JONES & STONE.

A. BUCHANAN,

Four-in-Hands

to the Fore.

For our customers who prefer the four-in-hand to all other shapes, we constantly renew this scarf in new and elegant patterns. We now have some different from the usual form and made of soft but substantial silk. They are the Gum Twilles. Price 50 cents.

JONES & SONS.

Sunflower Shoe Store

Sells Solid,
Serviceable,

Stylish SHOES.

New Store, New Stock. 518 Commercial Street.

JOS. C. JONES & SONS,

Pure Homemade Candies, Ice Cream, Etc. Foundry and Machine Shop.

STUDENTS ARE INVITED TO COME TO THE WHITLEY BARBER SHOP. Two Good Barbers. Same Rates as Before. Nicer Shop. JOE HILL, Asst. J. W. HILLERMAN, Prop.

STAR STEAM DYE WORKS,

814 Commercial Street.

Clothing Dyed, Cleaned, Pressed and Repaired. Satisfaction Guaranteed. Your friends have their work done there-why don't you?

Spring Goods

We do all kinds of Furnace and Stove Repair Work.

MILLER & CALL

are in the lead with

Bread, Pies, Cakes and Cookies,

Fruits, Nuts and Confections, Fresh Bulk Oysters, Celery and Crackers.

We canvass the city with three wagons. and see us at 627 Commercial Street.

Come

E. W. CARVER & SON.

325 Commercial Street.

KINDERGARTEN SUPPLIES.

Materials for DRAWING and COLOR WORK.

TEACHERS' HELPS AND BOOKS.

80-page Catalogue 4FREE.

MILTON BRADLEY COMPANY,

H.O. PALEN, Manager.

KANSAS CITY, MO.

Vol. XI.

The Future of the Rural School.

Some one has called attention to the fact that though the life of the farmer has changed greatly in the last fifty years, the work in the average rural school has remained practically the same. When some of us were boys, the farmer was actually the tiller of the soil. He did the work himself; he plowed, he sowed, he reaped with his own hands. His income was necessarily limited. He sold little and bought less. He was supposed to know little and to be very honest. He might be able to read and write, but if he had gone beyond the rule of three in mathematics, or the indicative mode in grammar, he was looked upon as very wise in his generation. If he took more than one newspaper and had a copy of "Baxter's Saints Rest" or "Fox's Book of Martyrs" on his sitting room table, he was regarded as a seer. His home was seldom carpeted; that one who could afford an ingrain carpet for his parlor being considered as specially favored among men. Then every country boy wore cotton jeans and homespun and the chief concern of every family was not to make money to buy things, but to raise things to eat and to make things to wear.

Now, how has all this changed! The farmer does most of his farming by proxy. Machinery has taken his place. He buys everything he wears and one-half of what he eats, sells nearly everything he raises, lives in a comfortable and even a luxurious home, raises stock, buys and sells like a merchant, reads newspapers and discusses politics like a lawyer, borrows and loans money like a broker, investigates and experiments like a scientist, rides about and visits the great cities like a man of leisure, sends his children to college like a doctor or preacher, and in fact is now the most thoroughly all-round man in the whole land.

With these changed conditions, the district schools have not kept pace. There have been some extensions of the course of study and some positive improvements in methods. The comfort of the schoolroom, the supply of apparatus, the interest of the general public, are in many cases in advance of that of a half century ago, but there is only an occasional country school meeting the demands of the new conditions of country life. This all-round man who lives in the country ought to have rare facilities for a general education and for fitting himself for his special occupation. Education for a country boy or girl has too long pointed to the city and not to the farm. This is most unfortunate, for it creates unrest and dissatisfaction that sooner or later bring disastrous results.

No. 6

The future rural teacher is going to revolutionize all this. He is not going to be a rural teacher at all; he is going to be a country school teacher, and he is going to love the country and make the country boys and girls see more than toil and drudgery in the free life of the farm. To do this he must be revolutionized himself, he must have an education and training befitting his great mission. He must be able to utilize the great resources of nature which a country life so abundantly affords, and to stimulate abiding interest in its problems. We hear much of the advantages of the city schools, but as a matter of fact, they are more apparent than real. In the cultivation of sense perception, the material within reach of the country teacher is infinitely greater and infinitely more helpful than that within the reach of the city teacher. The paucity of material and the set way in which much of it must be given to the city children often awaken but a passing interest and superficial knowledge. In the country, every farm, every orchard, every wood, every garden, every roadside, every pond, every river, teems with materials that awaken the wonder of the child and stimulate enquiry.

