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HE term was drawing to a close, and the constant reviewing of number combinations was becoming very tiresome. The teacher was thinking of this as she stood at the window, watching the children at play. Just then, two children skipped by with their jumping rope. How they did enjoy the exercise! What fun and laughter! The teacher smiled involuntarily, and then her thought traveled back to the next lesson. "If I could only make the numbers jump rope! Well, why not?" And then the plan slowly formulated itself in her mind.

The children came in from their recess bright and happy. "You enjoyed your recess didn't you children? It is such pleasant weather for jumping rope. One day, just like this, Mrs. 8 sent her children out to jump rope. Mrs. 8's oldest girl is named 7, and she told 7 that she should take one of her little sisters with her. Now, whenever 7 went out, she always took the same little sister. This was the baby of the family and her name is”—

Number Street

figures 8 and 2.) Then 2 skipped across the floor (= was drawn for the floor) and found her partner. Who was her partner? (as the answer was given, the 6 was placed after =.) Then Mrs. 8 calls 3, and plays the same game with her, and then with 1 and 4. After each one finds her partner, they all form a ring with their jumping rope and the mother stands in the middle while they sing a merry song." Then the children were told to draw Mrs. 8's house with the children in it, and also to draw them jumping rope, and As can be imagined, playing "Ring a Round a Rosie."

they did this in a very different spirit from the one in which they usually wrote 3 +58; 2 + 6 = 8.

The next day was rainy, and, as 9 was the number to be reviewed, the class first had a little talk about Mrs. 9's children going to school in the rain.

5.365

Now I will draw Mrs. 8's house. See! She is standing at the door and sending her little ones off to school. 'Come 3,' she calls, 'run off with your sister.' Then 3 runs off with which one? and who goes with 2? and of course, little I waits for whom?

Then they were told to draw the children as they walked along under their umbrellas.

A little later in the term when the hills were covered with snow, Mrs. 10's children went sledding; in the spring, they went out for wild flowers; when Decoration Day came, the little number children had a parade, Mrs. Io's leading the way, Mrs. 9's and Mrs. 8's following, and all marching along, two by two, in the most decorous manner; finally, when the weather became very warm, Mrs. 8 took her children out to the park for a picnic. What a delightful time they had! Almost as delightful a time as the real children had when they drew the picture. They never seemed to tire of representing their little number friends as taking part in their own pleasures.

These little devices were never given at the beginning of the term, as they were merely intended as a memory drill; and memory was not allowed to take the place of reason. It was not until they had seen for themselves and understood perfectly that 6 and 2 made 8, that they were introduced to Mrs. 8's older and younger child.

Reading Lesson for First Grade.

O, see Mrs. 8! See stands at the door. She says, "Run to school, little ones, or you will be late." Just see 3 and 5 skip off together! 6 will go with 2, but 7, will let little I go with her. I do not see the twins. Are 4 and 4 still in bed Mrs. 8? O, the lazy little twins!

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Mrs. 9's children going to school.

A Merry Thought.

If all the little children dear

Who are glad vacation days are here

Should stand in a line with their books and slates
They'd reach across the United States,
And then if they counted one, two, three,

And laughed - what a long, long laugh 'twould be! · Anna M. Pratt.

Eolus, the Keeper of the Winds.

By HELEN BECKWITH.

Ulysses had been to war.

He was a brave soldier and loved his country.

But now the war was over.

He was going home. How glad he was!

"I have been gone so long," he said.

"How glad my wife will be to see me !

And my dear little boy will be glad, too.

He is not a little boy now. Ten years is a long time.

What a big boy he must be !

Oh, I wish I could fly to them!"

But Ulysses could not fly.

He must go by boat, and his home was far away.

At last the boats were ready. Ulysses and his men set sail.

Days and days went by.

They did not have a pleasant time.

They had ever so much trouble.

But at last they saw land.

"I hope we can rest here," said Ulysses.

"We are all so tired.

I hope the people will be kind to us.

We need some food to eat.

We shall need food to take with us, too.

Will they give us some?"

They rowed the boats to land.

Some one came to meet them.

This was olus. Eolus lived on the island.

He took care of all the winds. He kept them in a cave.

"If it is too cold, let out South Wind," he said. "If it is too hot, let out North Wind.

If you wish to go east, let out East Wind.

Open the bag just a little. Call the wind that you need.

