Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/654

636 order to witness work of this nature at a neighboring manufactory or workshop. Now, he beholds a school which is a workshop in itself; where the boys, instead of having to content themselves with looking on, are permitted to take an active part. He sees whole classes of children interested in arithmetic, algebra, and geometry, and listening to talks upon geographical and historical subjects with evident relish. In his day the allurements of geography were by no means so strong as those of foot-ball; and he never could get himself to look upon mathematics with that ardor of affection which he was wont to bestow on mumble-the-peg.

By what arts, it may be asked, do the teachers at this particular school succeed in suddenly awakening the interest of children in subjects which heretofore have not particularly attracted them? By making them interesting instead of tiresome. How many children will be attracted by the statement that Africa is the division of the world which is the most interesting, and about which the least is known; or that Afrigah, from which its name is supposed to be derived, is said to mean "colony" in the ancient Phœnician, and, having been given by the founders of Carthage to their territory, is supposed to have spread to the whole continent?

But children are ever ready for stories and the relation of exciting adventures, and through this faculty, it has been found, they may be led on from one event to another of African history, from one point to another of African topography, till, finally, what heretofore they may be said to have regarded as an unpalatable dose, is successfully administered in the form of a sugar-coated pill.

Instead of beginning at the commencement of African history, at least at the point where our knowledge begins, and gradually working forward through all the dry details, the contrary course would be pursued at the Workingman's School. The children would be told about Stanley and how he found Livingstone. This would naturally lead to Livingstone, and to why Stanley went in search of him. Then would follow the mission that brought Livingstone to Africa; the Nile, and the various conjectures regarding its source, and the reason of the world's impatience to know it; the Niger, and the interesting story of the finding of its course by Richard Lander, after his master had failed in a similar attempt. Egypt and the Suez Canal would be gradually worked in, as well as the history of the Continent of Africa and its relative position on the earth's surface.

By such a course, it has been found, connected ideas are given of geographical points and historical incidents and eras. The mention of ancient Greece to one so instructed would mean something more than a portion of land included in the most easterly of the three peninsulas in the south of Europe, and which, beginning at latitude 40° north, is bounded by a chain of mountains extending from the Thermaic Gulf on the east, and terminating with the Acroceraunian promontory on