46 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
JAN 18 
Various, 
A JERSEYMAN’S JOTTINGS. 
ABOUT SCHOOL MONEY. 
I HAVE been looking over my tax bill 
and comparing it with previous ones. 
I like ]to]„know where my money goes. 
On general principles I dislike.to pay a 
dollar out] blindly ^without knowing what 
I am to get in . return for it. I recognize 
tbe fact that theYnoney we pay out for tax¬ 
es is "a perfectly legitimate expense. I 
would like, however, to have the money 
that I contribute to the public purse in¬ 
vested as carefully as I would try to invest 
it if/"-it | were left in 'my Jown hands. We 
should obtain the best possible service from 
public servants ]and.the greatest possible 
good to the community from the invest¬ 
ment of the money we spend as taxes. 
Now I find that the possession of my lit¬ 
tle property entails upon me a yearly con¬ 
tribution of about $60 to the public funds. 
This includes a number of items, only one 
of which I want to consider now. I pay 
$3.65 to _help the 'poor in my township. 
Nine-tenths of these .-poor people are for¬ 
eigners and the majority of them can trace 
their misfortunes back to liquor-drinking, 
still I do not'object to caring for them. 
We are all liable to.misfortune, and chari¬ 
ty is, not a bad thing to cultivate. The 
item I wish to talk about is the school tax. 
I am called upon to pay this year $16.06 for 
schools, both State and home ; $9.49 of this 
being the State tax. To be exact, a little 
more than 26 per'cent, of my whole tax bill 
is levied„in support of schools. I have no 
children to send.to'school now. In the lit¬ 
tle farming hamlet where I live there are 
17 families. Together, we pay in the way 
of school taxes about $300 each year. The 
school house is somewhat more than a mile 
away. We send at present six pupils to 
school. .The rest .of the children of school 
age either go to the neighboring town 
where more.advanced schools are found, or 
are taught at home by their parents who 
do not like the influences found at a dis¬ 
trict, school. Quite a good many of the 
city people who live among us club to¬ 
gether and maintain private schools. 
I seldom hear people ..object to paying a 
school tax. There seems to be a very gen¬ 
eral opinion that our public school system 
is one of the most necessary things for us 
to maintain. ,_Hosea Biglow spoke up for 
the majority of us, when he said : 
“ We ain’t so fearful poor, John, 
With twenty million people, 
An’ close by every door, John, 
A school-house an’ a steeple.” 
Still it occurs to me, as.I keep on paying 
out $16 or more every year for a matter 
that is of no direct benefit to me, that I 
would like to know whether we get the 
best we can from our investment or whether 
this money is being wasted simply because 
we do not look after it and follow it up. 
If I, with my little property, am called up¬ 
on to pay $16 a year for public education, 
the aggregate sum paid in for this purpose 
must be immense ? Do we get the best 
teachers to be obtained ? Are they followed 
up and properly directed? Do we pay 
them too much or should we pay them 
more ? Are our children taught the things 
that will prove most useful to them ? 
These are questions that are of vital im¬ 
portance if we propose to know what re¬ 
turns our school money is to give. 
I feel that I am not capable of criticising 
our present method of conducting schools. 
I could not go into the school-house and do 
as well as our present school teacher. At 
the same time I have a very distinct idea 
as to what I think ought to be taught in the 
school and what the teacher ought to do, 
though I have not the least idea that I 
could work out my ideas if I were made 
master. A great many farmers feel just as 
I do about it. They know the value of an 
education—what they should have learned 
at school—but they can’t get up and ex¬ 
plain just what ought to be taught or go 
into details about the building of an educa¬ 
tion. What they want to describe and call 
attention to as the one thing desirable in 
our country schools is the cultivation of 
the reading habit, the thinking habit, the 
observing habit. Give me the boy or girl 
that has been stai’ted in the habit of read¬ 
ing, thinking or observing, and I will guar¬ 
antee a sound, well-seasoned, solid mind. 
It requires only time to develop it. It 
seem 3 to me that many of our teachers de¬ 
pend too much on their text books, and too 
little on the personal example and en¬ 
couraging influence that will teach chil¬ 
dren to'investigate for themselves. 
