experience the needs of the life of to-day. I am watching to see whether he can do for me what the man of purely academic training cannot."

To such testimony as that from a teacher might be added the personal recollections of many students not far enough away from the influence of college life to have injured the value of their assertions. "The most definite encouragement I ever received in college," says one of them, "to gain any ability in practical writing came not from any member of the faculty, but from the literary activities of the students themselves, and those literary activities, instead of being encouraged by the English teachers of my day, were frowned upon and curbed."

Of course he refers to work in connection with undergraduate publications-the literary magazine, the student newspaper, and the like. This opens up a field for discussion by no means new, and presents a problem that is faced earnestly by every thoughtful English instructor in any college. We are told that the experiment has been tried of utilizing these student undertakings to give strength to college English work, and that the result was satisfactory neither to the activities inside the classroom nor to those outside. In a recent article on student activities by a college president who is facing earnestly many new problems, the following paragraph is of interest in this connection.

"But now I shall be asked, 'Would you substitute these activities for the studies, give up the classroom for the loungingroom and the union?' Of course not. The very excellence of these activities is that fundamentally they are the fruits of the classroom. But the point is that by these fruits the work of the classroom shall be known. We need not forget that these activities are only accidental and that the real value lies in the studies and the teaching. But none the less, it is true that these activities reveal to us far better than any examinations can do the success or failure of the classroom itself. They are, as it were, mirrors in which we can see ourselves and our work. If we

want to know the effect of what we are doing in the classroom, let us look to see what the students are doing outside of it, when they are free to follow their own desires. If they do not on their own initiative carry on activities springing out of their studies, then you may count on it, however well the tests are met, that the studies are of little value."

Here, then, an authoritative representative of the colleges suggests a test of the efficiency of work in English composition. If the college literary magazine is the result of a wide-spread effort on the part of the students to produce a creditable exhibit, then the practical English work in the classroom is effective. But bear in mind that it is not the quality of a student publication that is the test, for that quality will depend upon the accidental talent of half a dozen students in the college at any given time. The test must lie in some equation that represents enthusiastic support of the periodical by the bulk of the student body, the percentage of the total number of students who offer contributions to its pages, plus the general average of merit. Is it an exaggeration to assert that in any of our colleges of, say, five hundred students, the literary magazine publishes contributions from no more than fifty different students during the entire course of the year? If we said twentyfive we might be neårer right, and yet presumably the business for which these five hundred students have come together is directly in line with such individual endeavor as the sending of contributions to their own publication.

Three generations ago Amherst College took the initiative in requiring physical exercises as a part of a well-balanced college course, and built upon its campus the first college gymnasium. Out of that wholesome beginning grew the whole problem of college athletics, and the same college that had first recognized the need for attention to athletics was prompt to recognize afterward the dangers attached to their growth. Those in authority determined that there was something wrong in a system that demanded of a

student body financial support and provided the services of an expert teacher more highly paid than any recognized. member of the faculty, and then applied those funds and that teaching skill to the super-development of a small selected squad of students. Without upsetting any beloved traditions, therefore, and without any great stir, they built up a new system which should provide skilled training in all of the recognized athletic sports to every member of the student body; they provided athletic fields enough to make this possible, and a system that would bring in all of the essential elements of rivalry and competition; and then they required of every student that he should take some part in one or another of these activities, and even made the mastery of the art of swimming essential to graduation.

Every one applauds the development of this policy. It has been, or is being, worked out in many other colleges, and the day will come when it will be as generally accepted as is the necessity for a gymnasium upon the campus.

And yet with this parallel before their eyes, the faculties of these colleges view with complacency or indifference the fact that a dozen or so students are being super-trained in their efforts to maintain. certain college publications up to an accepted standard. The student body is being urged for motives of patriotism to maintain financially these institutions, conducted solely for the benefit of a small group. The result is that neither the college nor the small group does benefit, because the burden upon the very few becomes very great. It is incumbent upon them to maintain the standards that they deem worthy of the fame of their college, and lacking adequate support, they must do so much work themselves that they have too little time for the classroom.

It seems reasonable to believe that if the same intelligence might be applied to the solution of this problem that was applied to the solution of its parallel in athletics, a result might be gained that would help to solve two or three different ques

tions which are now puzzling the minds. of conscientious college presidents.

