pleted. Waste no time waiting for slow pupils. After corrections have been made, first by the side which wrote, secondly, by the other side, the teacher may decide which is really the better composition, and point out reasons for her decision.

Picture-Sentences.

Certain sentences, as those which follow, suggest at once some picture to the mind. After instructions as in the preceding exercise, let this be described, always with the effort to make clear (1) the figures represented by "they," and (2) the act predicated.

Exercise (a.):

1. They crossed the bridge.

2. They rested by the spring.

3. They played under the walnut-trees.

4. They looked in at the shop windows and wished

5. They gathered wild blackberries.

6. They forded the river.

7. They shook the pippin-tree.

8. They ironed their aprons.

9. They sat on the porch, sewing.

10. They made cakes on the kitchen table.
II. They climbed the hill.

12. They raked hay on the hillside.
13. They sat in the swing, eating apples.
14. They sat in a tree, reading a book.

15. They waded in the brook that runs through the field.

16. They quarreled over a bird's-nest.

17. They behaved badly in the steam-cars. 18. They played in the woods by the pond. 19. They all tumbled into the cart.

20. They caught fire-flies.

Exercise (b.)-Historical:,

1. He spread his velvet cloak in the mud.
2. He drew lightning from the clouds.
3. He was buried in the Mississippi.

4. He broke Audubon's beloved violin, chasing
a bat.

5. He fiddled while Rome burned.

6. He sat on the ruins of Carthage.

7. He drank the cup of hemlock and died.
8. He wrote the "Pilgrim's Progress

prison.

in

9. He signed the Emancipation Proclamation. 10. He discovered the law of gravitation.

II. He received the Tables of the Law.

12. He interpreted the king's dream.
13. He painted the "Last Supper."
14. He was lashed to the mast.
15. He translated Dante.

16. He discovered the Pacific.

17. He sought the fountain of youth.
18. He was called "The Lady" at college.

19. He wrote the greatest English epic.

FOR

CHAPTER III.

OBJECTS.

Natural Objects.

OR this kind of exercise choose some natural object common to the region. An ear of corn, a stalk of corn with ears, roots, and tassel, an apple, a grain or stalk of wheat, a cobblestone or large pebble, a blade of grass, an orange, a potato and plant, a piece of wood, a section of a tree, a butterfly, a handful of earth, etc., etc., are easily obtained.

The first lesson should be conversational, and the facts to be used in a composition-lesson to follow should be mostly obtained from the children by means of the conversation; they may be on such topics as the origin, uses, history, varieties, properties, qualities, parts, their uses, their relation to the whole, and growth of the object selected.

The potato and all other garden vegetables are interesting subjects for lessons, and can be made especially so by means of drawings, done at the lesson. Most city children know nothing of these