reading books, because we come across phrases and words which sound most pleasant to the ear, these undoubtedly stick to us, and when we are writing or speaking to friends, these phrases may express our own ideas. Education learns us to speak and write in a manner which can be easily understood. In company, when talking in general, the ignorant man can be singled out from the educated when they begin to speak. The ignorant person will either keep quiet (a wise plan) or make a fool of himself. Edu

cation also teaches us manners.

"No man can say he is thoroughly educated, because we are always finding something of which we know little or nothing. We can greatly improve our education by mixing with learned people. It is to be desired after by everybody, because as it is in China so it is here, the passport to wealth

and honour."

The subject of the second is "Arithmetic." (It will be noted that it is no less utilitarian in sentiment. The moral of our public educational system may be thus summed up: "Learn nothing, teach nothing, which does not pay.")

"Arithmetic is of great value in education. It enables us to make our calculations in anything. Speculators require arithmetic very much, as it enables them to know how to lay out their money to the best advantage. If we wish to spend our money, we always try to spend it where we think we may gain something by it.

"Then arithmetic is a splendid study for the mind. It exercises the mind in accuracy. It trains one to be speedy in any calculation he may require.

A man entering into a big trade with a lot of money, and knew nothing of arithmetic, would soon find the want of it. People would be trying to cheat him, and he would at last find that instead of gaining anything he was constantly losing. If that man had known anything about arithmetic, he would have known how to lay out his money so as to gain something by it, and not to lose. If we were without arthmetic nowa

days, we would soon come to a standstill in our trade."

These, doubtless, are extreme instances; but they illustrate well enough the sort of stuff which has to pass muster for thought and composition under a system which proudly points to "its results," which makes no effort to develop and interest the intelligence, and which stimulates the teacher by appealing mainly to the lowest of all human motives. Many examples could be produced of work done by pupil-teachers at the end of their course in which there is the same dearth of intelligence, the same absolute want of literary culture which these papers showthough in most cases, no doubt, accompanied by a mechanical and wooden accuracy as regards the subject actually prescribed for examination, which I am bound to say was not exhibited in the papers of the particular students whose papers are quoted above. But I call attention to the subject, not for the purpose, on this occasion, of attacking the pupil-teacher system as a whole, much as it deserves to be attacked, but because the instruction afforded to pupilteachers is very similar in kind to that which is bestowed upon pupils preparing for the specific subjects. There seems to be something barren and actually sterilising in the process to which pupil-teachers are subjected during their four-years' training, from which only the best minds seem able to escape. it frequently happens, as in the instance of the essay-writer quoted above, that one who has passed through the course with some success exhibits a total absence of real culture, and of the sense of what culture really means not unfrequently accompanied by most complete confidence (on his own part) that he has obtained it. Such

And

scholars are taught under conditions very similar to those under which the specific subjects are taught. They are taught in small classes, or even singly, and in isolated schools; they are taught by a master who, however capable, cannot give them the time which is required for their mental training, and who, by hook or by crook, can only hope to put into them the minimum amount of knowledge which is essential for the examination. And so long as the work has to be done under the same conditions as at present, it is not to be expected that the work done in the way of specific subjects can ever become much better. The mere grammatical knowledge which is required for the language subjects is no doubt es sential, and the drudgery of getting up the grammar must be gone through; but when a teacher, as in a secondary school, feels himself responsible for the whole training of the pupil's mind from the beginning, he is not satisfied with the teaching of mere grammatical forms. He will ever be teaching his pupils some fresh thing by the

way; he will explain the subjects of which they are reading; he will dive into the pupils' minds for illustrations derived from their own experience, and enable them to go through for themselves the invigorating and interesting process of passing from the known to the unknown, and illustrating what is strange by what is familiar. Such work can be tested by no examination. Its effects are slowly developed year by year. But it is in this systematic and gradual quickening of the intelligence, carried on hand in hand with the enlarging of the stores of knowledge on which the intelligence is helped to play, that true Secondary Education consists. How imperfectly this all-important work is often done; how frequently the teaching of the English subjects fails to attain the objects it should chiefly aim at; and how the teaching of English and other languages (whether classical or modern) should be carried on hand in hand and combined into a single plan of education, I shall attempt to show in another article.

G. G. RAMSAY.

THE most remarkable thing about this little history is that it is quite true. If I knew how, I would make it into a real story going on from month to month in a magazine. But I could never invent the love-making, and without love a story is nothing. I should never know, for instance, what to make May and the Doctor say to each other. So I had better put down Thomas's story just as it all happened, and leave fiction to cleverer folk.

