A. A district may be altered in two ways; by adding to its territory or taking from it. And in either case the law provides that such alteration shall be made by the Superintendents of such adjoining towns.

Q. Will an alteration affect the apportionment if made before the Annual Report, but taking effect afterward?

A. That will depend upon the Report. If the Report included the part set off, the apportionment must be divided in a proper proportion; but if the Report did not so include it, the public money would not be divided. In all such cases the decision should be treated as null and void until the time when it goes into effect. This will avoid any confusion.

OFFICERS.

Q. Can a Town Superintendent be removed by the State Superintendent?

A. We know of no authority for removing a Town Officer by the State Superintendent. The statutes declare a vacancy in certain cases, for instance, during absence or inability. Nor is there any thing in the law distinctly authorizing the Board to remove an officer for neglect of duty, but the decision of the State Superintendent, following the spirit of the law, is a sufficient guide as to the course of an appeal in such cases.

Q. Can the district vote to dismiss a qualified teacher, and compel the

Board so to do?

A. The law expressly guards against any such proceeding. If a teacher has been regularly hired, he can not be dismissed by the district, nor by the Board, except he be paid wages for the full time for which he was hired. If the Board select a poor teacher, the only way the district can dismiss him, is by having his certificate annulled after proper re-examination. Districts should, therefore, be extremely careful to select competent and impartial officers.

Q. If complaints are made against a teacher, can the Town Superintendent notice them or not as he sees fit?

A. If complaints are properly lodged, the Town Superintendent must give a copy of the charges, and appoint a time and place for giving them a hearing, and act according to his best judgment in the premises.

Q. Can the Town Superintendent teach school in his town, provided he has a certificate from his predecessor?

A. The Town Superintendent can not qualify himself, but there is no legal objection to his teaching so long as his certificate from his predecessor holds good, but no longer. Still, it is never advisable, as he is chosen to be the guardian and overseer of the schools in the town. Any exclusive engagement, in any one school will, of course, so occupy his time as to seriously interfere with a proper visitation and inspection of other

schools, besides being liable to beget a feeling of jealousy, and complaints of unfairness. There may be cases where it may seem absolutely necessary for the Town Superintendent to teach, but unless it is under a pressing necessity, the precedent should not be established.

Q. If the decision of the Town Superintendent is plainly illegal, is it binding if not appealed from?

4

A. Certainly. It is not to be presumed that the Town Superintendent would make a decision, knowingly, which is illegal, and the law holds all his decisions legal until reversed by the State Superintendent. The remedy of appeal is held to be sufficient against any injustice in the decision of a Town Superintendent, or in the action of a district meeting. Q. Can the Town Treasurer use the School Tax to pay the State Tax? A. He can not. Upon settlement the money paid to the Town Superintendent and the delinquent list must precisely balance the Assessment Roll. There is no reason why the School Tax should be thus infringed upon. The statute makes it the duty of the Town Treasurer to pay over the full amount of the school money as soon as collected.

Q. In case a district or a Town Officer refuses to carry out a decision of the State Superintendent, what course must be taken to enforce it?

A. The writ of Mandamus. An action can not be brought in court. If the question is upon the payment of money, a suit can not be brought to recover it, upon the decision of the State Superintendent, but the proper remedy is to proceed by mandamus. The law by making the decisions of the State Superintendent "final and conclusive," confers upon that officer sole jurisdiction, and no appeal lies from his decisions to any court of law.

Q. Can a District Treasurer refuse to pay a regularly drawn order on the Treasury?

A. Not if there is money in the treasury? He can not go behind a regular order to test its legality or propriety. If there is any error, the order is a sufficient voucher for him.

Q. In case, by a mistake in the Report, a district draws more money than it is entitled to, what shall be done with it?

A. Under such circumstances, when the mistake was unintentional, it is advisable for the Town Superintendent to remit the overplus to the State Treasurer, stating the reasons, to be added to the principal of the School Fund. If the false return was wilfully made, it will be the duty of the Town Superintendent to enforce section 92 of the School Law.

Compiled from the records of the Department, by

S. H. CARPENTER,

Assistant State Supt. of Public Instruction.

WEBSTER'S DICTIONARIES.

THE Legislature has authorized the purchase of 600 copies of Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, for completing the supply to the deficient districts of the State. Over 400 applications are already on file. Let the Town Superintendents make application without delay for such districts in their respective towns as have not been already supplied, making affidavit to the same. No applications should be made for a joint district, unless the school-house is located in the town of the Town Superintendent applying for the same.

Particular directions should be given how to forward the dictionaries applied for-they can not, as some imagine, be sent by mail; and the cost of conveyance must be paid by the towne entitled to them.

LYMAN C. DRAPER,

Supt. of Pub. Instruction.

TO TOWN SUPERINTENDENTS.