Each day new marvels in abundance greet the eye and arrest the ear. The growing corn, the ripening wheat, the creeping vine, the blushing primrose, the dainty cowslip, the clinging cock.ebur, the lowing cattle, the noisy thrush, the restless bee, the vaulting jack-rabbit, the sly fox, the nimble woodchuck, the industrious beetle, the praying mantis, the newly mown hay, the clicking corn planter, the complicated self-binding reaper, the puffing steam thresher, and the multitudes of kindred objects whose mere mention would fill this edition of the Instructor furnish the means for cultivating the observing and discriminating faculties which no city teacher can ever secure, save in limited measure.

I am assured that the average country teacher does not use them now because he knows so little about them himself and knows less about how to use them properly in teaching the children. The future country teacher will not be so handicapped. He is going to have a school house cabinet and it is to be filled, and filled by the children. It will contain every variety of grain that grows in the district and many from abroad. It will also contain similar collections of grasses and fruits and soils and minerals, and specimens of every living thing that flies in the air or creeps on the prairies and in the wood about. All will be labeled and their habits and value to

man properly indicated. The gathering, the naming, and the describing of such a mass of material will prove an education in itself. The process, properly managed, is in its very nature scientific. The boy or girl who does it will be wiser than those who have grown up in the old way.

What will such a child know? He will know all about the various forms of plant life, their roots, stems, branches, leaves, flowers, fruits, habits, etc. Will know what are useful, what are worthless and what are injurious. The same variety of knowledge will extend to the animal life of his locality. He will know when the robins come, where the swallow builds her nest, where the partridge feeds her young, where the groundhog digs his hole, where the beaver plies his trowel, where the pigeons sleep at night, where the perch and the trout bite best, where the first apples ripen and the exact day when the melon may be plucked. He will know the soil suitable for wheat, for

corn, for rye, for alfalfa, for flax, for millet, and for the varieties of grains and fruits adapted for his locality. He will know the nature and effect of frost, of rust, of blight, of drouth, and how to guard against them all. He will know all about the history of the varieties of apples and pears and pumpkins, and will readily detect the good or the weak points in Durhams and Holsteins and Jerseys and Cochin Chinas and Plymouth Rocks and Merinos and Cotswolds and Percherons and Berkshires. He will learn all about them as the impulse to learn is fresh and strong, and will learn systematically and well.

In this acquaintance with the life about him, the perceptive faculties are not the only ones developing, for imagination and memory grow stronger and wider every day; discrimination and judgment become keen and active, and the child's mind is alive to everything it meets.

With this extension and differentiation of knowledge has come language in abundance. If anything will make a child talk, it is the wonders of the outside world. Here interest seldom flags. When it is stirring the children, talk is easy and natural. They write as easily as they talk, for then they have something to write about. The great cross in writing disappears when the children have something to write about.

Counting and addition and subtraction, and other simple mathematical processes, come naturally. The children are eager to read about similar things elsewhere. With a youthful ambition and the appetite for knowledge thus whetted, the transition to books and to abstract studies is readily accomplished. It is made with little effort, for the mind seeks it. The problems of good roads, of drainage, of irrigation, of markets, of the effect of world and home supplies, of transportation, of fuel, of labor saving machinery, of the currency, of the tariff, of government, of morals, of religion, come fast enough and along with history and geography keep interest unabated. I hope that no one fails to see the literary side of this busy, wide-awake knowledge-getting which so abundantly occupies the life of the country child. He must learn to use books in facilitating his study of Nature and in working out the problems which come into his life. He must learn to read them as rapidly as he reads nature. Rightly used, they multiply his eyes and magnify every sense. They help him to see the glories of the setting sun and to catch the meaning of the rising wind as it sways the walls of corn. They sweeten the odor of the clover blossoms and sharpen the appetite for the rarest fruits of the orchard; they heighten the charm of springtime anu of autumn, of the summer harvest and the winter's hearthstone. They quicken the love for home, for the farm, for the country life, and fix the tastes and habits in healthy lines. The great poets have been the poets of Nature. Its beauties have been the themes of the masters. Only those who have grown up in Nature's heart, who know its fits and passions, who have seen it in midnight's lonely hour and in high noon's royal power, can appreciate the poet's touch and understand its subtlest teaching. What does Riley's "Old Swimmin' Hole" mean to a city bred chap? Who that has not broken nubbins across his knee and shivered over the milk pail, can drink the depth of meaning out of those days

"When the frost was on the pumpkin

And the fodder in the shock."

What an ordinary rhyme is Wordsworth's "Daffodils," save to the youth who lives

"Beside the lake, beneath the trees."

