Book Reviews

EDUCATIONAL MUSIC COURSE. TEACHERS' EDITION FOR ELEMEN TAKY GRADES. By James M. MeLaughlin, director of music in the Boston public schools, and W. W. Gilchrist of Philadelphia. Ginn & Co., Boston. List price, $1.25; mailing price, $1.40.

In spite of the fact that this book seems to have no name, it is full of new features, and may well serve as a guide to the elementary teaching of music in the schools. It is really a teacher's manual designed to supplement the New First Music Reader of the same course. It presents a comprehensive and practical plan, with plenty of drills for training and developing the child voice; also complete piano accompaniments for all the song material of the New First Music Reader, and for all the songs in the manual itself. An entirely new system of developing tone relation is introduced, and a collection of superior rote songs suitable for the first three years of school is given. Invaluable Aids to Teachers are included, and every time and tone feature to be developed with each exercise and song is clearly explained and illustrated. The names of the authors are a guarantee of the quality and value of the teachings, as well as of the practical character of the novel features of the book.

THE CHILD HOUSEKEEPER. By Elizabeth Colson and Anna Gansevoort Chittenden. Music by Alice R. Baldwin. Illustrations by Alice Leonore Upton. A. S. Barnes & Co., New York. $1.00.

These simple lessons with songs, stories, and games on the practical subject of housekeeping are presented in quite an alluring style. Such homely duties as sweeping, washing dishes, scrubbing the floor, etc., seem to lose all their terrors when written up so entertainingly and illustrated with good pictures. As Jacob A. Riis, in his dainty little introduction, says, "Making two blades of grass grow where one grew before is great; but to bring them into the house, into the kitchen-grass, daisies, and all,— and the sunshine, and the summer winds, and the birds with them, is to make happy house-mothers out of weary wives of the future." The object of the authors is to teach young girls to do in their own homes the common, necessary tasks of housekeeping, and it must be said that they have done well. The music and the pictures, the good type, the paper and the neat cover, all help to make the lessons attractive. If there is an adverse criticism to make, it is on the fire building chapter. Some children might not be able to abstain from touching a match to the tempting materials piled on the imitation stove.

THE MOTHER-ARTIST. By Jane Dearborn Mills. The Palmer Co., Boston. $1.00 net; postage, 7

cents.

In the prelude, Mrs. Mills indicates the special messages that her book is meant to carry. These are concerned with the falsity and harm of a pitying spirit toward the mother; the unexampled possibilities for richness of growth in the mother's life; the kind of training that shall hold children to normal states of growth, and the father's important share in that training. The book is to be recommended heartily. Its view of the joy and greatness of parenthood gives it a tonic quality, and it treats these subjects with originality and simplicity.

WOMEN'S WAYS OF EARNING MONEY. By Cynthia Westover Alden. A. S. Barnes & Co., New York. $1.00 net.

The impecunious woman who turns to this volume for help will receive about all that the printed page can give, for Mrs. Alden has written definitely and frankly out of a large stock of information. She does not mince matters in acknowledging the disagreeablenesses that belong with different kinds of work; but she encourages a sturdy facing of facts, shows all manner of possibilities, and, in recounting the varied ways in which women are earning money, she will supply the very hints needed by other women who need to earn but have no idea as to the feasibility of different employments.

Books Received

GINN AND CO., BOSTON. The Educational Music Course. Teachers' Edition for Elementary Grades. By James M. McLaughlin and W. W. Gilchrist. List price, $1.25; mailing price, $1.60. Grammar School Arithmetic. By David Eugene Smith, Ph.D. List price, $0.65; mailing price, $0.75. Sea Stories for Wonder Eyes. By Mrs. A. S. Hardy. $0.75. Industries of To-day. Edited by M. A. L. Lane. List price, $0.30. RAND, MCNALLY AND CO., CHICAGO. The Story of a Short Life. By Juliana Horatia Ewing. $0.30. Stories of Mother Goose Village. By Madge A. Bigham. $0.45. A. S. BARNES AND Co., NEW YORK. The Child Housekeeper. By Elizabeth Colson and Anna G. Chittenden. Music by Alice R. Baldwin. $1.00. Women's Ways of Earning Money. By Cynthia Westover Alden. $1.00 net.

Educational Readings in Recent Periodicals

HOME LIBRARIES FOR POOR CHIL-
DREN. By Frances Jenkins Olcott.
THE CHILDREN'S ROOM IN THE
PUBLIC LIBRARY. By Mary Emo-
gene Hazeltine. GREAT LITERA-
TURE AND LITTLE CHILDREN. By
Mrs. H. L. Elmendorf. The
Chautauquan. June.

THE LITERARY TREATMENT OF NA-
TURE. By John Burroughs. At-
lantic Monthly. July.
FIRST-HAND EDUCATION IN SENSIBLE

SCHOOLS. By Adele Marie Shaw.

OUR UPLIFT THROUGH OUTDOOR LIFE. By Dallas Lore Sharp. THE CULTIVATED MAN IN AN INDUSTRIAL ERA. By Walter H. Page. World's Work. July.

THE HEALTH OF THE HIGH SCHOOL GIRL. By Nellie C. Whitaker. Good Housekeeping. August. Annual Educational Number of the Outlook. August 6.

EISENACH, July 4, 1904.

To Miss Alice E. Fitts, Chairman of the Froebel House Committee.

