always ready to hand. The most important habit which children should be taught is to observe the language of good speakers and writers. Much of what is said in print is slangy, but it is rarely vulgar. For many persons the habit of observing is hard to acquire, while others seem to do it without effort. Comparatively few people see anything to which their attention has not been called. Not long ago I was discussing a matter with one of my neighbors, when he used the words "have went." In the course of our interview I said "have gone" two or three times, nevertheless, he always said "have went." But he did say "grew", not "growed." Have went is not necessarily incorrect, but it is as this man employed it. Moreover, why should "have went" be regarded as worse English than the very common "he don't" for "he doesn't"? The great majority of young people in every country and a large majority of adults use the popular speech because their peers do so. Few persons have sufficient command of language to employ simple words that are both good usage and properly correlated. In this matter as in many others the proverb holds good that you might as well be out of the world as out of the fashion. Some time ago a little boy whose parents always speak English that is grammatically and orthoepically correct said in the presence of some of his fellows, partly to his hearers and partly to himself: "Oh, I have spoiled this drawing, and it troubles me greatly." The saying was repeated until almost the whole school talked about it. I once knew a country school teacher who never used slang or bad grammar. One of his pupils asked him one day whether he ever studied anything but the dictionary. Sometimes this lower-stratum speech takes hold of people upon whom the higher style would make no impression; and they are not of the baser sort either. Everybody knows what kind of English "Billy" Sunday habitually employs, and everybody knows also that he is one of the most effective speakers now before the public. Bad grammar and incorrect pronunciation often impart a piquancy and a raciness to a saying that it would lose if put into correct form. Such a proverb as: "It's better not to know so much than to know so much that aint so," can easily be put into good English, but its peculiar flavor is gone after the transformation. This popular style is in use everywhere. It seems indispensable. It is an in teresting study in such a country as Germany. In the schools the high or literary German is taught and is the speech of officialdom. In recitation the pupils are expected to use it. But when at play or even in the home they relapse into the local dialect. In most parts of the country the people take pride in it and regard it as an evidence of patriotism. This sentiment finds expression in the proverb: "Speak as your bill growed." Our utilitarian age is indifferent to propriety of speech. It is much more concerned about knowledge that can be turned into money than about things that gratify a cultivated taste. Editors of technical and scientific periodicals have to rewrite some of the most valuable papers submitted to them for publication. We read so much and so superficially that we are impressed only with what is racy or unusual in form or style. Perhaps there are in this country seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to slovenly and meretricious English, probably not more. Classic Sonnets THE HORSES OF PHIDIAS Across their native plains of Thessaly, Where the wild horse was tamed to hand and rein, Snorted these chargers of the flowing mane, These forms instinct with savagery and glee Famed in the sculptures of antiquity. O'er the turf-padded fields, what well-matched twain, Flew forth for heroes born to charm the free! Come ye where cool Peneus rolls, where snowy-crowned Caught in the march to Greek supremacy! -Helen Cary Chadwick. What Should Vocational Schools Offer Girls? V BY ABBIE O. STODDARD AND LUCY H. CHAPMAN. I. OCATIONAL education, as defined in the laws relating to state-aided vocational schools in Massachusetts, is education which fits for profitable employment. This means, presumably, employment which has some economic value; it should mean employment which gives the girl as well as the boy a definite possibility of self-support. The purpose of this article is to show in how far our girls' vocational schools are now fulfilling their function, and to suggest lines of future development. According to the laws already quoted, vocational education in Massachusetts may be divided into three distinct branches; agricultural education, industrial education, and household arts education. This division is far less definite than it appears. Although we may consider agriculture, the production of raw material for food and clothing, as a distinct branch, household and industrial occupations are not so clearly defined. They are undergoing transition. The contrast between the pioneer home in which every article of use was manufactured, and the modern home, in which many factory products are consumed, is too familiar to need more than passing mention. We do need to be reminded, however, that the end is not yet. Our methods of housework may be as obsolete in our grandchildren's