study as presented by even so plain and simple and straightfor- 

 ward a speaker as Professor Bailey. 



Atmosphere is intangible at best, and not an easy mark for the 

 inexperienced. One may be sure the arrow will hit somewhere, 

 even if sent at random, and many of our public-school teachers 

 have evidently taken refuge in this thought, and the result is 

 random and haphazard. 



The result would be the same and perhaps the idea might 

 seem more definite, if, with the idea of attitude as the ultimate 

 goal, we should begin by aiming at some nearer mark. To in- 

 spire the boys and girls with a vital rational interest in their im- 



widen with the circles of growing experience and knowledge 

 founded on experience, and so lead to a wider environment — 

 this is concrete and feasible. 



In the country, there is such abundance of material that the 

 question is one of choice ; in the more cramped conditions of the 

 larger cities, the question of choice is largely eliminated, and 



within the reach of the children and to widen their pathetically 

 limited environment by constantly reaching out, always from 

 something they have seen or experienced, to the things beyond, 

 and to inspire them with a desire to learn what lies outside the 

 few blocks which immediately surround them. Settlement- 

 workers tell us that most children in the crowded tenement dis- 

 tricts seldom go beyond the half-dozen blocks which supply the 

 necessities of life. A little girl of nine years was taken to the 

 country for the first time. She was amazed beyond measure ; 

 she had attended the public-schools, but she had never been 

 told that the earth was not paved all over, and it had never oc- 

 curred to her that it could be any other way. Let us teach' the 

 children to love the parks, not simply as pleasant places in which 

 to play but as places where one can know the trees as individuals 

 that in time may become one's comrades and friends. To know 

 the trees that are in our parks, to know them by their outlines 

 and buds and twigs and leaves and flowers and fruits, and to 

 watch the changes in them from week to week and season to 