Who but the country lad knows that

"The rose is sweetest, washed with morning dew,
As love is sweetest when immersed in tears."

What boy or girl can read Holland's "Bitter Sweet," Carle

ton's "Farm Ballads," Mrs. Allerton's "Walls of Corn," Bryant's "Robert of Lincoln," J. Whitcomb Riley's "Melodies of Meadow and Orchard," Burn's "Highland Love Songs," or any one of a hundred other songs of stream and mountain, of plain and glen, of labor and content, without every lane and grove and running brook and humble home becoming a thousand fold more dear? The country teacher is beginning to understand all this. He is beginning to teach more of science and more of nature, and more of life and less of abstract mathematics and technical grammar. In readjusting his course of study, much to which he has been burning incense is disappearing and these more fruitful subjects are dictating its spirit and controlling its methods. Careful grading and yet more ready recognition of individual tastes and capabilities will follow. Homes will be filled with good books and choice pictures, thoughtful and happy families.

The teacher of the future is not going to teach subjects so much as to teach children,—a far more difficult task. As a preparation for this, his education will be thorough and comprehensive. Nature will be to him an open book, the child the object of unselfish love, of untiring care. He will esteem knowledge above silver and gold; will be skilled in the management of educational processes and will make people recognize the difference between the master and the novice in school teaching.

He is not going to be a Jack-of-all-trades, neither is he going to teach as a make-shi t until he can find something better. He will be specifically trained for his work and will find his highest pleasure in it. He is going to be a part of the community in which he works, having a common interest in all that pertains to its welfare. His responsibilities are not going to begin and end with the school bell, but will extend through the years until the children reach the estate of manhood and womanhood.

The country schools are to have organic connection with the high schools and the universities and this teacher of the future will be weighed in the balances. He will be rated not so much by the technical knowledge of his pupils as by their spirit and their capacity for work. I am aware that I am laying out a liberal ideal for this country of the future, but I do it because I believe in the country school teacher and because I know that it has already been happily realized in some communities and believe that it is possible to all. It will be seen that I have said nothing about the wages and the tenures and the comforts and the social standing which the country teacher of the future will have. I have not done this because such a school as I have named gives the teacher higher market value. We need not worry about the salary question. It will take care of itself. The people are hungering after just such a teacher as I have described and they will soon respond with the proper compensation. These changes, though already making, are not coming at once. Their speed depends entirely upon us as teach

ers.

No one who has not seen it done, can understand how soon a teacher may revolutionize an entire community. I can point to an occasional locality where all the young people are keenly alive to the value of an education, where they love books, music and art, and where they are planning for great things in life. In such cases you may be sure that this ideal school master, with his great heart and brain, has been about. Not long since I visited such a community, and in answer to my query was told that it was all due to a great soul, a woman, who some years before had gone there to teach school. As one expressed it to me, "She had literally set the whole community on fire."" -A. R. TAYLOR, in Normal Instructor.

The Certificate Bills.

The following is a summary of the House Bill, No. 92, that extends recognition to the State University and the appraved non-state schools:

Sections one and two provide that graduates of the School of Arts of the State University, and of the School of Arts in incorporated colleges and universities in the state, maintaining, in the opinion of the State Board of Education, courses equivalent to those at the State University, shall be entitled to a three years' certificate; provided, that such colleges and universities are maintaining departments of education and that the course completed has the professional work required for the teachers' diploma at the State University. This certificate is renewable at the end of three years, provided that the holder has taught successfully two years out of the three, and has pursued a course of professional reading.

Section three of the same act provides that graduates of approved colleges and universities, who have completed a four years' course accredited by the State Board of Education as equivalent to the four years' course at the State Normal School, shall be entitled to a three years' certificate; provided, that they have included in their course five months' practice teaching under the direction of the pedagogical department of the institution from which they graduate. This certificate is not renewable. The holder, however, may secure a life certificate by passing the examination given by the State Board of Education on the five professional subjects as provided by the law of 1893.

