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writers? Certainly, as before said, we do copy. It arouses interest in letter writing to correspond with the class; to pose by turns as the country aunt, the city uncle, the business-like employer, the elegant friend, giving and receiving invitations. The class seem to enjoy such letters, and they mimic them with appalling faithfulness. Here the teacher must face that other obstacle, his own limitations. High school teachers as a rule cannot pretend to any mastery of literary style. If we could write as we wish we could write we should not be high school teachers long; the high school could not afford to keep

us.

The colleges may be able to give sufficient salary and sufficient leisure to include among their professors of English men who can follow their own instructions,-such men as Professor Barrett Wendell of Harvard, Professor Arlo Bates of the Institute of Technology, Professor Richardson of Dartmouth. The high schools cannot have such teachers. And how shall we teach others to do what we cannot do ourselves? This is where we need a model. It is as if that mother of the early sewing lessons should say: "You do plain sewing well now; it is time for you to learn to do finer and more ornamental work. I cannot do that as well as your aunt can. Sit near and watch her. Don't ask her any questions, for she is too busy to be bothered with you. I will watch you both, and help you to work as she does by any suggestions I may be able to make." It would be better, of course, if the aunt herself turned teacher, but this way of learning is to be preferred to forming a habit of working awkwardly.

But would it, after all, be better to rely entirely upon indirect influence, merely calling attention to characteristic excellence in each composition? Permit another analogy. Suppose a pupil almost, if not quite, ignorant of sculpture comes to a master in this art. Having been taken through galleries of statuary and instructed thus: "Notice the smooth grace and supple softness of this Fawn of Praxiteles, the complete relaxation of this Dying Gaul, the knowledge of the human frame which Michael Angelo shows. Look long at these statues, for you must ever after be dissatisfied with what is not true and so beautiful. Behold and admire, and you will forever long

for like excellence"-having been told these truths, would he be sent home to work with no model save what his own untrained eyes can see in the living form before him? Would he not rather, even after years of practice, surround himself with his favorite masterpieces of statuary, from which his glance might catch

"Hints of the proper craft:
Tricks of the tools' true play"?

Certainly our analogies suggest imitation as one of the best means of acquiring skill in any art.

Imitation of literary style is, perhaps, not entirely analagous with imitation of the style of the sculptor or painter; yet further illustrations might be brought forward to show that such imitation is possible and, indeed, often unavoidable. There is one kind of imitation, however, that is impossible with the present text-books, i. e., imitation of the general method of treatment. We can imitate parts, but we have no models of wholes. Our essays, if we except the De Coverley papers, are all too long; too exhaustive to admit of anything like similar treatment of subjects within the capacity of high school pupils. As a consequence the boys and girls copy each other; all graduation essays, with lamentably few exceptions, are alike. How I wish we had a volume of really bright and sparkling essays, works of master minds, not more than one to two thousand words long! With descriptions we are well supplied; but for narrative, with its difficulties of subordination of parts and of dialogue, we must look outside the required reading certainly. Where shall we find brief, pithy, argument, too superficial for a Webster or a Burke, but more able than anything our boys. and girls can do? Whose essays shall we use to prove that an ordinary theme may be bright without being flippant; wise, yet not dull; stimulating and helpful, and still free from censoriousness or sentimentalism? With proper models it would seem that we might have kindred topics taken up in like manner; and then by saying, "Look on this picture, and then on that," make plain by contrast those faults of dullness, prosiness, and being generally not worth while, that we cannot explain, and hardly dare suggest for fear of producing complete discourage

ment.

