it does occur, be detected and punished. All cases of prosecution should be published, on account not only of its preventive effect, but because it strengthens public sentiment.
The cause will be hindered by mawkish sentiment, interference to an undue degree in slight cases, while neglecting great and widespread injustice, or positive wrong, toward our faithful dumb friends. In spreading sound ideas in regard to animals; in correcting generally admitted and great cruelties; in providing temporary homes for lost and stray animals; by encouraging, directly or indirectly, scientific research in biology, especially on the diseases common to man and our domestic animals; in contributing to the investigation of animal intelligence—we have, in addition to many other lines of effort, large and worthy fields of endeavor for the improvement of the condition of things in the world in which we live, both for man and his fellow-creatures, lower in the scale, it is true, but withal very admirable.
| THE OSWEGO STATE NORMAL SCHOOL. |
By Prof. WILLIAM M. ABER.
TO-DAY, in the quiet, old city of Oswego, N. Y., stands a school whose influence has extended throughout the land. At its head is its founder, Dr. E. A. Sheldon: the school is his life work.
In 1848 Mr. Sheldon, a young man of twenty-four, then a resident of Oswego, felt moved to study somewhat into the condition of the poor of that city. Their ignorance and misery excited profound pity. Influential friends were enlisted, an "Orphan and Free School Association" was formed, a schoolroom provided, and a teacher sought. To his surprise, he found that he must teach the school or the enterprise would be abandoned. For salary he asked the estimated cost of his living, two hundred and seventy-five dollars per year, and received three hundred dollars. In the basement of an old church, the inexperienced young teacher was brought face to face with one hundred and twenty wild boys and girls of from five to twenty-one. These he held in order and kept at work by insight, love, and patience—those potent exorcisers of evil spirits.
From this movement, though against strenuous opposition, sprang the free and graded schools of Oswego, which were organized by Mr. Sheldon in 1853. As a superintendent of schools he might have ended his days, had he not possessed qualities of mind and heart which led him to turn from easy, routine work and encounter toils and dangers to find or make a better way. As machines for securing from the pupils the learning, memoriter, of
