has no distinction of race or sex. A colored lady graduate of the law department was admitted to the bar, and read a paper upon chancery which challenged admiration. Two young men, formerly slave and master, with brotherly feeling study law side by side. A lady is present here who has succeeded in bringing together children of slave-holders, of poor whites and of negroes in her school, the influence of which covers the entire community.

Joseph White, of Mass. There is great cause for congratulation upon the unity of this meeting of representatives of so many states in council. I would solve the problem here discussed by normal schools of high type. We have a law requiring drawing to be taught in every school. It is met with enthusiasm. We wait for teachers. Money is granted for a normal art school to prepare teachers. We hope to educate our own designers. Now, with all our ability, we can hardly design a checked apron. We are beginning a system of technic schools. In Boston there is a magnificent specimen with three or four hundred pupils, resorted to from nearly all parts of the country. Those competent to judge tell me there is no better school of its character on the continent. Another school, nearer to the anvil and hammer, is in Worcester,-endowment $300,000. We have an agricultural college. Government gave us land. We sold the scrip. One-third of the proceeds is paid to the Institute of Technology and two-thirds to this institution. We believe it is the duty of government to develop the power of the nation, when individual enterprise is incompetent to do it. Our system has grown ont of our soil. To build asystem

of education otherwise than out of the soil, brains, thoughts, aspirations, wants of a people, will put down a palace in a place where it will tumble down. I ask no higher honor than to give a cup of cold water to a soul athirst for learning.

President of Association. We have here present a bridge-builder and churchbuilder, just now devoted to that business. His absorption in it is all that has kept him from our meetings. An old teacher, he gained the best part of his education while teaching. I hope we shall hear from

Thos. K. Beecher, of Elmira.

Mr. President:

My fellow citizens of Elmira hardly expect that I shall speak to them this evening. In the few moments in which I occupy the attention of these friends from abroad, I will speak as if my intimate friends and neighbors were not present. To the members of the Convention:

I have not been able, for want of time, to keep the run of the speeches that have come before you. But by the testimonies I have heard I doubt not that the discussions have been exhaustive. It is quite possible that what I am moved to say has been better said already. But I shall be unfaithful to Him whom I serve if, being allowed to speak to leading teachers, I fail to make manifest what I suppose is the leading power of all teachers.

Wherever man works upon his fellow man for good, his power will be found to be the same. As soon as I have developed this thought, I will hold my

peace.

It is our theory at least that we are, in virtue of our manhood, brethren. And being entitled all of us to pray the prayer beginning with the memorable words "Our Father," you perceive the great law of this world is laid aside in our behalf. We are no longer natural brute beasts, biting and devouring one another, but brethren- sons of one Father. The great natural law, the "struggle for existence," the "might makes right," ceases. Every one of us has at least a sentiment, a feeling, that might does not make right, but with might go mighty duties. In the very breath in which we confess that our GOD, because He is the greatest, therefore undergirds the least and spares the evil-in the worship we give that God, we have set up a standard at which we ourselves, as sons of GOD, must aim, that the greater we are, the further down we must reach. We have ceased to be wrestlers. We are behaving ourselves like a great family of brothers.

This is the theory. We like it on Sunday. We are saints when we are preached to, and act like devils the rest of the time. There is not one but sympathizes with the theory.

The blacksmith works on iron. The carpenter works on wood. The manufacturer works on woolen, silk, cotton. Every occupation has its raw material. We educators have as our raw material our younger brethren. The manufactured product, the result, is a son of GOD. We are workers together with GOD. For what? Allow me to say not to secure this or that series of text-books for the profit of the publisher; not to build a school-house the best-looking ever built; not to make a school so silent that you can hear a pin drop, and all the school-board shall say "We never saw so still a school." The silentest school you can find is a sepulchre. A growing school will be noisy. A teacher is an elder brother taking a younger brother and bringing him up to look like his father. Religion consists in you, big brother, taking care of your little brother and thanking GoD you have the heart for it.

What is the great, genuine educational power?

Assuming that you have intellectual qualification; assuming that you are maters of the branches in which you intend to give instruction; you, holding a geography in your hand, what is it you bring to that book? The same thing that I bring when I take the New Testament and speak to my people. What shall the preacher bring to the people? He is to bring a live Testament, incarnated in himself. Every teacher is to be himself the geography, himself the arithmetic-a living, flowing fountain of intelligence, of intellectual, moral and religious stimulation.

Ah, but I am fixing a high standard, you say. It is so. It is a high standard. You have often heard the words, "a teacher's calling is the highest calling." I repeat it, not to round a sentence, but as a strict philosophic truth. Inasmuch as all values are estimated by their ability to satisfy human want, he then who moulds wants is moulding the matrix in which all values are stamped.

If you train muscle, you train a want which is satisfied by efforts in one direction or another. If you train the eye, you make a want which is satisfied by beauty. The teacher has taken as his function to take hold upon human nature and train it or give it just development.

The central power of a teacher is this: He himself incarnates all that he intends to teach. He never can teach higher than himself.

The power that radiates from a true, devoted teacher is the power that finds its best illustration in Him whom we all recognize as a chief prophet, and most us call the Son of God. He, the pattern and type of a successful teacher, illustrates this power, in that, being strong, he behaved himself as weak; being chief, he served others; and people touching Him felt, this man loves me; this prophet has no sinister motive. He is here to lay down His life for me.

Gentlemen, ladies, how many of you produce that impression? You wield a child's heart and a man's heart, when through you he catches sight of GOD. Your chivalrous faculties produce chivalrous faculties. It is manhood developed toward the pattern of the sons of GOD that will satisfy. When a teacher, touched with a divine inspiration, bows himself upon his scholars, he is a worker together with GOD.

