granite will remain, but little else. The lumberman does not care; after him, quite literally, the deluge. But the people who love the beauty of the hills care, and still more the people who value the commercial and industrial supremacy of New England should care. These would better lift up their eyes to the hills, whence cometh their strength-and take measures to keep it coming. New Hampshire may not care, but it is a matter of more interest to Massachusetts and Rhode Island and Connecticut than it is to New Hampshire. It is a national matter, indeed, but it is peculiarly a New England matter and New England as a whole should take it up. It is not too late as yet, but it will be if we dally. New England legislators might well see that better political fences can be built out of the New Hampshire forests still standing on the white hills than of most any other material.

The Vanishing Schoolmaster

HERE in New England at least

the schoolmaster is fast vanishing, practically has vanished, from the country districts. This is particularly true of what we were wont to call the grammar schools. As a rule our country high schools still have a head master, supplemented by a greater or lesser number of woman assistants, though now and then one hears of a woman taking the place, making the entire schooling of the children, from the time they enter the kindergarten until they graduate from the highest of the public schools, that of women teachers. Thirty years ago the grammar school master was still the rule and the young people went

charge. Now the grammar school teachers are almost invariably

women.

Alfred Mosely, head of of the English commission which has recently investigated the public school system of America with a view to applying its good points to the English system, notes this lack of male teachers here and thinks it a detriment to the schools. He says: "My severest criticism of the American school system would be that the teaching force lacks men. A large proportion of men would greatly improve it, but there can be no such improvement until American communities match the generosity they exhibit in school equipment with generosity in allotting salaries."

Whatever the cause of this lack of men teachers the fact remains, and the question is being seriously asked if it is not a condition detrimental to the best development of the pupils. It is claimed, and with much show of reason, that boys between the ages of ten and fourteen peculiarly need the influence of masculine control and personal contact with masculine views and ideals. The bulk of our American boys complete their schooling with the grammar school, having been taught entirely by women. It is not that the women do not teach as well as men, nor that they do not inculcate principles of right living and honor, both by example and precept, for undoubtedly they do. But having done that they can go no farther from the very fact that they are women. That boys should be manly, more than that, that they should be masculinely manly, if one may use the term, is just as important as that they should know well the

rules of rhetoric, square and cube root, and the foundations of geography and grammar. The uncon

scious influence of the teacher is deeper and more lasting than the principles taught in class; hence the boy taught entirely by women may be as good a scholar and as good a boy as the boy who has had a man

earning of college expenses, but they brought to them the energy of youthful aspiration and college ideals, and their influence on the other boys, in that direction, was of great value.

Harvard English

ever be so much of a man. This seems to be the point which touched Mr. Mosely, and which is causing serious thought in many men who are interested in the welfare of the school boy. Those of us who remember the grammar school boys

of one of the old-time masters'

schools and can compare them with the grammar school boys of to-day are apt to be struck with the difference. The old rough and ready sturdiness is gone and in its place one finds a certain touch of effeminacy which is painful. The boys may be gentler, perhaps more scholarly, quite likely more consciously good, but one finds a certain lack of the blunter manly virtues which he regrets. There are far more prigs and what the old-time grammar school boy used to call "milksops." The boys who are lucky enough to go on and enter college may get this crushed out there by masculine contact, but the bulk of them do not go on and the influence remains. Business life may cure it, but it is a pity that it should have to be cured.

It seems probable that Mr. Mosely is quite right in his criticism, and that a return to the old-time masculine grammar school teacher is much to be desired; how to accomplish it is another matter. Some of the best of the old-time teachers were college students, to whom the positions were makeshifts, to be sure, for the

in praise of Harvard University and it doubtless will print much word or two of criticism now and more, so it may be forgiven for a then. Only the other day an editor of Boston's greatest newspaper referred in jocose self-pity to the struggles he had had with manuscripts from Turks, Armenians and graduates of the Harvard English

course or words to that effect. The New England is in the throes of similar experience, and it wishes to ask seriously why people who cannot spell are allowed to enter Harvard, and why, if by any chance they are allowed to enter, they are allowed to pass on toward graduation without being taught to spell? The cause of these queries is just this. There lies on the editorial desk at this minute a paper of less than three thousand words, written on what should be an interesting topic, by a Harvard undergraduate. The English language is maltreated in this paper; but that is not the chief cause of sorrow. It is the

spelling. By actual count forty-four cominon words in this paper are misspelled, some of them such common words that no teacher in a fourth grade grammar school would pass such a paper. How can a young man get into Harvard who persists in spelling speech, s-p-e-ac-h? Here are a few of the worst of the others: Writting, cudggled, ignorent, circulers, appered, soley, rightousness, naieveity, lisstlessly,

conquor, hungrey, negroe, errend, loquatious, Niagra, litterary, candadates. It is not enough to say that such illiteracy should not have been allowed to pass the grammar grades and the preparatory school. It should be the plain duty of any institution of learning to catch such people at the door and send them back to prepare for entrance before allowing them to enter. Yet this

WAY

WAY down in Maine they are beginning to have a little stir of the stay-at-home feeling. The state papers are putting themselves on record as having a poor opinion of the "insidious boom of the Southern states that has been instituted through New England and Maine, using the governors of half a dozen states of that section for live bait by which to entice our most ambitious youths away from our midst." Just why the Maine papers should make a distinction between New England and Maine, is hard to see. It has often seemed as if Maine people thought they were all New England and certainly New England includes all Maine. Nevertheless this insidious boom is worth looking into. It used to be the West that teased our stalwart sons and marriageable daughters to graze in fresh fields and pastures new; now it is the South. Orange blossoms in January and sweet potatoes growing all the year round while you wait are certainly tempt ing. Yet the South has venomous serpents and malaria and negro problems lying round loose.

