There are so many topics pressing for immediate consideration that I am tempted to prolong what I mean to be a brief letter into a catalogue of our necessities; but I will allow myself only one word. There is a wide-spread complaint that, with all the time given to history, much more time than was commonly given ten years ago, pupils leave the high schools with indefinite knowledge--I had almost said with indefinite ignorance--of the subject. College teachers are perplexed and discouraged by the frailty and inaccuracy of the students’ attainments when the students first appear in their classes; perhaps there is like cause for discouragement when they disappear from their classes. The cold fact is that our boys and girls too often do not have distinct, decided, accurate information; but have aptitude in guessing, supposing, and approximating. The first thing, then, that we need to consider is this: Can we make the most and get the best from the newer methods of teaching? Can we teach students to handle books and to think as well as remember? Can we give them the historical idea and the historical point of view? Can we stimulate them to read and arouse their imagination? Can we do these things, and still be sure that this information is exact, that they have reverence for truth, and that what they have learned is firmly fastened in their minds? If we cannot, I fear that sooner or later we shall all slip back quickly into the old rote method and make each day’s lesson an unalloyed grind on an unvarying modicum of unadorned and unadorning fact; and when we do slip back thus far, we might as well slip out of the school room altogether, for there is no time or place in the school for history instruction that is content with stuffing minds with dates and names. Our task, then, is to get and to give all the educational value of history; and experience proves that the task is a heavy one. We all hope that the new journal will help us lift the load and carry it. Cordially, A. C. MCLAUGHLIN. History in the Summer Schools The summer school admittedly is organized for the benefit of teachers who wish to gain intellectually, or advance themselves in their profession by study in the vacation time. There are indeed in the summer school regular students who are making up conditions, or ambitious undergraduates seeking to shorten their course; but these are a negligible quantity.