African J^'^otcs.
��275
��School is a novelty and a pleasure to them. Their advancement always equals that of children who spend all their working hours in study.
The papers are continually print- ing articles about the immense value to every person of the knowledge of some practical handicraft by which he can earn his own living. They cite instances of European noliles who have apprenticed their sons, and of a few wealthy men in this country who have followed their example. But it is no use. So long as the pub- lic schools teach as they do, and es- pecially so long as tlie iiigh school remains free, their mighty influence all goes against manual labor.
In old times it was accounted that a child seven years old was able to earn its living. It may be a disad- vantage for a child to have to do it, but it certainly is no less a one for the child to be put into the public school system and turned out at the age of seventeen without knowledge of one practical craft by which he
��can provide for himself. When Hor- ace Greeley saw Oxford graduates in New York city unable to earn their daily bread, no wonder that he " thanked God that he was graduated from a New England ^"e>•^/ common school."
I have no wish to depreciate the value of learning. It is because I would not have it held cheap that I would not give it away in any grade beyond the grammar school. If par- ents had to pay a tuition fee, how- ever slight, to the high school, they would be compelled to appreciate the relative values of things. There should be no niggardliness in expen- diture for public education. School appropriations, if judiciously applied, cannot be too large. There are not half enough school-houses in the land ; but that which the people most need to know should be taught in them. The instruction of the high school may well be left to those who can afford time and money for learning for its own sake.
��AFRICAN NOTES. By a. a. Woodbridge.
��No i)art of the Dark Continent has been opened up longer to the com- merce of the world than has the west coast, and yet to the average I'eader no part of the African coast is less known than the long stretch of har- borless shore line from Goree to the Bights of Benin and Biafra.
No trading coast of the world can offer richer inducements to the Amer- ican shipmaster or owner, yet but few
��capitalists are found with sufficient knowledge of its constant value to induce them to engage in its trade. England skirts the coast with steam and sail, carrying protection with man-of-war and mail-boat to every trading-post where any handful of Englishmen have made a thirty da3's stand. Nearly half a century before Columbus's first voyage westward the Portuguese had nominally taken pos-
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