tion, and, needless to say, an ardent patriot as well, winced at the boy's barbaric joyousness, but very wisely used no reproof except that which was delicately conveyed by her voice. as she re-arranged his sentences for him.

"The 'glorious' part of the affair is your half holiday, is it

not?"

"Yes'm."

"Of course my boy realizes that the mayor's death is a serious matter to the city?"

"Yes'm."

"And a tragically sad matter to his own family?" "Yes'm."

The polite vagueness in the lad's tone warned his mother that he was finding it difficult to attach any human, personal attributes to the abstract term "mayor," so she slightly changed the drift of her questions.

"Why, do you suppose, does the death of the mayor cause the closing of the schools?"

"Well, I dunno exactly. It takes a big man to do it. A high-up man, I mean. Like Washington. Or Lincoln. But he has to be dead."

A little more questioning brought out the statement that not at all by their lives but simply and solely by their obliging deaths did heroes confer blessings upon young America. In the course of the conversation, one or two other interesting points were brought up. For instance,

"Which is the greater day to you, this one, or Washington's birthday?"

"Washington's birthday, of course."

"Why?"

"Because we have a whole holiday then, and have only a half a one to-day."

"Is not the Fourth of July the best day of all?"

"You bet.-I mean, yes'm."

"And why?"

"Because we make all the noise we want to, all day long, and nobody scolds us for it."

Dismissing the child, the mother found herself face to face with a grave situation of which she had never before

taken cognizance, and that is the utter insufficiency of hometraining accorded to young patriots. Most parents seem to take it for granted that as children have bodies, and internal organs and brains, so they must have the inevitable accompaniments of hunger and pains and patriotism. It is all very beautiful to say that children imbibe love of country from the sheer freedom of the air they breathe, but it is not in the least true. Why is it not as rational to think that children breathe in other virtues, gratuitously, such as love of truth, hatred of bullying, courtesy to each other? Even the most conscientious parent, who strives to make invulnerable every least.point in her child's moral armor, will either shirk entirely the question of patriotic training or leave it to the already overburdened school teacher.

Of course, the public schools are supposed to handle this

hours daily in lecturing their young charges upon the vital subject of "How to be Happy though Married." It is a positive fact that many primary schools find themselves so bogged up in ethics, as it were, that they have very little time for instruction in the material branches of reading, writing and figuring. It is not strange that the schools do but inconsequential, surface work where they have to deal with such extraordinary alien topics of instruction. There is a primary school damsel of some six summers who every month brings home a report card whereon she is marked "Excellent" (or 100%) in a weird, study, broadly entitled "Morals and Manners." Now, in private life, this particular maiden has execrable manners and is quite as immoral

as she knows how, but being blessed with a good memory and having a captivating if hypocritical suavity of address. for the taking in of strangers and school teachers, she is enabled monthly to obtain full credits in the fancy items. of the curriculum. Such patriotism as the overworked teacher has time to impart must necessarily be of the same superficial order. Far from criticising them, sympathizing with them utterly, we can nevertheless see that teachers adopt every method best calculated to make children, boys especially, abhor the very names of patriots, whether living or dead. One method of patriotic instruction. is to read a class a brief biographical sketch and then have the pupils re-write it in their own words. Now when a boy has broken his back, emptied his brain, cramped his fingers, inked his eyebrows, smeared his paper, lost his recess and generally wrecked his happiness in an attempt to write a composition upon a hero of whom he has a most insufficient knowledge, that hero is ever after ranked among the cutthroats and torturers of that boy's unforgiving memory. If the teacher is merciful she allows the children to reproduce the sketch orally; and by that means is one method of soulflagellation exchanged for another, for the ordinary bashful lad stands and wriggles and blushes and pales and stammers and stutters and marks every titter from his companions and gets through some sort of a biographical sketch with no other desire but to wind up with punching the head of the titterer, and of the teacher, and of George Washington too, if he could get hold of him. There is worse yet. What capital punishment is to the criminal offender, so is dramatic recitation to a school boy; and it seems to be an established notion in some schools that there is no course more calculated to instill patriotism into an urchin than by hounding him to a platform, impaling him upon the jeering glances of his mates, and by grinding out of him a desperate command to "tear the tattered ensign down, long has it waved on high?" Theodore Roosevelt, and if he believed as much in the strenuous life when a boy as a man, he must have been quite a handful for his teachers,-confesses to have been fairly

bereft of his senses every time that he was set to declaim before his school-fellows. There is told of him this story.

He was once under compulsion at a school-exhibition to recite the patriotic selection of Marco Bozzaris. He became so exceedingly agonized and confused, that at the lines"The Turk lay dreaming of the hour,

When Greece, her knees in suppliance bent,
Should tremble at his power,"

he completely lost his memory and could only gasp at miserable intervals-"when Greece, her knees"-"Greece, her knees and collapsed utterly when a rural but encouraging voice in the audience vociferated, "Grease her knees once more, sonny, and mebbe she'll start." Surely the patriotism that is inculcated through the instrumentality of heart failure is bound to be of a very spasmodic quality.

There is in the United States a bright young man sane on every subject except the Declaration of Independence. When he sees that piece of literature, he has no other impulse but to rend it page by page and jump upon the fragments,—and all because he was forced to learn it, twentyfive lines at a time, after school, as a punishment for whispering. As he was a persistent whisperer, he is letter perfect in the Declaration, and loathes it accordingly. Such a punishment cannot be too strongly condemned. It is on a par with a punishment devised by a western ranch woman,she used nightly to put her baby girl out of doors, in sight of some howling coyotes, as a means of inclining the youngster to say her evening prayers.

Repeating the statement that the method of teaching patriotism prevailing in the public schools of to-day is not calculated to produce the highest results, repeating also that the teacher is to be wholly commiserated and not blamed, it is urged in these remarks that the home is the province where such instruction may be most successfully carried on. A few words spoken at prayer time by the mother to the child upon the sacred claims of his country,- -a few words earnestly uttered, in moods of good-comradeship, by the father to the son upon the noble duties of citizenship,-and it would not be long before patriotism would be lifted above.

the clap-trap of public oratory, and the flag would change from a gaudy decoration (often a mere advertisement) into a symbol of all that was unspeakably holy.

All honor to them, our dear boys need no teaching to tell them when to die for their land,-they are away at the first call; but when they learn that it is as noble and nobler to live daily in their country's service, surely there will be no wars to call them to foreign graves!

Perhaps, if patriotism were inculcated tenderly at the home fireside instead of being martyred upon a school platform, and then dropped entirely out of family conversations as if it were something,-as Silas Wegg puts it,-"not to be mentioned before ladies," we might number among our citizens more patriots and fewer politicians, we might almost aspire to the hopes of a ballot that would really express the will of the people and not the strength of the "mighty."

A DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION DEDICATION IN SOUTH DAKOTA.

By Mrs. Andrew J Kellar.

THE twenty-eighth of August, 1900, will be marked with a white stone in the state records of our noble order. On that day an impressive ceremony was held in wind cave, South Dakota, the great natural cave, twelve miles from Hot Springs. A beautiful chamber in that vast underground temple was dedicated to the Daughters of the American Revolution. The state regent, with a party of Daughters and Sons from this and distant states, was present and conducted the ceremonies. The baptismal fluid was pure mineral water from Hot Springs. "The Rescue," a patriotic poem written by Philip Kellar, for a Daughter of the American Revolution luncheon last year, and afterwards published in the AMERICAN MONTHLY MAGAZINE, was recited;