and feeds him that he may exercise him still more. The grand idea is of culture, expansion, joy and power. So of teaching. The teacher who leans on the text-book is not free enough. It is like the amateur doctor, who goes to the bedside with book in hand and attempts to determine whether the patient has the typhoid fever or is suffering from a sprained ankle. He is befogged by details. The physician knows the body as a watchmaker does a watch. The teacher should know the mechanism of the mind, and use instruction as a lever to start it into activity. The text-book kills both teacher and scholar, if much used. A few years, and it will be hard to find one who walks up and down with his eyes alternating between question and answer. The teacher will emerge from the unprepared state in which he is at present.-N. Y. School Journal. TRUANCY. TRU RUANCY is probably the worst evil of school life, involving as it does the acting of a lie, and thus reacting upon the moral character of the child. Any one will admit that the child who will act a lie is no better than he who tells one. How to overcome this evil of truancy, is one of the great problems of all large schools. It is a fact that many parents wink at the delinquencies of their children in this respect. Truancy is promoted in this way: Many parents are exceedingly restive under the just requirements of the school in the matter of excuses for absence. When teachers, in the proper discharge of their duties, seek for some reason. able excuse for the pupil's absence, they are virtually (if not in so many words) told by the parent, it is none of their business. Right thinking people are desirous that their children be held to a strict accountability; but parents in their hurry dislike to take time for writing excuses, and frequently express their impatience in terms not so complimentary to the teacher. Pupils soon learn how much annoyance the writing of excuses is, and it is an easy way out of the difficulty to write them themselves. Thus many a boy has taken his first lesson in forgery. Having learned how easy it is to pass muster in the way of excuses, it is but a step to truancy, as the truancy can be so easily covered by a forged excuse. If some parents were aware how much deception is practiced by their children, as soon as they are able to write, they would be greatly alarmed. Official Organ for the Southern Educational Association. T. C. H. VANCE, Lexington, Ky., Editors. Eclectic Teacher Company, Publishers, Lexington. A Monthly Magazine conducted by leading The OFFICIAL ORGAN for State Departments Teachers of the Southwestern States. of Public Instruction. TERMS-One copy one year, in advance, postage paid, $1; specimen numbers ten cents; in clubs of one hundred, seventy-five cents. Remittances-Single subscriptions may be sent at our risk; in remitting sums greater than $1 obtain checks or postal order, or enclose in registered letter. Ten numbers constitute a volume, a year. When ordering a change of your address do not fail to give the old as well as the new postoffice. Should you fail to get any number of the ECLECTIC TEACHER, drop us a postal card to that effect and another will be mailed to your address. MERRY Christmas! Happy New Year! We wish our readers a merry and happy holiday-a rest from physical labor and mental anxiety-a jolly, good time for at least one short week. LEXINGTON is talking of erecting another school building to relieve the present overcrowded rooms. We say amen; but in the name of common sense tear down the three old shanties now in use and put up two instead of four. What the city absolutely needs is a thoroughly graded school, which is impossible, as the work is now operated. Now is the time to renew your subscription. Remember that the ECLECTIC TEACHER is discontinued at the expiration of the time for which payment has been made. LET us hear from our contemporaries in the south as to the propriety of a meeting of the Southern Educational Association at the time and place of the meeting of the National Educational Association. The views of its president, secretary and executive committee would gladly be published in the ECLECTIC TEACHER. cover. ATTENTION is called to our premium list on the second page of the With very little effort any person may secure the gent's Waltham, silver watch, or the lady's gold watch. The watches are just what they are represented. Of the gold watch, a lady writes: "It is a perfect gem. I am glad that I exerted myself a little in order to get it." hears HON. THOMAS W. BICKNELL, the educational journalist, will accept our thanks for a copy of a life-size portrait of Dr. Barnas,, the late agent of the Peabody Fund. It is the work of the celebrated Baker, and worthy a position on any wall, but especially of the study. It is sold for $1 50, and offered as a premium for one new subscriber to the Journal of Education. HOPKINSVILLE will complete her graded school building by the middle of January, in time to conduct a session of five months during the present school year. A quarrel is already on hand as to whether home or foreign teachers shall be employed. Our