May 22.
Orren has it been remarked that many men, who afterwards became really great, were, during their school days, regarded as perfect duiters by their schoolmasters. They appear to Have been utterly indifferent to the mental food placed before them at that particular period of their life and almost to have incurred the lasting displeasure of their pedagoguer.
Here are a few examples, Sir Erie Geddes, one of the world's great financiers and organizers, was ove of those unfortunate beings who were conently at the bottom of their Cecil Rhodes, the great Imist, was in the class who, r'school days, are looked upon as persons certain to be failures in after life, Sir Isaac Newton, we are told, was reg ed by his teachers' as an idler, largely because he showed no aptitude for the classical studies which in his aay formed the main part of the school curriculum, Clive was looked upon an incorrigible wastrel and was shipped to India as to dumping ground for failures. Thomas Edison during the short period he spent at school gained the reputation of being a dunce. The late Sir Spencer Leigh Hughes, one of the foremost En-gush journalists, on the occasion of his distributing the prizes at his old school informed his aunce that that was the only time he had ever handled a prize. We might go on multiplying almost indefinitely these examples of men who attained renown, who in their boyhood were regarded by their schoolmasters with anything but favour, These men reached their exalted posi-ions in spite of their early education, not because of it. The fact' is their desires and their own particular ambitions found no vent, if they were not actually repressed during their school days, and it was only after they had the schoolroom that they found their metier in the world, Of course a man with real sgenfus will make his way in his own particular line whatever disadvantages are put in his way, but the ordinary person may often find his life's work greatly hampered if not. spoilt through the obstacles in his path during his early years, Many a man's future has been injured by the so-called education that he received during his school els? curricula in almost all parts'of the civilized world are narrow in their relationship to life, and particularly to boy life. From generation to generation the same old subjects are taught, very often in th ame old way. The teachers themselves have been brought up on the same mental food. They have digested it to some extent at any rate. They may never have enjoyed it, but they seek to force it down the throats of all pupils alike, whether suited to their tastes or not. In too many cases it would appear that school syllabuses and courses of instruction, are lai! down on linea,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.