Of all this there is one superlative picture in Scripture. It has stayed by me, brother teachers, through five years of teaching (for I have been a teacher and know the tediousness of it). Through times of weariness, and nights some times of thoughtfulness, the same picture hangs in my gallery. I share it with you. It is the widow's son lying dead; the prophet in close rapport with GoD himself; the weeping mother of the dead boy; the prophet alone with the child. And he bowed himself mouth to mouth, hands to hands, person to person, upon the child. He bowed himself once, and twice, and thrice, and the life of the prophet struck through the child, and the child lived. That is the picture of a teacher.

Prof. Joynes, of Va. It has fallen to my lot more than once, since I came into this Association, to be called upon to speak as a southern man. I regret that always. I did not come here as a southern man. I came as a national man [cheers] to a national convention, where I expected to be received in a national spirit. I hoped I should not hear the words "north" and "south" mentioned.

There is a bright side to the picture of the South. I speak of what I know. At the close of the war there was not a college of Virginia but was bankrupt or nearly so. Yet none but through sacrifice was opened. More students attend them this year than ever before. There are more than 2,000 this year, half from far south. For one college there has been a voluntary contribution this year of $300,000, in one, five, ten-dollar gifts, spared from daily necessities and luxuries. Lee University has graduated fifty young men every year I have been there. There are live men there. Virginia would thank Massachusetts for the Rev. BARNAS SEARS and his successor. While Massachusetts has lost nothing, Virginia and the South have gained immeasurably. What we want is not governmental interference, not class legislation; it is liberty to do the best we can for ourselves. It is that sympathy, that divine spirit of brotherhood just described, from the great and strong and prosperous, toward their true brothers suffering in poverty. It has been said to me since I have been here: "You are too sensitive." Southern people, I know, are sensitive, but I know and you know they are generous, and will never fail to appreciate generosity. I thank you, sir. I thank you all. [Cheers.]

President Northrop spoke of Richmond without public schools three years ago, and now having most excellent free schools.

City Superintendent J. H. BINFORD, of Richmond, was invited to speak.

Mr. Binford. There is a broad, liberal spirit awakening among the people of the South. Four years ago Richmond had one free school. To-day she has 4,000 pupils. Virginia, the oldest state, through me, one of her sons, offers to you the right hand of fellowship and cordial coöperation. As a sister in the Union she comes and offers to help in the toil of education, but asks to be placed on an equality with her sisters. She will be no mean competitor in the She means her high schools and elementary schools to be second to none in the land.

race.

Our schools give the same education, under the same regulations, to both

races.

Mr. McIver, of N.C. North Carolina can not claim a prominent part in the great work of education. Last July a state convention was held at the capitol, its object to improve the condition of education. They formed a permanent state educational association. Prior to the war the school fund was about two millions. The war swept it away. The property upon which the people relied was gone. The land was impoverished by improper cultivation. All circulating currency and bank stock was swept away by one stroke of the pen. For a few years education stopped. The Constitution adopted in '68 provided for public schools in every district at least four months in the year. To-day the school fund consists of a tax upon property and polls, which properly collected make $300,000 a year.

I know of no objection to education from former slave-holders. They started this educational scheme.

Mr. Rounds, of Maine. The sparsely-settled portions of Maine have great want of upper schools. We did rely on academies, but their day has passed with the development of the public-school spirit. Last winter, the legislature passed a free-high-school bill. These are its provisions: Any town establishing a free high school receives from the state one-half the amount actually expended for teachers' salary for that school. The amount paid thus by the state is not to exceed $500. Two towns may unite and receive it. From one to two hundred such schools will be established.

Mr. Jillson, of S.C. The world moves even in South Carolina. We ask your sympathy in our struggle. Before the war there was no organized system of schools in South Carolina, except in Charleston. At its close South Carolina was crushed and bleeding. Property was gone, the state was bankrupt, a large class of people were ignorant. It was very difficult to organize free schools. Some progress has been made. In 1870 the scholastic attendance was over 30,000; in 1871, 66,000; in 1872, 76,000. The population of the state between six and sixteen years is 200,000. People are getting interested. They impose schooltaxes upon themselves. Many private institutions are springing up some good, some not so good, some rather poor. The mass of the people are not opposed to education. They begin to see it is the best means of building up the state and

restoring prosperity. In the name of South Carolina, I would return thanks to the noble army of teachers who went south at the close of the war.

President of the Association. We have many other choice speakers, but I will venture to call upon but one. I am embarrassed by the fact that I can not call upon persons whom I have invited to come and speak; but the lateness of the hour forbids. I will ask Mr. BROWN, of Louisiana, whom we interrupted this morning, to come forward.

Mr. Brown, of La. I was going on to tell you of things at present which would bring me to the hopeful side of the picture. We pay all teachers alike in primary and secondary departments. Louisiana white people (I must say white people, because that is the only way I can make you understand I am not speaking of colored people) [laughter]-Louisiana white people are entering into the common-school feeling faster than they are in any other state, I believe. I love Louisiana, and feel as much southern as any body down there. There are colored and white children in the same school in New Orleans. This school has a staff of twelve teachers, all white. It is the best school in Louisiana and the pride of the board. We have not forced colored children into white schools. The laws forbid, but Gen. BEAUREGARD says they must be mixed! What can I, a colored teacher, do but mix them? A majority of our 408 teachers are white. They are at my office forty or fifty at a time, and pay all deference any officer can expect. There is no jar.

Catholics are very numerous, very respectable, and have excellent schools, educating thousands of children. They do a noble work.

The South has been crippled and poverty-stricken, but in education she is doing the best she can.

Thanking you for the kind attention and courtesy shown me, I take my seat. After singing the doxology, the Association adjourned sine die.

S. H. WHITE, Secretary.