DEAR MADAM: Your report concerning the Froebel House Building Fund has been received, and was submitted to the committee meeting of our Kindergarten Society on June 30. The members desire to express their thanks to the International Kindergarten Union for its sympathy and the sums of money hitherto sent to the society through Fraulein Heerwart. The committee quite understands that it was a difficult task to explain the reason for the change of the original plan. Here, in this country, it was easy to see the necessity for that change, and all the German contributors agreed to it without exception. The reasons having already been stated they need not be repeated here, except that the circumstances really required that Eisenach should be preferred for a Memorial House because Fraulein Heerwart, through living in Blankenburg two years and three months, has experienced the difficulties that were placed in the way. Certainly there would have been no suitable place there in

which to house the treasures, nor persons to explain the value of the manuscripts, etc., which form the nucleus of a future good collection of Froebel's works. Fraulein Heerwart has not left Blankenburg without very good reasons. She desires to thank you for your confidence in placing the sums of money which were collected by the International Kinder- · garten Union at her and the committee's disposal for the benefit of the museum. And certainly it will be used in the best way, viz., for the translation of Froebel's writings and the securing of a permanent place in which to keep them. She proposes. to begin with some of the shorter writings, in which she will be helped by an English friend. In order to facilitate matters, they could be printed and revised here, unless your committee advises a more advantageous plan for the benefit of the museum by printing and advertising in America. The translations will help to make the museum a center of study for English-speaking friends. In this case your committee will use its influence in recommending to your branches further assistance by con

tributions.

As to your committee's fear that the Froebel House might become a home for indigent kindergarten teachers, something must be explained. The Kindergarten Society has, by its rules, pledged itself to assist kindergarten teachers, not merely by money, but by cheaper rates for living in the House towards which its members have contributed during the past four or five years. The society has become well acquainted by correspondence and personal intercourse that many members are not well off, and that they often look with anxiety into the future. We hope the time will come when they will be more hopeful, and this object can be attained by securing them better salaries and more support from the parents of their pupils. Most of them are badly paid. The House will at first only receive a small number of kindergarten teachers, especially in their holiday time, at a lower rate than is usual in boarding houses and watering places; others may hold an office or render help during their stay. The salaries are very far below those which their more fortunate sisters in America receive, and therefore they need their sympathy, which we hope will not be denied to them.

There will be rules against the staying of persons suffering from contagious diseases or other disturbing illnesses. Please assure your committee, and through it also the contributors, that the Memorial Froebel House will be under control, and that our committee will meet your wishes, so as to make it worthy of its name.

Fraulein Heerwart wishes to add that she found among Frau Luise Froebel's letters her wish, repeatedly expressed, that kindergarten teachers should be helped in case of need, and this our society has done frequently during the twelve years of its existence, out of its own funds; it has also contributed to the support of the kindergarten in Blankenburg, but it could not keep it from being closed after all, without injuring the society's objects.

In concluding this letter our committee sends a hearty greeting over the ocean, and the expression of admiration for all the successes your branch societies and individual members are achieving. More links have been added to the chain that binds us together, and we hope to send you a small return for your generous help and sympathy by contributing to the Froebel Library some translations in your language.

Respectfully submitted by the Secretary of the Kindergarten Society, Germany.

EMMI CASSELMANN.
Eisenach, Froebel Museum,
July 4, 1904.

(Sent to Miss Glidden after receiving the album of photographs.)

EISENACH, JULY 10, 1904.

DEAR FRIENDS: What obstacles are between continents and oceans now? Thoughts and feelings know no boundary. I see that clearly in our case. You have thought of me and I feel grateful to you. The rare occasion of my fiftieth anniversary on this side of the water gave you the

opportunity of sending across the Atlantic a tangible sign of recognition for services rendered to the same cause which you have at heart. The advantage I have is the greater length of time-fifty years-while you have wider experience and ample means to do the same work in a shorter space of years.

I accept the handsome volumes with your photographs in Froebel's name, for he is the originator of our mutual work and intercourse. Take him away, and we should not know each other, never would we have heard of each other. There is no System of Education which has bound nations together as Froebel's has done. He is right in naming his book The Education of Man, which you know so well by translation, because he appeals to all mankind which must be lifted up to a high standard of culture; he in particular appeals to womanhood by his mother book, since through mothers and their representatives he enters into the wants and claims of the young generations who must be raised to a high place of human dignity; he speaks to Childhood itself in all parts of the world, and he supplies it with the most natural means of developing their faculties and of satisfying their nature, thus we see he thinks of mankind in its various stages of life, and thus he could reach with his system the distant lands and unite the workers in spite of land and water. We recognize the spirit in it,—the methods may vary according to the different habits and degrees of civilization. We therefore find kinder

gartens in North and South America, in Europe, India, Japan, Australia, South Africa, and there we find not only tunes, words, gifts and occupations, but also the deeper idea: the child-the future man-must be lifted up from the earthly to the heavenly, from the sense impressions to spiritual enjoyments.

While our opportunities are more limited, you in the United States can take hold of many nationalities without difference of color and creed; you see in every child the future citizen who must be useful to the state. And while you carry on Froebel's work on a large scale, how gladly would I name all the workers between the Pacific and the Atlantic and from Canada to the West Indies, who have so gracefully recognized the smaller services rendered near the home of the originator where the source of the large stream may be traced.

Several times Froebel turned his thoughts to America. Even in the last winter of his life he wrote to his wife's brother about going there, but the answer did not reach him; it was wisely denied and arranged differently-his spirit traveled instead; there were pioneers for spreading his work, and many of you are inspired by those whose names are still honored by us. You see the spirit lives above circumstances, above time and distance, and that may give us hope that ultimately it will conquer over all kinds of difficulties. Let us go on working while we can, not lose hope and energy; let us train a generation of young workers who keep high the standard of true education.