that was Scribe's; he has not the grasp on life and people that other dramatists have had; but he is very definitely a part of the history of French drama. Outside of a tendency to prolong unnecessarily certain scenes, Porto-Riche is almost a perfect technician. He is a practical dramatist, with an eye on the acting quality of his play. He never encumbers the stage with non-essential characters, but uses a surprisingly small number. He aims at a true picture of life as he sees it, and the fact that his attitude may not be moral does not constitute an objection to it.

Maurice Donnay has said that conjugal infidelity is a social necessity; it is evident that Porto-Riche agrees with him. But he is far too clever a dramatist to make the point obvious. There is no neatly-labeled moral attached to the end of his plays, but, if one is not satisfied with them for their own sakes, he may find the thesis of the plays. His is far from being the sentimental attitude toward love and lovers. He believes that offenders against the moral code will be punished, but this does not change the fact that such offenses are necessary. Porto-Riche is not a great teacher. He was a poet before he was a dramatist, and the best portion of his work is that combination of the poet and the dramatist. There is no dramatist that has excelled him in his knowledge and depiction of human passion, and it is but natural that he should be called into the field of abnormal amatory experience.

THE PUMP ROOM

In the Pump-room, so admirably adapted for secret discourse and unlimited confidence.

NORTHANGER ABBEY.

TEACHING MISS PELLICO TO DRAW

Do you remember Kate Greenaway's jingle:

"The twelve Miss Pellicoes were always taught

To do the thing they didn't like, that is, the thing they ought;"

and the dainty drawing that accompanied the rhyme? That best describes my first two years of teaching youngsters to draw; some fun, of course, but the prejudice in favor of what we call Discipline. It had to do with straight lines of children, and bells to make them stand up or sit down. Then an explosion threw me over to a different method, to find that all my ideas had blown up.

Other people's, too. What we have left are convictions as to a new way in education, a new rule, or rather, the rediscovery of an old one, which attains the same results in the drawing room as elsewhere. We have one rule in that room at the Bryn Mawr School: "Work." Anything that interferes with one's work or one's neighbor's work is forbidden, nothing else. I ought to explain that this rule varies in interpretation; after a bad night informality seems disorder.

However, though an enthusiastic convert, I am not fired with such zeal of the proselyte that I cannot see two great faults in the general system of what Stanwood Cobb, writing in The Atlantic Monthly for February, has termed Progressive Education. First, the whole point of view of these Progressives is apt to be materialistic. Characteristic of the average teacher trained in the Projective method is

the use of the word vital to mean something tangible, something of immediate result, something wanted very much, and eventually made and carried off in the maker's small hand. But not all projects are material and visible. In the realm of creative imagination thought may be as objective as its results.

Compare a material object with a vital idea. Vitality is the test? Let us see. Even the five-year-old Miss Pellico of our day can look at the sky and remark, "That is a beautiful sunset. I'll paint it at school tomorrow." Isn't she better equipped than if she had spent all her time carpentering the table or chair she "vitally" needed?

Perhaps a greater weakness in the system lies in the fact that it leaves the balancing of the child's education largely to the discretion of the class teacher, who is often without sufficient breadth of education to be a safe judge. According to Mr. Cobb, the teacher keeps records of the work done and maintains a just division of time by discussing results with the child. But her ideal with regard to art, for instance, is that the drawing room should at all times be open to the child, who can then go in when the need occurs. This works out as well as leaving the pantry open instead of having regular meals. Children often need extra food, but they must have breakfast, dinner, and supper.

Our compromise, and I regard the experiment as distinctly successful, is to have regular drawing periods, which are adjustable in individual cases. Any child who is working hard asks special permission to stay till she finishes. Sometimes that is not given, but she is told why. Of course, this program calls for great friendliness among the teachers. It works for great friendliness with the children.

So much for schedule. Another reform brought to us comes from allowing, encouraging, yea, urging the children to choose their own subjects to draw. Now they usually rush into the room, eager to put down just what they are thinking about, without the jolt that comes from sudden in

terruption of thought at the end of an hour when the bell rings for a change of class-room. Children lately in the "gym" are likely to draw something they have been doing there; those just from prayers illustrate Bible stories. Or perhaps they have stored up an earlier impression. After a new moon I always expect night scenes; after a carol singing, madonnas. The every-day happiness of their lives is visualized, is seen in terms of beauty and so expressed.

Perhaps it is not fair to compare teaching ordinary subjects with teaching art, which in some form or other all humanity craves. Any child wants to draw and can, provided grown-ups do not put too many obstacles in the way. If you teach drawing as Harvard University, with its famous "daily theme" plan, teaches English composition to freshmen, you get the same results: on the part of the average student, the ability to express his own thoughts; in a few cases, poets or artists. Frequent themes, rhetoric, literature; frequent compositions, drawing from the model, study of good pictures; in English or drawing, the process brings similar results.

Our children have a course in picture study that corresponds to one in literature, and they learn compositionthey are o'er young for the Hambidge Theory-by posing each other in tableaux. Sometimes they make up little plays to show the artist's point of view. In one play last winter with Cimabue, a would-be Donor and several priests made clear to the players, who had no lines to speak, only points for each character to make, the attitude of the Church to the Primitives. These youngsters, when they saw actual Early Church paintings in the Walters Gallery later, were intelligent and really appreciative.

A very young group studying Greek myths are building the Parthenon of clay and pasteboard on their sand table. "Some Parthenon," you might comment, but its builders go out with a prejudice in favor of Greek art. My highest ambition is to connect with the Latin department, where a

visible background, even a piece of cheese-cloth worn for a toga, would surely help the learning of Latin verbs.

So far as actual discipline is concerned, self-discipline is the end and aim of all training. In an emergency children accustomed to responsibility are far safer than those kept under thumb. Ours, to be sure, is a private school, and men may theorize that all private schools are undemocratic. Actually they are the laboratories where educational experiments are tried out. The descendants of the Twelve Miss Pellicoes are being trained in some such laboratory, and are learning to meet with sportsmanlike spirit "the thing they didn't like" in whatever form it comes to them.

MARGARET M. LAW.