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to keep pace with him. This is even likely to be true when he is obliged to do the phrasing, the putting of the thought into word. He cannot profitably go farther at that time. In another way, at another time, he may be able to bring the class over the difficulty; but he is doing them an injury and not a benefit, if he go on to do for them the thinking, or that realizing of thought which belongs to putting thought into word. He is then not educating, but "cramming." It is his duty to encourage, to assist, but never to do himself what to be of value must be the actual work of the learner himself.

All this is evident enough in those branches where results are definite and concrete, like the learning of the multiplication-table or of the facts of geography. It is equally true in subjects where reasoning is essential, like algebra or syntax. Most of all, if not most evidently, is it vitally true in any connection where are involved the feelings and anything of the nature of appreciation of artistic values. We evidently cannot do the children's memorizing for them; but no more can we do for them their reasoning; and least of all is it possible to manufacture for them their likings and their dislikings, their appreciations and their enthusiasms. To tell children what feelings they should have over a given piece of literature produces about the same effect as an adjuration to stop growing so fast or a request that they change the color of their eyes.

In any emotional as in any intellectual experience,

intensity and completeness must ultimately depend upon the capacity and the temperament of the individual concerned. It is useless to hope that a dull, stolid, unimaginative boy will have either the same appreciation or the same enjoyment of art as his fellow of fine organization and sensitive temperament. The personal limitation must be accepted, just as is accepted the impossibility of making some youths proficient in geometry or physics. It may be necessary under our present system-and if so the fact is not to the credit of existing conditions-to present the dull pupil with a set of ideas which he may use in examinations. The proceeding would be not unlike providing the dead with an obolus by way of fare across the Styx; and certainly in no proper sense could be considered education. Difficult as it may be, the pupil must be made to think and to feel for himself, or the work is naught.

Perhaps the tendency to try to do for the student what he should accomplish for himself is the most general and the most serious of all the errors into which teachers are likely to fall. The temptation is so great, however, and the conditions so favorable to this sort of mistake, that it is not possible to mete out to instructors who fall into it an amount of blame at all equal to the gravity of the offense.

V

FOUNDATIONS OF WORK.

THE foundation of any understanding or appreciation of literature is manifestly the power of reading it intelligently. A truth so obvious might seem to be taken for granted and to need no saying; but any one who has dealt with entrance examinationpapers is aware how many students get to the close of their fitting-school life without having acquired the power of reading with anything even approaching intelligence. Primary as it may sound, I cannot help emphasizing as the foundation of all study of literature the training of students in reading, pure and simple.

The practical value of simple reading aloud seems to me to have been too often overlooked by teachers of literature. Teachers read to their pupils, and this is or should be of great importance; but the thing of which I am now speaking is the reading of the students to the teacher and to the class. In the first place a student cannot read aloud without making evident the degree of his intelligent comprehension of what he is reading. He must show how much he understands and how he understands it.

The queer freaks in misinterpretation which come

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out in the reading of pupils are often discouraging enough, but they are amusing and enlightening. Any teacher can furnish absurd illustrations, and it is not safe to assume of even apparently simple passages that the child understands them until he has proved it by intelligent reading aloud. The attention which oral reading is at present receiving is one of the encouraging signs of the times, and cannot but do much to forward the work of the teacher of literature.

Of so much importance is it, however, that the first impression of a class be good, that the instructor must be sure either to find a reasonably good reader among the pupils for the first rendering or must give it himself. In plays this is hardly wise or practicable; but here the parts are easily assigned beforehand, and the pride of the students made a help in securing good results. In any work a class should be made to understand that the first thing to do in studying a piece of literature is to learn to read it aloud intelligently and as if it were the personal utterance of the reader.

In dealing with a class it is often a saving of time and an easy method of avoiding the effects of individual shyness to have the pupils read in concert. In dealing with short pieces of verse this is, moreover, a means of getting all the class into the spirit of the piece. The method lacks, of course, in nicety; but it is in many cases practically serviceable.

Above everything the teacher must be sure, be

fore any attempt is made to do anything further, that the pupil has a clear understanding at least of the language of what he reads. My own experience with boys who come from secondary schools even of good grade has shown me that they not infrequently display an extraordinary incapability of getting from the sentences and phrases of literature the most plain and obvious meaning, especially in the case of verse; while as to unusual expressions they are constantly at sea. On a recent entrance examination-paper I had put, as a test of this very power, the lines from "Macbeth:

And with some sweet oblivious antidote

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Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff.

The play is one which they had studied carefully at school, and they were asked to explain the force in these lines of "oblivious." Here are some of the replies:

"Oblivious," used in this quotation, means that the person speaking was not particular as to the kind of antidote that was chosen.

A remedy that would not expose the lady to public suspicion.

The word "oblivious" implies a soothing cure, which will heal without arousing the senses.

An antidote applied in a forgetful way, or unknown to the person.

"Oblivious" here means some antidote that would put Lady Macbeth to sleep while the doctor removed the cause of the trouble.

"Oblivious antidote" means one that is very pleasing. The word "oblivious" is beautifully used here.

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