playing of her children with the other children in the neighborhood. It is a great mistake to let a child grow up and think he is always right and his playmates always wrong in the many petty difficulties of early childhood. In many cases the foundation is thus laid for lifelong selfishness, through undue sympathy with the child in these minor misunderstandings associated with the neighborhood squabbles.

Both parents and teachers should aim at making the children brave, developing self reliance, raising and training the children to expect a reasonable amount of hardship, rebuff and misunderstanding—even occasional defeat—and to take it gracefully, manfully and so far as possible, cheerfully. In other words, we must, for the sake of the character development, train the little folks how to become brave and cheerful losers.

We must not fail to recognize all the agencies and phases of experience which are connected with the up-building of moral resistance and the development of a strong and resistive character. These influences are not all centered directly in either the schoolroom or the home. There is the street with its influences and the ever-present 'gang," not to mention the other organizations of childhood which are springing into existence, such as the Boy Scouts, etc. We have often thought that the influence of the school grounds and athletic fields and the experiences on the way to and from school sometimes share equally with the influence of the teacher in the school and the parents in the home, as regards final weight and influence in the development of character.

In the case of children, as in that of adults, we should discriminate between wholesome, helpful play, and that which is destructive of the better qualities. It is a healthful sign of the times that university presidents are taking a hand in eliminating whatever is brutalizing in the sports of college life.

28. The Call of the Wild. Any child old enough to walk

four miles is old enough to have frequent tastes of Robinson Crusoeing. A weekly or bi-weekly careful planning and preparation of outfit and food, a walk to suit the capacities of the youngest, an encampment of an hour or two, a meal well-cooked outdoors, the camping-place left in good condition, and the return with trophies for the home collection will be at once a joy and a benefit to the youngsters.

To be sure, all this can be done, more formally with more definite organization by some of the modern substitutes for parents- such as the Boy Scouts. But I do not see why the realization of the value of outdoor life as a means of arousing self-reliance should necessarily be another factor for the alienation of the child from his family. Bearing these things in mind, consider what you would answer to a little boy of eight or nine who says, wistfully, "Oh, I wish we lived where Indians are! I wish I was an Indian!" As a modern parent you dare not practice the negligent offhand methods of the parents of two generations ago, who said briskly, "What nonsense, Jimmy! If I hear any more such talk, I'll know how to make you stop it! Go and split your kindlings this minute!" You remember that such parents were always cut to the heart when the most energetic of their sons ran away from home to lead a roaming life. But, on the other hand, you say to yourself with the humorous despair which is a frequent mood with modern parents: "Good gracious, we can't be expected to move out to an Indian reservation and live in a wigwam! If there were no other reasons, before we got there, Jimmy would have forgotten his Indians and want to be a sailor." Any spot that has the sky overhead and the earth beneath is a happy hunting-ground where parents can successfully lead their children forth into the flight away from modern habits of passivity and possession, toward the age-old impulses to activity and endeavor. And there is no need for elaborate preparation. This very afternoon, armed with a loaf of bread and a pound of Lacon, one can take the children by the hand and walk out of the twentieth century back into the Stone Age. Ten to one, if the ground is at all workable they will dig a cave. The man who said that no adult ever amounted to anything who had not in childhood played in a hole-in-the-ground, exaggerated but not much.- Fisher.

29. Self-Reliance in Early Childhood. In the last generation children had an opportunity early to develop a spirit of self-reliance by the responsibilities that were placed upon their young shoulders in connection with the daily work of

the household - doing chores, running errands, bringing in water and coal, splitting kindling - work about the barn in the winter and in the garden during the summer. All these useful activities on the part of the child were of great value in his moral training and the up-building of his character; but modern civilization, at least in the great cities and the larger towns and villages, is gradually robbing the children of the present generation of these valuable modes of discipline and methods of character development.

