structions not to study the fine print at first, but to wait for the review. Strange that no one has ever dared to abandon this "orderly arrangement" and build a textbook on true pedagogical principles ! The proper grouping of material can be stated in a mathematical expression. Each fact concerning Latin, which we retain in the beginning book and therefore must group, possesses two independent qualities, viz., difficulty and power. If a fact can be apprehended and accepted as pure truth upon a single presentation, or if the fact involves complex and exceptional parts which have to be proved repeatedly in problems, this is the measure of difficulty. The power of a fact is measured by the insight it gives into the subject, the distance it takes us toward the heart of the matter, the control and leverage it bestows. The value of our Latin facts then is a matter of high power and low difficulty; the value varies directly as the power and inversely as the difficulty. P VX- In so far as the beginning book aims to lighten the grammar study of the second year by obviating re-adjustment, I think readjustment is a good thing. Whatever grammatical study is finally retained as desirable for the second year, will be much more vivid if approached in a new method. This is the proper way to review and enlarge knowledge. III. The third question is presentation. Principally this question is one of technical details, and therefore will not be taken up here. One point, however, is worthy of great emphasis, viz., make the details less technical. Reduce the nomenclature; let us have fewer kinds of ablatives, subjunctives, etc. of which we must remember the names and values; let us devote more attention to the force and value of a case, a mood, a tense, an idiom, and omit the multiplicity of names. As a matter of fact, when the pupil encounters a subjunctive, he does not first get its name, and from the name gain a knowledge of the value; on the contrary, he arrives by individual methods at the value, and then, if coerced, will name, or guess at the name of the subjunctive. The naming is posthumous and apocryphal. Summing up these three questions, omit all material which will not contribute to the well-being of the pupils who will not advance beyond the reading of Cæsar. Make the Latin valuable to all pupils through the study of Latin-English relationships. Abandon the grouping on the plan of the miniature grammar, and group the facts on the basis of high power and low difficulty. Simplify the presentation, eliminating technicalities and reducing the nomenclature. A Garden Thought. I wonder where the roses go With alchemy of sun and rain, With essence of the dew, In laboratories of the earth, The rose was wrought, and grew. And all this beauty for an hour? A rose that is, must ever be; The answer differs with the years, -Arthur Wallace Peach. The Problem of Two Vocabularies T BY CHARLES W. SUPER, ATHENS, OHIO. HE author of the article under the same caption in a former number of EDUCATION sets forth lucidly the obstacles that confront the teacher of English. I never say that a thing is impossible because ninetynine out of a hundred persons can not do it, but I have come to the conclusion after many years of observation and a good deal of experience, that the evil is in a large measure irremediable, for the great majority of teachers. I doubt whether any language can be taught directly. The manner in which we express our thoughts depends so much upon the quality of our thinking that when the latter is commonplace and almost entirely dependent upon environment speech partakes of the same character. Low thoughts are necessarily expressed in routine words. If we can not elevate the thoughts of our pupils we can not purify their speech. A certain amount of information can be drilled into the mind of almost any person so long as it is a matter of mere memory. This is true of elementary mathematics, of natural and physical science, and of history. But speech that rises above the ordinary requires a good deal of creative power. This the teacher can not impart because it is spontaneous. We need only to take up the writings of such masters of English as Franklin or Lincoln or Clemens and consider that they were entirely self taught to be convinced that for those who wish to acquire the ability to express themselves with force and elegance a living teacher is not indispensable. In the case of these men and of many others the stimulus came from within. It is well known that the English public schools and universities did not teach the vernacular until within the memory of men now living. But they taught young men to think and to reflect; they stimulated thought, and expression followed of necessity. Procedure and result stood in relation to each other as cause and effect. It is well to keep in mind also that there is as much complaint about bad English on the other side of the Atlantic as on this. The Germans likewise tell us that their young people for the most part do not learn the mothertongue. It requires linguistic ability of no common order to have at call even a moderately large vocabulary, and rare discernment to know just what words and constructions are most forcible. A good deal of English that is now considered low or even vulgar was not always so. Shakespeare who probably had at his command almost the whole vocabulary current in his time frequently uses coarse expressions because he considers them forceful. No doubt a great deal of his language is what we should call slang and colloquial; we have no means of deciding the question because there were no dictionaries to indicate the fact. All persons talked and wrote, when they could write, in the language of their province or of their station. The members of Queen Elizabeth's parliament had great difficulty in understanding one another. The English of Scotland and of Yorkshire is still in large part incomprehensible to those who know only the printed page. It has frequently been remarked by intelligent observers that the English of North America is far more homogeneous than that of Great Britain. It is not difficult to explain why this is so. William Cullen Bryant posted up in his editorial room a list of about three score words which reporters were forbidden to use because he regarded them offensive to good taste. Albeit, this list contains a considerable number of words which no writer would hesitate to employ for the reason that Bryant rejected them. There is a long list of words the use of which almost everybody would regard as an exhibition of bad taste or of ignorance, but there are many more that lie in the twilight zone. When I was a boy some of our neighbors were in the habit of using words that were in my father's Index Expurgatorius. I often wondered where they came from. Among these were het, clomb and cowcumber. I afterwards found "clomb" in modern English poetry, and learned that the other two are merely obsolete. Wyclif wrote "cucumber" which he seems to have modeled after the Latin, In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the spelling cowcumber prevailed. However, Smart, writing in 1836, says that "no well taught person, except the old school, now says "cowcumber, although any other pronunciation would have been thought pedantic thirty years ago." This word is still pronounced more than a dozen different ways in Great Britain and Ireland. Only in a few districts, notably in the vicinity of Oxford, is the first syllable pronounced kyu. A person therefore who says "cowcumber" has merely failed to keep up with the gradual change in pronunciation through which the vocable has passed; in other words, has not consulted the dictionary. In many parts of England old people still speak of a cow as a "coo". But it seems inconsistent that the same person should say "coo" and "cowcumber." It is one of the vagaries of speech which are met with in all languages. We do not know what words considered inelegant today will be in current use fifty years hence. Good usage is to some extent a matter of grammar and dictionary, but not wholly so. A word never gets into a dictionary until some one has used it. Horace had observed nearly two thousand years ago that some terms become obsolete while new ones come into vogue. And there were no dictionaries in those days. No doubt there was as much slang used in his day as in ours. But we have no means of detecting it because our Latin dictionaries contain all the words found in Latin authors. In fact we do not know what was slang before the time to which our memory extends unless some one made a record of the fact. If nobody used a word unless it occurred in a dictionary, language would be at a standstill. Not a day passes that does not increase our general vocabulary. Less than a century ago our largest lexicons contained fewer than a hundred thousand words, now they contain more than four times as many. However, the older dictionaries embraced only those words which the compilers regarded as belonging to good usage; now they include almost the entire vocabulary. Grammars and dictionaries have some influence on language, but they are not omnipotent. Furthermore, language and logic have not much connection with each other. Nothing could be more illogical than such phrases as "I was as given," "I was told," and so, albeit they are correct English. Everybody learns the lower-stratum speech. It is not necessarily vulgar, but it is commonplace. When an individual rises above it by education his range of thought becomes wider and his vocabulary enlarged, but his earlier acquisitions can not be wholly discarded. Getting an education consists largely in cultivating the habit of observing, of taking mental note of what is to be seen and heard. It is no easy matter to deal with commonplace affairs without falling into the current phraseology. It is |