an unusual educational opportunity for the teacher seeking to keep abreast 

 of the times. The railroad fare will be just half of the regular rate. Hotel 

 rates will be no larger than usual. Of all years for a generation to come, 

 1906 is the year to arrange for a visit to San Francisco. 



No community can afford to lose the inspiration that will come from 

 having representatives attend this great meeting, an inspiration that will 

 open new lines of thought, that will throw light on dark places, that will 

 send every teacher back to her work filled with enthusiasm and zeal. No 

 community can afford to be unrepresented at the great California meeting 

 to be held in San Francisco. The visiting thousands will come to the 

 Pacific Coast metropolis not only in the cause of education but to see 

 California. They have heard of our schools, our climate, our scenic at- 

 tractions, our industries. They will visit every part of the State and every 

 part of the State should have a delegation in San Francisco not only to co- 

 operate in the work of the session but to see to it that the visiting school 

 men and women know California as California is to-day. 



While the visiting teachers will be interested in the Yosemite Valley, 

 in the trips up Mt. Lowe and Mt. Tamalpais, in the Big Trees, in scenic Cali- 

 fornia generally, they should above all things be brought in touch with the 

 fields, orchards, vineyards, forests and mines of industrial California. In 

 too many cases the California of the geography and of the encyclopaedia 

 Is the California of twenty years ago. It would be a service both to the 

 schools and to the State if the visitors were shown the real wonders of irri- 

 gation, of the combined harvester, of raisin vineyards, of peat lands, of 

 redwood lumbering, of prune orchards, of quartz mining, of the many every 

 day Industrial wonders of the Golden State. 



Private Schools in California. 



W. T. REID. 



THE first question that a home-seeker asks before deciding where to 

 settle is, "Have you churches?" and, more than all, "Have you good 

 schools?" This latter question is certain to be emphasized by comers 

 from the East, because they assume that in a country so compara- 

 tively new as California schools as good as those in the East must 

 not be expected. The best that can be hoped for is schools that aYe 

 passably good. And dwell as we may upon our superb climate and our 

 productive soil, the answer always comes, and rightly, "A fine climate and 

 a productive soil are all well enough, but we know all about those advan- 

 tages. But the education of our children, including the moral influences 

 that are to be thrown around them, are vastly more important." And their 

 position is sound. To convince them of the excellence of our schools, that 

 in districts as thickly settled as in the older Eastern communities our schools 

 compare most favorably with Eastern schools, is not so easy. No argu- 

 ment upon the fertility of our soil can compare with an ample and a well- 

 equipped store filled with our vegetables, our fruits, our lemons, our oranges, 

 and our wines, but it is not so easy to exhibit the product of our schools. 



And yet it is a fact that the fruit of our schools may be seen to-day, 

 could have been seen any day for the last twenty years, at Harvard, Yale, 

 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and others of the best Eastern 

 colleges and schools of science. It happens to be true that one of our 

 private schools has not for twenty years been without representation at 

 Harvard, and it happens, too, that in a late graduating class three out of the 

 four graduates of this school went out with honors, two with next to the 

 highest honor and one with subject honors. There was but one graduate in 

 a class of some four hundred or more who had highest honor. And while 

 the public schools are justly the pride of every community, city or State, the 

 pride indeed of our country at large, it is yet true in the East, more true 



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