less as the floppings of a donkey's ears. These motions may be perfectly natural to the speaker, but they are never appropriate to public speech. Naturalness and simplicity must be accompanied with earnestness, not the stormy bluster of that celebrated preacher who always bawled loudest when he had least to say, but the enthusiasm that comes from a real feeling and genuine interest in the subject and the occasion. "A man who can't put fire into his speech. should put his speech into the fire." Jeremiah Mason, Webster's great antagonist and model, when addressing juries, used to single out one man in the jury box-the dullest, stolidest and stupidest-and direct his whole plea to that one man, keeping his eye continually upon him. The juror felt himself watched, and knew the lawyer had business with him. Mason had a forcible style of address, and there was nothing mechanical about it. A drowsy, drawling, nasal delivery will brood over the speaker's thought and suffocate it; while a brisk, energetic, versatile elocution is an inspiration. The man who is talking to one person, with a specific purpose, tries by tone, look, attitude and gesture to make his listener understand that he means him. He doesn't stand doubled up behind a desk, and, with the dullness of a clam, reel off, "Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac begat Jacob, and Jacob begat Reuben, and Reuben begat Hanoch, and Hanoch begat Phares," and so keep them monotonously begetting each other to the end of the chapter.

66

Suit the action to the word," said England's greatest dramatist, and this is the way one of her greatest orators did it: "When-I-consider-theenormity,-and-the-unconstitutionality,-of-the-measure-proposed,-I -am-hurried-away-in-a-torrent-of-passions,-in-a-very-whirlwind-of-impetuosity." Said Hamlet: In the very torrent, tempest, and whirlwind of your passion, you must beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. Lord Stormouth went beyond this advice, and begot a total abstinence that gave all flatness.

If eloquence is not within the power of all, it is within the power of all to avoid sing-song, screaming, lisping, guttural, and tremulous tones, and a triphammer emphasis at regular intervals. Let conversational tones be the basis. Have something to say. Keep the fire of thought and emotion burning, and the voice will adequately perform its office. Above all, avoid an interminable roar, beginning with a shout, and all through your speech, splitting your own throat and the ears of every one else. Eloquence is not delirium. A pious old farmer was going home one very dark night in a furious storm. A terrific crash of thunder would come, then a small flash of lightning; then another crash, and another indistinct glare. The good old man wandered aimlessly around several hours and at last fell on his knees in the mud and reverently exclaimed: "O Lord, if it is thy will, please give us a little less thunder and a little more light." "Give us a little less noise, and a little more light on the subject," is the less reverent prayer of many a distracted audience.

A speech should not be too long. What kills sermons, lectures, and addresses is their excessive length. A speech of twenty-five minutes is too long by the same watch that will call two hours at the circus too short. The first fifteen minutes a speaker may enchant us by his thought and manner; the second fifteen minutes we like him pretty well; after that, we kill time by yawning, looking at our watches, cursing him for a bore, and wishing we were at home, or out seeing a man. Swift's most effective sermon was a brief lendeth to the Lord; and that which "Brethren, you hear the conditions;

one.

Text: "He that pitieth the poor he hath given will He pay him again."

if you like the security, down with the dust." Oliver Wendell Holmes says: "In writing, as in rifle practice, you may hit or miss the public mind; but in talking, as in playing with the hose-pipe of an engine, if the mark is within reach, and you have time enough, you cannot help hitting it;" but such carelessness of speech and disregard of the value of time as would be content to hit somewhere in the neighborhood but never pierce the bulls-eye of the thought till listeners are exhausted, is to be severely condemned.

The command of natural discourse can be acquired only by large practice. Thinking, alone, will never give it. The study of rhetorical treatises will not create it. General reading will not confer it. Practice with the pen will aid but not furnish it. Criticism of others' works and of one's own, will not meet the necessity. Only thinking, and writing, and speaking, till mind, and pen, and tongue move spontaneously and joyously, will effect it. There is no way of learning to speak which can be compared with speaking itself. If you want to swim, of course you must get into the water; and if you, at first, make a sorry exhibition, you do not mind, for it is by swimming as you can that you learn to swim as you should. So in speaking-you will rise at first unwillingly; your speech, very likely, will be a poor excuse; but, like a bath in cold water, only the first plunge is formidable. You will soon gain self-possession, and in time, possession of your audience. Most men can learn to swim if they are pushed into deep water and left alone. Speaking is as natural as swimming; and it, too, can be learned only by doing it. You must train and exercise the whole man till native faults are subdued and native excellencies developed; till thought, and expression, and action become unconsciously artistic; till to the mental equipments-clear perception, sure memory, sound logic, rich imagination, solid judgment, power of statement, there is added the physical accomplishments-dignified posture, graceful gesture, and forceful manner, the eye trained to look at men, scorning them or smiling at them, the cultured voice, coaxing as the coo of the dove, or appalling as the scream of the eagle or roar of the lion, and the hand educated to wield the sceptre, or beckon with mild persuasion.

