Members will therefore receive their copies at Milwaukee meeting. Any person sending Any person sending 5c. in stamps to the secretary will receive his copy by mail.

County superintendents or superintendents of city schools, who are willing to pay the express, will receive sufficient copies to supply their teachers who are members of the association by addressing the secretary and stating the number required.

W. H. CHEEVER, Sec'y.

THE SUPERVISION OF RURAL SCHOOLS.

In the office of supervisor of rural schools there is no place for the martinet or or the pedant. Supervision is a blessing or a curse in proportion to the intelligence and skill with which it is administered. The country schools need a supervision, which in its effects challenges the respect and support of all interested. In selecting a suitable person to oversee a system of rural schools, in addition to a reasonable education and a clean personal character, we should look for adaptability to circumstances, the ability to discern the fitness of things so that he may accomplish that which is possible without wasting time on the impossible. The person who is chosen as supervisor of rural schools should have in the highest degree the qualities of leadership. He must be both a thinker and a student. I would rather have in a teacher one divine spark of originality, lightened up by the enthusiasm and zeal in the work, than all the knowledge that is contained in a thousand pages of the dead lore of the past. The rural school needs a supervision which inspires energy, awakens a desire to know the best, and which says, "Come, let us study, let us think, let us reason, let us discuss.

There is a new field for supervision open in the duty of awakening public concern, and of strengthening the tone and trend of public thought directed toward the promotion of educational interests. The supervisor of rural schools must be acquainted with the resources of his district. He should know what constitutes good farming, should be acquainted with the grazing interests, the dairy, and the rotation of crops. He should be able to convince the people that he knows something besides books. It is not so much to invite the farmer or the miner to the school, as to take the school to the farm or the mine, and to show the children the foundations upon which have been built the great natural sciences of our day. The teacher must be a lover of nature in its various forms, and be able to interpret the language of rocks, and trees, and flowers, the running brook, the snows of winter, and the fruits of autumn.

The supervision needed by the country school must concern itself also with school extension, lectures, and libraries. The establishment and maintenance of good roads finds in the supervisor a ready and popular advocate. The country schools do not need what we ordinarily call close supervision; they do need a supervision which is intelligent and rational, is strong, manly, and vigorous, so that the character of the supervision commends the wisdom of the supervisor. The supervisor should be kept in the field every day in the school year.

His vacations should not be en

tirely free from field work, for then he should be with the people and school officers, looking after school grounds, advising with directors or trustees in regard to buildings, choice of teachers, text-books, and the general educational interests of the district. The supervision which I have attempted to mark out is that of a live, enthusiastic man, in sympathy with educational progress, in touch with the common people, consecrated to his work, who thinks no sacrifice too great, no labor too severe, when made in the cause of the common district school.-State Supt. Henry Sabin in N. Y. School Journal.

THE SCHOOL ROOM.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

His Life, 1794-1878.

Bryant was a descendant from John Alden and Priscilla, on his mother's sideand the poet derived from her his seriousness. He was a precocious boy, read well at four years of age, and wrote verses at twelve. Thana_

His

topsis, of high and permanent merit, was composed when he was eighteen, and is on the whole the most satisfactory representative of his genius. He studied law and practiced it for nine years in western Massachusetts. In 1825 he removed to New York and devoted himself to journalism. The following year he became connected with the New York Evening Post, a connection which was continued to his death. He gave to the paper an exceptionally high moral and intellectual tone, and made it a vigorous opponent of slavery and an advocate of free trade. He six times visited Europe, and was an extensive traveler in the United States, Mexico and Cuba. life was uneventful, being occupied chiefly with literary labors. He was not a prolific writer. In his latter years he made a translation of Homer, which must rank as one of the very best in the language. It occupied him six years, and was undertaken to afford him occupation and solace after the death of his wife, in 1866. He died in June, as he wished in his poem with that name, and this touching piece was read at the side of his open grave. He was reserved and dignified in his bearing, refined in taste and calm and judicial in his temper. A tall, slender man, with high forehead and bushy eyebrows, with deep-set keen eyes and aquiline nose, his features, especially in later life, had a touch of majesty and intellectuality suggestive of one of the ancient sages.

