purpose of bringing out the
relation of the geography to the history in the lesson, will be of great
assistance. For example, if the class are to study the Louisiana
Purchase, the full significance of that revolutionary event will be made
much clearer if the student is asked to prepare answers before coming to
class to such questions as the following:--

1. What States are included in the purchase?

2. What is its area? How does it compare with the area of the
original thirteen States?

3. What geographical reasons caused Napoleon to sell it?

4. What influence did the purchase have on our retention of the
territory east of the Mississippi? Why?

5. How many people live to-day in the territory included in the
purchase?

_His power of analysis and criticism will be stimulated_

A lesson should be so assigned that the student will read the text with
his eye critically open to inconsistencies, contradictions, and
inaccuracies. With a text of six hundred pages, and with a hundred and
eighty recitations in which to cover them, it is not too much to expect
that the average of three or four pages daily shall be studied so
thoroughly that the student can analyze and summarize each day's lesson.
The teacher should not make such analysis in advance of the recitation,
but he should so assign the lesson that the student will be prepared to
give one when he comes to class. A word in advance by the teacher will
prompt the student who is studying the American Revolution, to classify
its causes as direct and indirect, economic and political, social and
religious. There is no difficulty in finding good authorities who
disagree as to the effect on America of the English trade restrictions.
Callendar's _Economic History of the United States_ quotes five of the
best authorities on this point, and covers the case in a few pages. A
reference by the teacher to this or some other authority will bring out
a lively discussion on the justice of the American resistance. Let the
class be asked to account for the colonial opposition to the Townshend
Acts, when the Stamp Act Congress had declared that the regulation of
the Colonies' external trade was properly within the powers of
Parliament. Let the class be asked to explain a statement that the
Declaration of Independence does not mention the real underlying causes
of the Revolution. A few suggestions and advanced questions of this sort
wil