If a man spends six or eight years at a 
district school and 50 or 60 years more 
without any schooling, it stands to reason 
that the'years spent in the school house 
are merely preparatory. * Let him get the 
right sort of a start there and he will 
spend his whole life acquiring knowledge 
and digesting what comes into his mind. 
If taught that a text book is absolutely 
necessai’y to those who would acquire •wis¬ 
dom, the chances are that he will believe it 
and stop trying to learn when school days 
are over. If taught that text books are 
merely conveniences, that wisdom—educa¬ 
tion-lies all about us, waiting only for 
thinkers and investigators with patience 
enough to fathom its mysteries, his life 
will be filled with pleasure and satisfaction 
as one after another the secrets of Nature 
are given up. I know many farmers who 
could not begin to pass the examinations 
our school superintendents lay down, yet 
they are ■wise, good men, safe counsellors 
and full of practical information. The 
short term of schooling'they had interested 
them in reading and thinking and investi¬ 
gating. To my mind that is the secret of 
successful education. 
The parents and friends of scholars make 
a gnat mistake when they fail to follow the 
teacher up and see what he is doing. At 
least once a week they ought to question 
the child and see what he is learning. Fol¬ 
low this up fi.r awhile, and it will not take 
long to find out what the teacher is worth. 
We never can get the full returns for our 
money while we let the teacher do all the 
teaching and never look over his work. I 
should consider it a duty I owed to my 
children to take pains to find out what they 
ai - e studying, and how they are studying it. 
A matter that has just come under my 
observation led me to think strongly of 
this matter. I recently had a farm hand 
working for me—a strong, active man of 
about 30. He was born and reared among 
the mountains in the northwestern part of 
New Jersey. I assumed, of course, that he 
could l-ead and write. One Sunday I asked 
hinx if he did not want to take some of my 
books to read. To my surprise he said 
he had never learned to read, his reason 
being that he bad never gone to school but 
one term, and then the teacher took no in¬ 
terest in him. At the same time we had a 
Swedish woman woi’king in the house. 
She came to my wife and said she wanted 
to learn English. My wife got a “First 
Reader” and a spelling book, and spent a 
few minutes each day teaching the Swed¬ 
ish woman her letters. She can now write 
a short letter in English, and can read 
almost as well as children of 10. 
A curious feeling comes over me when I 
see the manner in which these two persons 
spend their spare time. Here we have a 
native-born American citizen unable to 
read his own language. With the school 
facilities we have in this country, the books 
and papers, the chances for learning, and 
the apparent advantages of an education, 
this man prefers to smoke his pipe and talk 
nonsense rather than try to learn to read. 
On the other hand, we have a foreigner 
with no in-born loyalty for this country 
working like a slave to master our lan¬ 
guage. With what patience she tries to 
bold the pen in her great, thick fingers, or 
spells out the words in her book. Now, 
take these two people as extreme types of 
the product of our schools. One class of 
pupils may leave the school interested, in¬ 
spired, ready for a continuance of reading 
and thinking. Another class may go from 
school dissatisfied, untaught, uninspired, 
uninterested. One class will make bright, 
fair-minded, intelligent people; while the 
other will develop into sour, bigoted, hard- 
headed folks—just the sort to prevent organ¬ 
ization among farmers. Foreigners who 
work after hours to learn our language are 
better material for citizenship than Ameri¬ 
cans who will not learn to read. I do not be¬ 
grudge the money I pay for public educa¬ 
tion, but I would like it better if we had in 
our district school less book and more per¬ 
sonal inspiration, less of the idea that edu¬ 
cation will end when our children leave 
school, and more of the idea that it will 
only begin at that time. JERSEYMAN. 
MAGAZINE REVIEWS. 