I did not put West Wind into the bag.

She will blow you from the shore.
She will go with you to help you.

You may not need any other wind.

If you do not, open the bag when you get to land. The winds will all fly home. You must watch the bag. Do not tell the men what is in it."

"That is good," said Ulysses.

"Thank you, Æolus. Good-by."

Away they sailed. How softly the wind blew !

How still the water was! Yet the boats sailed very fast.

Nine days went by.

All this time Ulysses watched the bag.

He would let no one touch it.

He watched it day and night.

But now he was so tired that he fell asleep.

The men saw he was asleep.

"Now we will open the bag," they said.

"We will see what is in it. It may be full of gold.

We will each have a share. Ulysses will not know.
He is asleep." So they untied the silver cord.
Out came all the winds. Oh, how they blew !

They were so glad to be free. They blew north and south. They blew east and west. The waves came into the boat. "What shall we do?" said the men.

Ulysses woke up, but he could not help them.

The winds blew for hours. But at last they grew tired.

Then they flew home, but they blew the boats back, too. Eolus heard the winds.

He came to meet them.

He saw the boats.

The men saw him, and cried :

"Oh, please tie up the winds again!"

66 No," said Eolus.

"Ulysses cannot trust you.

The winds are tired.

They may rest in the cave now.

West Wind shall not help you.

You must help yourselves.

You will have to row Ulysses home."

So they took the oars and rowed away.
They had to row day after day.

What hard work it was!

"Why did we untie the bag?" they said.

They said this over and over.

It was a long time before they saw land again.

Don't you think they were glad when they did see it?

Color.

A parting word from Mr. Bailey.

My fellow Teachers:

During these ten months we have been studying color, not to reproduce it, not to become painters, but to become intelligent observers.

If during this time we have learned to look for color, to image a standard tone as we image the letter O, to love color and to rejoice in its purity and loveliness, our lives have become by so much richer and more nearly whole.

If we have opened the eyes of our pupils to see another entrance into the world of beauty, and have awakened in their hearts a desire to go up and possess the land, we have not labored in vain though they know not violet-red from red-violet, and cannot tell a dominant harmony from an analogous.

"O, when I am safe in my sylvan home,

I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome;
And when I am stretched beneath the pines,
Where the evening star so holy shines,

I laugh at the love and the pride of man,

At the sophist schools and the learned clan;
For what are they all, in their high conceit,
When man in the bush with God may meet?"

The best we give our pupils cannot be weighed and numbered and percented. The best is spiritual. The magic touch which leads a boy to exclaim of his teacher "Whether he be a sinner or no I know not; one thing I know that whereas I was blind now I see;"— that is the mark of the teacher who is remembered with eternal gratitude.

Let us covet earnestly the best gifts.

HENRY T. BAILEY.

Grass-Flowers.

"I should like to be a beautiful wild rose," said Ada as she was out in the fields one day with her mother. "I would like to be any flower in the world; but as for grass, just common green grass, I shouldn't think anybody would want to be that."

She looked down at the grass as if she thought it very common and plain indeed.

"And yet no flowers in the world are more wonderful than these little grass flowers," said her mother.

"I didn't know it had any," said Ada.

Her mother took a magnifying glass from her pocket, and Ada looked through it at one of the tiny grass flowers. “Oh!” she said, “how beautiful! "

"Yes, and to think of the hundreds of such wonderful little flowers on one plant, and the fields full of them! Watch them when the wind blows."

As the breeze came, the slender stems swayed before it, and the color of the whole meadow was changed, as the surface of the water darkens under the wind.

"You will make up your mind, if you watch, that there is nothing in the world much lovelier than this common grass," said Ada's mother. "And then think of the good it does!"

"Think of the great fields where the herds of cattle get their daily supply of rich tender grass all through the long bright summer. Think of the rocky pastures where these happy beasts roam all day, and at night lie down beneath the stars!" "I believe grass is better

Ada looked down at her rose. than roses," she said.

C.

"Infancy is the perpetual Messiah which comes into the arms of fallen men, and pleads with them to return to Paradise."- Emerson.

I had as who has not?-suffered intermittently and been strong while correcting the multifarious epistolary effusions which had poured down upon my devoted head when letters were the order of the day.

