180 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



chinery that pulls the bells and adds the marks within the school 

 walls gives way to life; and here a man who sympathizes with child- 

 hood has all the opportunity he needs, and probably much more than 

 he can use, in providing for that life where a code of reciprocity and 

 honor must be established. It is not as the magistrate he will success- 

 fully rule, but as the sympathetic general in the field, whose very 

 name is a talisman and an inspiration to every man. In the school 

 yard, the bully, who comes to the front in about every tenth child, 

 needs to be repressed; the foul mouth must be cleansed; against 

 these prevailing evils the playground has a protection the street can 

 not possess. The boy's world is a peculiar world, certainly, making 

 laws for itself as rigorous and about as barbarous as those of a gang 

 of pirates; but it is through his esprit du corps he can be uplifted 

 and educated; the individual may be a selfish animal; as one of a 

 body he is capable of heroism and devotion to a noble idea. He can 

 be a friend; the playground is the field for the natural growth of 

 friendships, and youth the generous time of their birth. 



I recall another scene in a schoolroom in a Western city long ago. 

 A gentle girl, magnetic, deep-hearted, large-eyed, sat after school at 

 her table in tears. On a seat in front of her platform were piles of 

 slates which she had been correcting, for she instructed all day a 

 succession of arithmetic classes coming to her from the different 

 grades. At the same time she was in charge, for all particular pur- 

 poses of their order and conduct, of about forty boys in their early 

 teens. Her tears were in consequence of a quarrel at recess be- 

 tween two of her boys. ' They had settled their quarrel by a fight; 

 not unlikely it was a wholesome fight, for they were not boys of the 

 mean sort, and were friends. It is an affair of long ago, but of a 

 time when, in a large city, a teacher shed her influence upon the 

 school playground, and took account of its moral standards, its friend- 

 ships and breaches of friendship. 



Although white men, if they take due precautions, may live and do 

 certain kinds of work in tropical Africa, it will never be possible, Mr. J. 

 Scott Keltie concludes from the results of past experience and study, to col- 

 onize that part of the world with people from the temperate zone. Even in 

 such favorable situations as Blantyre, a lofty region south of Lake Nyassa, 

 children can not be reared beyond a certain age, but must be sent home to 

 England ; otherwise they will degenerate physically and morally. A plan 

 has been proposed of bringing Europeans down into the tropical regions by 

 degrees, and acclimatizing them by successive generations to more and 

 more torrid conditions till they are finally settled in the heart of the con- 

 tinent. But the experiment would be a very long one, if tried ; and the 

 ultimate result would probably be a race deprived of all those characteris- 

 tics which have made Europe what it is. 



