GOOD READING.

A glance at the way reading is generally taught in our schools will convince any impartial observer that this subject is made the driest and dreariest of all studies.  In our graded schools, children generally read, on an average, an hour a day during the eight or nine years’ course, at the rate of less than one book a year.  The average child easily learns by heart in a few weeks all there is in the first three books, after that the constant repetitions are in the highest degree monotonous.  There is nothing to attract his attention or stimulate his love for reading.  The selections filling fourth, fifth and sixth readers are too often far above the mental grasp of the pupil, and are also of so fragmentary a nature as to be almost unintelligible to the average student.  Word pronouncing, and that alone, is the only refuge of the teacher.

There can be no excuse on account of the cost, for the money now thrown away, and worse than thrown away, upon useless spelling books and mind-stupefying grammars, would purchase a rich supply of the best reading matter the English language affords for every school in the land.

I have tried this experiment, and to my mind it is no longer an experiment.  I have seen the children of the poorest and most ignorant parents taking from the library works upon history, travels, biography, and the very best fiction, exhibiting in their selection excellent taste, and showing from their manner how much they love such books.  They would no more choose bad reading than they would choose bad food when wholesome is provided for them.  Shameful neglect, I repeat, and not innate depravity, drives our children into by-ways and forbidden paths.  Let no one preach long sermons on the depraved tendencies of the young until he has tried this simple, cheap, and practical way of avoiding an unnecessary evil.—­F.W.  Parker.

* * * * *

The Golden Text Calendar, arranged by A.C.  Morrow, editor of The Illustrator of the International Sunday-school lessons, with designs by Mary A. Lathbury, is specially adapted as a holiday gift.  Beautifully lithographed and printed in nine colors.  It contains the Golden Text for every Sunday, and more than fifteen hundred quotations from the best authors.  The background of the calendar is of sprays of apple blossoms.  To the right of the pad the passing of time is represented by the flight of birds and an angel bearing an hour-glass.  To the left, a young girl, with light flowing hair, stands beneath the branches of a tree, gathering pink and yellow hollyhocks.  The design is worthy of the artist, and the literary selections reflect credit upon the editor.  Price, $1.00.

* * * * *