The law of 1876 admits holders of certificates and diplomas from the State Board to first and second class cities without examination. Though it was plainly stated several times that the above named bill gave the graduates of the institutions approved by the State Board of Education greater privileges than the graduates of the State Normal School, many members of the legislature did not seem to realize what they were doing until it was too late to retreat. They came forward very generously proposing, however, to equalize the inequality, if time would permit. A bill was immediately prepared, admitting the holders of the State Normal diploma to first and second class cities without examination, and it was introduced into the Senate by Senator Lupfer on Monday evening, February 27. He was heartily seconded by Senators Titus, Braddock, and other friends, and on Wednesday morning, just twenty minutes before the lapsing of the time for considering Senate bills, it passed that body. The nature of the bill was explained to the leading members of the House of Representatives, and almost without exception they conceded its justness and agreed to support it. Though there were a multitude of other bills clamoring for recognition, the revision committee, under the chairmanship of Representative Seaver, of Ellsworth, reported favorably on the bill, and it was placed well in advance on the calendar on Thursday afternoon. Several efforts during the evening and the next day proved futile because of the claims of other bills ahead of it on the calendar. Late on Friday evening, however, a little over an hour and a half before the consideration of all general Senate bills must stop in the House, Representative Harris, of Lyon, succeeded in getting recognition and moved that the House act on the bill at once. Representative Grattan, of McPherson, seconded the motion in a short but convincing speech. The character of the bill had been explained to a large majority of the members of the House and the motion carried unanimously; the roll was promptly called, eighty-four voting in its favor and but one or two against it. The Governor signed the bill on the Monday following. It is

but justice to say that many friends of the other bill, including President Swensson, Chancellor Snow, and a large number of senators and representatives, were most kindly disposed to this one and gave it their hearty support.

From Miss Spencer.

My Dear Friends:-Truly some tidings of my life in the mountains of West Virginia should return to Normal friends, whoever yet may be interested. I have kept somewhat posted regarding you all, through the NORMAL MONTHLY, and last April had the good fortune to meet Professor Dinsmore at the meeting of our Presbytery in Charleston. He gave me many

items of the Kansas friends.

I remained three years in my first location.. Resulting from the work there are four Sunday schools established and super intended by our mountain people who were converted under our work. Three weekly prayer meetings are held in the same fields, several homes are keeping the altar fires burning, and I will not attempt to say how many hearts have been touched and how many lives changed by the transforming power of God's word. The seed was scattered persistently through all those years, sometimes in weakness, sometimes too much in the flesh, not fully of the Spirit, but still,

Scattering precious seed, doubting never,
Scattering precious seed, trusting ever,
Sowing the Word, with pray'r and endeavor,
Trusting the Lord for growth and for yield.

The mountaineers say that the trend of morals has been elevated in adjacent and remote communities; or, in their language, "The whole country has changed their ways of livingit is no more like it used to be than day is like night." This change they attribute to the work of the Presbyterian Bible teachers, "whose teaching has done us more good than all the preaching we ever listened to."

To us whose ideals are high, these results are only beginnings of better things which we see by faith. The gospel in the homes has brought to many young hearts a thirst for knowledge, a desire for usefulness, a longing to measure mind with mind and to know the blessings of force rightly directed. "More light" is the cry. "Oh, to have learning!" We keep good books in circulation and feed every longing for the truth. The time has come when a school in the midst of these fields is in great demand, and for this we labor, hope and pray. These eager young people must have right employment for hand, heart and brain. The public schools are too slow to catch the spirit of these demands, because of the incompetency of teachers. The compulsory law is not enforced and the schools are not well attended.

Acme, my present location, is a coal-mining village, the railroad station for a large mountain region. It is ten miles from my former field and I am enabled to visit there occasionally. The miners are rather harder to reach than farmers. They are quite well satisfied with present possessions. It may require some time to create in them a hungering after righteousness. But children are numerous and most of them delight in Sunday school. So our hope of evangelization is through the children, as is being demonstrated in some of the great cities, Philadelphia leading. Again and again the old truth is verified, "A little child shall lead them."

Approaching spring days bring some longing for vast prair ies with myriads of modest erythroneums lifting fair faces to the breeze. But contenting myself with the shy arbutus, I anticipate the vernal splendor soon to cover these rugged mountain sides. We have scenes of wondrous beauty. With kindly greetings to all the many friends, trustingly, Acme, W. Va., Mar. 6, '99.

M. P. SPENCER.

Public Libraries and Public Schools.

The Committee of the National Council of Education on the Relation of Public Libraries to Public Schools, issues the following:

There should be most cordial relations between the school and the library. The librarian should know the school and its work, in a general way, as a very important part of his work, just as the teacher should know the library and its methods as a part of her work.

The librarian should meet with the teachers as often as practicable for the discussion of their common work. If possible the librarian should occasionally address the older pupils.

Teachers should be members of various library committees, especially of the purchasing committee.

use.

The librarian should make out frequent bulletins for school He should suggest books for the collateral reading of teachers and pupils in geography, history, science and literature. He should regard the children as his most important patrons; those whom he can help the most. The children should have free access to the library shelves.

