are ignored by the public in spite of critical admiration. But the inference in these prophecies that the best sellers above all others are doomed to oblivion is certainly erroneous. The ultimate test of literature is the continuous appreciation of the public; and the only practical way of testing people's appreciation of a book is to offer it for sale and see the way that they buy and read it. Because the Because the public in 1910 buys 100,000 copies of Mrs. Deland's "Iron Woman" it does not follow that in 1920 "The Iron Woman" will still be selling, and yet it is certain that it has a better chance of being still a "live" book in 1920 than a book that does not even get the public's fancy when it first appears. Without any intention of comparing Mrs. Deland or any other of these successful modern authors with Dickens and Scott, it is interesting to remember that their novels were the bestsellers of their day, and moreover that both of these men wrote with their eyes upon the money return of their writing. Like many a modern author, they had to. Coming down to more recent times, General Lew Wallace's "Ben Hur" was published in 1880. Whatever the critics may say of it, it is well on its way toward becoming at least a fixed part of American literature. Thirty-three years ago, when it came out, it was a great success. People have been buying it and reading it ever since. This year Harper & Brothers, its publishers, contracted to deliver a million copies of it to Sears, Roebuck & Co., of Chicago. And this house will sell it to the public. In 1895, the first year that "The Bookman" published its list of "best-sellers," George Du Maurier's "Trilby" led the list. In 1896 came Sienkiewicz's "Quo Vadis" and Sir Gilbert Parker's "The Seats of the Mighty." These books continually find their way into new and appreciative hands. They have not lived long enough to justify any prophecies of their continued longevity, but at least they are upon the eligible list. They are nearly twenty years old and still alive, and there is no doubt that their successful beginning was chiefly instrumental in giving them such measure of life as they have had.

And then what about such books as "Uncle Tom's Cabin?" The critics' standards of literature to which modern successful novels are asked to conform would condemn this book. Certainly another novel on slavery in every way as good, if published now, could hardly hope for the tremendous sale of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." It would almost certainly die, although "Uncle Tom's Cabin" with its great success behind it, still lives. Because of the peculiar conditions under which this book came out, it got a tremendous grip upon the public imagination. It gained such a momentum in people's minds that it has become an integral part of American life. Being brought out at the psychological time that would make it a "best seller" made this book a part of American literature.

Those who are seriously interested in what American novels will continue to be read by successive generations might well check up the opinions of the literary critics with the reports of librarians and with the publishers' sales of books of by-gone years, especially cheaper editions brought out by the original publishers or by reprint houses such as Grosset & Dunlap and A. L. Burt & Co. On these lists Scott, Cooper, Kipling, Conan Doyle, Harold Bell Wright, Sir Gilbert Parker, Robert W. Chambers, Winston Churchill, and F. Hopkinson Smith, and a host of others, all appear. They have sold continuously since publication. Probably by no means all these latter-day bestsellers will live as long as the books of the other authors on the list have lived, but they in turn were weeded out from a larger number in their generation. But this much is certain: a book that the public takes unto itself upon publication will have an opportunity to go at least one more step toward permanency in the reprint lists an opportunity which few books that do not succeed at first ever gain.

Not all the statesmen who are hailed as great men in their time remain so in history, but history seldom makes great a man without prominence among his contemporaries. Literature treats men much the same as history treats men.

T

HE little red schoolhouse - the public school in the countryhas an affectionate place in the minds of the American people, but otherwise it is sadly neglected. There are 5,000 country schools still taught in primitive log houses. In thirtytwo states there are 147,227 one-teacher schools, and under this one teacher are

boys and girls in all stages of advancement, from beginners to those who have had eight or nine years' work. More than 55 per cent. of the young people from 6 to 20 years old (inclusive) — about 17,000,000 of them - live in the country or in towns of less than 2,000 inhabitants.

According to a recent report by Mr. A. C.

