from some work that was returned to the pupil and supposedly corrected: "Resitation work was not being carried on to any great extent untill last Tuesday when the teacher called on a few boys for an account of Thorogh (Thoreau?). Each boy failed and he soon gave the resitation up. We have begun to take the New England poets but have not progressing to any extent. The Transseendial movement has discussed and Poets on slavery the greatest of whom was Harriett Beacher Stowe. She was New England girl who with her father moved to a border state of slavery, wrote Unkle Toms Cabin, etc" This paper was given a passing mark with a good margin. Why such work should be accepted at all is passing strange. And the teacher who taught and corrected this sort of work, with a title after his name, himself wrote the following letter, the occasion for it is of course obvious; copies of it were handed to other teachers to be sent to their respective representatives in Congress:

"Dear Sir:-I write to implore you in the name of all thinking Americans to do your utmost to insure the concerted action of Congress on behalf of the Defense of this country.

I have thought much and read exhaustively. Surely all who do so must see the terrible-not to say pitiable-condition our utter defenselessness puts us in. No one worthy the name of American, with all that used to mean, can endure patiently being the joke of all Europe.

You surely have read all the facts which show the United States as the rich and conspicious and disliked weakling of the wrold. I need not waste your time and mine enumerating them. It must sadden you as it does me. But will you, as one who can alter that, allow us to remain that contemptible thing? will you not do your utmost to see that Congress does what the President only talks about?

Of what are those people thinking who cry "Who wants to attack America?" We are being warned against right now. Who can ignore it? Do you for one moment think of the twenty accidents to American property this year-one destroying a whole town—

accidents? and do you imagine that any country would have dared -and continued to dare-so contemptiously to treat a Defendedproperly defended-country?

There are no arguments against safeguarding what is valuable; I wonder if those unreading, unthinking men who prefer spending the nation's money on roads and public buildings, leave their money, their homes, where thieves can easily appropriate them? If the country needs no more protection than the handful of Preparedness we now boast, take locks off doors, have paper banks? we are reasoning creatures, let's be logical!

When I do my little best to show the truth to some who will not see, the popular protest is "I don't believe in war!" Neither do I. It is senseless and brutal and ineffectual. Neither do I believe in sickness, in robbery, in murder. Am I safe from them by not believing in them? am I inviting disaster by protecting myself against it? It seems the most puerile and futile of beliefs to rest a whole nation on. I am hoping you are more wide awake than such as these.

I beg of you, Sir, to put aside all thoughts of gain to a mere city or community at this time; think only of the country, to say nothing of the good old Constitution.

I should be bowed down with grief if we faced war; I should be infinitely more despairing to be openly warred upon and in no way prepared for it as now.

We look to you gentlemen whom we choose to represent us to take care of us.

We are murders as well as Germany when we send brave men to sea in a submarine that falls to pieces. We are to blame for many deaths caused by our carelessness these last years. How long shall these facts disgrace us? We are too easy-going, too confiding in the ubiquitous stranger forever with us, those strangers who are not at all so confiding. Are we never to learn our lesson from the thousands of spies Europes thrusts upon us? Are we forever to think only of making money? while other wiser countries learn every tiniest secret they care to learn?

Should we not place confidence in our Naval and Military experts? Will you not vote for plans that they have proposed? Yours Very Truly”

Comment is not necessary.

Just as a man may be judged by the company he keeps and the language he uses, so may a teacher often be judged by the questions he asks.

On walking into a schoolroom we found the following questions on the board: "Tell what you know about Emerson, about New England Colonial poetry, the Bay State Psalm Book, Brook Farm, and Transcendentialism. What is Pig Philosophy? What was the real conflict between Calvinism and Lutheranism? These questions were given to a first year high school class. By the way, what is Transcentalism? Who will define it for the sake of a freshman ? Did those who tried to practice it know what it is? What does a first year high school pupil know about it? Is there any reason why he should know much about it? The pigs may settle their own "philosophy".

