(Motion seconded by Mr. Humphrey, carried, and ballot so cast).

President Williams:

Members will please note that this hour, which has been taken for the election of officers and board of directors will be given back to the literary committee to-morrow from 12:00 to 1:00. The papers which were to have been given during this hour to-day will therefore be given to-morrow. We shall then take time also to hear from the chairmen of the several committees. I shall ask the Secretary to read at this time a report which has been prepared and sent in by the custodian of reports, Professor Trueblood, of the University of Michigan, who will not be with us this year. Having attended fourteen of the seventeen annual conventions, Professor Trueblood is justly entitled to his European holiday.

(Secretary reads report of custodian of reports).

Nakama Hall, Friday, July 3rd, at 9:00 a. m. Mr. Humphrey, of Kansas City, Mo.:

In the absence of the chairman of this section, Mr. Kline, I have been asked to preside. The first topic to be considered is "Practical Methods in Securing Interpretive Values in Reading in the Public Schools." And we shall hear from Mr. Wickes, of Syracuse, N. Y., in a paper on that subject.

Mr. Wickes:

I wouldn't think of dignifying this talk I am going to give you this morning by calling it a paper. I gave you a good deal of paper 'yesterday. This morning, however, I mean to make an informal talk. I am to speak to you on "The Deterioration of Christianity in Percolating Through the Ancient Universe." (Laughter). No, on

"Securing Interpretative Values in Reading in Public Schools." I got one long-timed subject mixed up with the other, but I think I am on the right track now. There is a great deal to be said for that title, more even than for its length; a great deal for its depth of meaning. In the first place, we shouldn't all agree, I am sure, as to the meaning of the word "practical." It is a word of very wide range. One has his idea, and another another, and the best we can do is to do the best we can. It is not the experience that counts, but practice, and practice comes from the old Greek word, as I understand it, "to do." Difference in methods.Methods are so numerous, we perhaps are swamped with methods. I remember a boy once speaking on the subject of a national quarantine for New York City, and he startled us who were listening somewhat when he said "Mr. President, disease is the thing that carries off more people than death itself." I sometimes think that methods are the things that do more killing than anything else of which we can speak. As to securing, that is another point of extreme interest. You know one of the characters of Shakespeare says "I can call spirits from the vasty deep." So can I or any one else. But will they come when we call them? So we may talk about securing values from reading. We cannot absolutely know that we can secure those values. I am trying to show you that all along this line there is great meaning in the words that have been chosen as the text for this talk. And then we should differ from the word "interpretative." Interpretation means one thing to one person, and another to another, depending entirly upon the point of view which may be taken. For instance, I heard of a hardshell Baptist minister who took for his text those famous words of St. Paul, "Without controversy, great is the mys

tery of Godliness," and he said "But controversy clears the matter all up." Of course it doesn't, but that was his way of interpreting that passage; and so we have our different ways of doing that. As to the word "Value," we cannot agree on that, I am sure. What might be considered of great intrinsic value by one person might not be so considered by another. You know Wordsworth tells about a certain man

"A primrose by the river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more;"

while to another it is as big and florescent as a sunflower. There is the whole topic "Practical Reading in the Public Schools.'

I am going to ask you for just a few minutes. three "M's" in reading that I should esteem to be as valuable in their way as the famous old three "R's" of education. The first is Manner. I am not going into any elaborate analysis of what might be called the mechanical side of reading, but at the same time one can do hardly do less than refer to points of such great value. In th first place, I would call attention to enunciation. Great stress should be laid upon that. It is a very difficult thing, particularly in our English language, where you find such a queer combination of consonant sounds, so that it taxes the ability of a person who has himself fully under control to speak the words distinctly. I was in a car in a city somewhat distant from my own, and saw a beautiful building on the right hand side of the street, and I said to the conductor, "What is that building yonder?" He said to me, "That is where they keep the immates' of a certain institution." I had to ponder a little bit to know what he meant by "immates." Of course he meant inmates. If you want to say inmates,

you have to form one sort of sound to say "n" and then another to say "m," and he just put the two together and said "immates." How difficult to get clear enunciation, and yet how much beauty and charm is lost unless that is attended to. So, in the matter of pronunciation, how much is there in that, and how, perhaps, the absence or the presence of a single letter, the pronouncing or not pronouncing of it, may make a great deal of difference. I heard a boy declaim, and he was speaking about the spirit of somebody's military glory. He said the spirit of his military glory rose like a "meter." Now nothing can rise so high or so fast as a meter. (Laughter). I said what you mean is "meteor." Then light broke in upon him, and it wasn't gaslight either (laughter). But pronouncing is so difficult in the English language and yet so necessary a part of English reading, that we can hardly do better than pay great attention to it.

These are familiar things, but need to be repeated. When we come to emphasis, with inflection and modulation, how careful the teacher should be in training the pupil. It makes a vast deal of difference alike in the sound and in the sense as well, and indeed, where this matter is not attended to as it ought to be, it reminds me of the definition which the boy gave of accent. He said that accent was the "distress of voice on a particular syllable." It is, as sure as you are born, a "distress of voice," if it is not properly placed. I would have pupils pay much attention to extempore reading. When they get out in life, they aren't going to be able to sit down and premeditate what they are going to read. They will be called upon on a sudden to do it, and if they are, and haven't had the training which would render them ready, the results will oftentimes be very disastrous. I had a group of boys in a class of

oratory reading Chauncey M. Depew's great oration on "The Inauguration of Washington." There is a fine sentence where Depew groups together a large number of names of those who were prominent in those days, and I set the boys to reading that in extempore fashion as an experiment. He speaks of Washington and Livingston and Franklin and the Rutledges and the Pinckneys, and this boy went on to read, extempore, of course, about Washington and Franklin and the Sumters and the Rutledges and the "Pickaninnies." Now wasn't that a tremendous drop from George Washington to the pickaninnies? (Laughter). Well, that was a great thing for the boy, that slip, for although it brought down the laughter of his fellows, he never made that mistake again, and he avoided many another mistake that he might have made save for that practice which he had had. The one thing to do, it seems to me, in the manner, is to attempt to take the pupils while they are young, and then to inculcate the best possible presentation, so far as the mechanical side is concerned, of reading. There is so much, you know, in youth, of that spirit of ebulliency and enthusiasm, that it is all right if it works the right way but it is all wrong if it doesn't, and the best illustration that I know of it is an old picture that I saw at one time of an old Scotch fisherman who stands upon the brink of a stream; his little boy Johnnie is just before him. Johnnie has dropped his line into the water, and with the impatience of youth-you can see it in every feature of his face he is hoping with all the hope of his little heart that the big fish will get on there so that he can yank him out of the water. All that the fine, wise old Scotch fisherman father says, as he lays his hand on the lad's shoulder, is "Steady, Johnnie." That is all there is to it. "Steady." And it is what we want our students

.