will be able to rise with the increase of pressure. The one who does not continually study will inevitably lose the respect of the public, deteriorate as a teacher, and finally will not be able to find a position in the ranks. President Wayland's rule to increase the power of mind was to use the mind to the utmost. If a man wants to be a thinker he must think, and think hard. If he would be a reasoner he must reason, and reason to the very limit of his powers. A teacher can get along for a time without much thinking or new study, for he is in advance, in knowledge, of his pupils; but it does not take many terms to indicate to the pupils that he is doing the same thing over and over again just as it was when he began. Because the pupils know less than the teacher, or because the patrons of the school do not object, will not justify the lack of great energy of mind on the part of the teacher.

Much has been said about clergymen being dull and prosy, and no one has been more severe in criticism of the poor preacher than teachers. There is as great demand for broad scholarship and daily study in the teacher as in the clergy. Have not the children as good right to something fresh and vigorous and attractive in the public schools as the congregation at worship on Sunday morning? There is an every-day imperative need of constantly filling up the

We are drawing from it constantly, and unless it is replenished from time to time we cannot draw always. We ought to have more in store than we need for daily

use.

The reserve fund of mental force ought to be large, for we do not know how large a draft will be made nor at what time. Mind power can be exhausted like an account at bank. This reserve fund is of vital importance in every department of human activity. Sooner or later you will be called upon, and if you have toiled long and patiently you will have a reserve that will serve you in good stead. It is the boy in the counting-room, who makes it a point to

master the details of the business, that becomes after a while the partner. The clergyman who is a profound student and knows men and affairs, does not preach to empty pews. He neither exhausts himself or his hearers at each service. The same thing is true of intellectual knowledge. Our capital there is like other things. If we would have our drafts honored we must constantly keep accumulating. It does seem that for the demands upon his own mind-for increase in mental power--for this mind richnessevery teacher should be a model student, with fixed habits of study.

ONE-SIDED DEVELOPMENT.

Intellectual culture prevents one-sided mental development. One of the easiest things to do in the world is to become onesided, to measure everything by one's own standard of measurement. Nothing new is admitted into the mind for fear that the mental equilibrium will be disturbed. From the very nature of the teacher's work there is great danger that the mind will be heavysided, and finally will cease to grow. Variety is the great law of mental health and symmetrical development. Some years ago Mr. Gladstone was asked how he managed to do so much work and keep his energies so fresh. He replied that in his younger days there was a bit of road running out of London which had the reputation of killing more horses than any other road in the country. Why? Was it hilly? No, it was absolutely level, and that was the reason for it. A dead level takes more life out of a horse than a succession of hills; and as with horses so with men. Charles Darwin, who set the world to thinking along certain lines of science, found to his sorrow in after life that he could not read Shakespeare, With his manly honesty he assigned as his reason that he had made his mind a great machine for grinding out general laws from masses of facts, and that in the process the imaginative faculty had perished from lack of

mitting this condition to come upon them out of sheer stupidity and sordidness of aim. They have never taken the trouble to ask themselves or others what is the best life to live. They have found themselves on the straight, level road of every-day life, and after a few ineffectual struggles to be something more have given up and yielded to the force of the routine life. I have often wondered how many teachers have yielded to this mental poverty until now about all they allow their eyes to rest upon, and minds to gather strength from, are the text-books of arithmetic, grammar, reading, geography, etc., and the current news of the day. There is no attraction to such persons in a library though the wealth of a world's literature lies all about them. The books which have been the consolation of the lonely, the inspiration of the heroic, the meat and drink of the thoughtful, the records of those who have moved the springs of human progress are there, but all of this is an alien world to such minds.

I utter this word of warning to teachers for fear that some will take too narrow a view of their possibilities. A teacher should have a culture developed from the center outwards through all the capacities for growth. The imagination-the taste-the memory-the critical-the rational and the spiritual faculties should all be cultivated. He who would instruct others must know more and be more profoundly informed than those whom he would interest. What is more fascinating than to step into a schoolroom and see a teacher with intellectual margin broad enough that will enable him. or her to be a perfectly free instructor? He teaches out of himself, from the inward richness of his own wisdom. The minister may know his theology, the physician may know his materia medica, the lawyer his Blackstone, the merchant the principles of business, and each of these may succeed; but what shall we say of him or her who knows only one thing and attempts to pose as a teacher a teacher not of law, or of theol

ogy, or of medicine, or of business, but one who deals with all of these and lays the foundation for all of these; and for all of the vast and varied duties of every-day life? I am not putting it too strongly when I say that the public school teacher by virtue of his position needs, of all the instructors of man, to be the most symmetrical, the best developed mentally and morally that it is possible to become.

REFLEX INFLUENCE.

If there were no other consideration for a broad and strong scholarship on the part of the teacher, the reflex influence of attaining intellectual strength would be sufficient to repay a thousand-fold for all the expenditure of time, and thought and energy in the acquisition of knowledge. In many callings of life, in the accomplishing of a task, the effort necessary to complete it has been of more worth than the work performed. The production of that wonderful music composition of the Messiah expanded the soul of Handel much more than it has that of the thousands who have been thrilled by it since; his soul grew by perceptible accretions as note by note the song grew. The great singer who thrills an audience by her voice stirs her own soul much more as she sings than she does those who hear. Tennyson's In Memoriam moved and comforted his own great being much more than the great poem has ever comforted others. If everything else that I put into this paper is forgotten, remember this one fact-that nothing great has ever been done for money. No great picture has ever been painted for money, no great song has ever been written for money, no great oration has ever been delivered for money, no great deed of any description has ever been done for money. Whenever a great song has come forth, whenever a great picture has been painted, whenever a great address has been made, whenever a great deed has been done, they have been the overflows of great souls and not done for money. The influence upon the

