My only criticism of the system is that it has become a system, almost a cult, a religious ceremonial, and that, enormous advance as it is, it does not go far enough. It does not trust nature quite sufficiently yet. It is a little inclined to load the natural play of the child with certain "instructive" elements, especially moral and mathematical (the square, the cube, the circle and their esoteric implications), far in advance of his grasp. And surely a real "child-garden" should be in the open air! Modify it in these three aspects and it would be ideal.

Just to get the problem into debatable form I would submit a few practical suggestions. First, that every school-house should be provided with a play-ground, containing at least ten square yards for each pupil. This would make, roughly, for every forty children a city lot (30 by 120), for 400 children half a block. For every pound spent on the building, ten shillings ought to be spent on the playground, and I can hardly conceive of a better investment for the community. Personally, if I had to take my choice, in one of our large cities, between a school without a playground and a playground without a school, I would choose the playground.

All these spaces should be real playgrounds, not ornamental lawns and miniature parks. I love flowers, but when I see them usurping space that belongs to children, and driving the latter out into the streets, or, worse still, into the hallways and basements, to play, I would preach a crusade of extermination at once. They are no better than parasites, floral vampires, sucking the sunshine and air needed so sadly by their pale-faced human kinsfolk.

Second, let there be organized, as an auxiliary department of the Kindergarten and primary grades, a class of play-mistresses and play-masters, who

shall be so distributed throughout the school district that each will have charge of from twenty to forty children. Then for each division of the district, let playgrounds be provided; or, in geographically small, densely-populated districts, one for each agegroup of the children. These grounds may be purchased wherever the district can afford it, but in the vast majority of towns there are abundant vacant lots, blocks and areas which could be leased; or, if need be, the use of them confiscated by the city. These could be levelled, or rather roughed down, cleared of rubbish, weeds and garbage, parts of them sanded or gravelled for use in wet weather, and then they would be ready for the children. In short, raise children on the vacant lots, instead of potatoes, as under Mayor Pingree's admirable plan, in Detroit. Many neighborhoods of course would be willing to provide and equip their own playgrounds, and some private grounds might be offered for the purpose.

Nor is this arrangement one whose utility would be solely confined to the congested tenement districts of our large cities; far from it. Many a most respectable, nay, even aristocratic, neighborhood will have no real playground capable of accommodating a dozen children within a mile square; down-town parks are for begonias, not for babies, and many an area of detached houses, in ample grounds, has so much spread of immaculate lawn and superb foliage-clumps, that there is no place for the heel-prints of little feet or the litter of tiny hands.

The equipment of these grounds should be of the simplest. A rough shed-roof covering part of the space, for use in wet weather, and movable wind-brakes, either board or canvas, which could be put up on the north and west sides in winter, would be advisable. With the assistance of these,

the number of days in the year on which healthy children would not be much better off playing vigorously outof-doors than cooped up in the house would be reduced to a very small minimum. Any physician of experience will cheerfully testify that children kept constantly in the open air extremely seldom catch cold as compared with those over-housed and coddled, as fully half of them are at present. In fact, a "cold" is utterly misnamed, and is caused by foul air instead of fresh. For the younger children a capacious sand-pit, where they can grub and dig to their hearts' content, a load of "tailings" blocks and short boards of all sizes from a saw-mill or carpenter's shop, for building purposes, a few cheap accessories for the Robinson Crusoe and "Indians" play, would suffice. For the larger youngsters, plain, strong swings, bars, ring-trapezes, vaulting-horses, see-saws, etc., could be constructed and, of course, large spaces kept always clear, levelled and free from mud or standing water, for hockey, football, rounders, prisoners' base and all the running games.

Then where the space could be secured, corners could be set apart for garden plots, for those agriculturally disposed, for little hutches and sheds for the keeping of pet birds and animals; perhaps even a small pool, arranged for fishes, frogs, newts, and crayfish. But these should be kept well out of the way of even possible overflows of hearty, reckless play. Let the grounds be emphatically places where children could race and tear and scuffle as hard as ever they liked, without breaking or spoiling the looks of anything. Where they might even "make a mess," within any reasonable limits, without reproof.