There is room and occasion in this country for every degree of oratorical power. Clear-headed and right-minded speakers are needed in our commercial, manufacturing, educational, charitable, industrial, and social conventions. Political advice and persuasion are needed on questions of greatest importance and vastest extent, reaching into the illimitable future, inviting and compelling the wisest thought any citizen can offer. The service of science, the demands of art, and the lessons of religion, are to be urged upon the attention, and brought home to the constant practice of fifty-five millions of people. Let every ambitious young man, then, train and arm his mind with all the resources of knowledge, of method, of grace, and of manly character to perform such service when opportunity is offered. Be somebody, that you may be trusted, and your service sought for. Have something to say worthy of public attention. Train yourself to say it in a clear, agreeable, and forcible manner. Be sensible, and stop when you are through.

EDUCATION IN RELATION TO AGRICULTURE AND OTHER

INDUSTRIES.

BY SECRETARY R. G. BAIRD.

(Read at Institutes held at Flushing and Albion.)

This subject is one to which considerable attention is now being given. Although it is a comparatively short time since anything like a general interest has been awakened in it even among those who are specially interested in education.

Although the world's progress may not be as rapid as we sometimes think it is, yet there can be no question but that it moves, and that on the whole it moves in the right direction. During a long period of human history education was not regarded as having any direct or even remote relation to the world's work. For any of the varied occupations in which the great mass of mankind must necessarily be engaged, in order to supply the necessities and comforts of the life that now is, no preparation or fitness was given by the edu cation of the schools. It is not only true that the education of the past did not aim at anything of this sort, but it is also true that the end and design of the old education was in the very opposite direction. A man was not educated to labor but he was educated not to labor. In all the habits of his life and the processes of his thought the educated man was as far as possible removed from sympathy with what we term industrial pursuits. It would have been regarded as a degradation for the philosopher to leave his speculations and his dreams to mingle long enough with the drudgery of labor even to make it less a drudgery.

It is apparent to all that a very great change in this matter has been brought about within the past few years. This change had its commencement when the natural sciences were introduced into the higher institutions of learning as a part of the curriculum of study. Not that men were first attracted to the' study of science because of its relation to industrial pursuits, but in the progress of that study men gained so large a knowledge of the materials out of which we are made, so far as our physical organization is concerned, out of which we make everything that human industry and ingenuity does make, that it was impossible but that men should arrive at the most important results springing from that knowledge and bearing directly upon human labor, lifting it out from its low position of ill-reputed drudgery to one of profitable and pleasurable employment. Scientific education has revolutionized processes of manufacture so that many things that were rare luxuries, possible only to the rich are in common use by rich and poor alike, and it has given to the world manifold articles of luxury and convenience, that, but for scientific knowledge never would have been known. Scientific education, although it has as yet done less for agriculture than for many of the arts, has given us improved grains, fruits and vegetables, improved breeds of every variety of domestic animals, and vastly improved implements of husbandry, which have in large measure revolutionized methods of cultivation.

The result of all this is that industrial education is coming rapidly to the front. It is very aggresive and radical and is putting forth claims that are startling to some, while they are being earnestly pushed into recognition by

others. We now hear a great deal about technology and about technological, polytechnic and industrial schools, institutes and colleges, and large sums of money, both in the way of private benefaction and legislative appropriation, are being expended to establish, equip and maintain them.

We do not wonder at the consideration given to this "new education," as it is not inappropriately called. We wonder rather that its advent has been so long delayed. The wheel has at length got out of the long and deep-worn rut, but before this vehicle of educational progress has adjusted itself to the new demands there will doubtless be no little clashing and confusion. Claims are being put forth for the new as better than the old and as destined to supersede it. This is wrong. The new will doubtless take its place along side of the old,. doing its own specific and much needed work.

