In the days of percentages, instruction in "_Writing_" below Standard V was entirely confined to handwriting and spelling; and even in the higher Standards the teacher thought more about handwriting and spelling than any other aspect of this composite subject. Now handwriting and spelling are merely means to an end,--the end of making clear to the reader the words that have been committed to paper by the writer. But it is the choice rather than the setting out of words that really matters, and the name that we give to the choosing of words is Composition. The excessive regard that has always been paid in our elementary schools to neat handwriting and correct spelling is characteristic of the whole Western attitude towards education. No "results" are more easily or more accurately appraised than these, and it follows that no "results" are more highly esteemed by the unenlightened teacher. For wherever the outward standard of reality has established itself at the expense of the inward, the ease with which worth (or what passes for such) can be measured is ever tending to become in itself the chief, if not the sole, measure of worth. And in proportion as we tend to value the results of education for their measureableness, so we tend to undervalue and at last to ignore those results which are too intrinsically valuable to be measured. * * * * * Hence the neglect of _Composition_ in so many elementary schools. I mean by composition the sincere expression in language of the child's genuine thoughts and feelings. The effort to "compose," whether orally or on paper, is one of the most educational of all efforts; for language is at once the most readily available and the most subtle and sympathetic of all media of expression; and the effort to express himself in it tends, in proportion as it is sincere and strong, to give breadth, depth, and complexity to the child's thoughts and feelings, and through the development of these to weave his experiences into the tissue of his life. But sincerity of expression is not easily measured, and the true value of the thoughts and feelings that are struggling to express themselves in a child's composition is beyond the reach of any rule or scale; whereas neatness of handwriting and correctness of spelling are, as we have seen, features which appeal even to the carelessly observant eye.