I'

Rose-Time Memories

ELEANOR M. JOLLIE

T must be the roses, peeping in and nodding to me as I sit near the open window at the close of this perfect June day, that bring back thoughts of long ago.

Ah! sweetest of all flowers, beautiful though you are, I could spare you better than the memories that come to me to-night; memories of three Roses that grew long, long ago, in a school garden.

Billy was a problem waiting to be solved. I wish I could paint you a picture of him as he looked on that October day. Billy had been christened William, but it would have taken a brave person to have called him by his right name. He didn't like the name of William and that settled it, as far as he was concerned.

Billy did not walk; he shambled. When he talked he stuttered. Such articles as comb and brush, and soap and water, were looked upon with contempt. In addition to these things Billy had a temper. And such a temper! In fact a very cyclone of a temper. In short, though I dislike to say it, Billy was the kind of a boy whom no one loves but his mother.

Yes, Billy was a problem waiting to be solved. Who was to do it? The answer was at hand. Hark! wasn't that a knock at the door? I opened it and met the first of my Roses. My little French Rose, who had come to us from far across the ocean.

Dainty Rose Marie, who won all our hearts the moment she entered the room and smiled shyly at us. "I would come to school, Mees Teacher," she said.

Billy had cut his thumb. He was always having accidents. Rose Marie's bright eyes fastened themselves upon the wounded hand. With a little shrug she arose, and, taking out a tiny perfumed handkerchief she went to his seat.. "Poor Billee," she said softly, and working quickly the little surgeon soon had the thumb wrapped up.

Oh! the look of rapture on Billy's face. Billy was conquered. He had met his Waterloo.

Life put on a new aspect. Soap and water showed themselves in a new light. Rose Marie liked to see people's shoes blacked and tied, and she told Billy so flatly enough. Rose Marie liked perfume. Billy saturated himself with it. When Billy appeared with a new red neck-tie we thought the millennium had come.

Billy had never been known to make a good recitation in school. Not that he was dull, far from it. He was downright lazy.

In his eyes the foot of the class was a most desirable place. When there, why not stay? It was no trouble to keep the position. It is worry that kills the body anyhow. So reasoned this small philosopher.

But now here was Rose Marie, who came only to his elbow,

What a queer

I laugh as I think of my second Rose. little thing she was! Such a mixture of sweetness and thorns. Born in the south in the land of sunshine and flowers, our New England hills, beautiful as they are, did not appeal to her.

She was literally dragged into the school-room by her energetic mammy. What a doleful figure this little weeping Rose appeared in its vermilion dress. Another pull at the pig-tails. "Come along hon'. Yo' mus come, deed yo' mus'." Then in a coaxing voice, "Don' yo' want to learn so yo' ken read to yo' ole mammy, whut neber had no chance to learn?" "Of course she wants to come," I said. "What's your name, dear?" "Ma name's Rose, and I But wants to go home wid my dear ole mammy." mammy" had fled and so Rose's school life began. And how she cheered us up, this little child of the sun, for gloomy moments were few with Rose. She loved music and I would often listen to catch the sound of her rich voice, as she joined in the singing.

66

Her clumsy little fingers worked 'less quickly than her active mind, "Oh, Rose," I said one day as I looked over her shoulder at something she was writing, "look at all of those blots."

"Deed Missy Teacher, honey, does yo' know I sometimes tink de good Lawd mus' made me black so's de ink wouldn't sho' on ma hands." I can hear her now as she used to say when things were going wrong at school, "Neber min', Missy Teacher, honey, eben ef de hoe-cake am burned dars allus merlasses to eat wid it."

Little flower, many a time through life when the road has seemed long and the lane has had no turning, I have been cheered again by your quaint little motto, so full of hope and love: "Neber min', Missy Teacher, honey, eben ef de hoe-cake am burned dars allus merlasses to eat wid it." My eyes fill with tears as I think of her whom I choose to call my white Rose. Rose, did I say? Rather only a bud, for she was called from all her pain to blossom in Heaven.

Dear little Rose, the third of these Roses who grew and were happy in that same school garden.

Such a pale little face used to look at me from the window across the way as I walked to school. But always a smile and kiss from her tiny hand.

Her mother invited me in one morning, and then I learned all about it-how a father in a fit of drunken rage had struck his baby daughter and she had never been able to walk.

