put it on the board, the class agree, and we take up and make the acquaintance of another word. Now this is a great step in spelling, and no teacher should allow her ambition for her class to run beyond the accomplishing of the words her children have already met with, and have understood in their reading lesson. In other words never give a child a word to spell he has not seen used.

There are many exercises, as they advance, in reading a sentence, then closing the book and telling all they saw, orally if they have learned the names of the letters, or by writing on the board, impressing them all the time that it is the good seers who will learn to talk on paper. In this way there is but little difficulty in clearing away all easy words, and in creating a delight in the work. Then there are interesting little exercises in making words of which "Appleton's Readers" furnish excellent suggestions.

There will always be every variety of shade of talent on this matter of seeing, but nevertheless the slowest one must see and the teacher must see that he does see. Teach a child to know, when he does not know how to spell a word, teach him never to write a word that he is not positively sure of, and he will become exceedingly careful. Now from this time composition exercises will furnish all the material for spelling that will be needed for months to come. The desire to compose is sure to come, and in composition all take great delight if they have been well handled. The child begins to want words to express his thought. He looks at a pretty picture that has been handed him. Once upon a time," he begins, and up goes his hand. "Mrs. Mitchell how do you spell'used to.'" This occurred the other day, and I remembered to have seen, a long time ago, a letter from a girl who had been attending a Philadelphia school, in which she spelled, several times, the word "usto," and I reflected that she had studied spelling a great deal, but had never come across that word, and how could she know how to spell it. So here is an opportunity to show this child. The words are written on the board, he looks at them, they are rubbed off when he is satisfied, and "used to "goes down on his paper, and I trust into his memory.

I believe a child learns best how to spell a new word when he wants to use it, and that the wise teacher will continually give him an opportunity to create that want. She will never be able to find so good a spelling book as her little class will ask her to make when they are reaching out for words to express their thought.

Another child stops to think, and finally asks, How do you spell coming? and we all

stop to talk about that. It is written on the board large and plain, and he sees it once again right, rather than to be allowed to run the risk of getting it wrong and having a big mark put under it by the teacher, and then being troubled ever afterward, perhaps, to remember whether he had an e in it before it was marked, or whether it was marked because he had not put the e in. This is possible, and happens often, especially when the marks come thick and fast, and the child is mortified and discouraged over his marred paper. What an enemy to success is discouragement. How the child will dread tomorrow's lesson, and fear to write on account of the marks which will be sure to follow.

I am always pleased when a child asks how to spell a word, for then the way is opened to teach it. If he be going to use that word it is full of thought to him, and he will remember how it looks performing the office of expressing that thought, much better than to have it given to him to learn, standing in a line with dozens of others, bearing no relation to it, and when he is not wanting it nor any of its neighbors.

If there seems to be a craving for a spelling book, I would let each child make his own, using a copy of any of the approved books simply as a matter of curiosity, to show my class how some industrious boy had put together all the words he knew how to spell. The rapidity with which this interesting collection would grow would depend entirely upon each child's facility for seeing and reproducing. This exercise might be indulged in five or ten minutes each day. The teacher keeping the books in the meantime, and giving them out for each child to put down just such words as he is well acquainted with and feels sure he can on any occasion write. This incites close observation, and this is the secret of learning to spell. The child may be encouraged a little further on to classify his words, to find out all the parts of a door, all the names of articles of furniture, or articles of food, the names of all the flowers he can remember to have seen, and you will find he can have just as valuable a book as Monroe's Speller, and he has discovered the words himself, and who does not love discovery? I have found it an extremely good plan and great fun to send my pupils, in imagination, to their own homes, and name all the articles contained in their dining room, library, kitchen or parlor. This calls forth a great variety of material. If the child be told, the day before, what is to be required of him, he will work harder than anybody ever induced him to work over somebody else's compiling. This kind of a spelling book can always be at hand, the re

sources are almost inexhaustible. He can write to-morrow all the names of all the things he ate for his dinner to-day, with this one restriction, that he be positively sure of the spelling. This, in its gradations, I would do for children before they begin to study much from any text books. After that I would work on the new words of any lesson under question in much the same way. And keeping up all the while composition writing. In this work the pupil learns to do just what he will need to do all his life, no spelling lesson can supply its place. I know a woman, a principal of the primary department of a prominent school in Philadelphia, who taught spelling in all the intricacies of syllabication, for many years, and when she went to Europe she wrote very interesting letters home, but invariably wrote "of" for "have, "of" for "have," "would of" for "would have.”