I had brought forth the scrap-books of my youth and offered them up on the altar of the "New Education," relentlessly tearing therefrom the pictures best suited to the tender years and the tenderer comprehensions of my children, and discriminatingly distributed the same as incentives to greater brain activity.

But now there was to be a change, which, though not startling, would, I knew, prove welcome after the monotonous round I have just touched upon. To augment the pleasure of the innovation, I determined to tell my school that I was to be one of them that afternon, and try my very best, too. Then I went to work.

By half-past one, three little Kate Greenaway girls were smiling from the front board - and, descending a steep hill on the side board, was a melancholy youth meditatively gazing down, as he walked, over the declivity's sheer descent.

The pictures, of course, had not the remotest connection with each other. I simply essayed two subjects for variety. I wished to offer a choice of subjects to my flock.

The time was up, and now the efforts were to be read. What sparkling eyes! What glowing cheeks! "Surely," I thought, "this has been a successful afternoon. Children cannot put their hearts into any work as these children have, and not be benefited!"

The first I called upon was little Marie. She arose timidly and stepped to the platform, but a moment later was telling in a brave voice enough how Dorothy and Angelina and Gladys played they were real people, though they were nothing but bisque dolls, and had a tea-party, and talked about what a nice teacher Miss Stevens was (your scribe!) and how they would like to go to school again, only they were too big and how they hoped the Nebraska sufferers were warm and not hungry any more "And then they

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went home and went to sleep, and when they woke up they were just dolls, and didn't know anything more! added Marie, brilliantly irrelevant, as she made her parting bow, and passed down to her seat.

The next pupil I called upon was a boy, whose paper, as I glanced at it, seemed to bear the impress of a poetic

which, I think you will agree with me, was good, and decidedly to the point!

Monday morning, I am to read my composition as a grand finale. That, at least, is what it is expected to be for the children have insisted it should be "saved till the last!" I fear, however, that the spiciness, the naiveté, the charming freshness, which characterized their efforts will be sadly lacking in mine. But then, should not one be content to fill in the background the harmless, necessary background for the scintillations, the high lights, which ever and anon emanate from the active intellects of les bons enfants?

Primary Geography for June. IX.

By ZONIA BABER, Cook County Normal, Englewood, Ill.
Work of Running Water.

E have been watching, during the year, the changing forms of life, of plants and animals; we have observed the effect of heat, cold, wind, etc., upon the life and function of vegetation and animals. The landscape of which the life forms so pleasing a part, has birth, life and death just as a flower. The tall, majestic tree owes no more to moisture for its life and beauty than does the landscape for its graceful contour. Running water is the mightiest of Dame Nature's chisels which she uses in sculpturing landscape. No Michael Angelo can rival her in beauty of curve and force of composition.

The majestic hill, the peaceful valley, the smiling plain and the noisy waterfall she has quietly and artistically chiseled from the great earth block. We cannot see a tree grow, yet we see that it is higher and higher as the days pass by. We may not observe the growth of the valley, yet we see that it has deepened and widened as time elapses. The hills which have been declared "eternal" die so slowly we think them ever young when compared to our short lives. Yet after each rainstorm, each season of thawing and freezing we see they have lost much of their "mortal coil." The waterfall near which you played when a child, you find has moved up the river when you return in after life.

"So the multitude goes, like the flower or the weed,
That wither away to let others succeed;
So the multitude comes, even those we behold,
To repeat every tale that has often been told."

It is with this key we read the illumed pages of Nature's book of landscapes. So simple are the A B C's of Nature's language, even the little child can grasp them, and soon begin to translate the numerous volumes in her great library. Life is so short that only a few pages of the great book can be read; and he who begins in childhood has lighted a flame which will illumine his entire life.

This is the time of year when the school houses should be closed and the schools assemble in fields and groves. How can we with conscience hold the children in an ugly schoolroom, giving them "The cat," "A cat," "My cat," 4 + 2 = 6,3 +5 8, when a heaven of "singing birds", "babbling brooks" and nodding flowers are awaiting them?

Of the numerous lines of delightful study which are found

(Ill. 1.) Gullies or young valleys

in a June landscape we shall only indicate one as a basis for physiography, that of running water.

From a little seed the great redwood trees of California have grown, so the first drop of rainfall on a slope may give birth to a little gully, which may expand into a Colorado cañon or Mississippi valley.