Characteristics as a Poet.

His "Thanatopsis" is perhaps the masterpiece of his somber, contemplative imagination. The reason why the author has never surpassed this effort of his youth is to be found partly in the cast of his mind, characterized by a narrow greatness, and partly in the fact that, during the major part of his life, he has been constrained to "scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen" as the editor of a daily newspaper, a fact to which, at the close of his "Green River," he makes a touching reference. Mr. Bryant has lived in thronging cities, an honest and energetic politician; but in his leisure hours his fancy has roamed to breezy hills and valleys and the undulating sea of the prairies. The perpetual autumn of his writings is peculiar. He has written smoothly in various measures, but he is never lively. An American Alastor, he loved "the air that cools the twilight of the sultry day" better than morning "clad in russet vest." In the beautiful verses on "The Death of the Flowers," his ear catches a dirge in the wind. "The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore,

And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more."'

The high, rank grass of the meadow is to his eye the garniture of the graves of a race represented by his "Disinterred Warrior." His "Evening Wind," "Forest Hymn," "Monument Mountain." "The Burial Place" and "The Past" are set to the same slow music, and pervaded by the thought of life as the avenue of death. If we compare his "Address to a Waterfowl" with Wordsworth's or Shelley's "Skylark" we appreciate the monotony of his mind, which is like that of Cowper without Cowper's occasional vivacity. Mr. Bryant stands on a high level, but the space he covers is limited; he has no touch of humor, and only the distant pathos of prevailing melancholy. Master of his position where he is at home in the woods, he loses his inspiration when he draws near his own cities.-JOHN NICHOL.

The above is undoubtedly true, but it overlooks the fact that a natural joyousness and delight in nature breaks out often in Bryant's verse without the usual touch of melancholy. He is not a humorist, but is by no means always sad or always cold. Such poems as

"The Gladness of Nature," "Robert of Lincoln," "Song of the Stars," "Oh Fairest of the Rural Maids," "The Song of Marion's Men," reveal another side of his nature too often overlooked. Lowell never wrote a more unjustified criticism than the passage on Bryant in "A Fable for Critics":

"There is Bryant, as quiet, as cool, and as dignified, As a smooth silent iceberg, that never is ignified, Save when by reflection 'tis kindled o'nights With a semblance of flame by the chill Northern Lights," and the kindlier words at the close of the passage, are not enough to redeem it.

June.

I gazed upon the glorious sky
And the green mountains round
And thought that when I came to lie
At rest within the ground,
'Twere pleasant, that in flowery June.
When brooks send up a cheerful tune,
And groves a joyous sound,
The sexton's hand, my grave to make,
The rich, green mountain turf should break.
A cell within the frozen mould,
A coffin borne through sleet,
And icy clods above it rolled,

While fierce the tempests beat-
Away! I will not think of these-
Blue be the sky and soft the breeze,
Earth green beneath the feet,
And be the damp mould gently pressed
Into my narrow place of rest.

There through the long, long summer hours,
The golden light should lie,

And thick young herbs and groups of flowers
Stand in their beauty by.
The oriole should build and tell
His love-tale close beside my cell;

The idle butterfly

Should rest him there, and there be heard The housewife bee and humming-bird.

And what if cheerful shouts at noon
Come, from the village sent,
Or songs of maids beneath the moon
With fairy laughter blent?
And what if, in the evening light,
Betrothed lovers walk in sight
Of my low monument?

I would the lovely scene around
Might know no sadder sight nor sound.

I know, I know, I should not see

The season's glorious show,
Nor would its brightness shine for me,
Nor its wild music flow:

But if, around my place of sleep.
The friends I love should come to weep,
They might not haste to go.