Talking with the pencil, as Col. Parker so happily calls it, is the one way to teach spelling, by which we may liberate our pupils from the thraldom of memorizing the spelling

book with its thousands of words.

LUCRETIA MITCHELL.

ENDURING HARDNESS.

There were various practical hints embodied in Professor Hall's essay at Lowell recently, which well deserve the attention of those who have the care of the young. Parents especially, and mothers above all, might profit by his wise advice with reference to physical training. He did not quite recommend the old Spartan method of dealing with babies and youth; but he maintained that there was great danger of making a child too careful about its body. He would not awaken too early or too strongly what he called "physical self-consciousness," a term afterward criticised as not scientifically correct, but which seemed to convey his meaning exactly.

Who has not seen the child whose youthful existence seemed devoted to conscious anxiety about his own person? He is too warm or too cold, in danger of draughts, afraid of a drop of rain on the head or of dew on the feet. This hyper-caution is most unnatural and unchildlike. It is instilled by coddling mammas and nurses, who never for a moment let the child forget that it has a body. If it runs, they cry, "Don't fall," as though falls were not foreordained to be the means of teaching children not to fall. No abstract command of that kind ever saved a child from a bruised head. On the contrary, it reminds it of the danger in store, and by perplexing the mind with unnecessary fear makes it less certain of its physical motions. If the little one toddles too near

"Don't wet your the water, they shout, feet," "Don't tumble in," "Don't slip," so many constant reminders of peril and perplexity. Not many mothers are so wise as one sensible woman who let her little twoyear-old, on a summer day, walk right into the water, shoes, muslin frock, and all, up to her shoulders, and then quietly lifted her out, undressed her, and put her to bed. There was no need after that to tell her not to wet her feet. She would play for hours on the sandy beach, pnd never venture in. The enticing water was less bewitching with a long afternoon in bed as a back-ground.

“While there is such a thing,” said Mr. Hall, " as hardening a child too much, there is great danger of making him too tender." And not only are the children that are made so tender more care when young, but "they are apt to grow up fastidious boys and girls, with too acute sensibilities, too little vigor, too much in the habit of watching the body. And there is no doubt that, if too much attention is paid to bodily states, the body is apt to become weak." A little hardness is good for boys and girls. If the clothing be worn as loose as is consistent with good health, a constant stream of air finds its way over the whole surface of the body, and the skin is kept so active that it is able to resist moderate changes of heat and cold. If the bruise, the bump, the cut, are properly bound up, nature will soon make all as good as new ; and the children will not talk about their little accidents, unless their elders do. It is this constant paying heed to bodily trifles that makes men and women petty in other ways. It makes them especially magnify physical ills in later years. Where is the happy man who is never greeted every morning by his friend with, "Oh, I couldn't sleep a wink for dyspepsia," or "Oh, my rheumatism has tied me up to-day." All that may be true, but it is not a wise topic of conversation. Emerson has some strong advice to such people. This vicious habit of discussing one's ailments on every occasion comes from early training. Such people have not "learned hardness" in their youth.

