the stimulus is withdrawn. And all the time there
is comfort to the easy-going average in the consciousness of how many
there are behind them.

The necessity for organization and foresight in detail among large
numbers is also unfavourable to individual development. For children
to find everything prepared for them, to feel no friction in the
working of the machinery, so that all happens as it ought to, without
effort and personal trouble on their part, to be told what to do, and
only have to follow the bells for the ordering of their time--all this
tends to diminish their resourcefulness and their patience with the
unforeseen checks and cross-purposes and mistakes that they will have
to put up with on leaving school. As a matter of fact the more perfect
the school machinery, the smoother its working, the less does it
prepare for the rutty road afterwards, and in this there is some
consolation when school machinery jars from time to time in the
working; if it teaches patience it is not altogether regrettable, and
the little trouble which may arise in the material order is perhaps
more educating than the regularity which has been disturbed.

We are beginning to believe what has never ceased to be said, that
lessons in lesson-books are not the whole of education. The whole system
of teaching in the elementary schools has been thrown off its balance by
too many lesson-books, but it is righting itself again, and some of the
memoranda on teaching, issued by the Board of Education within the last
few years, are quite admirable in their practical suggestions for
promoting a more efficient preparation for life. The Board now insists
on the teaching of handicrafts, training of the senses in observation,
development of knowledge, taste, and skill in various departments which
are useful for life, and for girls especially on things which make the
home. The same thing is wanted in middle-class education, though parents
of the middle-class still look a little askance at household employments
for their daughters. But children of the wealthier and upper classes
take to them as a birthright, with the cordial assent of their parents
and the applause of the doctors. It is for these children, so
well-disposed for a practical education, and able to carry its influence
so far, that we may consider what can be done in school life.

We ourselves who have to do with children must first appreciate the
realities of life before we can communica