New and better ideas of child education are steadily making their way. Nearly every one now acknowledges that the school room should be primarily a place of entertainment, that the true vocation of the teacher is to amuse in an instructive manner, and that study is really a scientific form of play. Also, it is quite generally admitted that methods which involve mental effort on the part of the child are not to be tolerated.
So much progress has already been made. But now there has just appeared a book which bids fair to carry the educational advance as far ahead again. This book, entitled "A Baseball Primer of French," substitutes for the conventional pedantry of conjugations, syntax, etc., a vivid account in French of an imaginary world's series. Any boy who studies it will understand it instinctively; for if the foreign text prove obscure, he has only to read the English translation underneath.
The author, Speed Stevens—who, it may be remembered, was captain of his college nine,—shows a profound knowledge of baseball. Indeed, it is on account of his ability as athletic coach that he holds his position of instructor in French at Croton.
The following extract gives an inkling of the rare pedagogical value of the book:
Dans le dixième point, avec deux hommes
In the tenth period, with two men
sur bases et un sorti, Harburg éventa. Alors
on bases and one out, Harburg fanned. Then
Bill le Rosseur ramassa sa chauve-souris et
Bill the Walloper picked up his bat and