This industrial education cannot to any great extent be adapted to our primary schools. Any attempt to fasten it upon our primary school system would in my opinion be an utter failure and seriously detrimental to the usefulness of this most important and fundamental part of our educational system. Our primary schools must maintain their usefulness and their hold upon the public favor by a judicious and intelligent application of the best methods, mainly within the sphere which they now occupy, that of teaching the rudiments of a general education.

Any form of technical education requires an institution with special equipments for that work. An Agricultural College must have its farm and garden, not only as an experiment station but also as furnishing scope for and labor in the line of commercial farming, gardening and fruit raising. The students should acquire some degree of efficiency in all the operations connected with these different lines of work. By doing, they should be taught how to do. They should be instructed also regarding the relation of these different lines of culture to the conditions under which they are pursued. The conditions, for example, under which stock raising would be more profitable than grain or fruit culture, or where these would be more profitable than that. The Agricultural College must also have its class rooms and laboratories, especially for the study of the natural sciences, such as physiology and entomology, chemistry, and chemical analysis and physiological botany. Whether the literary and mathematical part of the education be obtained at the same institution or elsewhere is of little or no consequence, so long as it is got somewhere, and enough of it to enable the student to make his education useful to others as well as to himself.

If the institution is to combine mechanics with agriculture it must have its workshops and machinery, and instructors in that particular field. The technical institution, therefore, must have a character distinctively its own and in some respects widely different from the merely classical or literary school.

The institution, however, need not be exclusively technical but may combine. with this, instruction in all those branches which are necessary to a general literary and scientific education. I think it altogether desirable that it should do this as it will give it a completeness which it could not otherwise have. It will thus send forth its students with that kind of education which will best qualify them to engage in the various pursuits and occupations of life. "The great aim of education," says one of our distinguished educators, "is and of right ought to be the same as the great aim of life. If this aim is simply and solely that of discipline, then the aim of education is discipline. If the aim of life includes the acquisition of knowledge, then education should also

include this. And if the great aim of life goes beyond both discipline and knowledge, if it involves the activities of life, its pursuits, its employment, and the whole round of its performance, then education should embrace all these. Both discipline and knowledge are doubtless involved as the necessary conditions of this higher aim, but only as conditions. Discipline has as its end the development of both strength and skill. Knowledge has as its object both the nourishment and illumination of our minds. And as our several employments necessarily involve both skill and strength on the one side and intelligence on the other, so they require as a condition of their success a subordinate training and study from which these proceed."

That education, therefore, which is not planned with reference to the probable employment and destiny of the individual who receives it, is radically defective, for it leaves him in ignorance of the things which above all others it is most important he should know. The education of the past was in harmony with the idea that only a few should be educated. The demand of to-day is not an ideally complete education for a favored few, but an education for the many, that will be largely helpful in the discharge of the common duties of life.

The education that will accomplish this must have a direct bearing upon industrial occupations. Much as science has done in the arts and in agriculture, and much as it will yet do, it is not from abstract science, but from science applied, that the benefits to mankind have come. We might conceive of the fact of the discovery of electricity as merely a very interesting and curious fact. But when it carries our messages and even our voices quick as the lightning flash, or when it lights up our streets with noon-day brightness during the darkest nights, then it becomes our servant, ministering to us in these various ways.

In pursuing, during the remainder of this address, a more specific line of thought, we shall have occasion to notice more fully some of the benefits of applied science. And first I observe that industrial education, by which I mean an education which gives instruction in the line of the occupations in which the greatest majority of men have to engage, produces a better type of manhood by developing what is latent, and awakening what is dormant in the faculties of the individual.

The trained eye, for example, sees what the untrained eye would fail to see. But what the eye perceives depends not upon the training of that organ alone, but vastly more upon the training of the mind of the observer, the eye being the mind's instrument of observation. It is said of Bertholet that he discovered the bleaching property of muriatic acid by observing that the corks of the phial in which he had put some of the acid had been whitened by it. And what was the result of that discovery? About the beginning of the present century the linen manufactured in England was sent to Holland to be bleached, and so slow was the process that it occupied the whole season from spring to autumn. Under the application of chemistry the process is accomplished in a few hours. Under the old process bleached cotton was much more expensive than the unbleached; now the difference is but a trifle. A soap manufacturer observes that from some unknown cause there is a corrosion of his copper boiler. He cannot account for it, but he has sense enough to think that perhaps some one who knows more than he may be able to discover the cause; so he takes some of the dregs from his kettle to a chemist, and the result of the analysis is the discovery of iodine. Other observers trace this element to marine plants, to sea water, to salt springs and salt mines,