Since the body of this paper was written I have received, through the courtesy of the publishers, two rhetorics, both of them very recent publications, which aim to teach the technique of English composition by the use of models. I welcome with pleasure this evidence of a more general belief in the value of the imitative method. With one of these books, however, I feel compelled to take issue in one respect. The book gives throughout, as models for imitation, extracts from Washington Irving; one is, therefore, brought to the conclusion that the end aimed at is that the pupil shall acquire Irving's style. This is not my understanding of the best use to be made of the model. The five-finger exercises and the scales are means, not ends. So all imitation is but a means to facilitate self-expression. I would have my pupils clearly to understand this. When they themselves have something that they wish to say, I would on no account bring up a model, and thus turn attention from the thought to the mere outward form of the thought. But when, as often happens, the tired brain lags, and the pupil would have to write his subject to the dregs in order to grind out a thousand words, then I would say: "You have nothing now that you want to, say; but the day will come when you will long mightily to say something, and to say it well. In order that you may be ready when that day comes, you must learn the secrets of the art. This that you imitate to-day is but a single detail, a choice of word or turn of phrase. The master's work is a combination of many such. Just as in the rendering of a difficult musical composition you might pick out a brilliant run, a difficult arpeggio, and practice scales and exercises to attain the mastery of a like technique, so by similar exercises in writing you may fit yourself for rendering unerringly those thoughts which some day you shall see spread out before you as the musician sees his score."

We know two kinds of musical failures: the player who has technique without feeling, and the player whose stiff and stumbling fingers refuse to do the bidding of the eager soul. We know among men and women two kinds of failures in the writing which it falls to the lot of each of us to do: there are those who have a fatal facility for saying an infinite deal of

nothing, too much expression, too little to express—the means made the end; again, there are those whose righteous indignation or sincere sympathy, lucid understanding or pure aspiration, fail to bless the world because the writer's very thought and feeling stiffen and shrivel at sight of pen and paper, too little technique-the subordinate suffered to cramp and dwarf the essential. Both these failures our teaching should strive to prevent.

Finally, no imitation of a single author can perform the highest service of which imitation may be capable. There is nothing so much to be desired as that our pupils shall catch the infection of art. Whatever we owe to imitation, there must be the added process of selection. We choose our models; and we are already well educated, morally or intellectually, when we have learned to choose wisely. Virtue is as contagious as vice. We wish to expose our pupils as thoroughly as possible to the right sort of contagion. If, by such exercises as I have suggested, we can but bring them into closer contact with the masters of our art, can train their admiration and arouse their emulation, we shall have gone far, very far, to assure their

success.

Editorial

E

AVERY superintendent and every teacher knows that the atmosphere of the home has a large share in determining the attitude of the pupil at school. The home has the child in five or six determinative years before the school gets him at all. After he begins his schooling the influence of the home is predominant for seventeen or eighteen hours in the twenty-four hours of each day, to the school's six or seven. The natural respect and love of the child for his parents properly enthrones their standards and their judgment as his ultimate rule and law. Family feeling asserts itself, and what his brother or sister will say or think of anything profoundly affects a young child's views and actions. The homes where prompt obedience is exacted from the children by the parents; the homes where intelligence forms the daily environment; the homes where things material and moral are orderly; the homes where wholesome food, pure air and water, proper clothing, temperate habits, quietness, subordination of the trivial to the important are insisted upon; where study and work are put first, and play and amusement, while by no means despised or eliminated, are made secondary-such homes send to the schoolroom pupils who make teaching almost a pastime. The other kind of homes contribute the difficult problems of the teachers' experience. The difference is felt during the first hour of the first day of the first term by nearly every teacher. He knows almost instantly whether he has a hard job or an easy one before him; and the determining factor in nearly every case is to be found in the homes from which the pupils

have come.

TH

HESE facts are so apparent that the question of how to make the home help the school has long been to the fore, and is of perennial interest. We have had a particularly clear witness to this fact in the frequent calls that have come to us from different parts of the country for the four or five back numbers of EDUCATION containing articles which somewhat elaborately discuss this subject. Our supply of those particular numbers has been nearly exhausted. The need of some sort of instruction which shall reach out into the community and help the parents to right ideas and proper efforts, so that the home. shall do its full duty by the children and send them to the schoolhouse suitably prepared for the duties and responsibilities which they will encounter there, is widely felt both by educators and the more intelligent parents. How can this instruction be secured?

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