days at school, are loyally ready to force
the views of their fathers and their mothers, and their uncles and
aunts, upon their teachers; and their teachers are tactfully ready to
effect a compromise with them. But, before very long, our reiterated,
"Your teacher knows; do as she says," has its effect. The teacher
becomes the child's touchstone in relation to a considerable number of
the "array of subjects" taught in a present-day school. School-teachers
in America prepare themselves so carefully for their duties, train
themselves to such a high order of skill in their performance, it is but
just that those of us who are not teachers should abdicate in their
favor.

However, since we are all very apt to be in entire accord with the
children's teachers in all really vital matters, our position of second
place in the minds of the boys and girls with regard to the ways of
doing "bank discount" or translating "_Gallia est omnes divisa in partes
tres_" is of small account. At least, we have a fuller knowledge of
their own relations with these mathematical and Latinic things than our
grandparents had of our parents' lessons. And the children's teachers
know more about our relations to the subjects taught than the teachers
of our fathers and mothers knew respecting the attitudes of our
grandfathers and grandmothers toward the curriculum of that earlier
time. For the children of to-day, unlike the children of a former time,
talk at home about school and talk at school about home. Almost
unconsciously, this effects an increasingly cooperative union between
home and school.

"We are learning 'Paul Revere's Ride,' in school," I heard a small girl
who lives in Boston say recently to her mother.

"Are you, darling?" the mother replied. "Then, shouldn't you like to go
some Saturday and see the church where the lanterns were hung?"

So much did the child think she would like to go that her mother took
her the next Saturday.

"You saw the very steeple at which Paul Revere looked that night for the
lanterns!" I said, when, somewhat later, I happened to be again at that
child's home.

"Twice," she replied. "I told my teacher that mother had taken me, so
she took all of us in my room at school on the next Saturday."

Perhaps the most significant influence of the American home upon the
American school is to be found in the regular setting apart of an hour
of the school-day once, or twice, or even three times a week, as a story
hou