still she held to her view that the way to teach a child to spell is to take ten words a day from his reading and other lessons, and cause him to learn them as a list. At the same time, she would not think of asking her pupils to write essays in which they would employ words as difficult to spell as those they were being drilled on in their formal spelling exercises. When I suggested that, instead of asking the children to prepare an essay on some subject they had observed on the way to or from school, she should require them to write a story, using the ten words of the spelling lesson, she objected vigorously. It seemed to her to be unreasonable to ask young pupils to treat such a difficult subject, and her point was well taken, probably, considering what experience the children had had in expressing themselves in this way.

words the true test

I have been interested for some years in keeping the spelling lists of a group of children, and noting Ability to use the relation between these lists and the development of the children's actual spelling ability. I have found, and this may be familiar in principle to all my readers, that pupils may commit to memory lists of words every day, but be quite unable to spell many of them when they need to express themselves. And

the reason for this disparity between learning for mere recitation and learning for use seems clear. It is one thing to learn a word as a separate, isolated entity, and an altogether different thing to master it so it can be employed in its connections in a sentence.

I am now observing a pupil who is required to memorize ten words a day; and he so establishes them in his visual memory that if I begin pronouncing at the bottom of the list, he may start spelling at the top. If I start at the beginning and go down to the fifth word, say, but skip it and go to the sixth or seventh, he will spell off the fifth with perfect confidence. He fixes the words in a mechanical order only. He really does not establish connections between the sound of any given word and its visual form. Much less does he gain such familiarity with words that he can use them as instruments of expression, simply because he does not have experience in using them in this manner. Do you suppose one could learn to use knives by simply learning the names of all the varieties made at Sheffield, and arranged in lists? The only way a pupil can acquire the ability to employ words readily and accurately is to learn them as he will need to employ them in the practical situations of life.

Does this mean that it is useless to have spelling lists? Not at all. But it does mean that spelling

Shall we have is to be gained mainly by writing spelling lists? sentences, rather than by the memorizing of isolated words. Without question the novice should first learn to write his words separately; if he attacks a sentence at the outset he may be overwhelmed by the complexity of it. He should have gained some freedom in handling the individual words of a sentence before he attempts to employ them as a unity; but he must not leave any word he has attempted to learn until he can use it readily in its usual connections.

It is certainly a wasteful, ineffective method to introduce a new list of words every day, so that a large number may be learned in a year. I have tested pupils who have been taught in this way, and I have found that lists learned last week, say, may be almost entirely forgotten this week. They are not used; that is the trouble. They may be impressed consciously for an hour or for a day, but they are not fixed for good. They can be made secure only by a generous repetition in a variety of familiar situations. They must be got into the muscles, as it were, and not left merely as unused visual images, which may soon fade into nothing

ness.

It will hardly be doubted that it is advisable to choose for spelling drill those words and phrases

How shall we choose words for spelling?

that the child is seeing and employing most frequently every day in the regular work of the school. One objection to the old-type spelling-book was that the lists of words offered were compiled without regard to what the pupil was studying in any grade. But even when the spelling lists are made up from the other studies being pursued at the time, there is still danger that if they are learned as lists they will be readily forgotten. It seems to be a law of the human organism, as true of the mind as of the body, that when a member or an idea is not used it is likely to degenerate. If you tie up the arm, the muscles will soon begin to decline. Let a person lie on a bed for two months, and he may discover that he can not walk when he makes the attempt. The muscles necessary for locomotion not being put to service, they become weakened, and begin to go out of business. So in mental function; any image or idea which is not utilized in daily adjustment is likely to be eliminated readily. Nature seems to proceed on the doctrine that what is not necessary for use might better be got rid of as speedily as possible. Any one who has observed the changes taking place in his own memory must have noticed how this law applies to things which he once had at his tongue's

end, but which, on account of not being used, have been forgotten, partially or completely.

Further, when one develops any power of muscle or of mind, he can employ it in the way in which he has acquired it, but not in a different manner. One who has developed his muscles in a blacksmith shop can not use much if any of this special strength in vaulting, say. If one should wish to learn to vault a pole, he ought to get up his muscle by practising on this particular activity, and not on something altogether different therefrom. The same principle is true in respect to mental training. A ticket agent told the writer recently that the moment he enters his office he can answer any question pertaining to the time-table of his railroad, the price of tickets to the remotest cities of the United States, and so on. "But," he continued, "when I am away from the office, and a man asks me a question about the time any train leaves, or the price of a ticket, I can not remember the simplest matters often. I do not understand why when I leave this office I seem to forget all the details of my business." The explanation appears simple enough. We tend to recall anything in connection with the circumstances under which it was originally learned, so that if we change the circumstances, we are apt to forget for the time being.