spent on education. If the State compelled our indignant friend to take a fifty per cent. bounty on all his possessions, he would not protest, if the tax-payer did; but the State does better, for the possessions of this citizen are small, but his children are rated at the same inestimable value as those of the millionaires. The school is democratic in the noblest sense of the word, and by its bounty in this regard, the State gives an equal fortune to every child who is reared within its limits.

It is well to remined our protesting friend, that Compulsory Education is not a novelty, only the school and the surrounding, are made more to the taste of liberty-loving souls. If his boy grows up a vagabond, as in nine chances out of ten he will if not schooled in his childhood, then instead of primary and normal schools, we have certain secondary and abnormal schools, where they don't let the pupils out at recess, and geology is pursued with a stone hammer, and the industrial arts are followed at the bench in a uniform that fits all inmates, but pleases none.

Compulsory Education in these barred and bolted schools, is mainly the product of the want of it in the airy and free seminaries to which childhood would flock by their own attractions, if adult folly offered no impediments. It is late to teach one after his head and heart both get hard, and a hundred times more expensive than early training, without a thousandth part of the good success which attends it. Even our indignant friend does not mutter a protest against the compulsory education of prison and reform school, and yet it is the men of his kith that furnish pupils for those expensive institutions. Not many lads who show a clean record in the common school, get into the books of these ugly reformatories. The State has found out that a certain per cent. of a mixed population must be coerced into propriety, and compelled to be decent, and as a simple matter of economy and humanity, it takes them in childhood to a school where diligence is honorable and proficiency the road to independence and respectability; a school where the virtuous are eager to go, and one which the wisest are happy to encourage, and proud to have enjoyed. Rightly to educate them here, precludes the necessity of educating them in the penitentiary; and save society a growing nuisance of vagabond youth and criminal adults.

To be sure, there are accomplished villains, educated scamps, and jail-birds well versed in science and the arts. They are men whose morals were neglected when the intellect was instructed, reared under some scrupulous teacher who was so afraid of inculcating religion that he would not enforce the divine sanctions of honesty and integrity. That disgrace to our educational system, will disappear when we distinguish between righteousness and a ritual conscience and a creed. Then Compulsory Education will not drive the reluctant to meeting, but will make him useful, and certainly keep him out of jail.

"THE GRAVE OF KING PHILIP."

MR. EDITOR-I read with much interest the article in the December number of THE SCHOOLMASTER, giving an account of the Old Bell in the Tannery, at Lincoln. The date upon it, 1263, indicates its great age, and without evidence to the contrary, it may perhaps be deemed to be "the oldest bell in existence," and let our new town of Lincoln enjoy all the renown of having so old a relic in possession. But, having this, let her not lay claim to the fictitious "curiosity" of the grave of the renowned King Philip. Sad to say, King Philip had no grave! In all the broad domains of the Wampanoags, no spot was permitted to give their great Chief sepulture. Mount Hope, within the limits of this town, his favorite resort, and the home he loved so well, received his warm life-blood into her bosom. For the rest, it is a well-known historical fact that he was beheaded and quartered within a few hours after his death, on the morning of the 12th of August, 1676. His head was sent as a trophy to Plymouth, and one of his hands to Boston; while the four quarters of his body were suspended upon trees, to shrivel, and bleach, and decay in the sunshine and storm. The other hand, which had a well-known scar, was given to Alderman, the Indian, (one of his own tribe) who shot him, and who made money by exhibiting it.

But if Lincoln cannot justly lay claim to the grave of King Philip,

she can boast that the scene of one of the bloodiest fights of Philip's Indian War, was within her town limits. And if this little sketch is deemed worthy of the space it will occupy in your next number, I may be tempted to write out the history of "Pierce's Fight,” for the entertainment of your young readers.

BRISTOL, R. I., Dec., 1872.

M.

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

The difficulties which lie in the path of the youthful essay writer have been aptly enumerated by some quaint old author in the following stanzas:

"Dear Sir, Dear Madam, or Dear Friend

With ease are written at the top;

When these two happy words are penned;
A youthful writer oft will stop,

And bite his pen and lift his eyes

As if he thinks to find in air

The wished for following words, or tries

To fix his thoughts by fixed stare.

But haply all in vain-the next
Two words may be so long before
They'll come, the writer sore perplexed
Gives in despair the matter o'er,

And when maturer age he sees

With ready pen so swift indicting,

With envy he beholds the ease

Of long accustomed letter writing."