As for the duties of the play-mistress, they would be largely summed up by that quaint but expressive Presbyterian term for the presiding officer,

"moderator": to guard against excess of all sorts, to prevent infant tryanny, to assist in settling questions of precedence and right of occupancy, to lead, and, if genuinely in sympathy with them, to join in the more elaborate plays and games, to suggest new and appropriate seasonal amusements. In the higher grades of the playschool, gardening and botany could be undertaken, construction and fortification practically studied, excursions organized to fields and woods, to rivers, lakes and islands, hills and quarries; where available, to art galleries, museums and libraries, All the neighborhood industries could be visited-mills, factories, engine-rooms, press-rooms, docks, depots. Houses, bridges, boats could be studied in process of construction. The broadest and most valuable of foundations could be laid for geography, history, physics, engineering, chemistry, agriculture, botany, zoology, sociology.

In the make-up of play-mistress and play-master, tact, sympathy, kindliness, cheerfulness, refinement of speech and of manner, sound physique and buoyant health, should be the chief considerations. Just those qualities, in fact, which are SO difficult to "grade" precisely and reduce to the terms of a competitive examination, and hence so difficult to recognize, and be safe of securing under our present "mental-contents" method of selecting

teachers.

As for one of the weightier objections to the scheme, that of expense, this is not so formidable as might at first sight appear. For while it would mean a large addition to the list of outdoor teachers, it would also permit a very considerable diminution of indoor teachers and economy of schoolroom space. It is the almost unanimous opinion of all thoughtful teachers that indoor school hours ought to be and could be markedly reduced.

The only thing that prevents it is the absolute inability of the vast majority of mothers (all, in fact, who are unable to afford to employ nursemaids) to properly take care of, "amuse" and watch over their children during the working hours of the day. In fact, more than half the time spent in school by children under ten years of age is more for the purpose of keeping them off their mothers' hands, or off the street, than for the actual necessities of instruction. Any experienced teacher will corroborate this statement. That fully as much can be accomplished in half the time has been proven by hundreds of instances and experiments. Children of the laboring classes who can spend only half their day in school make as rapid progress in their studies as whole-timers; children who do not enter school at all until eight or ten years of age, in from two to three years have completely caught up with their contemporaries, and from that time forge ahead of them.

The playground would completely relieve our schoolrooms of this nurseryduty, and with its powerful educational influence utilized as an ally, it would not be too much to hope that school hours could be reduced to at least one-half, if not one-third, of their present length. That is to say, children need not enter the schoolroom at all before six or seven years of age; from six to nine, one to two hours a day would be sufficient; from nine to twelve, two to three hours; from twelve to fifteen, three to four hours.

If this be true, then the same room and indoor teaching force which is now required to keep awake and maintain a semblance of industry among thirty wriggling tots for four hours a day could provide for three and, if necessary, four times that number in successive batches, for one-hour sessions. In older grades where a fivehour school day now prevails, two to

three times the present number of children could be taught, and in the six-hour grades, by a little planning, double the number. Nor would this overwork the indoor teachers, for the real nerve-wear of the schoolroom comes not from teaching, but from the disciplinary duties. Every thoughtful teacher will testify that both the receptivity and the manageableness of the child are at their maximum within the first fifteen minutes of school hours, and rapidly deteriorate with each successive half-hour after a certain very moderate period, varying from twenty to ninety minutes, according to age.

Rationally managed modern schools carefully avoid attempting difficult or new work in the latter third or even half of any school period. A child kept working at concert-pitch for one hour will accomplish as much as in two or even three hours steady drudgery. The child-mind is no more fitted for continuous application than a thorough-bred race-horse is for hauling a stone-boat. It is not that he is defective in concentration; he can concentrate like chain-lightning-and hang on just about as long. But the lightning flash has done the work. In the fraction of a second it has smelted the ore, it has welded the iron, as safely and surely as could a blast-furnace in an hour. To keep on puffing the bellows and piling fresh coal upon the cooling metal is superfluous, if not absurd.

In fine, the plan proposed would give the child full opportunity to develop naturally, healthfully, symmetrically, according to the law of his being. It would also soon enable us to settle once for all the much-vexed question whether a child's mind has the same natural, definite, irresistible tendency to develop and mature as has his body. Personally, I firmly believe that it has. Physiologists now no longer

speak of a child "learning" to walk or "learning" to talk. He grows to walk and he grows to speak. A healthy child, under normal surroundings, will, just as soon as the muscles of his legs and back and their corresponding centres in the brain have reached a certain stage of development, proceed to walk, unless forcibly prevented. As soon as his mouth-parts and his right hand, with their central areas, are sufficiently differentiated, he will (imitating of course the wordsounds he hears made about him) begin to talk. Not even the efforts of his adoring relatives to "teach" him can prevent him. And no small amount of the instruction lavished upon children in school has about as much effect upon their mental growth as has the "baby-talk" of the nursery upon their learning to speak. I believe that the child has to guide him in this field of his growth an instinct, or rather two instincts, as real and as dependable as that of hunger or thirst. These are, on the one hand, curiosity, the desire to know, the "want to find out" and on the other restlessness the resistless desire to do something, the "instinct for workmanship," as Loeb finely terms it. The natural tendency of mind, like that of matter, is toward motion in a right line, not toward rest.