Some little part of the remedy, then, in our opinion, lies in the proper answer to the question, How may we utilize. undergraduate publications in training students in practical English work? But a far more important step toward the remedy lies in a readjustment of the balance in the entire department of English. Our students are placing too much emphasis upon the literatures of another day, and too little upon the best standards of present-day practice. It seems to be a very natural evolution which has brought about the present college methods of teaching English. teaching English. When higher education began, there was only one exact science, mathematics, and the only languages with a body of literature to serve as the basis for study were dead languages. The planning of the curriculum was a simple matter for those pioneer faculties. To-day when several other exact sciences have come into existence, two or three of them far more intimate in their human relationship, mathematics still holds the center of the stage; and as for language, while Latin and Greek have retreated a little in the face of severe attacks, the only methods by which they could be taught have determined the methods of teaching English. Their best standards were dead standards, and so we are accustomed to value dead standards of English style beyond their deserts. Their grammatical constructions were fixed and immutable; so we learned to appreciate the beauties of a dead form by studying its bones. This terrible tradition has its dead hand upon the English work even in our schools, and little children learn syntax and parse a verb, and so are able to analyze the perfection of Thanatopsis!

In a recent number of "Education" there is an article by a high-school teacher who paints this vivid picture of certain high-school work in English:

"The pupil first, -the one who has repeatedly been called hopeless! He has supposedly been taught penmanship, spell

ing, and grammar in the Elementary Schools; he has written compositions of some sort since he was in the primary grades; he has had various sorts of language work. In the Secondary Schools he has studied rhetoric, sentence-structure, and has written compositions which have been duly corrected. His errors have been pointed out to him. At the end of the first, second, third, or even in his graduating year, he is unable to write a sentence. I do not mean a good sentence or even a grammatical sentence, but I mean that he will write as complete sentences, in his compositions, phrases, such as of beautiful trees'; clauses, such as 'although he came'; and still more frequently will he put several unconnected sentences, simple or otherwise, into one mess; or have his whole composition an incoherent string of words beginning with a capital letter, -and ending with a period, if he does not forget it. I think the schools are few, indeed, where such pupils do not exist in considerable numbers, and that the kind of pupil who does this sort of writing is unmistakable to any earnest teacher of English."

It is true that the pupils described by this writer are of the "submerged tenth," and are assigned to him as a special teacher; yet he later testifies to the fact that they all can be saved by special attention and taught to write the English language. Your child or mine might be among them, normal mentally, but hopelessly confused by the terminology of a science unrelated to life, and brought to feel that what he writes for his teacher and what he says freely for himself are in different tongues.

This is at the root of the whole matter. No red-blooded child in grammar school ever enjoyed grammar, and yet that was the collective term to cover his study of English speech; and he ran forth from the classroom to chatter his own language in the streets, unaffected by the dry bones of syntax, which had rattled in his ears only a minute before. High school did little more for him, and he found himself in

college unable to speak and write with simple and lucid directness, and with no one there among his instructors who had the time to labor over such elementary details.

A great responsibility rests upon the colleges. If there is something lacking in the elementary training of students, then the college must immediately secure teachers of proved efficiency in teaching more elementary things. Moreover, if you will agree that an art can best be taught by those who can themselves practise it, other requirements of a good teacher being equal, then have that in mind in selecting instructors. With the practical literary adviser upon a university faculty, it is even possible that the thesis might be forced to stand for something even more than an evidence of specific research; it might be forced to represent ability in the practical application of a knowledge of English style, and then there would be greater reason for making the degree which rests upon that thesis a prerequisite for a professorship in the art of English expression.

"A greater part of the thousands of manuscripts submitted to us annually," says the editor of a leading review, “are by college professors, and thirty per cent. of these cannot even be considered because they are so badly written." Surely this fact in itself indicates one point at which the strengthening process might begin.

"What you suggest is vocational training for literature," I am told. In this Englishspeaking land of ours, where a great annual inflow of foreign speech is constantly dashing its waves against the bulwarks of our language, what should our colleges be if not great technical schools for the business of using English? Granted that the cultural college does not aim to turn out a student equipped for architecture or engineering or the ministry or the law, yet it should turn out artisans, if not artists, in English, competent to handle the most. essential tool in the world's workshoptheir own language. This it does not at present do.