advice is freely given and short, viz: Secure the services of thoroughly competent teachers, whether residents of Hopkinsville or not. WE should be pleased to have our exchanges throughout the state publish the fact that even a half dozen persons from each county, male or female, may enter the normal department of the State College free of tuition, and that good boarding may be had from $2 to $3 50 a week. Let us have each of the one hundred and seventeen counties represented the present school year. Let no one be deterred from com ing to Lexington on account of his pecuniary circumstances. We assure all persons that the kindest attention will be endered them whether of poor or rich parents. AMONG the new educational journals seeking public favor are Our School, of Charleston, Mo., chuck full of meritorious matter, and Hamilton College Monthly, of Lexington, Ky., edited by the young ladies of the college, just such a paper as would be expected from the combined intellect of persons representing several states. May they never find a lower standard than the initial numbers and thus merit an extensive circulation. The first number of Different Kinds of People, published by the Classical and Business College, North Middletown, Ky., is replete with good things, chief among which is an abstract of the first lecture in their lecture course, by Elder John S. Sweeny. THE commercial department of the State College has but little in common with the so-called commercial college. It is simply a course of study, provided by those who for want of time and means cannot remain long enough to complete a collegiate education. The basis of the practical feature of the course is commercial law, and doubtless the graduates in this course of instruction will possess a better knowledge of law than many who are now practicing that profession. There are no hot-house methods of making business men, yet there are tens of thousands of young men who are graduates (?) in a superficial, mechanical course of "opening and closing books," without even an ordinary knowledge of the common branches. THE state of Michigan is mentioned with pride by all persons where reference is made to her educational facilities, and why? Simply because she provides the money necessary to support her schools liberally. In his recent report the regent of Michigan University made the following estimate of expenses for the year ending September last, viz: For salaries, $111,000; other expenses, $50,000, and yet the state of Kentucky, with all her natural as well as acquired wealth, and out of debt, is trying to sustain a college by a direct taxation of “one-half cert on each one hundred dollars worth of taxable property," thus realizing less than twenty thousand dollars a year. It should be remembered also that even this small sum is the result of an act of the last session of the Jegislature, an act barely having the constitutional majority in either house. The state must at a very early day do one or two things— make adequate provision for sustaining her public schools and the State College, or proclaim herself the hindmost of the southern states in affording educational facilities. Be Or the five thousand public school teachers of the state fewer than two hundred have received normal instruction from any source, and it is highly probable that the matriculates in the normal department of the State College will not number fifty for the current year. Something is wrong. The secret is simply this: There are but few persons other than mere boys and girls doing the teaching of this state. cause of farcical examinations, or we would better say no examinations, persons without even a smattering of knowledge of what they are expected to teach are duly certificated. Something must be done, and that speedily, if we would make any progress toward the liberal education of our half million of children of school age. We elect a legislature next summer, and it shall be the chief part of our work in the meantime to urge the selection of those, only, who are pronounced friends of the public free schools-such friends as are willing to open the pockets of the people and use their money for the prevention of crime and the increase of illiteracy. CAPTAIN EAD'S SHIP RAILWAY.-The Scientific American recently contained two full page illustrations of captain Eads's proposed railway for, transporting ships with their cargo across continents. Captain Eads claims by his plan to be able to take loaded ships of the largest tonnage from one ocean to the other across the Isthmus of Panama, as readily as can be done by a canal after the Lessep plan, and at a much less cost for engineering construction. The project is certainly bold and ingenious, and the projector anticipates no serious difficulties in carrying forward his enterprise. The engravings referred to in the Scientific American show the proposed construction of not only the railroad, but the appliances for transferring the ships from the water to the rail. While referring to this paper we may as well add that it is a most admirable paper for the teacher. During the year more than |