But there is a very different way of teaching geography, by which the study may be made a pleasure, not a task. The teacher does not begin with abstract definitions of rivers, and bays, and oceans, which convey no definite meaning to a child, but with Charles River, Boston Harbor, and the Atlantic Ocean, which are to him real things, however imperfect his conceptions of their extent. The child is first shown, not a map of the globe, which he can not by any possibility understand, but a map of a very limited region around his own home. He is taught how to find the north and south, the east and west directions. He is encouraged to make excursions to verify the map, or to add to its details, and such excursions may be made to have for him all the zest of voyages of discovery; and when thus the rudiments of geographical science have been mastered, not in technical terms, but in substance, then the teacher may begin to expand the horizon of the pupil's knowledge, judiciously omitting details in proportion as distance increases, until at length the general survey embraces the globe. Of course, such teaching as this can only be given orally with the help of proper apparatus, such as wall maps, and globes, and photographs. It must take the interrogative form, and the questions should be directed to bring out the child's already acquired knowledge, and to lead him to observe facts which had hitherto escaped his notice. What a child reads in a book, or even what you tell him, is never one half learnt, unless his interest is aroused. But what a child observes for himself he never forgets, and when you have thus aroused his interest you can associate a large number of facts with one observation, and these all crystallize in his memory around this nucleus. This is no mere theory, no untried method which I am advocating. So far from it, I am describing the precise method which has been used for many years in Germany, where the science of education is far better understood than with us, and where economy both of time and labor in teaching is most carefully studied. If our school committees could attend and understand a single exercise in geography, such as are daily given in the elementary schools of Prussia, I am sure that at least one form of child torture would soon disappear from the primary schools of this country. Indeed, I already see evidence of a growing public opinion on this subject, an effect which I trace in no small measure to the influence of the Department of Education of the Exhibition at Philadelphia in 1876.