Within the last few months Mr. Northrop, Secretary of the Board of Education of Connecticut, has distributed in the high schools and upper classes of the grammar schools of the State, blanks to be filled by the pupils with the kind of reading that they like best, and the names of their favorite authors. Several hundred of these circulars were destroyed when the Hartford High School was burned last winter. The publication of a list of books suitable for boys and girls has been delayed, but Mr. Holbrook, of the Morgan School, Clinton, Conn., who prepared the list, writes concerning his work in school: "I have the practical disbursement of three or four hundred dollars a year for books. In the high school, in my walks at recess among the pupils, I inquire into their reading, try to arouse some enthusiasm, and then, when the iron is hot, I make the proposition that if they will promise to read nothing but what I give them I will make out a schedule for them. A pupil spending one hour, even less, a day, religiously observing the time, will, in five years, have read every book that should be read in the library. Those who agree to the above proposition I immediately start on the Epochs of History, turning aside at proper times to read some historical novel. When that is done I give them Motley, then Dickens, or Prescott, or Macaulay, Hawthorne, Thackeray, Don Quixote. Cooper I depend on as a lure for younger readers. When they have read about enough (in my opinion), I invite them to go a little higher. Whenever they come to the office and look helplessly about, I immediately jump up from my work, and, solving the personal equation, pick out two or three books which I think adapted first to interest, and then instruct. I try to welcome their appearance, assuring them that the books are to be read, urging the older ones to read carefully and with thought. Some I benefit; others are too firmly wedded to their idols, Mrs. Holmes and Southworth. Finally, it is my aim to send them away from school with their eyes opened to the fact that they have, the majority, been reading to no purpose; that there are better, higher, and nobler books than they ever dreamed of. Of course I don't always accomplish this; but he who aims at the sun will go higher than one aiming at the top of the barn."