The natural method has been for several years past on trial, and has achieved a marked success. It has been practically demonstrated that in a very short time persons can be taught to speak French or German, or indeed any language for which there is a competent living teacher. The modern languages have been most successful because it is not easy to find those sufficiently familiar with the ancient ones to give to their pupils the necessary practice in them. Yet, even Greek and Latin have been taught to be spoken in this way. In the modern languages, however, but a few weeks have been needed to enable persons to speak them fluently and understand them well when spoken. From the beginning the scholar is taught to speak in the simple way in which the mother-tongue is taught in childhood. With the very first lesson single words at the beginning and then some simple phrases are mastered. These are increased with each succeeding lesson, and soon the pupil finds that he has quite a store of the words and phrases most commonly in use. By frequent practice these are retained, and others being daily added, at the end of six weeks, or thereabouts, of constant study, any ordinary conversation can be carried on with a facility which astonishes those accustomed only to the slow and tedious processes of the older methods.
It has been fortunate for the Chautauqua Assembly that teachers have taught here from the beginning who have been thoroughly devoted to this method of instruction. Hence the success of the schools, which have already attained to very large numbers, and have secured enthusiastic interest in all those who have attended them. Though the number of last year exceeded that of any that preceded it, it was but an earnest of what is yet to come. Any prediction of the future outcome of these schools, which would be recognized as at all moderate by others, would fall far short of what is confidently expected of them by those familiar with this natural method of instruction, and with the success with which it has met in the Chautauqua schools.
William Penn and His Policy.
The recent celebration of the bi-centennial of the landing of William Penn on this continent has once more attracted public attention to the founder of the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Penn was a prominent personage during his lifetime and figured largely both in England and this country. His character was an odd mixture of fanaticism and moderation, and in his public career he managed to so blend Quaker simplicity and worldly wisdom that he was a great light in his sect and at the same time was possessed of great influence in court circles, especially during the reign of James II.
He received his patent for the territory now forming the State which bears his name from the crown, in payment of a debt of £16,000 due to his father, who had been an admiral in the English navy during the reign of Charles II. When he came to this country in 1682 to take possession of his grant, he did not endeavor to drive out by force the Indian tribes which occupied it, but formed a treaty of peace and friendship with them on such terms that the land made over to him by the crown was ceded to him and his colonies by the consent of the aboriginal inhabitants. In all his relations with the Indians he treated them with such justice and benevolence that his colonies were never molested by them, but enjoyed uninterrupted peace and prosperity. Of this treaty made by Penn with the Indians Voltaire said that it was “the only treaty never sworn to and never broken.”
Penn’s treatment of the Indians was as anomalous as it was wise and statesmanlike. Had a similar policy characterized the leaders and members of other colonies this country would have been spared many scenes of horror and years of bloodshed, and the story of the red men’s wrongs would never have disgraced its records. Penn’s course in this matter was all the more remarkable in that it was utterly foreign to the spirit of the age in which he lived. War was the trade of kings and their representatives. Its rude alarms were preferred to the “piping sounds of peace,” and the sword was deemed a more honorable emblem than the olive branch. Penn showed his greatness by rising completely above the spirit and temper of his times in the policy he pursued in relation to the Indians.
The world has grown wiser with the flight of time, and now, after the lapse of two centuries, the peace policy which Penn adopted in his treatment of the Indians is becoming more and more the policy of the nations toward one another. War has been found to be the most costly and cruel method of settling national difficulties. Besides causing the slaughter of millions of men, it has been the means of loading the states of Europe, as well as our own country, with burdensome debts which the coming generations of peace-loving men must pay. As the world becomes more thoroughly civilized and Christianized war will be looked upon as a relic of barbarism, and will be shunned as a horrid crime. National differences will be settled by arbitration and mutual concessions instead of by an appeal to arms, and the prophetic declaration that men “shall beat their swords into plough-shares and their spears into pruning hooks” will be fulfilled in spirit if not in letter.