T HE CENTURY gives an intensely in¬ 
teresting though extremely sad part 
of the Lincoln History. It begins with the 
14th of April 1865, when throughout the 
North there was such general and profound 
rejoicing over the long-hoped for victories 
of the Northern armies, and the close of the 
bloody civil war. But the Nation’s joy 
was turned to grief, and its rejoicing to 
mourning by the assassin’s hand. An ac¬ 
count is given of the last Cabinet meeting; 
of the happy mood of the Pi’essdent; of his 
hopes and plans for the future; of the as¬ 
sassination and the murderous assault up¬ 
on Secretary Seward. The fate of the as¬ 
sassins and the funeral pageant from 
Washington to Springfield, are all describ¬ 
ed. Supplementary to this sad history is 
the “ Pursuit and Death of John Wilkes 
Booth.” Two nari-atives are given, one by 
Major Ruggles of the Confederate army, 
who aided Booth and Herold in 
their flight; the other by Captain 
Doherty who commanded the detachment 
that captured the fugitives. A short sketch 
is given of Prof. James Bryce, M. P., an 
eminent English jurist and scholar, whose 
portrait appears as a frontispiece. The 
article in Present-Day Papers is by Sam¬ 
uel W. Dike, and is in relation to “ Prob¬ 
lems of the Family.” There is an install¬ 
ment of Frank Stockton’s stoi’y, “The 
Merry Chanter,” which is quite pleasant 
reading. Miss Amelia B. Edwards, the 
Secretary of the Egypt Exploration Fund, 
who is now lecturing in this country, con- 
triPutes “Bubastis,” a historical study of 
gi’eat interest to the student of ancient his¬ 
tory. This was a city which would now be 
more than 6,000 years old—as old as the 
earth itself used to be considered. Numer¬ 
ous illustrations from photographs, with 
a map of Egypt, serve to make this of great 
historical value. The Autobiography of 
Joseph Jefferson is continued and is inter¬ 
esting reading, as showing the struggles 
and triumphs of a man who has risen from 
a humble beginning to eminence in his pro¬ 
fession. An article on “ Daumier, Carica¬ 
turist” may entertain some readers. The 
Centui’y Co., New York. 
L IPPINCOTT’S complete novel for this 
month, “ Millicent and Rosalind,” 
by Julian Hawthorne, is a pure love-story, 
unique in that none of the characters are 
wicked, and scai’cely even weak. And if 
we cannot quite acquiesce in the allotment 
of the “sensible ” lover to the less noble of 
the two heroines, it is worth much to have 
had such a glimpse of a pure, loving 
woman’s heart, and of the uplifting power 
which one may exert over another. The 
same author gives the first installment of 
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Elixir of Life,” 
in which he describes the author’s manner 
of work, and gives the chief parts of one of 
his manuscripts with paraphx’ases and an¬ 
notations of his own. Wm. Westall gives 
a very insti’uctive chapter on “Newspaper 
Fiction,” in which he describes the origin 
of the method of supplying country papers 
by means of the syndicate system with a 
class of reading which they could not other¬ 
wise afford. Edward Fuller discusses the 
“ Theatrical Renaissance of Shakespeare ” 
as well as other matters connected with the 
reproduction of the Shakespearian drama. 
Richard Henry Stoddard contributes a very 
pleasant sketch of Nathaniel Pai-ker Willis. 
Robert J. Burdette, Bill Nye and J. Annoy 
Knox contribute a serio-comic-tragic take¬ 
off entitled “ Kinks in the Skein,” each 
humorist perpetrating a separate and dis¬ 
tinct kink. J. B. Lippencott Co., Phila¬ 
delphia. 
T HE NEW YORK LEDGER in addi¬ 
tion to its varied contents of high- 
class serial and short stories, presents, in 
its issue of January 11, the first souve¬ 
nir supplement of the year, John Greenleaf 
Whittier’s last poem, “The Captain’s 
Well.” It is illusti’ated, is printed on fine 
paper, and forms an artistic and exceed¬ 
ingly interesting addition to the alx-eady 
well-filled pages. A serial story by Eliza¬ 
beth Stuart Phelps, which was begun in the 
issue of January 4, is a tale of American 
college life, and deals with the barbarities 
of the “fun,” called hazing, sometimes en¬ 
gaged in by young gentlemen (?). The 
Ledger in its new form is greatly improved. 
Robert Bonner’s Sons, New York. 
BOOK REVIEW. 
T HE LAW of Husband and Wife is 
the title of a small volume which 
has been compiled for popular use by Lelia 
Josephine Robinson, LL.B., member of 
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This is a useful book, because it will give a 
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with the most intixnate partnei’ship ex¬ 
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