GIRL. Yes, sir;

more'n three mont.

S. I thought so.

What else did you learn besides dog?

GIRL. Larn Histry, Rifmetic, French, 'n Latin.

S. You know a great deal, don't you?

GIRL. Yes, sir.

S. How much are two and two?

GIRL (quickly). Fifteen, sir.

S. What's your name?

GIRL. Name Sack, sir.

S. What?

GIRL. Yes, sir.

S. Is it Psyche or Sack?

GIRL. Yes, sir.

WOMAN. All two one ting, sir. De Yankee lady, sir, tell we mus' call the gal Psyche, sir.

S. Well, child, you may go down. I'll put you into a class where you'll learn to spell cat, and dog, too.

GIRL. I goin' in a fourf reader class, ain't I, sir?

S. Be still, you monkey. I suppose you know ma'am, that we require a tax of twenty-five cents a month for each scholar, to help pay expenses, don't you.

W. I heary so, sir; but my hubman', he out o' work now sir, 'n I can't git no money fo' tax.

S. But your child seems pretty well dressed. What has she got in that paper? My stars! here is more than twenty-five cents worth gunjis* and apples!

W. I bleege to gi' de gal a litte o' dese yere ting: all de chilum care um to school.

S. (Indignantly.) I know they do. And the good people at the North are scraping together every dollar they can get to keep your children at school, while you spend your money for sweetmeats and picnics. Next year it will be different. The Northern people are getting tired of this; and next term, if you want your children to go to school, you will have to help pay for it. Good

morning, ma'am.

* Gunjies, plural of gunjy, a ginger cake much esteemed by the dark infants of the South, and also by their Northern teachers.

W. Good mornin' mawsa. chile don't larn, lash um hard, sir. yer lesson, now; an' come home soon.

Please, sir, do be so good, sir, ef dis Here you gal (shaking her) mine [Exit.

(Enter Janitor.)

JAN. A heap o' chilun outside. Dey's one, sir, I think might be let in.

S. Let him in. (Janitor goes out, and comes in with a boy, leading him by the collar, and twitching him angrily.)

JAN. (to boy.) What make ye tag out in de street? Yer'll nebber larn nuf'n, les'n yer come to school soon in de mornin'. [Exit.

S. Well, my boy, what makes you come so late to school?

BOY. Couldn't come soon, sir. Stay out to git a job o' work for pay my tax, sir. I'm a mudderless boy, sir; 'n my pa, he got a swell han', an' Tiddy, she 'flicted

S. What do you mean by "Tiddy?" And what's the matter? Boy. Tiddy my sister, sir; him cripple, sir. Bubber, ony a lee boy.

S. What's become of the rest of your brothers and sisters? Boy. All dead, excuse me one. But I got my tax; shum* here, sir?

S. Ah! that's the right spirit! You 're a fine boy. [Exit boy.

(Enter Mr. Cardozo.)

S. Good morning, Mr. Cardozo; how do you do? Take a chair: take mine,- that's the only one there is. How is your school getting on?

C. Very well indeed. How is yours?

S. Nicely. The children behave very well, with few exceptions. Those who come regularly are making great progress. It is very gratifying to see the interest which the parents take in the school. But there's one thing troubles me very much.

C. Oh dear! You ought to have a picnic. I gave my scholars a picnic over at Mt. Pleasant the other day, and I luckily

* Shum, a corrupted contraction of see him (her, them, or it).

thought of those same taxes. So I told the children they should not one of them come unless they had paid their monthly tax. The result was that I got just about three times as much money as I should otherwise have received.

S. Good! So it seems (addressing the audience) you can pay your taxes when you want to.

C. Most of them can.

your classes recite.

L

But I came in to-day to hear some of

S. In good time. I was just going to call up a class. Miss please send your class to the platform. Mr. Cardozo, sup

pose we step down, where we can see the class.

(Miss L.'s class here files out for examination.)

GLEANINGS.

[Exeunt.

AN ARAB GENTLEMAN. My poor donkey-driver, Hasan, is ill and his old father takes his place; he gave me a fine illustration of Arab feeling towards women to-day. I asked if Abd-El-Kádir were coming here as I had heard; he did not know, and asked if he were not Akhul-Benát (a brother of girls)? I prosaically said I did not know if he had sisters. "The Arabs, O Lady! call that man a brother of girls' to whom God has given a clean heart to love all women as his sisters, and strength, and courage, to fight for their protection." Omar suggested "a thorough gentleman" as the equivalent of Aboo Hasan's title. European galimatias about "the smiles of the fair," etc., looks very mean beside Akhul-Benát. Lady Duff Gordon's Letters from Egypt.

