Oliver Wendell Holmes is a philanthropist in the world of letters. Since his college days at Harvard, where he distinguished himself by his contributions to the _Collegian_, he has been giving to his wide circle of readers strong, clean, good thoughts, mixed with the happiest humor. His essays have been among the most enjoyable of his writings. His publishers have recognized this and collected a dozen of them into “Pages from an Old Volume of Life.”[K] There are many subjects touched, but his “Phi Beta Kappa” oration of 1870, “Mechanism in Thought and Morals,” is, perhaps, the best in the collection. The two essays, written during the war for _The Atlantic_ readers, have a pathos so touching, it completely does away with the false idea that Holmes is only a humorist. The volume is a pleasant book for an hour’s reading; indeed, it may well be classed along with what the author himself has aptly called “pillow-smoothing authors;” not a dull, heavy book, but one whose easily-flowing thoughts and continued good humor, quiet the mind and allow the reader to pass into dreamy forgetfulness. “Things that have to be done, should be learned by doing them.” Teachers know as well, perhaps, as any class of people how applicable this old truism is to their work. They only learn by doing; but too often they learn the routine, not the science. A little book just published by A. Lovell & Co.,[L] is sent out in the interest of thoughtful teaching. There are some excellent development lessons, in which, simply by questions, and a few simple materials, are developed ideas of the senses, of forms, flat and solid, ideas of right and left, etc. A series of lessons on plants and insects have for their object “to bring the child into contact with nature, to teach him to observe, think, reason, and to express himself naturally.” The book contains an excellent paper on the much-discussed “Quincy School Work.” No new departure in the educational world has caused more talk. That there is something in it no one doubts that knows of the results of Superintendent Parker’s system, but how to use it is not easily explained. This essay will help teachers to understand the method and show them how it may be used.