wonder why nut-crackers took us to Turkey. These utensils had to be polished with emery cloth. The study of emery, emery wheels, emery cloth and emery paper took us to Asia Minor and especially to Turkey for emery. Time would not permit us to study this region at all carefully, but, by the aid of steamship folders and Chamber of Commerce material, we found the routes and the exchange cargoes from the United States to these parts in the near East.

As a project in wrought iron work, the boys made an electric floor lamp. This gave rise to the study of light and the progress that man with his increased knowledge of materials and skill in using them has made in lighting his home. We studied the torch, the candle, the kerosene lamp, (reviewing oil) gas and the electric bulb; the last being the only one not having a flame of some kind. The wiring of the lamp and the adjustments of the brass fixtures necessitated our studying copper which had been mentioned several times in our study of the Great Lakes. The lamp shade was of silk, so we studied silk, using all the exhibits of silk and all the books on silk. Italy and France were taken up again, China and Japan were studied just for silk, and our own silk manufacturing cities were studied rather carefully.

The boys had frequently spoken of the cotton waste that they used constantly in the shop, so we introduced our work on cotton here. The boys had been to the textile show so had very good ideas of the manufacturing processes of cotton and wool. Wool seemed to fit in here, as cotton and woolen goods are so often manufactured in the same mill. Anyway, the cotton and wool study was rather a review of the previous year's work, so they could locate Egypt and India and compare their cotton production with that of our Southern States. The comparison of the textile industry of old England with that of New England made a very interesting study.

England's monopoly of Australia's and New Zealand's wool, and the struggle for trade supremacy in Argentina between English and German merchants seemed a little more advanced way of

taking up the wool problems of those countries and gave them a new angle of thought about the matter. The study of the wool production of our Western States and its subsequent manufac ture in New England, and likewise the manufacture here of southern produced cotton occurred to them later in history and explained in a great measure the ever recurring tariff conflict in our country. That, certainly is a geographic influence on history. As the boys repeatedly mentioned linen in studying the other fabrics, we started our study of linen. This proved to be the most interesting of the textile studies. We received an excellent exhibit of flax which the boys gladly mounted. Through the courtesy of the "linen man" in Whitney's, we received some splendid material about linen.

Silk and linen may seem a far cry from grimy-faced, callousedhanded boys in a machine shop but they are the stuff of which our democracy is made, and on their knowledge of all these commodities and materials depends, in large measure, the making of sane laws for tariffs, for capital and labor and for all those grave questions that are perplexing us all today.

On their appreciation of and love for the fine and the beautiful in life depend, perhaps, our hopes of a higher civilization.

Old Age

The years go softly, and they go so soon,
We little think of them until, some day,
We talk November though our thought is June,
And feel December though our hearts are May!
ARTHUR WALLACE PEACH.

Literature in Everyday Life

E. A. CROSS, DEAN STATE TEACHERS COLLEGE,

GREELEY, COLORADO.

HEN a man builds a power plant, he consults a trained engineer. When a woman projects an

Wevening gown, she seeks advice and instruction

from a modiste, if that is the proper term to apply to the engineer who designs clothes. How strange it is that so few young people who are planning their lives consult the men and women who make the study of life itself their specialty-human engineers! For a moment imagine an almost unheard-of situation. Suppose a student should come to me, assuming that, as a teacher of literature, I could qualify as an expert in the art of living, since the business of literature is mainly the interpretation, clarification, analysis, illumination, elucidation of human life. Suppose this hypothetical inquiring youngster should pay me the compliment of believing that I had acquired some insight into the meaning of life and should consult me in the same good faith that his father manifests when he consults a mechanical engineer about the power plant, or his mother exhibits when she asks an architect about a proposed addition to her house, or when she advises with a skilled physician concerning her daughter's health.

Being an American youth of the twentieth century, the young man addresses me in the language of his class and his age. He says: "Say, listen, professor. You know I never expect to teach literature or anything. At the end of my college course I shall probably be farmer, a grocer, or a lawyer; a butcher, a baker, or a candlestick maker." He names his choice. "I'm planning my college course ahead, see; not just falling into it semester by semester by accident, as it were." To save me I can't imagine where he absorbed "as it were;" but there it is, his own phrase,

so let him have it. "I've already consulted a chemist, a historian a shop instructor or two, and some others, each about his work; and now I come to you. I want to know what there is in literature that will help me in my trade, or calling, or profession, whichever it may be,-what there is that will help me to become a well-informed gentleman-you know what I mean, and how I can go about it to get the most out of literature in the least time."

The compliment of being considered an expert even by a single student flatters me. I take myself seriously and try to tell this inquirer, whose desire is simply to become a good citizen, refined and cultured, what literature can contribute to his life and how he may go about levying upon its contribution.

"George," I say, (I might just as well be talking to his sister Maude. The principles I am laying down apply as well to a young woman as to a young man.) "George," I say, "I know what you want. The answer is simple, but I can't get at it until I feel quite sure you understand some preceding complex matters."

A resigned look comes over George's face which says: "Just like a confounded Professor. Always has to take a turn around Robin Hood's barn before he can make the jump and land anywhere. Sorry now I asked you. But go to it. I can't escape." All that follows here is what I might say to George (or Maude) under these imaginary, but unheard-of circumstances. may imagine himself for a half hour to be George or Maude.

The reader

In the first place, (you see I begin very deliberately and logically), I must make it clear to you that the education you are getting in school or college is not your complete over-seas outfitnot all you are going to need for the whole voyage of your life. At the best the college is able to supply you only with samples of the goods which in your life will become your complete stock. Education is like a traveling salesman who shows you samples of the things which make up a complete stock somewhere in reserve. Education shows you where and how to acquire the intellectual goods you will need in your business and also gives you some practice through which you may attain to a reasonable skill in

handling the materials. That is all. Suppose you are going to be a manufacturing chemist. Do you expect to learn in school every manipulation, every operation, every combination that you will ever use as a chemical engineer? No, certainly not. You expect to learn the principles of chemistry, the mathematics of chemistry, and to acquire a reasonable degree of skill in handling chemical materials.

Literature is just like that. I hope you do not expect to read in college all the poems, essays, dramas, stories, and novels you will ever read. If you go into the study of literature wisely, you will first learn to speak well and to write with a certain degree of precision and ease, so that you may have at least a comfortable assurance that you are not misusing the English language and that you are able to get your ideas over to those who hear you speak or read your pages directly and clearly. This study of language may, of course, be carried along with the reading of literature. Each helps the other.

And now we come to literature. We are talking a good deal about utility in these times. Naturally you will ask whether literature serves any useful purpose, whether one who reads much sees any tangible results in the form of a larger pay check. I am not sure that literature pays in that way, but I am very confident that it pays in other and more significant ways. Utility is one yard stick for measuring values, but it is only one. I go so far as to say that it is fit only for rough estimates, and that real success is measured by finer instruments. The things that are materially useful and contribute to success upon the physical plane alone call for a training of the hand and a sharpening of the brain in school and college. Literature goes beyond hand and brain. Its searchings are deeper, its aspirations higher. Its appeal is first to the intellect and then to the imagination. The emotions respond not to the merely useful, but to the eternally true-the things which awaken the soul. These may be useful as well as true, but true first if they are to make any impression upon our souls. The education of our day is paying less attention to the