amusements, and in his feeling. We should never ask or want him to “put away childish things” at this age, for these childish things are a proof of his normality and good health. His buoyant life and good health may prove disastrous to the furniture in his home, but far better marred furniture than marred childhood. If, at this age, he should become as quiet and sedate as his father, his parents and teacher would have cause for alarm. It is the high privilege of the parent and the teacher to direct his activities, but not to abridge or interdict them. If the teacher would reduce him to inaction and silence, she may well reflect that if he were an imbecile he would be quiet. He will not pass this way again; and if he is ever to have the sort of life that is in harmony with his age, he must have it now.

Childhood curtailed.—He has a right, also, to the full measure of childhood. This period is relatively short, and any curtailment does violence to his physiological and psychological nature. All the years of his childhood are necessary for a proper balancing of his physical and mental powers, that they may do their appointed work in after years. Entire volumes have been devoted to this subject, but, in spite of these volumes, some mothers still try to hurry their daughters into the duties and responsibilities of adult life. One such mother went to the high school to get the books of her fifteen-year-old daughter and, upon being asked why the daughter was leaving school, replied, “Oh, she’s keeping company now.” That daughter will never be the hardy plant in civilization that she ought to be, because she was reared in a hothouse atmosphere. That mother had no right to cripple the life of her child by thwarting nature’s decrees.

Detrimental effects.—The pity of it all is that the child is at the mercy of the parent, or of the teacher, as the case may be. We become so eager to have “old heads on young shoulders” that we begrudge the child the years that are necessary for the shoulders to attain that maturity of strength that is needful for supporting the “old heads.” Then ensues a lack of balance, and, were all children thus denied their right to the full period of youth, we should have a distorted civilization. Dickens inveighs against this curtailment of youth prodigiously, and the marvel is that we have failed to learn the lesson from his pages. We need not have recourse to Victor Hugo to know the life of little Cosette, for we can see her prototype by merely looking about us.

The child’s right to the best.—As the child has a right to life in its fullness, so he has a right to all the agencies that can promote this type of life. If he meets with an accident he has a right to the best surgical skill that can be secured, and this right we readily concede; and equally he has a right to the best teacher that money will secure. If he has a teacher that is less than the best, the time thus lost can never be restored to him. A lady who had an unskillful teacher in her first year in the high school now avers that he maimed her for life in that particular study. Life is such a delicate affair that it demands expert handling. If we hope to have the child attain his right to be an intelligent coöperating agent in promoting life in society, then no price is too great to pay for the expert teaching which will nurture the sort of life in him that will make him effective.

The child’s native tendencies.—Then, again, the child has a right to the exercise of the native tendencies with which he is endowed. In fact, these tendencies should be the working capital of the teacher, the starting points in her teaching. There was a time when the teacher punished the child who was caught drawing pictures on his slate. Happily that sort of barbarity disappeared, in the main, along with the slate. The vitalized teacher rejoices in the pictures that the child draws and turns this tendency to good account. Through this inclination to draw she finds the real child and so, as the psychologists direct, she begins where the child is and sets about attaching to this native tendency the work in nature study, geography, or history. When she discovers a constructive tendency in the child, she at once uses this in shifting from analytic to synthetic exercises in the school order. If he enjoys making things, he will be glad of an opportunity to make devices, or problems, or maps.

The play instinct.—She makes large use, also, of the play instinct that is one of his native tendencies. This instinct is constantly reaching out for objects of play. The teacher is quick to note the child’s quest for objects and deftly substitutes some phase of school work for marbles, balls, or dolls, and his playing proceeds apace without abatement of zest. The vitalized teacher knows how to attach the arithmetic to this play instinct and make it a fascinating game. During the games of arithmetic, geography, history, or spelling, life is at high tide in her school and the work is thorough in consequence. Work is relieved of the onus of drudgery whenever it appears in the guise of a game, and the teacher who has skill in attaching school studies to the play instinct of the child will make her school effective as well as a delight to herself and her pupils. In such a plan there is neither place nor occasion for coercion.

Self-expression.—Another right of the child is the right to express himself. The desire for self-expression is fundamental in the human mind, as the study of archæology abundantly proves. Since this is true, every school should be a school of expression if the nature of the child is to have full recognition. Without expression there is no impression, and without impression there is no education that has real value. The more and better expression in the school, therefore, the more and better the education in that school. In the vitalized school we shall find freedom of expression, and the absence of unreasoning repression. The child expresses himself by means of his hands, his feet, his face, his entire body, and his organs of speech, and his expression through either of these means gives the teacher a knowledge of what to do. These expressions may not be what the teacher would wish, but the expression necessarily precedes intelligent teaching.

Imagination.—These expressions may reveal a vivid imagination, but they are no less valuable as indices of the child’s nature on that account. It is the very refinement of cruelty to try to interdict or stifle the child’s imagination. But for the imagination of people in the past we should not have the rich treasures of mythology that so delight us all. Every child with imagination is constructing a mythology of his own, and from the gossamer threads of fancy is weaving a pattern of life that no parent or teacher should ever wish to forbid or destroy. Day by day, he sees visions and dreams dreams, and so builds for himself a world in which he finds delight and profit. In this world he is king, and only profane hands would dare attempt to dethrone him.

The child’s experiences.—His experiences, whether in the real world, or in this world of fancy, are his capital in the bank of life; and he has every right to invest this capital so as to achieve further increments of life. In this enterprise, the teacher is his counselor and guide, and, in order that she may exercise this function sympathetically and rationally, she must know the nature and extent of his capital. If he knows a bird, he