etire to, with the permission of the
teacher, for mutual instruction.

That able and judicious advocate of popular enlightenment, and eminently
successful school officer, the Honorable Henry Barnard, does not
over-estimate the importance of district libraries. In speaking of the
benefits they confer upon a community, he says, "Wherever such libraries
have existed, especially in connection with the advantages of superior
schools and an educated ministry, they have called forth talent and
virtue, which would otherwise have been buried in poverty and ignorance,
to elevate, bless, and purify society. The establishment of a library in
every school-house will bring the mighty instrument of good books to act
more directly and more broadly on the entire population of a state than
it has ever yet done; for it will open the fountains of knowledge,
without money and without price, to the humble and the elevated, the
poor and the rich."

APPURTENANCES TO SCHOOL-HOUSES.--There are, perhaps, in the majority of
school-houses, a pail for water, a cup, a broom, and a chair for the
teacher. Some one or more of these are frequently wanting. I need hardly
say, every school-house should be supplied with them all. In addition to
these, every school-house should be furnished with the following
articles: 1. An evaporating dish for the stove, which should be supplied
with clean pure water. 2. A thermometer, by which the temperature of the
room may be regulated. 3. A clock, by which the time of beginning and
closing school, and conducting all its exercises, may be governed. 4. A
shovel and tongs. 5. An ash-pail and an ash-house. For want of these,
much filth is frequently suffered to accumulate in and about the
school-house, and not unfrequently the house itself takes fire and burns
down. 6. A wood-house, well supplied with seasoned wood. 7. A well, with
provisions not only for drinking, but for the cleanliness of pupils. 8.
And last, though not least, in this connection, two privies, in the rear
of the school-house, separated by a high close fence, one for the boys
and the other for the girls. For want of these indispensable appendages
of civilization, the delicacy of children is frequently offended, and
their morals corrupted. Nay, more, the unnatural detention of the
_faeces_, when nature calls for an evacuation, is frequently the
foundation for chronic diseases, and the principal cause of permanent
ill health, resulting not unfrequently in