Section 76, chapter 23 of the Revised Statutes, which permits Town Superintendents, in their discretion, to set apart a sum, not exceeding ten per cent. of the gross amount of the school money apportioned to the several school districts in their respective towns, has been repealed by the passage of the new Town School Library Law. This new law, from the nature of the case, can not go into effect until next year.

S. H. CARPENTER, Assistant State Superintendent.

Dr. Charles Mackay, the song-writer, and Colonel Hiram Fuller, formerly editor of the Evening Mirror, in New York, are about to establish an Anglo-American newspaper in London. One issue will inform the English people of what is happening in America, and the other will apprise Americans of what is going on in England.

Home Department.

ROMANCE.

BY MRS. H. B. STOWE.

THERE is no word in the English language more unceremoniously and indefinitely kicked and cuffed about, by what are called sensible people, than the word romance. When Mr Smith or Mr. Stubbs has brought every wheel of life into such range and order that it is one steady, daily grind-when they themselves have come into the habits and attitudes of the patient donkey, who steps round and round the endlessly turning wheel of some machinery, then they fancy that they have gotten "the victory that overcometh the world."

All but this dead grind, and the dollars that come through the mill, is by them thrown into one waste "catch-all,” and labelled romance. Perhaps there was a time in Mr. Smith's youth-he remembers now-when he read poetry, when his cheek was wet with strange tears, when a little song, ground out by an organ-grinder in the street, had power to set his heart beating and bring a mist before his eyes. Ah! in those days he had a vision!-a pair of soft eyes stirred him strangely; a little weak hand was laid on his manhood, and it shook and trembled; and then came all the humility, the aspiration, the fear, the hope, the high desire, the troubling of the waters by the descending angel of love, and a little more and Mr. Smith might have become a man, instead of a banker! He thinks of it now, sometimes, as he looks across the fire-place after dinner and sees Mrs. Smith asleep, innocently shaking the bouquet of pink bows and Brussels lace that waves over her placid red countenance.

Mrs. Smith wasn't his first love, nor, indeed, any love at all; but they agree reasonably well. And as for poor Nellie-well, she is dead and buried-all that was stuff and romance. Mrs. Smith's money set him up in business, and Mrs. Smith is a capital manager, and he thanks God that he isn't romantic, and tells Smith Junior not to read poetry or novels, and to stick to realities.

"This is the victory that overcometh the world"-to earn to be fat

and tranquil, to have warm fires and good dinners, to hang your hat on the same peg at the same hour every day, to sleep soundly all night, and never to trouble your head with a thought or imagining beyond.

But there are many people besides Mr. Smith who have gained this victory-who have strangled their higher nature and buried it, and built over its grave the structure of their life, the better to keep it down.

The fascinating Mrs. T., whose life is a whirl between ball and opera, point-lace, diamonds, and schemings of admiration for herself, and of establishments for her daughters-there was a time, if you will believe me, when that proud, worldly woman was so bumbled under the touch of some mighty power, that she actually thought herself capable of being a poor man's wite. She thought she could live in a little, mean house, on no-matter-what-street, with one servant, and make her own bonnets and mend her own clothes, and sweep the house Mondays, while Betty washed, all for what? All because she thought there was a man so noble, so true, so good, so high-minded, that to live with him in poverty, to be guided by him in adversity, to lean on him in every rough place of life, was a something nobler, better, purer, more satisfactory than French laces, opera-boxes, and even Madame Roget's best gown.

Unfortunately, this was all romance-there was no such man. There was, indeed, a person of very common, self-interested aims and worldly nature, whom she had credited at sight with an unlimited draft on all her better nature; and when the hour of discovery came, she awoke from her dreams with a start and a laugh, and ever since has despised aspiration, and been busy with the realities of life, and feeds poor little Mary Jane, who sits by her in the opera-box there, with all the fruit which she has picked from the bitter tree of knowledge. There is no end to the epigrams and witticisms which she can throw out, this elegant Mrs. T., on people who marry for love, lead prosy, worky lives, and put on their best cap with pink ribbons for Sunday. "Mary Jane shall never make a fool of herself;" but, even as she speaks, poor Mary Jane's heart is dying within her at the vanishing of a pair of whiskers from an opposite boxwhich whiskers the poor little fool has credited with a resume drawn from her own imaginings of what is grandest and most heroic, most worshipful in man. By-and-by, when Mrs. T. finds the glamour has fallen on her daughter, she wonders; she has "tried to keep novels out of the girl's way--where did she get these notions?"

All prosaic, and all bitter, disenchanted people talk as if poets and novelists made romance. They do-just as much as craters make volcanoes -no more. What is romance? whence comes it? Plato spoke to the subject wisely, in his quaint way, some two thousand years ago, when he said, “Man's soul, in a former state, was winged and soared among the