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THE LIBRARY

The Ontario Institute

for Studies in Education

Toronto, Canada

LIBRARY

THE ONTARIO INSTITUTE

FOR STU I T^ ! ' EDUCATION

T ; SA

FEB 25 1968

"Then to live out all possibilities."

IN MEMORIAM

Charlotte M. Mason

TARENTS' NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL UNION 2« VICTORIA STREET LONDON, f JP 1928

PRICE TWO SHILLINGS AND SIXPENCE

to live out all p

IN MEMORIAM

Charlotte M. Mason

PARENTS' NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL UNION

26 VICTORIA STREET

LONDON, S.W.I.

1928

PRICE TWO SHILLINGS AND SIXPENCE

310. I93I09Z 13 f

Printed and made in Great Britain by Wadsworth and Go. The Rydal Press, Keighley.

List of Contents

Portrait

The World to Come

C M . Mason

Page

Frontispiece v.

Part I.

From the Whitsuntide Conference Report, 1922.

Some P .N .E .U . Principles . P .N .E .U . A Service to the State

CM. CM

Mason Mason

Part II. From the Memorial Numbers of the Parents' Review.

1.

OFFICIAL TRIBUTES.

Official Tributes

2.

THE UNION AND ITS FOUNDER.

Maud Immf.mor

C .M .M . The Friend Public Elementary Schools

The Marchioness of Aber- deen and Temair .

H.F

Willingham F . Raxvnsley

Sir L. Amherst Selby-
Bigge	16
Sir Michael Sadler CB.	17
Sir Clifford Allbutt .	20
The Rev. W.H. Draper	21
Lady Baden-Powell	21
General Sir Robert Baden-
Powell/	22
The Times	24
The Times Educationa	I
Supplement .	26
H. A.L.Fisher	27
Two Extracts .	27

29 31 3&

Memories 1. B. S.Whitaker-

Thompson

A Few Recollections . . . Helen Webb . M ,B .

Our Leader Still .... H . W . Household

A Father's Part in the Home

Schoolroom J. W. Walker, O.,

F.S.A. .

The P.U.S. from a Mother's

Point of View .... E.M.Capron

A Mother's Tribute. . . . H.M.Swingler

P .U .S . Secondary Schools . . P. S. Goode ,B.A.

P .U .S . Elementary Schools . G.H.Smith

Some Reminiscences . . . F . C . A . Williams

Miss Mason's Message . . . E. A. Parish .

The Day's Work .... E.K.

Miss Mason of the House of

Education . . . . . R.A.P. .

From an Ex -Student . . . E. Hughes -J ones

Miss Mason's Love of the Coun- try Drives . . . . T. H. Barrow .

From a Rydal Neighbour . . A.M. Harris

An Impression Francis Chesterton .

In Memoriam D . J . (an ex-student)

E.

38 40 42

44

46 48 50 53 56 58 66

78

77

79 81 83 85

Part III.

From the P.U.S. A. Magazine.

THE CHILDREN'S TRIBUTE.

(*) An Old Pupil .	86
(ii)E.da Fonseca .	88
(Hi) Olive Marchington	89
(iv) Ex-Student and
MemberofP.U.S.A.	91
(v) Veronica Whitwell .	93
(vi) ' 'Childhood Memories
of Miss Mason* '	94
(mi) Michael A. E.
Franklin	95
(viii)tiTo Miss Mason"	99

Part IV.

From the Memorial Conference.

"For a great door and effectual is opened unto me."

— l.Cor. XVI. 9. Some Impressions of the House

of Education Prof . W . G . de Burgh . 109

ii

The Nature Work at the House of Education ....

The Parents' Union School and Its Founder

The Beginning of Things

Miss Mason's Ideal: Its Breadth and Balance

A Tribute

Education is a Life (By C. M. Mason)

A. C Drury

Miss Mason's Ideal in School Life

An Appreciation from aP.N.E.U. Elementaty School

A Tribute

Sympathy in Teaching .

The Hon. Mrs Franklin E.Kitching

H. E. Wix

H.M. Richards, C.B. Chief H.M.1.

Read by the Rev. H Costley-White (Head master of Westminster)

L. C. Faunce

D.S.Golding .

Lady Aberdeen

The Rev . & Hon . Edward

Lyttelton, D.D.,

D.C.L. .

Charlotte Mason and the Nation's Children

A Tribute

"Scale How"

The P.N.E.U. from a Prepara- tory School Standpoint

What The Parents' Union School did for Me

Henceforward .

The Memorial Service

Impressions (I .)

<n.)

H. W. Household The Lady Cottesloe E. A. Parish

J.W.Clouston

Michael A.E. Franklin R. A. Pennethorne .

E. E. M. Peacey D.S. Golding .

105

111 118

143

152

153 165

173 180

181

182 196 199

206

213 217 223 224 225

Epitaph ,

111

The World to Come (The Disciple).

