"'Yes," said an old teacher to a representative of the _Mail_ yesterday, "education has been wonderfully revolutionized in Ontario during the last twenty-five years. It was in January, 1865, that I first took up the birch, swaying it until I cautiously made up my mind to quit when the new Act requiring higher qualifications came into force in 1871. At that time the school houses in my county were all constructed of logs, and more uninviting buildings than these were not to be found in the country. It did appear that the ratepayers were more led to educate their children out of a feeling of latent and legal compulsion, than out of duty and parental regard. The life of a teacher in those days was not the high-toned one of to-day. Let me give my own experience, and when I have related it you will see how much there is in the complaints and grumblings of the existing generation of school teachers. "'A school became vacant in the neighboring township, and I made up my mind, armed as I was with a first-class certificate awarded me by the County Board of Examaminers, that I would apply for the position. "'I went to two influential men in the neighborhood and succeeded in coaxing them to go with me to the trustees of the school. We arrived at the section in due time, and after making due enquiries proceeded to the house of one of the trustees, who had the reputation of knowing everything worth discovering in the school law of the period. I felt an awful dread and confusion come over me when in the presence of that trustee. I was introduced, and I immediately told my errand. The horny-handed son of toil gave me one of those inscrutable looks that nearly sunk me to the earth. He coughed slightly, jerked his head back, put his two hands in the pockets of his trousers, and immediately proceeded to business.' "'So yous wants the school, does you?' "'I do, sir.' "'Well, I might as well tell ye at once that the teacher we intend hiring must be better than the present one. He is a curse to the children of this section, with his grammar and his jography, and all his other fal da rals. Why, sir; my son Bill comes home the other night and says he, "'Father, what is grammar?' "I says, Bill, I never studied grammar, and you see how I am able to get along without it. Grammar is no good for ploughing or cutting up that slash fornent the house." "Well," says the boy, "would you tell me what our teacher meant by saying that Berlin is on the Spree?" I then got mad, and says I, "Bill, never let me hear ye say anything more about these things. Sure they were never taught to us from the New Testament when I was in school." But that is not all, the boy began to say to himself, orthography, etymology, syntax, and prosody, going over them again and again, until I says to Moriah, "is the child getting mad, wife!"