Miss S. I hope it will be a good roomy apartment, with a big fire in it, ma'am.

Mdme. Miss Spriggs, I am accustomed to conversing with young ladies who deport themselves as such.

Miss S. Well, aint I? I always thought I was a lady.

Mdme. I will excuse you from further remarks. I perceive the preparatory will have a brilliant addition. Have you ever turned your attention to geography? If so, please to give me the capital city of each State.

Miss S. Well, if you wait till I kin give 'em to you, it will have to be till I can get pap to buy 'em for me. I brought a silver fork and spoon, and all them things; but I didn't think of them other consarns.

Mdme. Grant me patience! In what species shall I class this rara avis?

Miss S. Specie's mighty scarce, now, I tell you. I don't wonder you're puzzled.

Mdme. Miss Spriggs, what is arithmetic ?

Miss S. 'Rethmetic! Well, I've heern tell of folks goin' on tick, and clock ticking; is't any of them kind you mean?

Mdme. Where were you educated, or rather where were you not educated, Miss Spriggs ?

Miss S. You're too many for me, now. I come here to be eddicated 'long with the 'stocracy; and pap said as how I'd beat the whole comboozle, and if there was any meddle to be given, I'd be sure to get it, for I was the most meddlesome gal he knowed.

Mdme. No more! Spare my nerves. You may retire to your apartment. I will consider your case.

Miss S. I guess I am a case. Pap says I'm the hardest kind of a case, but he guessed you could squelch me. Well, good-by, ma'am, and when you want me again jist let me know.

Mdme. Pity the sorrows of a preceptress! What a parody on the march of intellect, when capacities are supposed to be in the market; when the substitute for Pegasus is to be greenbacks, and the road to Parnassus can be reached only by a "carriage and four !"

THE MEMORY OF A MOTHER.-When temptation assails, and when we are almost persuaded to do wrong, how often a mother's word of warning will call to mind vows that are rarely broken! Yes, the memory of a mother has saved many a poor wretch from going astray. Tall grass may be growing over the hallowed spot where her earthly remains repose; the dying leaves of autumn may be whirled over them, or the white mantle of winter may cover them from sight; yet her spirit appears when he walks in the right path, and gently, softly, mournfully calls to him when wandering off into the ways of error.

AUGUST, 1866.

VACATION.

ELCOME is vacation to all! And thrice welcome to the teacher !

WE

In the long weeks of the early summer he has been looking longingly forward to his release from the badly ventilated school-room and the peculiar anxieties of his calling. Now, divested of pedagogical restraint and dignity, he is free to enjoy the broad fields and the free pure air of the country. He is free to renew his youth in the careless ease and jolly good-humor of his home and early associations.

Vacation is a blessed compensation for work and worry, toil and care. In spite of years, it tends to make children of us. We may not turn somersaults on the green; or swing our hats in air, with merry shouts and loud huzzas; or roll, like young colts, in the soft meadow-grass; or leap the garden fence at a bound; or turn our jackets inside out; or jump out of our boots to paddle, barefoot, down the stream. Yet, nevertheless, we are sometimes children again. Vacation calls up this childhood within us, and transforms us, for the time, into lads and lasses.

We gladly rise from our time-worn seats, shake the professional dust from our garments, and seek the velvet meadow and the rugged mountain. We pluck the wild daisy, recline under the wide-spreading tree, listening to the rippling stream and the music of the birds. We watch the flocks upon the hill-side, and delight our vision in the brood that sails upon the stream. We pat Rover on the head, and extend a handful of fragrant clover to meek-eyed Brindle. To all these vacation lures as, "pilgrims weary with the march of life."

Verily, vacation is the teacher's honeymoon of life. It mollifies the temper that has been ruffled by the friction of school machinery. Friction is inevitable. For school boys and girls are no exceptions to the general degeneracy of the race. Children are not born angels, and we often find perversity and deformity in place of wings. It is well for us to contemplate the freshness and beauty, the innocence and purity of childhood. It is pleasant to teach the "young idea how to shoot" but when the twig has a constitutional tendency to twist in its growth and run into knots, it is not so easy to rear it to comely proportions. It is inspiring

to teach where there is a desire to learn; but attempts to force knowledge through thickened skulls into empty craniums is hard and dogged work. To command the lively attention of those hungry for the crumbs of knowledge is pleasant employment; but when pupils prefer peanuts to geography and doughnuts to mathematics, teaching is not so very delectable after all. It is satisfactory to mark progress in wisdom, and to watch the unfolding of mind; but it is not particularly inspiring to discover that your pupil is more eager for a surreptitious bite at an apple, or a "dig” at the ribs of his companion, than for an honorable position at the head of his class. However, whatever may be the pros and cons of "schoolkeeping," VACATION is a blessed "institution" for the teacher.

Nor is vacation less appreciated by the student. What boardingschool miss, or what collegian-be he verdant freshman, wise sophomore, conservative junior, or reverend senior-but has impatiently counted over and over again the days which preceded vacation. His vacation brings with it the gentle embraces of his mother, more esteemed by him than medals of gold or wreaths of laurel, with all his "college honors."

To all classes and conditions of men, vacation brings grateful relief. It relaxes the lawyer's "tape," and allows him perchance a trip to Saratoga, or Newport, or Long Branch, to make the acquaintance of his wife and family. Sometimes it entices the poor metropolitan editor from his "easy (!) chair," and gives him permission to have and to utter "opinions of his own." The editor of the MONTHLY, even, may be able to enjoy his clam chowder and blue-fish at Fire Island beach.