Some years ago, twenty and more, after my husband died, I lived in what was then a new street near Westbourne Terrace. It consisted of two rows of houses -very ugly houses outside, though inside they were comfortable enough. I had three little girls; the eldest, May, was just five, a pretty little thing with golden hair and blue eyes. I often wish I had had her portrait painted. The others were quite tiny-four, and two and a half. The last was born a week before the news came from India that her father had died of sunstroke.

Opposite to us there was a house to be let. For a long time it was quite empty, bill in the window, dirt on the windows, dust on the steps, dreary and deserted. Suddenly one morning, though the bill was not taken down, the windows were cleaned, the steps swept, and a small cart-load of shabby furniture carried in. Evidently a care-taker had been put in charge, and I was glad of it, for it is never very safe to leave a house absolutely empty.

I used to sit by the window a

I.

good deal and knit. I had so much to think about that I could not settle to anything else. Books were never much in my way, and as for going out I never cared for it much even as a girl. So I used to sit and knit, seeing through the thick screen of plants on the window-sill all that went on in the street. Sometimes I saw the caretaker opposite going in and out, he and his wife and their two little children. He looked very respectable, but broken down and terribly thin; he was evidently far gone in consumption. The woman seemed worried and anxious, as well she might, poor soul; and in her arms there was always a skinny little baby, her third child. They were of the artisan class, and very poor, of course, or they would not have been taking care of an empty house. I used to wonder if they had enough to eat, for they all looked white and thin and halfstarved.

The next time I went to the landlord's office I asked about them, and was told that they were respectable Cornish people, but Cornwall was starvation now, and there was nothing for any one to do. They had come to London a few years before, and the man, who was a mechanic, had kept his family well till he broke down in health. He could do nothing now, was an outdoor patient at Brompton Hospital, and had only the allowance from his club, and the few shillings his wife sometimes earned by going out to work.

There was a large leg of mutton for the children's dinner the next

day. I cut off half-a-dozen good slices, put them between two hot dishes with some vegetable, and sent them to the Cornish folk. They were very grateful, the servant said, when she returned, and the dishes were brought back by the little boy, with "Father's much obliged, and it did him a world of good." One day a box of flowers came from the country, so I made up a nosegay and sent it across to the poor wasted-looking care-taker. This brought the woman, with tears in her eyes, to thank me.

"My husband he do like to smell a flower, ma'am," she said. "It's many a day now since he has seen them growing in the ground." Then I asked her if I might go and see him sometimes, or perhaps he would like a paper and some books now and then? The woman's face brightened. "He would be pleased, ma'am, indeed," she said." "It's long since any one went to talk to him, and I often think it's dull for him. I doubt if I have him much longer," she added, simply; "and it's likely you can feel for me, ma'am."

So I went over to see Mr Lobb. He was sitting by the fire, warming his long thin hands.

"I am glad to see you, ma'am," he said, with the almost perfect manner one sometimes finds among working people who have not lived much in towns. "I would have come over to thank you for your kindness, but feared you might think it a liberty. I spend most of my time trying to keep warm by a bit of fire."

He was very simple and kindly. He knew that he was going to die, and faced it like a man. He spoke of it without fear or affectation. "It worries me to think of the wife and children," he said. "A man should not marry as I

did, with nothing put by. I subscribed to a club, of course, and it's kept us from starving, and it'll bury me, but that's all. I ought to have saved before I married, and so ought every man. One is always so sure one is going to live when one feels strong. Well, God is good, and He'll take care of them," he added with a sigh, and a month later in that simple faith he died.

Then it became a question of what was to be done with the widow and children. The woman was delicate; there was the skinny baby,a little girl of six called Gracie, and Thomas,-they always called him by his full old-fashioned name, who was ten, or barely ten.

"I would like to stay in London; there's more going on, and I'd be more likely to get something," the poor woman said, when a proposal was made to send her back to her native place. "They be very poor in Cornwall where I come from; it would be no good going back; father and mother are dead, and there was only one other of us, my brother Joe, and he went off to Melbourne long ago."

"Couldn't you send to him?” I asked; "he might do something for you.'

"I have sent ma'am," she answered; "but I don't know if he's got the letter. We never kept much count of his address, for he never had the same one long together. I don't expect he'd be able to do much; he was never much of a hand at helping himself, let alone others."

So we got together a little. money and bought her a mangle. She went to live in two rooms close by, and just kept soul and body together for herself and children by mangling and occasionally going out to work.