SEEING BY AID OF THE LENS 



25 



and cunning as an artificer of metals. 

 Dalton was not a workman for wages 

 ly. He had that true love of his 



whose knowledge and craft partook al- 

 most of the dignity of a profession." 



on 



craft and a pride in his workmanship 

 which characterized the true craftsman 



CHARLES X. DALTON. 



and which is vital for best results. He 

 would never do mediocre work and was 

 his own severest critic of his product. 

 He made many of his tools and appli- 

 ances and accomplished much by 

 primitive but cunning methods which 

 are a lost art to the mechanician of to- 

 day, or made possible only by the use 

 of elaborate tools. 



"The wane came in popular interest 

 in the microscope as a recreation for 

 the dilettante and the cheap compact 

 "continental" instrument, of high op- 

 tical efficiency but reduced to the sim- 

 plest terms as to finish and accessories, 

 in short a laboratory tool designed 

 solely for the special work at hand has 

 become common in our schools and 

 colleges. Such instruments of good 

 quality are now turned out by the 

 thousands by the great manufacturers, 

 using labor-saving machinery and 

 modern systems of divided labor, and 

 a good microscope is cheaper to-day 

 than formerly. The elaborate instru- 

 ments of Tolles and other great op- 

 ticians of the past generation, instru- 

 ments in which cost was subordinated 

 to every detail which added to conveni- 

 ence and efficiency, masterpieces of in- 

 genious and perfect workmanship, are 

 no longer made, and with them is dis- 

 appearing the old-time workman 



Our Educational Vaudeville. 

 If Saint Augustine, who was pun- 

 ished when he was a little lad because 

 he loved to play (and playing, he ob- 

 serves, is the business of childhood), 

 could see the glorification of play in 

 twentieth - century schoolrooms, he 

 might enjoy the spectacle, and question 

 the results. Nothing is too profound, 

 nothing too subtle, to be evolved from 

 a game or a toy. We are gravely told 

 that "the doll with its immense educa- 

 tional power should be carefully intro- 

 duced into the schools," and that a 

 ball, tossed to the accompaniment of 

 a song insultingly banal, will enable 

 a child "to hold fast one high purpose 

 amid all the vicissitudes of time and 

 place." And when boys and girls out- 

 grow these simple sports, other and 

 more glorious pastimes await them ; 

 pastimes which will teach them all they 

 need to know, without effort and with- 

 out exaction. Judge Lindsey gives a 

 glowing description of the schoolroom 

 of the future, where moving pictures 

 will take the place of books and black- 

 boards, where no free child will be 

 "chained to a desk" (painful phrase!), 

 and where "progressive educators" will 

 make merry with their pupils all the 

 happy day. — Agnes Repplier, in the 

 January Atlantic. 



If there is a ruling and creative 

 power to which the existence of our 

 cosmos is due, and if we are its one 

 and unique highest outcome, able to 

 understand and to make use of the 

 forces and products of nature in a way 

 that no other animal has been able to 

 do; and if, further, there is any rea- 

 sonable probability of a continuous life 

 for us to still further develop that 

 higher spiritual nature which we pos- 

 sess, then we have a perfect right, on 

 logical and scientific grounds, to see 

 in all the infinitely varied products of 

 the animal and vegetable kingdoms, 

 which we alone can and do make use 

 of, a preparation for ourselves, to as- 

 sist in our mental development, and to 

 fit us for a progressively higher state 

 of existence as spiritual beings. — Al- 

 fred Russell Wallace in "The World 

 of Life." 