Soft airs, and song, and light, and bloom,
Should keep them lingering by my tomb.
These to their softened hearts should bear
The thought of what has been,
And speak of one who cannot share
The gladness of the scene;
Whose part, in all the pomp that fills
The circuit of the summer hills,

Is that his grave is green;
And deeply would their hearts rejoice
To hear again his living voice.

To a Waterfowl.

Whither, midst falling dew,

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler's eye

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
As, darkly seen against the crimson sky,
Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean side?

There is a Power whose care

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,-
The desert and illimitable air-

Lone wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fanned,

At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere,
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end:

Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend, Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest.

Thou't gone, the abyss of heaven

Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,
And shall not soon depart.

He who, from zone to zone,

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.

Green River.

When breezes are soft and skies are fair,

I steal an hour from study and care,
And hie me away to the woodland scene,
Where wanders the stream with waters of green,
As if the bright fringe of herbs on its brink
Had given their stain to the wave they drink;
And they, whose meadows it murmurs through,
Have named the stream from its own fair hue.

Yet pure its waters-its shallows are bright
With coloured pebbles and sparkles of light,
And clear the depths where its eddies play,
And dimples deepen and whirl away,

And the plane-tree's specled arms o'ershoot
The swifter current that mines its root,

Through whose shifting leaves, as you walk the hill,
The quivering glimmer of sun and rill
With the sudden flash on the eye is thrown,
Like the ray that streams from the diamond stone.

Oh, loveliest there the spring days come,

With blossoms and birds, and wild bees' hum;
The flowers of summer are fairest there,

And freshest the breath of the summer air;
And sweetest the golden autumn day
In silence and sunshine glides away.

Yet fair as thou art, thou shunnest to glide,
Beautiful stream! by the village side;
But windest away from haunts of men,
To quiet valley and shaded glen;
And forest, and meadow, and slope of hill,
Around thee, are lonely, lovely, and still.
Lonely-save when, by thy rippling tides,
From thicket to thicket the angler glides;
Or the simpler comes, with basket and book
For herbs of power on thy banks to look;
Or haply, some idle dreamer, like me,
To wander and muse, and gaze on thee.
Still-save the chirp of birds that feed
On the river cherry and seedy reed,
And thy own wild music gushing out
With mellow murmur or fairy shout,
From dawn to the blush of another day,
Like traveller singing along his way.

That fairy music I never hear,
Nor gaze on those waters so green and clear,
And mark them winding away from sight,
Darkened with shade or flashing with light,
While o'er them the vine to its thicket clings,
And the zephyr stoops to freshen his wings,
But I wish that fate had left me free

To wander these quiet haunts with thee,
Till the eating cares of earth should depart,
And the peace of the scene pass into my heart;
And I envy thy stream, as its glides along,
Through its beautiful banks in a trance of song.

Though forced to drudge for the dregs of men,
And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen,
And mingle among the jostling crowd,
Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud-
I often come to this quiet place,

To breathe the airs that ruffle thy face,
And gaze upon thee in silent dream,
For in thy lonely and lovely stream
An image of that calm life appears
That won my heart in my greener years.

The Gladness of Nature.

Is this the time to be cloudy and sad,
When our mother Nature laughs around;
When even the deep blue heavens look glad,

And gladness breathes from the blossoming ground?

There are notes of joy from the hang-bird and wren, And the gossip of swallows through all the sky; The ground-squirrel gayly chirps by his den,

And the wilding bee hums merrily by.

The clouds are at play in the azure space,
And their shadows at play on the bright green vale,
And here they stretch to the frolic chase,
And there they roll on the easy gale.

There's a dance of leaves in that aspen bower,
There's a titter of winds in that beechen tree,
There's a smile on the fruit, and a smile on the flower,
And a laugh from the brook that runs to the sea.

And look at the broad-faced sun, how he smiles
On the dewy earth that smiles in his ray,
On the leaping waters and gay young isles;
Ay, look, and he'll smile thy gloom away.

MAKE YOURSELF OVER.