I fear that such of the "discipline" school of educators as have honored this brief sketch with their perusal, will raise a chorus of protest, because I have not even mentioned the (to them) chief point at issue, how, by The Contemporary Review.

pursuing play, a child can possibly learn to work. In other words, how, by doing, no matter how vigorously, the thing it likes to do, it can be taught to do the thing it dislikes. This last they hold is the chief purpose of education. The omission is intentional, because in my view the question is not really involved in the position here taken-viz., that the child in play shapes and sharpens the tools, both mental and bodily, with which he is later to work. How the transition is made from play to work is another question.

But for the comfort of those of my critics who have a just and proper lust for battle à outrance, I don't mind confessing a lively, though quite irrelevant, belief that the best possible preparation for hard, effective, tireless work is a keen, over-mastering interest in the subject to be mastered or the problem to be solved: that most men work not from love of work or force of habit, still less because they have been "taught" to, but from a fierce desire, yes, vital craving for the rewards of toil-bread, power, knowledge, fame. There is no fear of ninety-nine men out of a hundred failing to "learn" to work and keep at it, for the sternest of reasons.

Industry is, in one sense, no more of a virtue than breathing is. It is merely an action necessary to life. And this I will, with my body, defend against all comers, though it has nothing to do with my main contention.

Woods Hutchinson.

Every angler knows my river: is it not, indeed, famous in song and story? Its salmon are many and great, and mathematicians will tell you, with awe, of the cost per foot of its dimpled sinuous face. For me it has other, even deeper, charms. There is a heathery eminence, reached by a steep broken track through the fir-trees, and from this the eye may command its course for several miles. Seen thus, it becomes an epitome of many rivers. Directly below, almost beneath one's feet, lies the deep sullen pool (the Hell Pot of the angling diaries), darkened by sheer cliffs, and visible only through the drooping evergreen branches of the firs. If there be any who care to share my fancies and to look with me on my river as upon a living thing, feminine in its vagaries, I would say that just here she is suffering from a fit of temporary depression, so real to her that she refuses to reflect the fleecy clouds which move in any numbers in the pale sky above her head, choosing rather the images of rocks and of desponding fir-trees. But this is a mere mood. She sees the absurdity of it herself, and in a moment or two more she braces herself to cast it from her. At the tail of the pool there is a foss, and beyond, great boulders, many submerged, but others, green with dripping moss, standing full in her course flatly disputing her passage. She sweeps by haughtily enough, but the stress is greater than she reckons upon. Witness her emotion, in her dishevelled streams and the whiteness of her broken foam. But it is all an affair of moments. Sweet green levels await her, where the sandpipers fly low on the shingle, and the lazy Highland cattle, in black and ruddy gold, browse

contentedly almost in line with her breast.

Now, in a breath, my Lady is her sunny self again, and she ripples on, coquetting with the swallows, and dimpling into a thousand smiles at a glance from the sun. She is happy now and at peace, but from this heathery vantage-ground the eye pierces her futurity. There are many troubles in store for her. A great tree, uprooted by a storm, has fallen across her channel. She meets it with indignant leaps and tosses, easily surmounting it, but flecks of foam mark her temper. The smallest spray dipping downwards mars her serenity, and she breaks into angry little swirls. I turn away thoughtfully. The gift of prophecy, welcome enough at Newmarket or Ascot, has its sadder side. Who would care to hint to this bright wayward being of the awful ravine which lies ahead, waiting to hurl her, in lashed and moaning fragments, through a maze of torturing rocks?

I was barely a boy when I first fell in love with her. In ordinary cases when you fall in love, you remain in your fallen state, happy it may be, but calm. But she, by reason of her eternal youth, and her constantly changing charms, renews the original thrill at every chance meeting. She varies with the weather, and the sun, and the seasons, never permitting domesticity to drift into monotony. For myself, my affection was pure enough, as such things go, but I see now it was never altogether free from a mercenary taint. She brought with her no small dowry. In right conditions, you could count on a fish in the run below the foss, and every stream was rich in promises rarely altogether unfulfilled.