Maine may have troubles of its own but it is reasonably free from

serpents and inducements to lynch.

negroes.

Besides, as the Maine advocates state in no uncertain terms, a man who really wants a farm and is willing to work it for all it—and all he is worth, can find them for the searching in Maine and good ones too. Just look at Aroostook County, for instance. While the Maine boys and girls have been rainbow chasing in the West fertile lands have been stretching beseeching hands to them right in their own state. It is a fact that to-day more potatoes and better ones are raised in Aroostook than anywhere else on earth. No wonder the tide of emigration is turning backward in its flight and bringing the Maine boys home again. Up in Aroostook they have men who are justly denominated "potato kings," who own potato fields by the thousand acres-more or less-and who cultivate them. from planting time to harvest-home by machinery. The potato farmer of to-day starts out with a team in the early spring and simply drives it all the season through. He hitches various machines behind this team and they do the work. He plants his potatoes, hoes them, poisons the

bugs, digs them, and runs them into the storehouse, all by machinery. Beneficent Providence does the rest. It has given the Maine potato man a soil that grows potatoes as big as your boots and more of them than any one ever heard of. Moreover, potatoes are not the only thing in Maine either, though at harvest time you hear of little else; even the lumber interests are overshadowed then. Maine is learning forestry rapidly and the fear that her timber will give out is fading before applied science. Pulp mill plans are new every morning and fresh every evening, yet the forests are bound. to hold on. The South won't catch many of the Maine boys. There are good opportunities right at home. Instead they are drifting back to the Pine Tree from the other statesand the New Englander wishes more power to them.

They are having hard work to spend state money up in New Hampshire. This is strange but true, and it may serve as a warning or a guiding star for some other of our New England states, as the case may be. The state has appropriated $125,000 a year for the building of highways. Most of us know that New Hampshire needs to spend this money, and needs the highways right away. Somebody ought to build good roads up in New Hampshire, but even the State is having difficulty. The trouble seems to be that they are short of contractors. Specifications are prepared, bids advertised for, and the contractors don't respond. Hardly a third of the right number have been found at hand to spend that $125,000. All this in face of the facts that the money is sure, the work easy, and the requirements clearly defined.

One can't help thinking that this unexpected result of a worthy attempt on the part of the state is due to two things. In the first place the old New England custom of making work on the roads-by the day-a sort of political job which is obtained by casting your vote for the right men for selectmen and surveyors of highways has a mighty hold on the rural districts. Many a petty politician holds his gang by means of it and these and the gang together in the various districts overawe the local contractor who might otherwise bid. There is more peanut politics of this sort in rural localities of New England than any man not born and brought up in such a place could be made to believe.

In the second place probably all the big New England contractors are down about Boston, getting fatter contracts and more of them dangling from the ends of wires in that ring-ridden city. It is a rather striking thing how New Hampshire supplies Boston and vicinity with able men who know how to get and hold fat opportunities which you'd think think Massachusetts men would keep to themselves. New Hampshire clubs are pretty strong in Boston politics, in Boston finance and in Boston educational circles. They have their influence in even art and religion down here, and I dare say they supply us with contractors as well.

However there's hope for New Hampshire roads. The fund is cumulative and what they don't spend this year they may next. When there is money enough in it the big contractors will quit their Massachusetts jobs and move back into the Granite State and grind up its granite and build roads with it.

They have their "good roads" problem up in Vermont, too, it seems. Outsiders have been asking them questions and the Vermonters are also asking themselves questions, which is a healthy sign. a healthy sign. Moreover they are urging their politicians up there to take the matter up and that in the end will probably mean an appropriation after the fashion of New Hampshire, and then-well, we shall see. The Argus and Patriot, which is published in the city of Montpelier where politicians most do congregate, thus gives them straight talk about it.

"Some touring automobilists who recently passed through the State made severe criticism of the condition of the roads. They even said Vermonters didn't know what good roads are, for they often told the tourists roads in certain directions were good when they proved to be very poor. They also suggest that the State ought to be ashamed of such a condition of affairs, for it is a well settled, highly civilized section of the country and has ample resources for building good high

ways.

All this contains some degree of truth and nowhere will it be denied that the highways of the State need improvement. Under the present highway law some improvement is being made each year but the progress is wofully slow. The sections of permanent roads are so scattered among the various towns that they are not appreciated by travelers. There is no comprehensive supervision of the State as a whole under the present system. Town road commissioners are learning something about highway construction and their efforts are more intelligently directed each year. The visits

of the State commissioner and the meetings of commissioners of the various towns in each county have helped to disseminate knowledge and the experience of each succeeding year results in better work.

But there are many miles of highway, some of it frequently traveled, that will not be put in proper condition for years as the work is now going on. Having entered on a definite policy of putting its highways in better condition, would it not be better for the State to proceed at once with the work as a whole and stop puttering around? It will cost no more in the end, probably not so much, and we shall have the privilege of using the good roads while we are paying for them. People now paying taxes to help highway improvement will have small use for macadam roads after they are dead.

There is a Good Roads association that has met and resolved and listened to addresses, but that is the end of the matter, so far as now appears.

Improvement of the highways will hardly constitute a political issue, but if candidates would take up and urge the matter in the next campaign the people might become sufficiently interested to send to the legislature representatives who would accept some well devised plan of wholesale and permanent improvement."

Brookline, the Massachusetts city. with a town government, was two hundred years old in November, but you'd never believe it to look at her; she is so stylish and handsome, her coloring is so good and she shows so few of the wrinkles of care or age. Brookline was considered old enough to wed some years ago and