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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



the future of the American university, the 

 author assumes that it must become the rep- 

 resentative of chnamic culture. The univer- 

 sity should have much to do with social re- 

 forms, political regeneration, and correction 

 of errors in the treatment of criminals. Social 

 and political reform will be impossible with- 

 out moral regeneration, in which, as the work 

 must begin with the individual, the univer- 

 sity has a noble part to perform. " The 

 fact is, the American people need a tonic of 

 the most active kind. Partly as a result of 

 the spoils system and partly in consequence 

 of the unnatural industrial and political con- 

 ditions produced by the civil war, we have 

 been brought to a very low plane of public 

 morality. ' It is a familiar fact,' says Her- 

 bert Spencer, ' that the corporate conscience 

 is ever inferior to the individual conscience.' 

 Indeed, it seems to me that a nation is in 

 evil straits when the standard of public 

 morality is very much lower than the stand- 

 ard of private morality, and that is precise- 

 ly the case with the people of the United 

 States. Never, perhaps, has there been a 

 greater disparity between political and pri- 

 vate ethics. A double system of morality is 

 a dangerous possession for any nation. Our 

 ideal of public conduct must approximate 

 more nearly to our ideal of private conduct 

 if we would ever attain the best in the higher 

 life." 



Remaking onr Boy^. "Boys, as they 

 are made," as contemplated by F. H. Briggs, 

 of the State Industrial School, Rochester, in 

 an address concerning them, are not the boys 

 who have home privileges and careful, com- 

 petent home training, but the boys of the 

 slums, and of the poor and the degraded. 

 The question, How to remake them ? is one 

 that the public school should have an im- 

 portant part in answering. For the child- 

 boy, in the autlior's view, the kindergarten 

 should be substituted for the home and 

 street during the day, and one should be 

 established, where all will be treated with 

 equal consideration, in every locality where 

 the poor abound. " The kindergarten gives 

 the child the mental, physical, and moral ex- 

 ercise that it needs. . . . But what about 

 the boys who are beyond the kindergarten 

 age now, and about the boys who have 

 passed through the kindergartens ? Put 



them into manual training schools. . . . What 

 should be the instruction in these schools? 

 That which in a natural way develops the 

 physical, mental, and moral faculties. The 

 workshop should form an inseparable con- 

 comitant of every school. Children delight 

 in doing. This is why the kindergarten is 

 so effective as an educational agent." Our 

 school for the boy should have drawing for 

 its corner stone ; and modeling should accom- 

 pany it, that by the test of actual contact the 

 correctness of the perceptions of size and 

 form may be tested, and the love of the 

 beautiful more fully gratified. Then the use 

 of woodworking tools the one thing that a 

 boy always delights in. " It helps a boy to 

 find out what square means. When he can 

 saw to the line every time, he has a greater 

 respect for truth. When he habitually be- 

 comes exact in the use of tools the great 

 battle is won. Your skilled mechanic is not 

 usually a liar. His respect for exactness 

 makes him hard to the line in his speech. 

 These three, then, drawing, modeling, and 

 woodworking in its various forms, should 

 form the foundation upon which our remak- 

 ing structure should rest." And they should 

 add develd^ment and symmetry to the whole. 

 " These things lie at the very basis of all 

 handicraft. They enable one trained in them 

 to see things in new ways ; to see their 

 parts, their forms, their beauties ; in fact, as 

 training for the perceptive and conceptive 

 faculties they have no equal. No scheme of 

 education is complete that leaves music out." 

 Nature has a warm place in every child's 

 heart. It is ever presenting some new form 

 for contemplation ; " and as bud, leaf, flow- 

 er, and fruit appear they challenge the child's 

 attention and invite study. . . . Why has 

 Nature been so long a closed book to the 

 masses ? Why is so much that is beautiful 

 and ennobling denied to the famishing souls 

 of little children '! Why should natural 

 history and science wait for the high-school 

 or college course that the great mass of 

 people never reach ? " 



Town Refuse as Fuel. Experiments in 

 seeking to utilize the refuse of towns as 

 fuel have been carried so far that a plant, 

 known as the Livfet plant, has been set up in 

 Halifax, England, with which it is intended 

 to supply electric energy. The successful 