A pupil enters an Academy. At the district school he has been through the arithmetic twice or thrice, has passed page after page, in "Watts on the Mind," and has succeeded in getting the map questions all at his tongue's end, but except in the way of a gossiping friendly letter, he has never tried to commit his thoughts to paper, hence composition writing is an untrodden field stretching out before him. A week passes and nothing has been said to him upon the subject; he fondly hopes that the teacher has forgotten to enroll his name, but vain is the delusion. The instructor has a terrible memory; the fiat goes forth and fourteen lines of foolscap must be filled.

The week of probation rapidly goes by in anxious deliberation as to what topic he shall select. He consults a list of subjects. He chooses, and writes for his caption : "The Pleasures of Memory," this accomplished, he bites his pen and lifts his eyes, hoping thereby to conjure up an idea. But the pleasures of memory are all in the past, all are irretrievably lost. He tries again; early rising next suggests itself, the old couplet,

"Early to bed and early to rise,

Makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise,"

is a good starting point, but when the word wise is written, he is no wiser than before; he can get no farther. The next truism that falls from his pen chances to be, "Procrastination is the thief of time." Time flies, but still the thoughts come not, and at last in sheer desperation, he falls back upon Spring with something like this result: Spring is the pleasantest season of the year, I think. In spring the birds come back from the south and build their nests. There are a great many kinds of birds, such as blue birds, canary birds, black birds, wrens, &c. In spring the farmer ploughs the ground and puts in the seed. Spring is pleasanter than summer. In summer I can pick flowers in my garden. This is all I know about spring. This is my first composition. I will try and do better next time." The task over, for another two weeks our pupil breathes freely. He receives instruction in all the other branches of polite and useful education, but not a word is said upon the subject of writing compositions. Unaided and untaught he struggles on, stretching his words over as much ground as they can be made to cover, and clipping his fool's cap at each edge in order to make his fourteen lines the shorter; or else disheartened and discouraged he falls into the habit of borrowing his essays from some obscure author, or of imploring the aid of a more accomplished friend. His school days ended, he enters into business and issues his circulars somewhat after the following style:

"Dr. Blank, of Troy, New York, wishing to spend a portion of his time in the country, and will do so by working at his profession, and those wishing dentistry done will do well to engage it now, as I have on hand a stock of gold, silver, casalite and rubber, of which I

am going to work into artificial teeth, cheaper than can be done at any other place in the State of New York, and I will warrant the work to be first-class in every particular; and I will also give my patrons the benefit of the late improvements in the profession, which are very valuable to those wearing artificial teeth. Thankful for the very liberal patronage I have received in F. and H. counties, for the past fifteen years. Dr. Blank may be found at the house of Mr. Call." His deceased friends lie buried under the weight of such obituaries as the one here presented: Died-" At Sandlake, February 21st, 1860, Mrs. Eunice Jones, mother of E. S. Jones, of Chicago, aged ninety-nine years and six months. She made a profession and united with the church nearly eighty-five years ago, when their house of worship was made of logs, and which church was so long under the prosperous pastorship of Rev. Mr. O., and afterwards one of the constituent members of the first church in Albany, and since 1832 a member of the church at Sandlake." Or he attempts elegiac poetry, and grinds out,

"Her dying bed, we'll long remember

Her dismal groans still strike our ear;
Death rattles in our thoughts engender
And cause the sympathetic tear."

He falls in love and expresses his sentiments towards his Dulcinea in an epistolary correspondence, a fair specimen of which I subjoin:

Dear Fanny-" I have looked in vain for a reply to my communication. Again my thoughts suggested the propriety of writing another letter thinking perhaps there would be no doubt in my mind but what you would hasten to reply to this without fail. Perhaps it did not contain the kind of sentiments that would justify you to act upon the premises of circumspection. I do not wish to make a serious announcement in these communications from the fact that such preliminary steps is only calculated to ripen or develop the affections of two hearts that beats in unison. I have often recurred to my late visit at your place over in my own mind with the most exquisite sence of delight. Your name is music in my ears. Still language would be inadequate to express the highly favoured impulses of my heart in your behalf; if there are charms in the human family seartinly there is none that has higher charms than you Fanny. I wonder how long it will be before I shall open the envelope containing an