Equally aimless and indefinite are drag-net questions like the following; "Discuss in detail the content of 'Ivanhoe" ", "Idylls of the King", "Paradise Lost", etc. In addition to telling the content briefly, give some criticism of the work. On a similar occasion pupils were asked to discuss Longfellow's poetry, to write on the work of Hawthorne and Poe, and on the work of Holmes. Not unlikely any second year high school pupil who has learned to spell Longfellow's name and has probably read Longfellow's "Excelsior" will be able to make a few pointless, incoherent statements concerning Longfellow's poetry. The same sort of result can be obtained from the other questions. And the propounder of these questions is the head of an English department.

It is well and proper that pupils know something of the figures of speech. But why a freshman class in high school should be required to study twenty-two of them simply in a formal, abstract manner and in examination be asked to name them with examples of Litotes, Pleonasm, Vision, and Epigram is somewhat beyond the comprehension of the uninitiated. It might be well if most of the twenty-two figures of speech were consigned to the limbo of Quac

kenbosh's old rhetoric as far as high school freshmen are concerned.

It is not necessary and not pleasant, either, to increase the number of incidents, however great the opportunity, nor to comment freely on what has been stated. "It does not require the general complaint of business and professional men, and of other men interested deeply in our schools, to convince the teacher that in this, the most important part of the school work, the instruction has been the least efficient and the results the least satisfactory. It is patent, even to those possessing no intimate knowledge of our schools, that pupils leave our high schools unable to speak or write clearly on the simplest subjects; and what is even worse, are woefully deficient in spelling, punctuation, and grammar." These are trite statements heard time and again; but seemingly there must be some truth to them. How much proficiency the pupil may have acquired by the various innane methods already described will be left to some one else to judge.

The facts stated are from actual observation and experience; but fortunately they do not indicate the nature of the average work done in high school English. They may be only sporadic, exceptional cases, but there are too many of them. They seem to point out what is too painfully evident, that much of the work done in English is shiftless and aimless. There is a lot of good, sane, practical work done by a company of hard-working, conscientious teachers who take their work seriously; and on the other hand there is a lot of futile, useless work done by teachers who do not take their work seriously, whose indifference, indolence, and probable lack of qualifications causes them to make a swivel-chair performance of English teaching. If the teacher does not take himself and his work seriously why should the pupil? The teaching of English, especially of composition, is hard work as much so as any work in the curriculum.

These things ought not to be, must not be, if high school English is to hold its rightful, respectful place, if it is to meet the requirements of life outside of school, and be looked upon as sane, helpful, practical. It behooves every teacher of English to see to it that the public no longer condemns high school English and takes it so of ten for a joke. Probably the "Philistine" within the Department is largely responsible for the many "Philistines" beyond the pale.

What Business Expects of the Graduate

of the Commercial Course

CARLETON B. BECKWITH, ASST. ADVERTISING MANAGER, THE NEW DEPARTURE MFG. Co., BRISTOL, CONN.

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O one can appreciate better than the business executive how thoroughly essential is the proper training of the young boy or girl in their preparation for a business career. There are many small details which are so necessary in the makeup of the prospective business man or woman which only appear as such small and insignificant details, but which are really the things which decide the value of the man or woman to the executive.

In other words, certain admonishments of the instructors, although strictly to the point, may seem unimportant because, coming from the instructor, they may give the impression of being entirely theoretical and, therefore, purely superficial.

The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to give the essential requirements of a boy or girl when completing the commercial course and entering a business career. Please think of these requirements as being thoroughly practical, coming as they do from one who has never learned the teaching methods, but who has acquired from ten years' business experience a very definite idea of what constitutes a successful and valuable stenographer and secretary. To become valuable is to be successful in business.

Remember that the prime requisite of a stenographer is to relieve the executive of attention to details and to permit him to devote all his energies to the larger and more weighty matters of business. Any lack of ability on the part of the stenographer to do this at all times is an evidence of failure in his or her most important mission.

Let us see what the stenographer must be able to do.

The main business of the stenographer is to take dictation and