The whole trend of our present-day American life tends to rob the boy and the girl of these opportunities for developing individual responsibility and it is going to require a great deal of ingenuity on the part of the parents of this and future generations to find valuable and helpful substitutes for these old-fashioned chores and errands. Likewise, these changes in our mode of living will bring new responsibilities to the school teacher who must needs, perforce, tax his ingenuity in an effort to help the parents solve these new problems in child culture. New substitutes must be found for these old activities on the part of the child, that he may not grow up passively enjoying the blessings which are brought to him by the plumber and the furnace maker. New tasks must be found for him, that he may understand that effort always comes before enjoyment, and that a sowing must precede the reaping.

City life is robbing the child of an opportunity to develop an early feeling of self-reliance. He gets water now by turning on a faucet instead of going to the well. A steam-heated apartment is warmed by turning a valve. The opportunity of splitting kindling, carrying in coal, and building fires, has largely passed; and, as more mothers are leaving home as wage earners or professional women, and as it is impossible to find any servant or caretaker who will be able to instill this spirit of self-reliance into the children, the problem remains to be solved by the united efforts of earnest parents and painstaking teachers.

We must develop a new line of responsibility a new

list of duties for the growing child to attend to in connection with home and school work. The daily toilet must be standardized and the children must be held responsible for its proper performance. From the time children are six years of age they must be taught acceptably to dress themselves, to brush their teeth, and, as soon as possible, to decide what clothes they shall wear. The going-to-bed hours should constitute an opportunity for rigid discipline -the child should be held responsible for being undressed and in bed at the appointed hour.

The child should not be helped at every little thing about the house and neither should he be assisted unduly with his difficulties in the schoolroom. Children should rather be given assistance in learning how to help themselves; this is consistent with the development of a proper spirit of self-reliance. Children are spoiled in this way by having baby talk practised on them when infants and then when they grow up they are helped into chairs instead of being taught to climb up by means of a stool.

If children were left alone more in the face of the problems of early childhood—if they were given but a minimum of assistance - it would lead to the development of more ingenuity, the acquirement of more ability for selfhelp, and the promotion of that spirit of courage and confidence which will be so necessary to these little folks, if they ever achieve success and usefulness in later years. There is no surer way of developing the habit of self-help than by training the children, when young, in the performance of regular and increasingly difficult tasks which will lead to their later enjoyment of the humdrum tasks of the work-a-day world for most people like to do what they know how to do well.

30. Early Development of Responsibility. Responsibility is the watchword the keynote of the best thought in modern educational training. Teaching the pupil how gracefully and acceptably to bear responsibility is the chief factor in character development. The real purpose of our

school training is to acquaint the child with the highest meaning of the term "making good"; or, as sometimes expressed in slang, "to deliver the goods." The purpose of all our training is to develop in the pupil a sense of personal reliability to stimulate the child's ambition to reach a worthy goal and to accomplish his life-purpose.

Children are thoroughly human and if the sense of responsibility is not early developed as a part of their character, they are liable to develop an alarming inertia, to degenerate into an alarming state of moral flabbiness. They are apt to acquire a passive mental attitude instead of developing that active, aggressive and masterful state of mind which we so much like to see in a young boy or girl.

If the children are at first backward and bungling in the performance of their little duties about the home, or if they are inapt or even exasperating in their school work - don't help them too much let them plow through it, let them fight it out. All this effort on their part is developing responsibility, and that is the chief purpose of both our home training and our school discipline.

Children must be taught how to use tools to help in overcoming their difficulties; how acceptably to relate themselves to the common situations to be met in life. Children should be taught how to take care of themselves when traveling. They should early be given an experience in engaging and selecting a room at a hotel. They should be taught how to purchase their tickets and check their baggage. As soon as possible they should be taught how to select and buy their own clothing, in the case of girls, how to make much of their clothing; and even in the case of boys, how to mend slight tears and sew on buttons.

Children should be early given opportunities to earn small sums of money · - should be taught how to save it. They should also be counselled in the proper spending of a part of their earnings. The ability to spend wisely is just as important a moral asset as the ability to earn money and the willingness to save a portion of it.