directly to the teachers' province in education, we cannot overlook changes in educational thought and work. Painstaking, earnest, faithful teachers have been among the instructors of youth since the days when Plato led his pupils in classic groves. The work of these teachers of the past deserves honor. Some of the foundation stones laid by them, in the great educational structure, were irregular in form, and but partially fitted in their places; but as succeeding laborers, with more skill in the art of teaching, came on, symmetry began to appear, and this temple is rising into stately forms and symmetrical proportions, far above the ideals of the earlier builders. No single individual has wrought these great changes; no one man deserves the credit for them; the thought and labor of many have led towards these results. Every thoughtful teacher, every observing educator, has contributed to the onward movement. Tact employed in teaching, and wisdom exercised in supervision, efforts to learn the modes of child development; to know the training that guides in ways of intelligence and the formation of noble characters; all these contribute to the progressive changes in educational systems and results. To have been, to be now, one of the workers in the upbuilding of our country's noblest structure-her system of public education-is a great honor.

When books and the learning taught in the schools had been long divorced from the affairs of practical life, Bacon sounded the key-note for change and progress when he proclaimed: "Men read in books what authors say concerning stones, plants, animals, and the like; but to inspect these stones, plants, and animals with their own eyes is far from their thoughts. It is no less true in this human kingdom of knowledge than in God's kingdom of Heaven, that no man shall enter into it except he first become as a child. Go to nature and listen to her many voices, consider her ways and learn her doings; so shall you bend her to your will, for knowledge is power."

The present extent of investigations in the various subjects of science and art, the rapidly-succeeding discoveries in the several fields of natural history, the amount of attention now bestowed upon each of these in the public press, and their intimate relations to the various occupations of life, render it absolutely necessary that our standard of education for to-day should be correspondingly deepened and broadened. The present demand in education does not consist so much in the call for a mastery of many new subjects, as it does for a more complete development of mental powers and the formation of those habits of

investigation and research which mark the wide difference between those whose memories have become chiefly store-houses for what other people say or write, and those who have been taught to observe, to think, and to describe, and who have learned where and how to obtain whatever knowledge may be desired.

The days that may be spent in school going are too few, life itself is too brief, and the subjects embraced in the several departments of useful knowledge at the present day are too numerous to render it possible for each person to hope for a mastery of all; but such a development of the powers of acquiring knowledge as will secure the ability to obtain whatever may be needed from any department is not too much. to hope for, nor more than can be successfully attained by proper methods in education. Correct habits of thought, of study, of investigation, the power to gain knowledge from every surrounding object, together with the ability to apply knowledge profitably to the affairs of life, constitute the standard of education for to-day. The two indispensable qualifications needed by teachers, to insure their success to-day, are knowing, and knowing how to do. The knowing is a high attainment for which all should strive; the knowing how to do is a high art that becomes permanent guarantee for the use of successful methods in teaching, and for the accomplishment of the most valuable results in educational training. Obtain these two great qualifications. for successful teaching, and develop them in your pupils, that they may possess rich stores of knowledge and the ability to use them skillfully. We stand here, within the bounds of one of the states latest admitted into the Union, in the presence of representatives from the oldest and from the youngest states, and before those whose territories are earnestly asking for admission to the great sisterhood; and one of the important questions that comes vividly into the foreground is: What shall education do for the future of the country? Ponder this question seriously; act wisely under your decision.

We who come from the eastern portals of the land, through which crowd ceaseless throngs from foreign countries to seek homes on these broad plains, feel that the educators in these western states have a great work laid upon them-that of Americanizing the foreigner, so that he cannot foreignize our institutions. Broad and deep must be laid the foundations of the American public school in every town, village, and city of the land, in order to assimilate and develop into intelligent citizenship those who have no true knowledge of free institutions.

