Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/403

Rh thought well for each child to feel a breath from the mountains above and beyond—a breath whose coolness and fragrance he might feel without analysis or comprehension of its qualities. To have felt was enough. So we paid no attention to ordinary poems and tales for little children, but introduced the children at once to Longfellow and Emerson, Wordsworth and Scott, Milton and Shakespeare.

There was regular study of history for each year. Copies of early and late maps of Boston were given to each child; the older one was drawn on transparent paper, so as to be laid over the later one and show directly the changes and extensions into river and harbor. Colored crayon maps and pictures were used to illustrate the historical narrative. These narratives were drawn mostly from local events—as the settlement of Boston, with certain old Boston worthies as centers, about whom incidents were grouped; the beginning of the Revolutionary War with a visit to the Washington elm at Cambridge; some incidents of slavery and the civil war connected with Garrison. Extracts from diaries, letters, etc., were printed on leaflets and read by the children, who drew their own inferences. These readings from original sources were mostly confined to the third and fourth classes, as the language used was too difficult for children of the first two years. Sometimes gratifying volunteer work was done; as an instance, a boy of eight learned the whole of "Paul Revere's Ride," and recited it, standing at the blackboard and tracing on a colored map of Boston and its surrounding townships the route taken by the rider. This work in history was done by Miss Nina Moore—Mrs. F. B. Tiffany—who developed it with such skill as to fascinate the children, and to lead to her publications on these topics. (See articles in Common-school Education for September, October, November, and December, 1888; and the books Pilgrims and Puritans and From Colony to Commonwealth.)

The industrial part of the experiment was started at the beginning of the third year. Each child was provided with a bench and ten tools—ruler, try-square, scratch-awl, saw, vise, plane, chisel, brad-awl, hammer, nail-set. The children of the two younger classes made a box with the cover hinged on with strips of leather; those of the two older, a case with shelves fitting into grooves. The work was divided into steps; each was mastered before the next was tried. All the children began with the use of the ruler in measurements to an eighth of an inch. The try-square came next. As soon as a true line was drawn, the saw was used to divide the board. After the first day no two children were exactly together, each one's position depending on his own results. The third step—the cross-cut saw—detained most of the children several weeks; a true cut with its face at right angles to each