She had to be carried to the window each morning, and would sit there getting her enjoyment from watching others play. Rose was only one of many lonely hearts in this great world of ours, who get enjoyment from watching the play of others. Her little life was saddened ere it had scarce commenced.

"I get so tired," she said to me. "If I could only read." "Children, I am going to tell you a story this morning," I said to my pupils as they gathered in school. And I told them the story that Celia Thaxter has told to us so beautifully in the "Wounded Curlew."

"I know a sadder story still," I said, looking into the brimming eyes, and I told them of sweet, patient, little Rose. "I thought perhaps you might like to have her come over with us, and we will all try to put a little sunshine into her life."

She came, carried, oh, so carefully, by my two largest boys. And was she happy! You would have thought so to have seen the look of ecstasy upon her little flushed face. Each day was such a happy one to her. Frail though she was, she reigned queen. What a help she was to us all! When the boys were rough or loud at their play, or walked too heavily, a "Remember Rose" was sufficient.

But life was too great a burden for our Rose, and the next year Jesus took her home.

The little grave was covered with the flowers she loved best until the snows of winter fell, and in the spring a white rose bush was planted where she slept.

Nothing but this rose bush marks the grave of little Rose. Indeed I think nothing could be sweeter; a rose which year by year breathes out its perfume to make a world more beautiful even as her memory breathes perfume into our lives. Here then are the pictures of my three Roses who grew so long ago in that little school garden.

Concrete Spelling

SUE GREGORY

AGREE with the editorial in PRIMARY EDUCATION, that we should spell and spell and spell. We all agree that poor spelling is a disgrace.

The question is, how shall we get correct forms of words? I say correct forms of words advisedly, instead of saying spelling.

Do we remember when we stood up in rows and spelled down? Don't we remember with a shudder the epistolary efforts of the very ones who got the most "head marks?"

Then came written spelling. That was some improvement but then came the crusade against the spelling book, that has been so much misconstrued as a crusade against spelling.

How can spelling and language be divorced? When do we use spelling? Always and inevitably in the written sentence. When do we write? When we have something to say. What words do we need? Words to express what we are thinking about. Do we need to go to a spelling book to get them? We need just as much to go to a talking book to get words to say. It is just as sensible to say, "You may talk this list of words to-day," as to say, "Put this list of words into sentences." Oh, the time that is wasted in putting dead words into dead sentences when they should come bubbling up from the fullness of something to say! With all the things there are to see, with all the stories there are to tell, with all the gems there are to learn, we can surely get words enough! To my mind there is nothing so deadening as lists of words with no connection and no excuse for being there except to be spelled. My experience has been that children who come into my school with lists of words carefully filed away in the memory are the children who have the least use for words, just as the child who writes the most beautiful copy book hand has the least use for penmanship. In either case, the energy has been put into the mechanics of the word. It is dead, formal work.

Experience in both ways of teaching written expression has convinced me that words should never be used except as vehicles of thought at any rate, not with younger children. If in telling a story, the teacher stops to write the names of the characters or a list of nouns, as the grains, in the story of Ceres, then the list has some meaning. The pupils can read between the lines. The words are alive.

If a stanza of a poem that relates to the season, or for any other reason appeals to the children, is written on the blackboard or read from a book, and then disintegrated and put into columns of words, the words are alive. The children enjoy putting them back into their original lines for language. A stanza of twenty words made to say something beautiful, or at least sensible, will be a light task compared to a set lesson of ten words with no life pulsating in them.

How instantaneously a child will master the words that mean much to him! I had been giving my people Helen Hunt Jackson's September poem beginning:

"The goldenrod is yellow

The corn is turning brown."

Some of the pupils, in writing it "to take home" missed corn; but only one out of the forty missed goldenrod. We had been making Miss Goldenrod's acquaintance and learning to love her; and when we saw her name we didn't see it to go straightway and forget it. If we had had the Mondamin story perhaps no one would have missed corn. But we are saving that for the corn carnival.

I have a scheme for studying a spelling lesson that I thought I had a monopoly of until I learned that other pedagogues had dared to think of the same thing, and that it had even been put into a book.

By the way, our spelling study is our recreation time.

