do take naturally and regularly two passive forms. Character John hit me a hard blow (No. 1.), and I was hit a hard blow by John (No. 2.), | and a hard blow was hit by John (No. 3), are three different ways of saying the same thing. They are all three in common use. There is little difference between them in the way of rhetorical propriety, and none whatever in the way of syntax or grammatical correctness. It is a mere quibble of ignorance to cavil at No. 3. and say, either that it is ungrammatical in form or that it is false in fact. That a blow, a mere act, an abstraction can't be hit is true in one When the good ship Schiller was sense. It cannot objectively and finally as a man is hit. But a blow can be hit steered by a faithless captain upon the fatal rocks, and went down slowly to mediately and instrumentally. That is, it can pass just as the fist does from her doom, a group of six people sat in the hit-doer to the hit-receiver. But the pavilion, holding each other's hands, ere I explain this further I must precalm, praying, awaiting death. One mise as a third principle of language was a girl, young, petted, surrounded that neuter verbs govern the objective, with luxury, having "fed on the roses (are limited by the objective case) when- and lain in the lilies of life,” and one was a scholar, trained in many tongues, ever the limiting term has the same meaning with the verb-name. And the a woman of science and skill, with a verb-name, when used as a verb, differs purpose and a career, and one was a from the same word when used as a young daughter, with life all before her, noun only by assuming a predicating and one was a wife and one was a husfunction (a do-power) by means of band, with their consecrated past. And which the speaker asserts the act name there sat they in the midst of the night, of the verb (or its state-name) of some going down slowly into the shrouding other name, which thus becomes at waters, calm, prayerfully, conquering once the subject of the sentence and the death. And as the water rose around nominative of this verb. Hit and sleep them they rose, still holding each othare two names, the one of an act and er's hands. And so, weak, helpless, the other of a state. When I say John they were ingulfed in the awful depth, hits and John sleeps, I simply affirm but sublimely triumphant, they passed the two things, named respectively hit out into the unseen universe. It is charand sleep, of a third thing named John. acter that prevails. What odds whethAnd now if I say John sleeps (sleep er it is music or medicine, or costume does) the sleep of death, then the second or color, a man's unencumbering garb "sleep" is not external to and different or a woman's multitudinous drapery from the first. It is the same word and that has occupied the mind, if so be it it means the same thing. The second can encounter the vicissitudes of life sleep, then, is in no opposition with the with fortitude, and face death with first-that is with the noun of the verb tranquility? "sleeps." Now these neuter verbs, thus limited by an internal and appositional objective, are passivized exactly as active verbs are. Thus, John lived a happy life is equivalent to a happy life VISITING CARDS.-25 fine visiting cards, 10 cents; in gold, 15 cents. M. H. VESTAL, Bedford, Ind. Who is truly blessed? OUR POETS' CORNER. The Flight of Time. BY CALVIN GOSS. Time, like a vision or a troubled dream, A vapor flying from the morning sun, Bears onward to forgetfulness what seem The brightest scenes 'mid which life's race is run. Youth's amaranthine walks and shady bowers, Are withered by the breath of time; the hours We fondly turn and look in after years, Unto the old whose lives were good and true Then onward Time in thy untiring flight Preference. Some would the flaming comet be, The earth and all that hold earth dear, That holds each planet in its sphere. But soon, alas! its glory's gone, And left of greatness scarce a trace; While lesser stars are beaming on, And filling every night their place. I'd rather be yon evening star, That just as twilight sweet draws near, Each evening casts its rays afar, Our earth to light, our hearts to cheer. To it the weary farmer turns, And whistling homeward makes his way; Where the cheerful cottage fire burns, And the good wife waits at close of day. To it when far from home and friends, Slang. When the sun in the west was sinking, I was walking along on the sidewalk, I thought of the next generation, Such words as "you're getting too fresh, boss," I wondered if God in his goodness Had decked me in trimmings hirsute, "I guess, boss, you milked 'fore you crawled." And the noise kept increasing, ne'er ceasing. As they shouted, "say, boss, you're a rum 'un," "Hi, Cully, how is that old tom cat?" "Tom Collins is looking for you," "Don't take me up for flat, boss," "That's played-trot out something new." "Old sardine, you go at half cock now," "You're getting too big by a half," "I'm afraid that you're old clothes won't fit you," "You'd better get milk for that calf." And the sun paused just for a moment, Then sunk in the far golden west, So I went home and ate a good supper, And at night I said "give us a rest." BETTER trust all and be deceived, And weep that trust and that deceiving, Than doubt one heart that if believed Had filled one's life with true believing, Oh, in this mocking world, too fast The doubting fiend o'ertakes our youth; Better be cheated to the last, Than lose the blessed hope of truth.. We Must Educate. For the purpose of public instruction we hold every man subject to taxation in proportion to his property; and we look not to the question whether he himself have or have not any children to be benefitted by the education for which he pays; we regard it as a wise and liberal system of police by which propety, life and the peace of society are secured. We hope to excite a feeling of respectability, and a sense of character, by en larging the capacities and increasing the sphere of intellectual enjoyment. By general instruction, we seek as far as possible to purify the moral atmosphere; to keep good sentiments uppermost; and to turn the strong current of feeling and opinion, as well as the cen sures of law ard the denunciations of religion, against immorality and crime. We hope for a security beyond the law, and above the law, in the prevalence of enlightened and well principled moral sentiment. We hope to continue and to prolong the time when, in the villages and farm-houses of New England, there may be undisturbed sleep within unbarred doors. We do not indeed expect all men to be philosophers or statesmen; but we confidently trust, that, by the diffusion of general knowledge and How to teach Spelling. Spelling should be taught as it is practiced in the actual business of life. "In practical life we spell only as we write." By writing the spelling lesson the hand ard the eye work together with the memory. It is the natural and successful way of teaching spelling. spelling should be taught through the eye and the hand, and not through the hand forgets its cunning." "What a pupil reads or hears he may misappredend or forget; what he sees stands, and may recall; but what he pictured or performed he easily underdoes with his hands he comes practicalgood and virtuous sentiments, the poly to know, and can only lose when the litical fabric may be secure as well against open violence and overthrow, as against the slow but sure undermining of licientiousness. We rejoice that every man in this community may call his property his own, so far as he has occasion to furnish for himself and his children the blessings of religious instruction and the elements of knowledge. This celestial and this earthly light he is entitled to by the fundamental laws. It is every poor man's undoubted birthright-it is the great blessing which this constitution has secured him—it is his solace in life—and it may well be his consolation in death, that his country stands pledged by the faith which it has plighted to all its citizens to protect his children from ignorance, barbarity, and vice.- Webster, 1821. The teacher may require the pupils to be prepared on a portion of their reading lesson, or assign them a paragraph from some other text-book, or a newspaper, or give a set list of words selected for the purpose. He should drill the class often on the common words used in familiar conversation, business, and correspondence. If you teach spelling at all you will, of course, employ the written instead of the oral; and to do it most successfully, ed for that purpose.-Oswego (N. Y.) you need, for each pupil, a book prepar Times. I WILL listen to any one's convictions, but pray keep your doubts to yourself. I have plenty of my own.-Goethe. |