98 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ever may appear that is pernicious. There is no other time in all the 

 day when competent guidance can do so much to make boys manly 

 and girls womanly as when they are at their games. It is not enough 

 to leave the play-ground to the janitor or to some inferior authority ; 

 it is the place where the principal teacher and nearly all the others 

 are most needed — ^not to direct the games, or to meddle in any way 

 with the sports, but to be ready with a cheery voice and an easy 

 grace to suggest to any one about to engage in anything improper 

 that he has forgotten himself. Ruffianism will soon disappear, timid 

 children will learn to assert themselves, and an esprit de corps of the 

 play-ground can soon be formed which will have a wonderful influ- 

 ence on the characters as well as the actions of the pupils. Nor is the 

 benefit to the pupils all that is derived from this plan ; the teacher 

 needs such a recess quite as much as, and in many cases more than, her 

 pupils. Fifteen minutes of each ninety in the open air, away from 

 the sights and thoughts of the lessons, will remove the nervous, tired, 

 irritable, and almost despondent feeling experienced by many teachers, 

 and give them renewed strength and cheerfulness and mental elas- 

 ticity for the remainder of the session. By being upon the play- 

 ground among her pupils, many a teacher learns their character, their 

 ambitions, the bent of their minds, as she can not learn them in the 

 peculiar position in the school-room ; and yet there are many children 

 who, unless understood in these particulars, can not be successfully 

 taught. To the teacher who sees her pupils only in their relation of 

 pupils, the school- work is very likely to become a grind, a machine at 

 which she is to perform a regular and a constant part, and the chil- 

 dren are little else than so much raw material which is to pass through 

 the mill over which she presides. She sees no individuality in them, 

 and of course her work is arranged for the aggregate, and individuals 

 receive no consideration as such. To overcome this error there is 

 nothing better than for her to see them daily at their sports, for there 

 their distinctive characteristics are manifested as in no other place. 

 If the schools are to build character, certainly an out-door recess is an 

 absolute essential for both teacher and pupils. 



THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. 



Bt W. MATTIEU WILLIAMS. 



XVI. 



A CORRESPONDENT of Manchester asks me which is the most 

 nutritious, a slice of English beef in its own gravy, or the 

 browned morsel as served in an Italian restaurant with the burnt- 

 sugar addition to the gravy ? 



