344 



THE GUIDE TO NATURE 



A Good Example of Bad Teaching. 



Miss Sara Arnold, while supervising 

 the primary schools of Boston, came 

 one morning into a room where one of 

 the teachers under her charge was hear- 

 in a classr in geography recite a lesson 

 on Newfoundland. "John," said the 

 teacher, "what is fishing?" Now John 

 had been sitting listlessly before he 

 heard this question. The teacher had 

 thus far failed to win him. But at this 

 he wakened. This was the first sen- 

 sible question he had heard since he 

 got into that school. With light in his 



eye he started, "You get a hook " 



"Next," said the teacher; "Willie, what 

 is fishing?" Now Willie had also wak- 

 ened. He thought John had not started 

 early enough in the process to suit the 

 teacher. "You git a worm — " "Next," 

 said the teacher, and the amazed Wil- 

 lie sat down dumbfounded beside the 

 equally non-plussed John. The next 

 was Mary to whom a hook was a fear- 

 some thing and a worm an impossibil- 

 ity. "Fishing," said Mary, "is the chief 

 industry of the Province." "Right," 

 said the teacher. 



The moral of this storv lies in. its 



pathos. If this teacher had known the 

 things that made for her peace, she 

 could have gripped those boys to her 

 with hooks of steel. She would have 

 stood John up to talk on what he really 

 knew. Lapses in grammer and in 

 pronunciation might have gone un- 

 checked for the time, and he would 

 have proudly learned that he knew 

 things the others did not. And W^illie 

 would have joined in the game. New- 

 foundland could wait until tomorrow, 

 for two souls were finding themselves, 

 and a teacher was entering into two 

 lives. But the door into paradise, 

 swung open for a while, closed and the 

 teacher "never could know" what she 

 missed. She had been over-standard- 

 ized. — S. C. Schmucker in "Nature- 

 Study Review." 



Life Is Ever Young. 



My friend, Luther Burbank, will 

 never grow old. He deals too much 

 with plants that are perpetually renew- 

 ing their youth to ever become fossil- 

 ized. At the age of sixty-eight he has 

 taken to himself a bride who will not 



TlloAlAs A. EDISON, l.UTllEK ilL'RUANK AM) HENRY FORD. 