Yes, we women turn our bonnets and dresses-reshape them and retrim them— and, lo! we feel better in them, and our friends say, "What a pretty new rig!"

After we have taught a few years we need making over. Yes, there's no mistake about it. We show signs of wear and tear, and our pupils and our friends are a little tired of us. We have a deep line on our foreheads that means-no, not thought, don't let's flatter ourselves it means worry. We have a sharp tone in our voice-it means impatience. We have a short, terse, emphatic way of speaking, as if we were laying down the law-it means too good an opinion of our own mental powers and too poor an opinion of better minds around us. It all means, we're getting narrow and unlovely, and if we keep on we shall be left to walk our narrow path alone, friends and companions will find no room beside us, we shall scare them away.

Let's make ourselves over.

I. To cure the wrinkle, let's think of something pleasant with all our hearts and minds. 2. To cure the sharp tone in our voice, let's talk a little less, and criticise others a little less and ourselves more.

3. To cure our conceit, let's think how hateful we must be to others, and let's come down from our high stools and walk companionably with the people around us, learning from them, letting them see that we appreciate them, and presto! they'll begin to say: "We made a mistake about Miss Bookwoman. She's very She's very pleasant when you know her well, and her ability as a teacher is the highest in town. very fine woman—a fine woman!"

A

Ah, yes, it pays to make ourselves over every once in a while.-American Primary Teacher.

INDIAN CORN: A WONDER LESSON.

Do you want a subject for a wonder lesson? You are embarrassed by riches. They are here on every hand by tens of thousands. Almost anything will do. I know nothing more common or more striking than the Indian corn, growing in our gardens and in the fields everywhere about us, one of the most widely known and most useful grains in the world. What a wonder story you call tell of this marvelous plant! "First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear." When, as a child, I used to read these familiar words in the Bible, I always thought it meant our yellow corn planted in the springtime and gathered to the crib in the autumn. Years later

I was surprised to learn that this "corn" was a kind of wheat or barley, and that all the wealth of Jerusalem could not in those days have bought an ear of our common corn.

There is a story told of a selfish farmer who had got a new variety of Indian corn, and to a neighbor who wanted to buy a little of it, he replied: "Not a grain." In his ignorance he thought he could keep it all on his own farm. He did not know of stamen and pistil, pollen and ovary-perhaps only of horses and hogs and dollars; knowledge very good to have if a small fraction of a large unit, but if it be all a man has, then of little value in the great account. His neighbor, more knowing than he, taught him a lesson in botany, and had the corn both without buying it, without his consent, and without risk of a law-suit. The new corn happened to be planted along the line fence between the farms. The neighbor, seeing this, selected the best grains from the middle of some of his best ears for seed, and planted them on the other side of the fence. The land was equally good; the rains fell and the sun shone alike on each field. The corn grew and flourished and neared the time when the staminate blossoms of the tassel would shed their pollen upon the silken bloom below. He noted the right moment, and then cut the plume (the tassel Gray calls it) from every stock of his own corn, so that no pollen from his own field should fertilize his corn-it must all come from the other side of the fence. The new corn was rich in pollen which floated on the air and fell here and there with little

regard to line fences. The life forces went on working out their results in the laboratory of nature, and, when the husking time came, both hauled to their barns nearly the same kind of corn-much to the chagrin and somewhat to the edification of the stingy farmer.

The lesson of the pollen is in this story, and a deeper lesson yet for the growing boy and girl. It is good teaching. If you can give many lessons like this, you are a teacher good to live with. I went to school on the Duke Street hill, nearly fifty years ago, to a man who taught many such lessons. Was he good to live with in those far off days? A green

But we want to look at the corn. stalk may be brought to the school, roots and all. Take the circuit from the seed dropped into the ground in the late spring to the seed from the ear in the fall. The green shoot comes up; the leaves of the beautiful, vigorous thing are rapidly developed—in the warm June days after a rain how they grow!-then the rustling two edged sword-blades of July; the light yellow plume of staminate blossoms,