Teachers of the West, this is one of your high duties. As you prize your rich inheritance of free institutions, as you desire the prosperity of your country, as you cherish your homes, honor them all and bless yourselves in carrying forward to triumphant success the great work of education before you. And may the God of our fathers, who has crowned us so abundantly in the past, bless and guide you.

SCIENTIFIC TEMPERANCE INSTRUCTION IN THE PUBLIC

SCHOOLS.

BY MRS. J. ELLEN FOSTER OF CLINTON, IOWA.

In no previous age has there been such a liberal expenditure for popular education as in our own. The school property of the United States has cost $200,000,000, and we pay over $100,000,000 a year for teachers. England, France, Belgium, Germany, show a like outlay, while elsewhere, in America and Europe, the efforts in the same direction are only in a less degree. In extent and energy, the movement for popular education at the present day dwarfs those of all preceding times. So says an authority of unchallenged reliability, in a current publication; but even while the philanthropic heart swells with these potentialities, there stalks before us a procession of lame and halt and blind; we see the stare of the idiot, the leer of the imbecile, and hear the shriek of the maniac; for the same authority further reveals his findings out. "The increase of insanity during the present century has been steady, large, and universal in the civilized world, and has been exactly proportional to the growth of what we have called our civilization."

In 1850, the ratio of the insane in our population was one to 1,486; in 1860, it was one to 1,306; in 1870, it was one to 1,030; and in 1880, it was one to 549. In 1850, the ratio of idiotic persons among us was one to 1,469; in 1880, it was one to 656. In 1850, one out of every 2,365 of our population was a deaf-mute; in 1880, the proportion was one out of 1,197. Thirty years ago, our census reported one out of 2,367 as blind, while our last census reports one out of 1,033. Why set these figures* the one over against the other? That every friend of the race may see what are the alarming tendencies, what are the threatening dangers, with which our educational systems have to cope. Is it

*Probably the actual increase, though great, is not so large as the above figures would. seem to indicate. The later statistics are doubtless more correct than those of thirty years ago; and, inoreover, the real increase is more in the foreign population, transferred to our shores, than among our native inhabitants. We also venture the inquiry whether the term idiocy does not now include imbeciles, etc., not reckoned as idiots thirty years ago.

as true now as two thousand years ago, that "our people perish for lack of knowledge"? Thus queries the educator of to-day. He is not a recluse from life's activities; not a cloistered book-worm, dwelling always among the mists of history, the vapors of philosophy, the abstractions of mathematics, the mysteries of tongues, or the wonders of physics. He is "a man of affairs"; she is "a woman of views." They enter the activities, the charities, the philanthropies, the economies of the living, rushing present. They are not flippant nor arrogant; they have zeal with knowledge, courage with patience.

The development of the nation's material resources, the practical application of scientific methods to the every-day needs of the common people, the ever-increasing and complex questions of social economy and political life,-these each demand a place in current curriculums, and find varied expression in educational subjects and methods. To the three R's of our fathers are added such liberal acquirements as shall fit the child for citizenship in this best government the sun shines on. Lest any need be forgotten, or any refinement of our civilization neglected, physical, industrial, and military training, schools of technology and applied science, with music and art, are added.

And now, to the heart of the home comes the answered plea for scientific temperance instruction in all schools supported by public money or under state control. This last departure is in the same upward trend of educational effort which gives us the improved, compre hensive, and beautiful textbooks in the hands of our children, rather than the primer and the Murray our grandmothers used; and the modern schoolhouse, with appliances for health, comfort, and elegance, in contrast with the log-cabin and rude benches which constituted the training-school for "shooting ideas" a half century ago. This touch of the people's life has been felt on the door of the schoolroom and at the desk of the teacher.

DRINK HABITS.

A history of the drink habits of the race shows them to be almost co-extensive with the entire period of its existence, more or less ample in detail, as the text is full or meager. It is a record of misapplying the fruit of the ground; misdirecting man's ingenuity,-wasting his vital force; disturbing social relationships; destroying national life. The