time as pioneer industry is today. Household arts are very rapidly becoming industrial arts. Both capital and labor are combining to bring about such a result. A recent house-to-house canvass made by the General Baking Company indicates that bakers' bread has replaced the home-made product in about one-half of the homes of Greater Boston. This company and others are naturally bending every effort to win over the more conservative other half. Laundries, too, are offering many special inducements of various sorts to the housewife. More and more each year the family wash is being sent out. Here labor combines with capital, for as a foreman in one of our first-class laundries remarked: "Laundry work is a good business. It has got to grow. Our girls will never go out washing as their mothers are now doing. They prefer working here." So much of the work originally done in the home has already become factory work that practically every girl must go out of her own home in order to be self-supporting, and a large number of them are returning to wage-earning occupations after marriage. Just here arises the difficulty which confronts the Massachusetts vocational schools. As we shall see in the succeeding section, the vocational schools for girls with one or two exceptions are emphasizing courses which train for domestic activities or "home-making." An investigation of industrial conditions will further show that such training does not meet the need of a large proportion of the girls who at sixteen leave our vocational schools to earn their own living. II The founders of the vocational schools in Massachusetts seem to have had two distinctly different aims. One group of schools, evidently patterned after the Manhattan Trade School for Girls in New York City, aims, like that school, to fit girls for definite lines of shop work in which training is requisite to a living wage. The Boston Trade School for Girls is the best example of this type of school in Massachusetts. The Worcester, the Somerville, and the Cambridge Schools were originally planned along the same lines and are classified as trade schools. The Newton, the Northampton, the New Bedford, and the Lowell schools have been "home-making" from the start. The success of a trade school depends in a large measure on the adaptation of its courses to the locality in which it is placed. The Manhattan Trade School, from the wealth of industrial opportunity offered by New York City, has chosen four distinct lines in which to supply an evident demand for trained workers. These lines are the use of electric power sewing machines, the use of needle and foot power sewing machines, the use of paste and glue, and the use of brush and pencil. The second group of these subjects, commonly classed as the needle trades, is taught in every vocational school in Massachusetts. The Boston and Worcester schools also give courses in electric power machine operating. Not enough of the brush and pencil work is taught in any of the Massachusetts state-aided vocational schools to make it a distinct trade, and the paste and glue work, where taught at all, is merely incidental. No Massachusetts community offers the industrial opportunities of New York. An investigation of local conditions preceded the founding of the trade schools in Massachusetts, but nothing was found to replace the subjects in the curriculum of the New York school. Of the needle trades, dressmaking is conceded in all communities to be a better trade than millinery. In fact, the millinery seasons are so short that the trade schools discourage as many girls as possible from entering the trade. In New York the making of lamp and candle shades is taught to supplement millinery, but in Massachusetts this plan is not feasible. In dressmaking the season is longer, and in Boston there are many openings for trade school girls in dressmakers' shops. The Boston Trade School for Girls has an enrollment of five hundred girls and, according to an investigation made last year by the Women's Educational and Industrial Union, about thirty-five per cent of the girls who had attended the school for at least nine months had been at some time in dressmaking shops. In this trade the average initial wage in Boston for girls with trade school training was found to be $5.60 per week. At the present time the Boston Trade School is refusing to place girls at less than $1.00 per day. For girls with the same training who had been eight years in the trade the average wage was found to be $12.06 per week. The lack of advancement which this wage indicates may be partly due to the fact that the trade school course includes little cutting and fitting. A girl of the type who usually enters the school can hardly acquire in the allotted time more than the skill required in mechanical work. The dressmaking trade in this city is, moreover, dropping off at the rate of fifty per cent in ten years, according to the above mentioned report. All this does not indicate that a remarkable opportunity in dressmaking awaits the girl with trade school training, but her possibilities in Boston far exceed those in any other city in the state where trade schools are located. The Somerville school has a dressmaking course, but so |