A visit to a railroad cut, a bank of a ditch, or any exposed slope will show the beginnings of our great river valleys. We notice that little gullies have been formed during a rain which are dry when the rain has ceased. (Ill. I.)

After the next rainstorm we see they have grown deeper

and wider, some expanding more rapidly than others and absorbing their neighbors. Between the gullies is left a ridge which represents a mountain range which may be cut by tributaries to the main gully, into separate mountains.

The mountains of Norway, the Catskills and many mountains of the earth are nothing more than the ridges of a plateau left between valleys.

(Ill. 2.) A waterfall

We may watch our gullies until one has absorbed so many of its neighbors that it occupies the entire slope and may in time extend to the limit of the land. Why did one gully grow faster than another? Where are the gullies largest? Why? Where are they narrowest? Why? Why do they grow from the upper part? What has become of the material worn away?

We see the baby valley is narrow and deep in the newest part, and wide and shallow in the older part; that the material washed out is dropped where the slope is less inclined. In this bank may be read the erosive history of the earth. Valleys, like trees, require constant moisture for most rapid development. In regions of continuous rainfall valleys grow broad and wide, while in regions of little mois

ture deep and narrow valleys sometimes called cañons are developed. (Ill. 2.)

After each rain we notice that the little gullies in the bank were dry and lay dormant, disturbed only by the wind, until the next rain deepened and expanded them. After many years the deepest one will be worn down below the upper surface of underground water, then a river comes to live in in the basin.

A valley grows so slowly we cannot see our gully sink itself to find a permanent stream. We can, however, find valleys in all stages of growth, so we shall visit a little brook basin which has carried farther the work the rain began. How much land is drained by this brook? Can you find where the water begins to flow into a neighboring basin? We can go to the top of this ridge or hill and see where the neighboring basin begins. We notice the upper part of the brook basin, like the gully, is narrow; the water flows more swiftly; why? We find a fall where the harder part of the valley will not give away so rapidly as that just below it. We see the fall has worn back leaving a little cañon below it. (Ill. 3.) What will become of the fall? What will become of the cañon? What causes the stream to be muddy? What will become of the mud? Pick up pebbles in stream. Why are they so shaped?

As we go farther down the stream we notice the valley widens and a little plain appears along the stream. The

stream flows more slowly now; why? We see the stream wears on one bank and builds on the other just opposite. It wears on the concave bank and builds on the convex. Why? How far will it wear the concave bank? What will it do when it stops wearing the bank? Below you see the stream is shifting to the other side of the valley. If the water should rise slightly in the stream what would happen to the plain? We call a plain made by a river, its floodplain. We may tell the children stories of the great flood plains of the Mississippi, Nile, Hoangho rivers, and of the ways man has contrived to keep the rivers from flooding their plains, by building dykes or levees.

We follow the stream to its mouth and find it dropping the remainder of the material carried forming a delta. What kind of soil do we find in the delta and flood plain? Is it good garden soil? What part of the entire valley has the richest soil?

I need not indicate farther the long list of questions which will stimulate close observation of valuable phenomena. As aid in this direction "Outlines of How to Study Geography," by Col. F. W. Parker, also "Field Work in Nature Study," W. S. Jackman, I should recommend. Every thoughtful teacher knows the ground over which she takes her class and has prepared carefully her list of directing questions. First primary children will not be interested in this study of river action.

But advanced second and third will see much which will claim their attention. What we see depends entirely on what we have to see with, on our previous experience. So work adapted to one second grade, for instance, is highly absurd for another class of the same grade. The demand for expression in painting and drawing while in the field is the greatest stimulus to close observation,- as paint or draw the valley looking from its source. Show the winding river in the flood-plain, etc. Landscape painting and drawing, I believe, should be the beginning of these forms of expression. A child will paint the broad waste of green slope. and blue sky with far more ease and freedom than the definitely limited peach.

The drawing of a simple landscape presents fewer difficulties than the representation of a leaf, for we know the more exact the limitation the more difficult the representation.

(Ill. 3.) A cañon

Because the child's result is not that of a "Turner" or a "Corot" need not discourage the teacher; it is through this indefinite observation and expression that the child is lead to definite, accurate work. A demand for close, accurate work at the beginning is forcing unnatural and harmful results. Presenting the right conditions and patiently waiting for the natural unfolding of the powers of the child is the work of the artist teacher.

"And the brook seemed to sing: Patience conquers everything."