May this vacation indeed be a happy one for us all; and may we all take in a good stock of new life and strength, to conduct successfully our next campaign against ignorance. May none have occasion to say that the realization of the pleasures of vacation is less than the anticipation.

THE SOCIAL STANDING OF TEACHERS.

CONTRIBUTOR to the present number of the MONTHLY, in an interesting paper on the Teacher's Profession, assumes that the social standing of teachers is low-unjustly low; that there exists in the common mind a feeling of contempt for the profession, which, outweighing the influence of the teacher's personal worth, condemns him to neglect and contumely, simply because he is a teacher. This opinion is by no means uncommon; nor is it without some shadow of plausibility. Still, we

believe it to be unfounded in fact, and unjust both to the profession and to the public. We do not believe that a teacher's certificate is a passport to obloquy; nor that teachers are ever socially disparaged on account of their calling.

On the contrary, the social prejudice, if prejudice it may be called, is in the teacher's favor, rather than against him. In most circles, the simple fact that a man is a teacher is sufficient to insure him a kindly reception. He is presumed to be a gentleman if not a scholar, and as such he is treated so long as his own actions do not prove him unworthy. If he fails to receive the respect due to his calling-and surely no calling is more respectable—the fault, in nine cases out of ten, is his own; and we do wrong to hold the entire profession responsible for the contempt which is justly felt for its unworthy members. With the better and perhaps larger portion of our people, no profession is more highly honored, theoretically at least, than teaching; and if honor is not practically rendered to individual teachers, they must look to themselves for the remedy.

We would not deny that there are, in almost every place, some who look upon the man who trains their children somewhat as they do upon the man who drives their horses, and who would be as likely to welcome to the "fashionable drawing-room" the one as the other. But this is not surprising, and the teacher who takes to heart the slights of such people is unworthy the name of teacher. Those with whom a man's social position is determined, not by his personal worth and use as a citizen, but by the condition of his bank account or the amount of his income tax, cannot be expected to reverse their standard of respectability in compliment to a profession with the merits of which they are but little acquainted. They look down upon the teacher, not because he is a teacher, but because he is poor.

Though we must admit that every community contains too large a proportion of those who make worth subservient to wealth, we feel that it is an insult to the good sense of our people, as a whole, to claim that they are so unjust and unwise as to contemn the votaries of the noblest profession, simply from an unfounded contempt for the profession. In fact, we would sooner take the opposite ground, and hold that the popular appreciation of the teacher's labors is so high as to lead oftener to an overestimate than to a disparagement of teachers, and to blind the public vision to the pretentious ignorance of thousands who assume, without just preparation, the teacher's responsible duties.

AS

EDITORIAL CORRESPONDENCE.

DRESDEN, June, 1866.

S the time for writing my monthly letter comes round, it always brings with it the regret that my engagements press so constantly upon me that I cannot gain leisure for that close examination of the schools which might yield the best material for a series of educational letters. And yet there is this compensation for the loss, that the more I have seen of German schools, the more fully I am convinced that it is true that in no important respect do they maintain any superiority over our own. It is hardly necessary to tell the reader that the Free School system, as we understand the word, does not exist here; though many of the schools are under the control of the State, yet they are no more free, in the American use of the word, than is Harvard College or Michigan University. The gymnasia, the real schools, the tradesmen's schools, the industrial schools, the kindergartens, are all sustained as are our American academies and private schools, though they are almost all under the direction of the State. The class system, the most marked feature of society here, is not lost sight of among the children and youth. The nobility regard it as work of condescension when they send their sons to the gymnasium, even although it be presided over by teachers of lifelong experience, of extensive learning, and of even European reputation. The poor man may, by the greatest effort and constant sacrifice, be able to command the means to educate his boy in one of the higher schools, but few lads are willing to incur the scorn and contempt which poverty or a "low station" incur. A school such as ours, where all sit together, where the son of a senator may be on the same bench, is on the same form with the son of a blacksmith, is not known in Germany. It contemplates a state of society which is utterly unknown here. When the "State schools" of this country are spoken of, it is only meant they are under the control of the government, the teachers chosen and their salaries allotted by the state, but nothing of freedom is meant. Every father pays fees for the instruction of his children. Nor are these fees light. There lies on my table, as I write these lines, the prospectus of one of the Dresden schools. You would suppose that in this country, where wages are not on the whole more than one-third as high as they are with us, the prices of tuition would be correspondingly low. But they are not so. I give the terms reckoned in American gold. Children, from three to six, attending the kindergarten department, pay $1.12 monthly; those from six to eight pay $1.50; those from eight to twelve pay $1.87; and those above twelve pay $2.25. To this sum must be added a slight entrance fee and a special tax for warming the rooms. A family of three or four children must cost the father for tuition alone at least $50 a year; and when to this is added the book bill, the sum is not a light one for a poor man to pay. Now, fifty dollars seems a small bill compared with the sums paid in Boston, New York, and Brooklyn; but it may be, and often is, far more out of proportion to the means of the parents here than the terms charged in our private schools. Many of the fathers sending to this school of which I write are public officials, clergymen, or teachers. Their income is not much more, as a general rule, than two-thirds what the same class of men would receive in the United States.