AESTHETIC EDUCATION. 359 



If the grounds about the school house are in a wretched condition, 

 an eyesore to the passer-by, the tendency will be to drag them down- 

 ward to the level of their surroundings, just exactly as it is in our 

 attempts with improvement in fruit. We must keep struggling to 

 get up to something better. We must have an ideal of something 

 better we want. That thousand dollar prize gives us an idea of what 

 we want in the apple line, and we must strive to have that ; that must 

 be the result of our effort. So in our schools we must have a high 

 ideal. We must see the beauty, we must see it in our surroundings, 

 we must see it in the character of the teacher, and then it will be 

 seen in the character and behavior of the pupils of the school. That 

 is just all it is, just the thought I want to throw out. Education is 

 a growth and not an accumulation of facts, growing stronger every 

 way, and by and by we shall come just as near to the limit as possible. 

 That painter, you know, who painted the boy, the most beautiful ob- 

 ject he had ever seen, he painted his picture because he came nearer 

 his idea of angelic perfection than anything he ever saw, thirty years 

 afterward picked up out of the gutter a wretched drunkard and took 

 him to his room to paint his portrait as a companion picture of the 

 other, because he was in the other extreme ; and when he got through 

 he asked the name of the man, and, behold, it was the same name 

 as that of the little four year old whom he had found thirty years 

 before in that pleasant little country home. Now there is a limit 

 to the height we can reach. Some say there is absolutely no limit. 

 We are human, we cannot go up to God in this world. On the other 

 hand, there is a limit to the depth to which we may sink. We may 

 never, though we do our worst, we never can get quite down to 

 perdition in this world. But those two points are a vast distance 

 apart, and it should be our part in our schools to bring every one who 

 enters our schools as nearly as possible to the highest point obtain- 

 able. (Applause.) 



When Blight Strikes. — "In watching our orchard I have no- 

 ticed that our Tran.and other varieties of crab are always struck by 

 blight during those heavy electric storms of thunder and lightning. 

 I have noticed this to be true in other seasons, when we have had 

 heavy electric storms." — C. L Blair, St. Charles. 