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A SCRIPTURAL ILLUSTRATION. Yesterday I saw a camel go through the eye of a needle, i. e., the low-arched door of an enclosure. He must kneel and bow his head to creep through, and thus the rich man must humble himself. See how a false translation spoils a good metaphor, and turns a familiar simile into a ferociously communist sentiment. Ibid.

A MAHOMEDAN ARAB'S SERMON.

Omar reports yesterday's sermon, on toleration it appears. Sheykh Yoosuf took the text, "Thou shalt love thy brother as thyself, and never act towards him but as thou wouldst that he should act towards thee." I forget

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the chapter and verse [in the Koran], but it seems he took the bull by the horns, and declared all men to be brothers, not Moslems only and desired his congregation to look at the good deeds of others, and not to their erroneous faith; for God is all-knowing, (i. e., He only knows the heart,) and if they saw aught amiss, to remember that the best men need say "Astaghfir Allah" (I beg pardon of God) seven times a day.

I wish the English could know how unpleasant and mischievous their manner of talking to their servants about religion is. Omar confided to me how bad it felt to be questioned, and then to see the Englishman laugh, or put up his lip and say nothing. "I don't want to talk about his religion at all, but if he talks about mine You, my lady, say when I tell

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he ought to speak of his own too. you things, that is the same with us,' or that is different, or good, or not good, in your mind; and that is the proper way,- not to look like thinking, all nonsense." — lbid.

SEVERE PUNISHMENTS. It seems not improper to introduce here a caution against a diseased persistency of impressions that sometimes occurs, and is the very opposite of the retentiveness now under consideration. In states of terror, feverish anxiety, and nervous weakness, particular subjects take hold of the system, and cannot be shaken off. Doubtless such things make themselves remembered, but at great expense; for the diseased flow of the currents of the brain wastes a vast amount of its natural and healthy adhesiveness. It is a notorious fact that when through fear, fascination, or other excitement, an object possesses the mind, all other things are unheeded and forgotten. The climax of this state is reached in insanity. . . . . A constitution liable to run into this condition is "nervous," in the sense implying weakness and not vigor of nerves. Herein lies the objection to the use of severe punishments and terror in education; for although in this way a preternatural attention is forced to some one thing, the mind is rendered much less retentive of things on the whole, not to speak of the positive suffering inflicted for the sake of the object. Bain: The Senses and the Intellect.

THE INFLUENCE OF SECTARIAN CREEDS ON EDUCATION. By importing the postulates of a divinity school as the measure of induc

tive truth, a hopeless breach is created between the logic of theology and that of science, and a war begun which is the more miserable because the parties to it, always within reach of irritating challenge, move upon different lines, and can never fairly meet. It is needless to say how this method spoils everything it touches: scholarship, natural knowledge, religion, and produces the temper most alien to the genius of them all. Is it not a melancholy fact that every modern science has had to make good its footing, not only against sluggish incredulity and prejudice, but against misguided piety? that the very sun could not find his right place in the heavens, or man prove, by bits of pottery and flint, his long tenancy of this earth without a clamor of devout fear and futile contradiction? Is it right that we should always know beforehand, irrespective of the evidence, what reception every physical or ethnological theory which makes large demands on time, every critical verdict which lowers the date or re-names the author of a Hebrew book will meet with from the clergy? There must be something wrong in a system which disturbs the quiet of eternal truth by dissolving in it a fermenting mass of decaying opinion; and whoever can precipitate the precarious foreign admixtures and leave the fountains of faith pure and clear, brings the truest healing to the moral and spiritual life of men.

One who is pledged to hold a compacted scheme of belief as divine, can never recognize it as growing or declining with the changing seasons of our nature, at one time the creation, at another the victim of human reason. He is obliged, therefore, to ignore its history, however indisputable it may be; to treat as an image fallen from heaven some idol of doctrine, which, if you are familiar with its first age, you may see moulded under the pressure of the time; and to insist that it still stands as adamant, though in the dry, intellectual air, all its tenacity is gone, and observers wonder when the clay is to crumble into dust. Even within the memory of our own generation, how many are the determinate points of change which it would be simply stupid not to register as past events in the history of opinion! What has become of the date which stood in our school-tables, "Creation of the World, B. C. 4004"? And what of the next, "The Universal Deluge, B. C. 2348"? Into