When we are tired, we spell. When other work is done, we spell. When we are waiting for the bell to ring, we spell. This is the scheme: There are always lists of live words on the board. The lists stay there until they stare themselves into photographs. The boy who knows he ought to be doing something else looks about the room and there the words meet his eye. He does not have to look at them consequently he does. He learns them unintentionally when he knows he ought to be reading the lesson in the reader about the good little boy.

"Who wants to spell?"

Suddenly I say, Everybody wants to spell. the ones who miss as well as the ones who hit. One child stands with his back to the blackboard while the other children pronounce the words. If he misses a word, or is not sure he can spell it, he turns and looks, and then proceeds to spell. Sometimes he looks three or four times before he gets it right. All this time, the interest of the whole class is centered on that word. I always give a wide scope for these exercises. There are always a good many columns on the board - our talks have been so prodigal of live words. One child spells a whole column. If he misses some, I sometimes let him try again. He always wants to. I rarely let the next child spell the same column. I do not want to get a perfect spelling recitation from the sounds that are still lingering in the ear from the former recitation. If, after interest has been centered on several columns of words in the same way, the first column can be returned to and spelled correctly, I know that the image holds, and that the same pupil can spell those words to-morrow and next week. It is worse than folly to keep an exhausted child after school to spell missed words. He can look up his missed words in a minute and recite them while the image is fresh, but he will not know them to-morrow. Some cameras take instantaneous pictures others require time exposure.

On days when the children write independently, each writing his own story, I pose as a spelling book. Hands rise, and they ask for a word because they have need of it. I write and erase. I write and erase the same word as often. as they ask for it. Thus there is no excuse allowed for incorrect spelling. This kind of work can not be kept up without the pupils acquiring the habit of correct spelling, mastering their vocabulary and expressing themselves in written English without pain to themselves and others.

There are special seasons, that are particularly prolific of a spelling crop. The thanksgiving season is one - the things one has to be thankful for. But the spelling harvest comes at Christmas time, when we make our spelling Christmas tree. With very young pupils, it comes in letters to Santa Claus. Santa Claus will not understand what is ordered if it is not spelled correctly. He will not know how to mark the gifts if the name is not plainly written. He will not know where to send the things if the address is not plainly given in the proper place! I would as soon think of laying rows of dead mice before a live, energetic cat in order to make a mouser of her as to give rows of dead words to children hoping to make users of written language of them. My sympathy is with Pussy, who sniffs and walks away when I am summer-boarding at the farm. I don't thank anybody to pick my peaches and hand them around in a basket. I'll take my fruit alive. I believe in phonics and I use phonics; but that's another story.

The Song of the Crickets

Under the grass, in the bright summer weather,
We little crickets live gayly together;

When the morn shines, and the dew brightly glistens,
All the night long you may hear if you listen-
"Cheep! cheep! cheep!"

We are the crickets that sing you to sleep.

We have no houses to store up our treasure;
Gay little minstrels, we live but for pleasure;
What shall we do when the summer is over?
When the keen frost nips the meadows of clover?
"Cheep! cheep! cheep!"

Under the hearthstone for shelter we creep.
-Emily Huntington Miller

ONG ago, it is said, there lived in Eberfeld on the Rhine a brave young knight of noble birth and bearing.

To him, one day, came a boy, golden-haired, blue-eyed, with winning face and manner. The knight at once engaged him to become his page.

The little page grew daily more and more beloved by his master. He seemed to have some strange power of reading thoughts. Often the knight

found his wishes fulfilled before he had made them known.

One day master and page rode together on the bank of the Rhine. Coming toward

them they saw a band of men. Long had they sought to take the knight's life. Their faces were stern and cruel. They were well armed. Their number was large.

He With pale face the knight reined in his steed. could not hope to cut his way through the ranks of the enemy. To turn about was vain.

"Get behind me, my boy," he cried, as he drew his sword. "At least we will die as brave men should. If you see but the smallest chance, flee for your life."

But even while the knight spoke, the little page had turned. "Follow me," he cried. Straight down the bank he spurred his horse. There was a plunge, and horse and rider were in the rushing Rhine.

Swiftly the knight bounded forward. Perhaps, even yet, he could save the lad. "Return, my boy," he cried. "It is better to die fighting than to drown. Return! Return!"