nd forth between the home
and the school.

I have a friend, the mother of an only child, a boy of eight. Her
husband's work requires that the family live in a section of the city
largely populated by immigrants. The one school in the vicinity is a
large public school. When my friend's little boy reached the "school
age," he, perforce, was entered at this school.

"You are an American," his father said to him the day before school
opened; "not a foreigner, like almost every child you will find at
school. Remember that."

"He doesn't understand what you mean when you talk to him about being an
American," the boy's mother said the next morning as we all watched the
child run across the street to the school. "How could he, living among
foreigners?"

One day, about two months later, the small boy's birthday being near at
hand, his father said to him, "If some one were planning to give you
something, what should you choose to have it?"

"A flag," the boy said instantly; "an American flag! _Our_ flag!"

"Why?" the father asked, almost involuntarily.

"To salute," the child replied. "I've learned how in school--what to say
and what to do. Americans do it when they love their country--like you
told me to," he added, eagerly. "Our teacher says so. She's taught us
all how to salute the flag. I told her I was an American, not a
foreigner like the other children. And she said they could be Americans,
too, if they wanted to learn how. So they are going to."

The small boy got his flag. The patriotism taught at home and the
patriotism taught at school, diverse at other points, met and mingled at
that one most fundamental point.

In former days children did not quote their teachers much at home, nor
their parents much at school. They do both in these days; occasionally
with comic results. A little girl of my acquaintance whose first year at
school began less than a month ago has, I observed only yesterday,
seemed to learn as her introductory lesson to pronounce the words
"either" and "neither" quite unmistakably "[=a]ther" and "n[=a]ther."

"This is an amazing innovation," I said to her mother. "How did she ever
happen to think of it?"

"Ask her," said her mother plaintively.

I did inquire of the little girl. "Whom have you heard say '[=a]ther'
and 'n[=a]ther'?"

"Nobody," she unexpectedly answered.

"Then how did you learn to say it?"

"Uncle Billy told me to--"

This uncle is an instructor of English in one of o