doer has always been greater than upon the receiver. Who has not been thrilled through and through as a master has touched the keys of the great organ and made it speak the deepest emotions of his own life? How with consummate skill he sweeps the keys with such precision and feeling that the hearer is led heavenward? How like the musician is the one who becomes scholarly by seeking to know the great truths of nature, science, art, government, of man, of God? As he uncovers this or discovers that, adjusts this or perfects that, fact upon fact, law after law, principle after principle, is not such a one touching the great keyboard of the universe of truths? As this or that is developed and mastered by hard study and put into place for use, is not the student putting himself into a position by mastering these things so that he can help others? In this help has he not lifted himself nearer and nearer the heart of all truth than he has those with whom he has come in contact?

This enlarged education on the part of teachers is not that they may do better service for the State, but that they may better develop the thinking, the feeling, the willing manhood and womanhood that is within themselves. The teachers of the public schools are so many living pictures for the childhood of the land to observe. Many of my readers, doubtless, have stood at some time in life before a painting by a great master. How the soul was stirred with conceptions that were lofty, and ideals that were pure? The soul was touched by inanimate objects. So teachers stand before the

boys and girls of their school-rooms; not as inanimate objects, but as living persons. They are there, not for dollars and cents, but for the purpose of imparting conceptions of life. Silent eyes are following teachers everywhere-in the school-room and on the street. Mental images of them are being formed in the daily recitation. It is not so much what is said, as what is, that makes an indelible mark upon the children. That the boy and girl may have the highest and truest ideals, the teacher must reflect a broad and liberal culture. Whether a teacher will admit it or not he is, or at least should be, the ideal of manhood and womanhood to the pupils; that when they see their teacher upon the street, in the social circle, in the house of worship or in the schoolroom, they will unconsciously aspire to be like him. There is no greater thought than this, for a teacher to be as the teacher desires the pupils to be. The great function of the teacher is not to call the rolls, perform acts of discipline, or hear lessons recited, but to awaken and inspire the slumbering immortality that lies sleeping in childhood.

Along this very line Col. Parker said some months ago at a great meeting of teachers that we should "Exalt the common schools by the exaltation of the teacher. Make thoroughly educated men and women fully capable of taking the priceless treasures of this mighty century to the school-room, and put them in the souls of the children. Make them capable of understanding the problem of man and the destinies of humanity." MARION, IND.

A

GREAT proportion of the people of Indiana think of this institution as an asylum where the aged and indigent blind may find permanent homes and where afflictions of the eye may be treated without cost.

Almost every mail brings letters addressed to the Superintendent of the Blind Asylum; applications for the admission of infirm blind persons are numerous; and not infrequently earnest friends and physicians per

suade old and middle-aged blind people to come to the institution without application, expecting that they will here secure homes and better medical treatment.

The ideas of the teachers of the state in regard to the purposes of the Institution for the Blind are but little less erroneous than are those of the public in general. They look upon it as one of the state's benevolent institutions, but as forming no part of our system of public schools, while in fact it is as much a part of our school system as is Purdue or the State University, and is supported in the same manner. Neither is it any more an asylum than these excellent institutions are; nor is there any reason why persons attending this institution should be denominated inmates, and those attending other departments of the public schools called pupils or students.

The Institution for the education of the Blind is even more exclusive in its requirements for admission than is any other department of our school system. An applicant for admission must not only be more than six and less than twenty-one years of age, but he must have a reasonably sound body, a sound mind, and must be free from immoral habits. The necessity for these requirements is obvious.

Provision is made in our constitution for a system of public schools wherein equal privileges shall be extended alike to all. Institutions of this character are but the legitimate outgrowth of this provision. There are but few blind children in the state, and they are scattered throughout her borders. They require special care and special training. They cannot well be educated together with the seeing-children of the public schools. It is economy on the part of the state to bring them all into one institution and thus educate them rather than to provide for them special teachers and special apparatus at their homes. The state boards them, it is true, but this additional expense on the part of the state is offset by the expense and sacrifice of the parents in sending their children,

while yet so young and comparatively helpless, away from home to be placed under the care of strangers. The home life and home influences of the children are likewise sacrificed in the life of the institution. At most the state shows no greater charity in educating her blind in an institution of this kind than in educating her seeing-children in her primary and secondary schools, not to mention her higher institutions of learning in which tuition is free.

The institution maintains three departments of instruction the literary, music, and industrial departments. The course of study in the literary department is nearly the same as the minimum course for commissioned high schools, excluding Latin. Reading, writing, and spelling, together with the fundamental principles of arithmetic are the instrumental studies and are so treated. As in the seeing-schools they are considered the basis of acquisition and impartation, and an effort is made to have all pupils well established in these subjects. The teaching of these, except spelling, is not difficult.

There are three different systems of reading taught in the institutions of the United States-the old system of raised letters, the Braille, and the New York Point-and the literature for the blind is published in all these systems. This diversity increases the difficulty of communication among the pupils educated in the various institutions, and greatly limits the literature to which they have access. It is to be hoped that those interested in the education of the blind will soon adopt a uniform system in which all text-books and all literature shall be published.

The New York Point is taught in the Indiana institution. It consists of six embossed points so arranged as to represent all the letters of the alphabet, ten combinations of letters, the punctuation marks, and numbers.

The first teaching in reading and spelling is wholly individual work. There can be no class instruction. The teacher must