The community should be led to regard the library as a necessary part of a system of public education, no more to be done without than the common school.

If it is the duty of the state to see that its citizens know how to read, it is certainly none the less its duty to see that they are so trained that the ability to read will be a blessing rather than a curse.

A free public library is the adult's common school.

Pupils should know what a library is, what it contains and how to use it. A child can no more be wisely left to get his knowledge and taste for literature by himself than to get his mathematical or scientific training in the same way. Children must be trained to use the library as they are trained to do other things.

Pupils should learn to read with economy of time by making use of page headings. tables of contents, reviews, Poole's index, card catalogues and other helps.

The destiny of a child is not affected by the ability to read, but by the use he makes of that ability.

The library should be made an indispensable adjunct of the school. The school trains for a few years, the library for a lifetime.

Pupils should be trained to read topically, getting from many books the information they want on any special subject. Normal schools, and all schools having to do with the training of teachers should train their students in the use of books and libraries.

The ability to read is merely a means to an end.

This committee asks your sympathy and cooperation in making the statements printed above common articles of faith among teachers and librarians.

The committee hopes to arouse general interest in its subject while it is making inquiries and studies in the preparation of its report. In its report it hopes to furnish a brief statement of present conditions, and an outline of what the most experienced say are the best methods of bringing into active cooperation the forces of the schools and libraries of our country.

The committee has divided its field as follows. The members ask for results of experience and investigation along the lines of its report.

1. Supt. Sherman Williams, Glen Falls, N. Y. :-List of books for pupils in grades 1 to 12 with special reference to the average country school teacher and the average grade teacher. Also the use of books and libraries in grammar grades generally.

2.

F. A. Hutchins, Secretary of the Wisconsin Free Library Commission, Madison, Wisconsin: -The relations existing between libraries and schools in the country districts and country towns. Also a brief outline which may help a country or village teacher to improve or to organize a library in a country district.

3. Professor M'Louise Jones, State Normal School, Emporia, Kansas:-The work of normal schools throughout the country in familiarizing their pupils with the use of books in the school room, the organizing and forming of a library in a small community, the selection of books, etc.

4. Prof. Charles McMurry, Normal, Illinois:-Books and libraries in grades 1 to 4 in the country generally. This covers the whole field, not simply of the use of books in connection with study in the school room, but the beginnings of children's reading in every department in school and at home.

5. J. C. Dana, City Library, Springfield, Massachusetts:The attitude of libraries towards schools: what the librarian can do to promote a helpful relation between herself and the teachers.

J. C. DANA, Chairman,
Librarian of City Library, Springfield
FRANK A. HUTCHINS,

Sec. Wisconsin Free Library Commission, Madison, Wis.
CHAS. MCMURRY,

(Representing the Council of Education,)
State Normal University, Normal, Illinois
SHERMAN WILLIAMS,

Superintendent of Schools, Glens Falls, New York

M'LOUISE JONES,

State Normal School, Emporia, Kansas

Το

Fragments, Through the Transom. Time; Space; Causality:-Space? Yes; how far? Out to Neptune. What then? As far as Sirius. What then? the nearest nebulae. Can we resolve them? Oh, yes! Blazing suns and obedient worlds. What then? To the farthest nebulae. What are they? Turn the most powerful telescope upon them, and ask the most brilliant intellect to make answer. What Still nebulae; unresolvable; incandescent, glowing gas. then? Space! And what then? God! Yes, God back of it all, illimitable, filling all in all.

Time! Where did it begin? Where will it end? Where is there no time? With God, who is without beginning or end of days, to whom a thousand years are but as a day and as a watch in the night when it is past. Time-the thing entitled to exist right royally equal with infinite space—, illimitable time. Causality. Why does the tiniest atom of matter exist? Why the tiniest composite of atoms? From whence its existence? Does in exist alone? Does it exist because of relations? Out of what do these relations arise?

Why is a cell of my own being so like a cell of the vegetable kind? Why is a cell of man's own universe-encompassing brain so like the brain cell of the humble earthworm? How and why so great diversities out of so great similarities? Whose the persistent force, the rationalizing element bringing eternal rhythm from this clashing of diverse units? God's; there we have these three great ideas dimly comprehended. The child knows them as infinite; he will not tell you so, they are his, great and abounding, filling all space, all timehis, only.

"There was a time, when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth and every common sight *

Seemed appareled in celestial light."

but

Their limitations are things which he must learn, and once learned, the veil shall not be rent in twain until eternity's bright day shall restore his childhood vision.