_Mr. Canniff Haight_, in Canada of "Fifty Years Ago," gives the following account of the common school education of his day:--"The schoolhouse was close at hand, and its aspect is deeply graven in my memory. It was a small, square structure, with low ceiling. In the centre of the room was a box stove, around which the long wooden benches, without backs, were ranged. Next the wall were the desks, raised a little from the floor. In the summer time the pupils were all of tender years, the elder ones being kept at home to help with the work. I was one of a lot of little urchins ranged daily on hard wooden seats, with our feet dangling in the air for seven or eight hours a day. In such a plight we were expected to be very good children, to make no noise, and to learn our lessons. It is a marvel that so many years had to elapse before parents and teachers could be brought to see that keeping children in such a position for so many hours was an act of great cruelty. The terror of the rod was the only thing that could keep us still, and at that often failed. Sometimes, tired and weary, we fell asleep and tumbled off the bench, to be awakened by the fall of the rod. In the winter time, the small school was filled to overflowing with the larger boys and girls. This did not improve our condition, for we were more closely packed together, and were either shivering with the cold or being roasted with a red-hot stove.... I next sat under the rod of an Irish pedagogue--an old man who evidently believed that the only way to get anything into a boy's head was to pound it in with a stick through his back. There was no discipline, and the noise we made seemed to rival a bedlam.--_pp. 17, 18._ "As far as my recollection goes, the teachers were generally of a very inferior order, and rarely possessed more than a smattering of the rudiments of grammar and arithmetic. They were poorly paid, and "boarded round" the neighbourhood. But it is not improbable that they generally received all that their services were worth.... The school-houses where the youth were taught were in keeping with the extent of instruction received within them. They were invariably small, with low ceilings, badly lighted, and without ventilation."--_pp. 157, 158._ A SCHOOL TEACHER'S PERSONAL EXPERIENCE IN 1865. From the Toronto _Mail_ of November 28th, 1888, I select the following graphic account of the personal experience of a school teacher in 1865:--