orkshops and the
girls to the kitchens and sewing-rooms of the farmers who allowed those
privileges. He had used up a great deal of time in studying farm
conditions. He had induced the boys to test the cows of the district for
butter-fat yield. He was studying the matter of a cooperative creamery. He
hoped to have a blacksmith shop on the schoolhouse grounds sometime, where
the boys could learn metal working by repairing the farm machinery, and
shoeing the farm horses. He hoped to install a cooperative laundry in
connection with the creamery. He hoped to see a building sometime, with an
auditorium where the people would meet often for moving picture shows,
lectures and the like, and he expected that most of the descriptions of
foreign lands, industrial operations, wild animals--in short, everything
that people should learn about by seeing, rather than reading--would be
taught the children by moving pictures accompanied by lectures. He hoped
to open to the boys and girls the wonders of the universe which are
touched by the work on the farm. He hoped to make good and contented
farmers of them, able to get the most out of the soil, to sell what they
produced to the best advantage, and at the same time to keep up the
fertility of the soil itself. And he hoped to teach the girls in such a
way that they would be good and contented farmers' wives. He even had in
mind as a part of the schoolhouse the Woodruff District would one day
build, an apartment in which the mothers of the neighborhood would leave
their babies when they went to town, so that the girls could learn the
care of infants.

"An' I say," interposed Con Bonner, "that we can rest our case right here.
If that ain't the limit, I don't know what is!"

"Well," said Jennie, "do you desire to rest your case right here?"

Mr. Bonner made no reply to this, and Jennie turned to Jim.

"Now, Mr. Irwin," said she, "while you have been following out these very
interesting and original methods, what have you done in the way of
teaching the things called for by the course of study?"

"What is the course of study?" queried Jim. "Is it anything more than an
outline of the mental march the pupils are ordered to make? Take reading:
why does it give the children any greater mastery of the printed page to
read about Casabianca on the burning deck, than about the cause of the
firing of corn by hot weather? And how can they be given better command of
language than by writing about t