AN AMERICAN MANUAL TRAINING-SCHOOL. 623 



unskilled gardener treats his plants. He puts them by a window, and 

 pours over them a flood of light and life-giving rays. Instinctively 

 they turn out toward the source of their strength. They put forth 

 their leaves and budding promises, and, as we look at them from the 

 outside, we mark their flourishing aspect and rejoice. But, if we 

 look at the other side, we shall find them neglected, deficient, and de- 

 formed. What they want is more light light on the other side. 

 Were the sun always in the east, our trees would all grow like those 

 on the edge of the forest, one-sided. 



So in education, we must open new windows, or rather we must 

 level with the ground all artificial barriers and let every luminous 

 characteristic of modern life shine in upon our school-rooms. We 

 must pay less heed to what the world was two or three hundred years 

 ago, and regard with greater respect what the world is to-day. 



The Arts of Expression. Dr. Youmans recently said (" Popular 

 Science Monthly," May, 1882) : "The human mind is no longer to be 

 cultivated merely by the forms or arts of expression. The husks and 

 shells of expression have had sufficient attention ; we have now to 

 deal with the living kernel of truth. . . . Under the old ideal of cult- 

 ure, a man may still be grossly ignorant of the things most interest- 

 ing and now most important to know. . . . Modern knowledge is the 

 highest and most perfected form of knowledge, and it is no longer 

 possible to maintain that it is not also the best knowledge for that 

 cultivation of mind and character which is the proper (i. e., the high- 

 est) object of education." 



I desire, for a moment, to direct your attention to the arts of ex- 

 pression. Next in rank to the ability to think deeply and clearly is 

 the power of giving clear and full expression to our thoughts. This 

 last can be done in various ways. As this brings me squarely upon a 

 subject I wish to impress strongly upon you, I will illustrate it by a 

 somewhat elaborate example : 



A gentleman recently called upon me for my opinion concerning 

 a certain automatic brake for freight-cars. The device was new to 

 me, but it lay pretty clearly defined in the mind of my visitor. It 

 was not original with him, but for the purposes of my illustration it 

 might have been. Before I could pass judgment, the device must lie 

 as clearly in my mind as, perhaps more clearly than, it did in his ; so 

 he set out to express his thought. He was what we call well educated, 

 being a graduate of the oldest university in the land, and was well 

 versed in the conventionalities of spoken and written languages. Ac- 

 cordingly, he proceeded to utter a succession of sounds. His lips 

 opened and shut with great rapidity, and without intermission a series 

 of sounds fell upon my ears. The sounds I heard were quite familiar 

 to me, as I had been listening to them in one order and another for 

 over forty years, and, as they had always been associated in my mind 

 with certain concrete things and the relations of such things to each 



