EDITOR'S TABLE. 



695 



nized, under a three-hundred power of the 

 microscope, as octahedra. Knowing well 

 that such paper is used in all other Kinder- 

 gartens throughout the country, and know- 

 ing also the habit of children putting every- 

 thing available in their mouths, and espe- 

 cially of swallowing paper, I think the use 

 of a sort colored with an arsenical pigment 



deserving of the severest reprehension. You 

 may, if you please, show these tubes to any 

 of the able chemists of your city, or de- 

 scribe them as you may see fit. 

 Yours truly, 



George Hay, M. D., Analyst, 



Analytical Laboratory. 45 Diamond St., » 

 Alleghany City, Pa., January 16, 1880. S 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



""LET WELL ENOUGH ALONE:' 



A GOOD illustration of the tenden- 

 cies of officialism in education, 

 as well as in politics, is afforded by tlie 

 recent inaugural address of the new 

 President of the New York Board of 

 Education, Mr. Stephen 0. Walker. He 

 said he had formerly been opposed to the 

 policy of taxing the people to sustain 

 academic or high-class education. But 

 no sooner does he find himself in the 

 official saddle than all doubt is dissi- 

 pated, and he becomes the eager apolo- 

 gist of tilings as they are. And this is 

 the more remarkable, as he betrays a 

 lurking consciousness that there is a 

 good deal hereabout that will not bear 

 examination, and of which the less is 

 said the better. He admonishes some 

 [leople that they had better have a care, 

 and not push things much further, as 

 there may come a day of reckoning. 

 Therefore he urges quiet and acquies- 

 cence, and deplores all excitement and 

 agitation. A certain questionable poli- 

 cy being consummated beyond what its 

 promoters could have ever dreamed, he 

 thinks the rule should be now, "Let 

 well enough alone." Mr. Walker is re- 

 ported as saying: "We not only have 

 two colleges, whose expenses are met 

 by general taxation, with curricula em- 

 bracing every known subject of aca- 

 demic instruction, but, in the course of 

 .study of our grammar and primary 

 schools, the subjects presented num- 

 ber fifteen or twenty, and, of course, 

 embrace many which are neither essen- 

 tial nor elementary. Never having been 



able to give full assent to the arguments 

 which are claimed to prove the propri- 

 ety of making academic education a 

 public charge, I am ready, and even 

 eager, to accept the present situation 

 of affairs, and to say to the champions 

 of what is called higher education, and 

 to the less eloquent and active advo- 

 cates of elementary instruction, let well 

 enough alone. I foresee dangers in 

 agitation and disturbance. I see much 

 good in things as they are. If those 

 who smcerely believe that the Govern- 

 ment should be so parental and munifi- 

 cent as to place within the reach of every 

 aspiring lad the means of the most am- 

 ple technical or professional education 

 will only rest content with the large 

 measure of success they have already 

 gained, with the crowded seats of ad- 

 vanced learning endowed beyond all 

 dreams of private munificence, by legis- 

 lation, which subsidizes for their sup- 

 port the property, real, personal, and 

 mixed, of the whole Commonwealth, 

 they will not hazard the attainments 

 already made. In pushing for more 

 tliere is, in my judgment, a possibility 

 of arousing a power in the community, 

 of great weight by reason of its wealth, 

 its clear judgment, its conservative and 

 logical methods, which shall bring all 

 the force of argument and capital against 

 the existence, at public expense, of aca- 

 demic education in any form." 



Having got two colleges, embracing 

 every known subject of academic in- 

 struction, and grammar-schools devoted 

 to fifteen or twenty subjects which are 



