Chapter V: Front Matter (5)

There is one additional point that should not be overlooked. A careful discrimination between the functions of the professor and those of the teacher would benefit both classes of men. Such has been the effect in Germany. The gymnasium-teacher has a high sense of the dignity of his vocation and a keen sense of its responsibilities, because he perceives that he must bring his labors to a well-rounded conclusion. He knows that the university does not supplement the gymnasium--that the university professors do not undertake to make good his shortcomings. The gymnasial course is a completed phase of training. It aims at giving the pupil all the general knowledge that he requires previous to his professional studies. What is lost or overlooked in the gymnasium cannot be acquired at the university. Hence the peculiar conscientiousness of the German teacher, his almost painful anxiety to make sure that his pupils master every subject, his unwillingness to let them go before they are "ripe." With us the change from school to college is not an abrupt transition, like that from gymnasium to university. The college course, certainly during the two lower years at least, is a continuation of the school course: the same or similar subjects are taught, and taught in the same way. Hence the school-teacher is tempted to regulate his efforts according to the college standard of admission. If he can only "get his men into college," as the saying is, he thinks that he is doing enough. To say this of all schools and all teachers would be flagrant injustice. Not a few of our older schools compare favorably with the best German gymnasiums, and in the large cities we find schools of even recent origin that endeavor faithfully to give a well-rounded discipline. But it remains nevertheless true that our schools, taken as a whole, give no more than the colleges require, and that only too many of them give less, trusting to the colleges to be lenient and eke out the deficiency. Moreover, when we read in the daily papers advertisements like the following, "Mr. Smith, a graduate of Harvard (or Yale or some other college, as the case may be), prepares young men for college," what inference are we to draw? Simply, that Mr. Smith, having gone through Harvard or Yale, knows exactly what is required there, and will undertake to "coach" any young man for admission in two or three years. Such coaching, if the young man is dull or backward, will consist in cramming him with required studies, to the neglect of everything not required. Teaching is not easy work. In many respects it is more difficult to be a good teacher than to be an original investigator. Whatever operates to strengthen and elevate the teacher's position, therefore, must be a gain. The highest incentive would be the consciousness that his school is not a mere stepping-stone to another school of larger growth, but the place where he must in truth prepare the youthful mind for independent study.

JAMES MORGAN HART.

CONTRASTED MOODS.

WANT.

Where is the power I fancied mine?
Can I have emptied my soul of thought?
In yesterday's fullness lay no sign
That to-day would be a time of drought.
What if thought fail me for evermore?
The world that awaits a well-filled plan
Must, railing, cry at my long-closed door,
"He cannot finish what he began."

PLENTY.

Thought dashes on thought within my soul:
Time will not serve for the bounding-line.
I think it would fail to mete the whole
If old Methuselah's years were mine.
Like the famous spring that is sometimes dry,
Then flows with a river's whelming might,
The current of thought now runs so high
It covers the earthy bed from sight.

CHARLOTTE F. BATES.

THE ATONEMENT OF LEAM DUNDAS.

BY MRS. E. LYNN LINTON, AUTHOR OF "PATRICIA KEMBALL."