Monahan, of the United States Bureau of Education:

It is generally true, for the United States as a whole, that rural schools lack intelligent and economical management, adequate supervision, and efficient teaching. The majority of them are housed in uncomfortable buildings, unsuitable from almost every standpoint, without proper furniture or facilities for heating, ventilating, and lighting; without adequate provisions for guarding the health and morals of the children, and with comparatively little equipment for teaching.

Few realize the magnitude of the rural education problem now before us. It is not generally known that illiteracy in rural territory is twice as great as in urban territory. This is true, notwithstanding that thousands of illiterate immigrants are crowded in the great manufacturing and industrial centres. The illiteracy among native-born children of native parentage is more than three times as great as among native children of foreign parentage, largely on account of the lack of opportunities for education in rural America, in which comparatively few immigrants live. Few know that about 60 per cent. of those in rural schools are in

one-teacher country schoolhouses, and that the instructional work in the average one-teacher country school is of very low grade.

In Illinois there are 10,615 ungraded schools, with an average enrollment of of these schools were still in log houses; 27 pupils in every school. In 1910, ten there were 3,063 teachers who were teaching their first year, and there were 3,448 teachers who had less education than the equivalent of a completed high school term.

In lowa, a state of particular prosperity, the State Department of Education classifies the rural school buildings as, approximately, 60 per cent. "good," 30 per cent. "fair," 10 per cent. "poor"; and 5 per cent. are without suitable and separate outhouses. In 1910, there were 12,640 one-room country schools. There were 4,676 teachers who were teaching their first year and 2,500 more who had had less than one year's experience. The schools were open on the average of eight months a year, but there were so many changes in the teaching force that the average length of each teacher's service was five months a year.

Arkansas has 4,796 common-school districts, in which there are 6,295 schools. More than 5,000 of these are one-room buildings - 120 being log buildings. The average value of the one-room school buildings and grounds is $352. The average cost of maintaining an Arkansas school in 1911, including the teacher's salary, was $286.

Such statistics show plainly one of the reasons for the lack of progress in country life; the article that follows gives in concrete form a clear picture of some of the conditions back of these statistics.

H

UMAN nature may be alike the world over, but it is certainly laid on thicker in some spots than others; and if there is any one place where it breaks out in regular knobs and knots of original peculiarity and weird unreasonableness, it is where it appears in the country school.

Every child ought to be educated along its special bent; every child ought to be taught to earn a living; every child should be gently led up the beautiful paths to peace, health, love, and happiness, but

This might more nearly be possible were there six expert psychologists for every pupil, instead of sixty expert psychologists for every teacher. The schools are very, very faulty, and will be so long as the children in them are the sons and daughters of their parents. And yet nothing else our civilization has evolved is half so useful, and we have few institutions whose usefulness could be so much improved.

Early on the first Wednesday morning in April, I set off through the hills on horseback to hunt a school in the remote hill country of the Ozarks. There were five or six applicants for every school; and the youth who aspired to teach had to get out the very day after the annual school meeting and slip on school directors, or waylay them to get them even to look at his pocketful of recommendations we all had a pocketful. And then he had to talk to the director like a life insurance agent to a good but slippery risk.

I had been reading a "Psychology for Teachers," and had persuaded myself that it was not for the twenty-five a month that I was to be a teacher - but for the good I could do. I even forgot for a time that it was the hope of the twenty-five

a month that prompted me to read the "Psychology for Teachers."

The Cotton Tail school the first at which I applied which I applied - had decided to keep its old teacher. I was deeply disappointed. But I next felt that my mission was to help out the Splitlog district.

The first director I approached in the Splitlog district was Dan Combs, president of the school board. Dan had short, grizzled whiskers, and cleared his lands with goats, and bought and sold mules. It was evident from afar that he was a man of authority, and very busy. I approached him timidly and he brusquely told me there were other applicants and to leave my application and it would be considered in its regular order. The next director was Tom Wilson. Tom was breaking a piece of new ground, but was still in a good humor. I talked quite confidentially to him I told him of my extensive learning, of my natural aptitude to teach, of my soaring ambitions, of my yearnings to give Splitlog a school that would be the envy of the whole county. He listened to me with mild and speculative interest, and I thought I had him. But when I finished and waited for him to pledge me his vote, he looked evasively across the new-ground" field and told me to leave my application and it would be considered.

