are notable: Judge John E. Gunckel's "Boyville❞ (Toledo Newsboys' Association) is a graphic account from first-hand experience of the characteristics of newsboys in his city; Mr. William George's "The Junior Republic" is an invaluable tribute to boys rightly dealt with; Mr. Joseph Lee in "Education in Playgrounds" (Educational Review, New York, December, 1901) describes with vivid illustration three phases of boyhood. These articles are all worth consulting. They should lead to a first-hand study by every teacher of the tastes and characteristics of her class.

THE MORAL CURRENT

We cannot give ethical teaching unless we know to whom we are speaking. The class and its point of view must be vivid before us. If we want to strengthen their good will, and thus drive out the evil, we must know why children are tempted to wrong-doing, and how they can be supplied with temptations to right-doing. Why are children troublesome, or, as we crudely and falsely term it, "bad"? Usually, from one of two reasons. They lack vitality, or they overflow with uncontrolled vitality. Fretfulness, laziness, cowardice, lying, and even aggressive faults like perversity and obstinacy, are often due to lack of vitality—a pathetic, misjudged protest against being forced into the wrong work. Bad temper, cruelty, roughness, stealing, and all the myriad acts we classify as "mischievous," may result from the great gift of superabundant vitality - an energy which, like electricity, is capable of service, but disastrous when uncontrolled.

The course of a misguided child is not unlike the course of a misguided bicycle. The bicycle falls if it

does not go ahead and if it is not steered. So a child will do wrong either because he has not motive power enough to go ahead on the road which leads to his goal, or because he has plenty of vitality, but no steering gear. The aim of ethical teaching is to give and to control the motive-power; to make the best there is for a child so inviting that he will work eagerly and persistently to win it.

Let me give an example. The principal of a Massachusetts Normal School instituted in the eighth grade a course in practical carpentry. Its result was notable. "Formerly," said the principal, "if a boy saw a somewhat worn table, he would carve his name on it with a jackknife; now he comes to me and offers to plane and varnish the table so that it shall be as good as new." Here we see the self-same energy turned from waste to construction, from evil to good. A boy's desire to use tools and to impress his immortal initials on wood thus achieves an end beyond his own hopes. It is more fun as well as preferable to leave one's mark upon a table by planing it than by nicking it. Later, the good artisan may rightly carve his initials on the corner of his finished product. Even Whistler enjoyed making his butterfly on the edge of his paintings.

Our teaching in ethical classes, like all our teaching and example outside such classes, must help to show each child that the right act is what he truly wants, just as he truly prefers to plane and varnish the table and see his work embodied in a useful and attractive act, rather than to see his deed result in marring the table. How can ethical teaching advance this aim?

THE MATERIAL FOR ETHICAL STORY-TELLING

There are two factors of paramount and almost equal importance: one is the choice of the right material, and the other, the right method of presentation to the class. I have given in this book material suitable for every grade in the elementary schools, and I have tried as far as possible to associate it with the literature or history that the child of any grade would naturally be studying.

Among the best in ethical meaning are the classic stories, including a chosen group of Bible stories. These are the great inheritance of our race; a treasure which we have of late too much allowed to rust. Bible stories are never sectarian; it is our fault if we so interpret them. They are pervaded by a perennial humanity, a direct simplicity that makes them appeal to the young of every century. Do not alter the language. Children grasp its beauty even if they miss the meaning of a word. Omit or rearrange verses where necessary, but trust the child; he will like King James's version. We cannot now write as the men wrote who fervently translated our Bible. The faith unquenched of Daniel praying with his windows open toward Jerusalem; the devotion of the widow casting her two mites, even all that she had, into the treasury, - these are better ethical teachers than any sermon, for they are character in action.

Next among the classic ethical stories come those that age after age has loved and treasured. These include some of the legends of India brought together in the Jataka Tales, the Greek legend of Prometheus the fire-bringer, the tender spiritual record of St.

Francis of Assisi, the legend of St. Christopher, the story of Sir Galahad.

Equal in value, though different in their appeal, are graphic incidents from great biographies, - the story of Socrates loyal unto death, of Joan of Arc, illustrated by Boutet de Monvel's pictures, the courage of Henry Fawcett the blind statesman, of General Gordon, flaming hero of the Soudan, and in our own day of Pasteur, of Waring, of Florence Nightingale. These and many other lives picture loyalty, beautiful and moving as a rushing river which seeks the sea.

After biography, I come to heroic incidents of loyalty. We need for our help vivid scenes of right action under difficulty. I have given the story of self-control and self-reliance in the wreck of the steamship Republic and the patriotism of Senator Foelker as modern examples. Every teacher will find others, as her teaching of ethics makes her eye prehensile to catch glimpses of the loyal deeds blossoming all around us, but hidden to our unobservant eyes as the arbutus hides fragrant under wintry leaves.

Variety is to my mind of great importance in ethical classes. Moral life is full of variety, of vitality, and of humor. We need not fear to bring these qualities to the class. Humor is a leaven. Without it, ethical teaching becomes flat. I hope the teacher will gather together fearlessly stories as varied as that of the "Winter at Valley Forge" and that of "Epaminondas and his Auntie." Moral experience is as wide and as thrilling as life itself. We must redeem it from its prosy reputation. The ethical class ought to be, and in my experience often is, the most popular class in school.

Among the books which I should like every teacher

of ethics to own are: Poems Every Child Should Know, by Mary E. Burt; How to Tell Stories to Children, by Sara Cone Bryant; World Stories, by Joel H. Metcalf; The Pig Brother, by Laura E. Richards; An American Book of Golden Deeds, by James Baldwin; The School Speaker and Reader, by William DeWitt Hyde; and Control of Body and Mind, by Frances Gulick Jewett.

METHODS OF TEACHING

And now a few suggestions as to methods of teaching. It is most important to know before each lesson just what you want to bring out in the topic of the day. The teacher must see her subject vividly, and feel its beauty and appeal. Her full faith must go with the lesson. This is impossible without preparation. Success means saturation with your subject, not with its moral, but with itself. Children will gain most from stories of right and wrong told in so graphic a way that they leave a picture. The instinct of a child is to love a story and to repel a moral. He is right. In the best stories, the true act is seen clothed upon as it is in real life, not protruded immodestly and self-consciously as in a moral. In the story of the Dutch boy at the dike, faithfulness is seen in action and compels our homage. When we hear of the boy at the dike, we are ready, every one of us, to keep an aching finger in the hole till help comes. For a moment, at least, we see loyalty face to face and swear allegiance to it.

The next point of importance in ethical teaching is to make this vision of the right act lasting. I have tried to do this by giving a number of very different stories and poems all illustrating the same virtue. If, for example, you wish to bring out the quality of persever