Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/65

Rh I believe lessons like the one recorded are unusual. The points which seem to deserve emphasis are—the freedom and sincerity of the pupils, their entire lack of antagonism to such discussion, their clear perception of the facts in the case and of the relations of cause and effect, their acknowledgment of their duty and their resolve to do it. "While there was reference to the conduct of Ward and Frank, the discussion mainly related to their own duties and responsibilities.

Being acquainted with the average youth of the age of these pupils, I saw that the conversation I had heard was the latest of many. The freedom, the seriousness, the consideration for others, and the final decision to help, indicated that this class had passed beyond the primary grade in morals.

Another thing was impressive: These pupils were helped to a correct emotion regarding duty, but the matter did not end in emotion; they were immediately and purposely so circumstanced as to have continual opportunity to decide in accord with their ideals of right or to decide against it. Further, it was evidently Mr. Norton's plan to show the pupil his own good purpose whenever he seriously failed to execute it, and to inspire him again with hope and decision.

Is not this class in the practice department of the Oswego Normal School getting moral training, not simply moral instruction? Might we not indulge in cheering visions of the citizens our schools might rear were all our children getting similar training? Give us a century of such work in our schools, and such an article as that on Education and Crime, in the Monthly. would be a curiosity

To-day, November 21st, nearly a month after the preceding was written, the practice teacher in charge of the class before considered reports that Frank is daily improving, but that Ward is still an annoying lad. "But," said she, "a glorious thing happened to-day. The pupils were hard at work, with the exception of Ward, who was very troublesome, when Frank gave him a stern rebuke and then returned to his lesson. So you see Frank is growing in self-control and in desire to help in our little community."

the old silver mines of Pribram, in Bohemia, there are several vertical shafts exceeding 900 metres in depth. The shaft Saint Prokop is 909 metres; Saint Anne, 942 metres; Francis Joseph, 992 metres; Saint Adelbert, 1,099 metres; and Holy Virgin, 1,116 metres deep. Subterranean observatories have been established in the thirty-second stories of the two deepest shafts, for the notation of variations of temperature and magnetic deviations. The rocks of central Bohemia belong to the Silurian system, and these two shafts are certainly the deepest vertical shafts in hard rock in existence. Besides silver and other precious metals, more than eighty species of minerals, some of them very rare, have been found here. This makes Pribram one of the most remarkable mineralogical locations on the globe.