"But look here," I said, "I am not after consideration, What I want is a school."

This startled him into frankness, for he told me confidentially that it was his opinion they would employ Dan Combs's niece. "He's president of the board, you know, and is set on having her. She ain't much of a teacher - but you know, well

I turned away from Splitlog, but I had picked up one piece of wisdom that I

who wrote such beautiful English about the duty of the teacher to the tender, budding soul of youth, were beside me to tell me just how to begin. But he was not there; and it has been convincingly borne in upon me since that he never was.

I had hoped for a good attendance the first day. There were fifty-seven; which was not at all bad considering that most of the "big 'uns" had to stay at home to help cut corn, make molasses, and sow wheat. They would come on later about the time the frost was on the pumpkin and the arithmetic class was in compound fractions.

I made a feeling little speech about the "great opportunities that lay before us," and told them what a good thing education was for the human system and cited James A. Garfield and Abraham Lincoln as examples; mentioning that these distinguished victims of assassins' bullets and orators' eulogies were once as ordinary as any one of the boys present, which was pretty hard on my illustrious examples.

However, I could see great promise in my pupils. They were vigorous and had come in close touch with the soil, at both ends. In spite of my beautiful theories, at the first tap of the bell I had subconsciously decided that whatever praying I did should be done with my eyes open. And while my soul and psychology kept my tongue going on the beauties and delights ahead of us in the flowery fields of learning, my eyes were busy picking out the most salient bumps of human nature and sizing them up,

On the off side in the extreme northwest corner sat a boy I instantly called "Chuck." He was about fourteen years old, chunky, with a thick neck, a pug nose, and a head that looked like a knot sawed from a blackjack tree. Straight across the room in the southeast corner sat "Slimmy"-nineteen years old, six feet tall, with a long nose, a loose skin, a mournful face, and hair the color of dead broom grass.

As my words glowed with the joy of school, Chuck's pug nose went a fraction nearer his forehead, his left eyelid lifted slowly, cautiously, his eye crept circumspectly around until it met Slimmy's, and then the eyelid dropped.

I was disturbed. I was not gripping the two with hoops of admiration — and I wanted the thing to be unanimous. But I went on. Most of the school were listening-at least they were doing nothing else. Some stared at me curiously; some looked blankly straight ahead; here and there was a dropped jaw. Half way down. the aisle was a slender girl of fifteenalmost grown, with large, inspirational eyes, brown hair, a clear, refined face, and a winsome mouth. She was listening with eager attention, and I saw dreamy aspirations were stirring within her. Her name should be Eudora. And in the last seat in the centre aisle, trying to conceal the shabbiest and scantiest garb in the room, was a boy of eleven or twelve, whose eyes, burning with a great yearning, were fixed on mine; pale, thin-faced, underfed, but with a high forehead and sensitive but resolute lips. His name should be Luke.

There were to "Do Right."

And so school opened. be no rules - save one How very simple; how easy! Do away with a hundred thousand thick, fat, dull, twisted volumes of revised statutes; and just pass one law - "Do Right."

It worked beautifully the first day. But as I returned that evening to my boarding place with books to review on one arm, and dinner pail on the other, I felt unaccountably tired. There had been a strain in the day's work my teachers' psychology had not mentioned.

I was tired but relieved. Nothing dreadful had happened all day. And in spite of a far-off fluttering sense of uneasiness, I was happy, for as I walked the ridge road shadowed by over-reaching oak and walled by hazel and sumach, I saw more vividly than ever the vision of the academy walls, the college campus, and the wide world of achievement. I should succeed with this school. The children should love me, the parents honor me and better paying districts call me. I had a little tussle with my conscience whether I should give up my well begun work here next year, and go to a bigger school at better wages.

In the first day I had discovered several things. The biggest problem was -"How