What has been said does not in the least imply that children are not to be carefully watched over. Indeed, they ought to be cared for a thousand times better than they are. But they should not know it. They should not be reminded twenty-four times in the twenty-four hours that the body is a burden to be borne. They shouldn't know they have bodies. And they wouldn't, if half the effort made to instill into the child that needless "physical self-consciousness were spent in seeing that they have food suitable for childhood and in preventing the wholesale

the brain cells exist in which do reside the different emotions. Here fear, here hate enthroned; there love, there resignation; and whether one considers the brain as the organ of the conscious mind or as all of mind, there is the same, truth holds good. If the cells are unhealthy the mental processes will be imperfect; and the health of each part of the body, be it bone, muscle or brain, depends upon the supply of blood.

The capacity of the arterial and venous system of each body is fixed; there can be no more blood created than there are vessels to hold it, else would death result from overdistention in some part. Therefore an excessive demand upon the life current by one organ is invariably at the expense of some other. One does not find the left arm of a blacksmith as well developed as the right, and the legs of a ballet dancer are grown at the expense of the upper part of the body. Again, the abnormal development of the whole body in the training of the professional athlete is notably at cost of intellectual force, and excessive mental culture on the other hand is sure to rob muscular and nervous systems of some of their force. Apply this reasoning to different organs of the brain. If the attention is exclusively fixed for too Iong a period upon any one emotion, be it love or grief, the general health suffers. It is noticeable that girls who are married after a long engagement have lost weight and color the blood which should have been distributed equally through the whole organism has been directed to one special part. The same is true of grief. Hence it behooves those of us whom sorrow has crowned to beware lest her symbols so intensify, our grief that we are unfitted for the duties of life. The wearing of the mourning garb has the effect of keeping the attention fixed upon the bereavement and so delaying the healthy reaction which is essential to the performance of life's duties. Common experience proves the truth of this statement, for once clothe our friend in sorrow's garb, and there is a constant appeal made to "rise above it," "do something to distract your mind,” come out of yourself," do try to be interested in life, etc. All the while the very garments are singing a dirge of joy day by day, and keeping the "heart bowed down."

unwittingly robbed her only son of the child's right to joyous surroundings. Children have a right to all that is joyous and healthful, they need happiness as a plant does sunshine, and the conventional mourning dress casts a shadow upon the young life just in proportion to the sensitiveness of the organization. Physicians realize the influence of surroundings upon an invalid, and many a grave case has been cured by a simple change of environment. Trained nurses are ordered to wear a colored uniform, and sisters of charity whose holy zeal for the sick and suffering has won through centuries the gratitude of humanity have many a time caused keen suffering by their uncanny dress. The dead are passed from the realm of our sentient life, to them can come through us no more of joy or sorrow, and the sharpest pang in bereavement is the inevitable remorse, “Ah, if I had only lightened the cares of life, if I had only gladdened the days; alas, if—if—if”—who of us has not made that moan. Why not then take a hint in this direction and avoid the unnecessary shadow black casts over a household. Death seldom makes us utterly desolate; let us cherish what the cruel Reaper spares. These we may still cherish and serve, our dead are forever with the Lord.

III. Custom makes cowards of us all, and the paraphernalia of woe is many times a tax the scantily filled purse can illy bear. Allow me one reminiscence. A clerk who had lived to the fullest extent of his salary, suddenly died, and sympathizing friends in the business house of which he was a member, made up from their small means a purse of one hundred dollars which was presented to the widow soon to be a mother. Did she put the money by for a time of need? Verily, no. The proprieties must be observed. Bombazine and crèpe, widow's caps to disfigure the young face, black bonnet and veil soon made a vast inroad in the tiny store, and the baby boy came into the world branded pauper by the very conditions of his birth-doctor's service a charity, attendance rendered by neighbors. Why should she be so weak, you ask? It might have been you or I, for would either of us have the courage to withstand public opinion? Abroad a royal family dictates the amount of mourning to be worn for each member of a household; in America, where each claims to be a law to himself, let us defy imported customs, not try to express the depth of our sorrow by the depth of onr crèpe.

RELIGION is that nobler half of life without which nothing stands in a true balance. It wants the same kind of practical training as the other side, and will marvelously help and steady that.-Dr. Bushnell.