A child will play all day at what he' 11 do, —

"When I am big!

"Great hunter will I be!

"That field I'll dig!" His parents look on smiling while he plays, And with bewildering changes shapes his days.

And we, poor foolish, when we dream and say

"Thus shall it be,—

"Our Father worketh yet,

"And shall not we? "Not eager, we, for crowns or crystal seas, "Or harps or singing or eternal ease;

"We would be doing as our Father doth! —

"We have no fears;

"With all our puny might

"Would roll His spheres!" Sure, not for this severely will He chide, Our Father, who for love of us hath died!

"Ye shall go before your brethren and help them, until the Lord hath given your brethren rest, ' '

O the dear world, sweet life, congenial joys!

How give them up ?

Though all be sin-defiled,

Where find we else The promise we believe our longings hold, — What work for us in any other fold ?

All bright may glow the joys of other spheres,

But this, our home!

And would we barter it

For any gain, Poorer, less constant, had our substance grown; Jesus, in separate joy, were less our own.

Continuance, sure, belongs to higher life;

All fickleness,

All change, with Death must pass,

And leave us true : Less a new life than utmost scope in this, With help laid on us here, ah, hope of bliss!

Jealous are we, with jealousy unreasoning,

Over their joys ;

For their gain, sadly bear

Unbidden loss; With Him ; — in Him ; — there all the promise ends : Ourselves, not Christ, do banish our sweet friends.

Sure, the dim kingdom where we seat our Dead

Is of the world :

The heaven of Christ is ruled

By other laws : Not cumbrous change in circumstance and place, But the enraptured vision of His face!

Death opes not heaven's gate ; for long ago,

Soon as the King

Shone in upon the soul

Did heaven begin: A blessed state, a lifting up for ever; Not some far seats when soul and body sever :

Two fuller consummations be there yet

To this full bliss :—

Our holy dead have reached

The second life, — Where pure eyes see the King in beauty fresh, And service bears no dragging clog of flesh.

vi

Then to live out all possibilities

Of love and help,

Of counsel and support,

That now but mock These slow unloving wills : to be unseen Among our own beloved, a ghostly screen,

And love them with love purely purged from self,

That, as an air

Tender, should wrap their lives,

Nor ever fret With any waywardness ; to lay their cares, And with pure spirit -promotings, help their

prayers, —

What life were this! Nor only for our own

Would we have help

Laid on us, but for all

Whose pain now moves, Whose thoughts inspire, — all life that any way, If only in fond dream, on ours doth play.

And not unowned, or self-imposed, our tasks;

Ever bidden

By the dear Word of God,

Willing His will, In the low rest of meekness, were our ease : So, working, should we yet from labours cease. *******

Poor, ignorant and foolish, what know we

If this may be,

Or other, better life?

We trust in Thee! Our Father, wilt not smile on us and say, "Tis but my silly children at their play?"

Charlotte M. Mason.

vii

In Memoriam — Charlotte M. Mason

PART I.

I.

SOME P.N.E.U. PRINCIPLES.*

By C. M. Mason.

It gives me and gives us all extraordinary pleasure to meet so many P.N.E.U. members, especially when one reflects on the fatigues of travel through the weary hours of a long, hot and dusty day; for members are here from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, from the most distant as well as the nearer counties of England, and, of course, London has sent a large contingent, notwithstanding the 'Season . '

A few delegates from other educational Societies have honoured us by coming, but the general aspect of this 'great gathering ' is undoubtedly P .N .E .U . ; we arc used to the same aspect in the children, who soon develop what used to be called in my early-Victorian youth 'an intelli- gent countenance ' ; and it is that same countenance we see here . Some of those present have upheld our teaching these thirty years and more. Lady Campbell brings a daughter who is a mother and a member, Mrs. Howard Glover does not bring a son who is a father, but we all know Mr. Cedric Glover who carries on our training in Musical Appreciation so brilliantly in the Parents ' Review, and whom I first met as a 'musical baby' of three!

* From the Whitsuntide Conference Report, 1922.

1

To our Honorary Secretary and her stalwart supporters we owe it that as a society we have lived in good fellowship for more than a generation.

The P.N.E.U. have taken pains to master a dis- tinctive philosophy of education which some of us believe will do great things for many thousands of children and their homes.

This spiritual edifice, shall I call it, is a sort of coral atol raised by innumerable workers. There is our Hon. Secretary who cares more for our philosophy than even for its results, and who, with her committee, has afforded never failing sympathy and support to every new development . To instance one ; when our late deeply lamented friend and colleague, Mrs. F. Steinthal, succeeded during the last decade in getting a village school in the Yorkshire Colli- eries to demonstrate that, notwithstanding a very scanty vocabulary and little in the way of cultured surroundings — the children of colliers are just as fit to profit instantly by a liberal education as are those of the leisured class, — the committee led by their Hop . Sec . threw themselves heartily into the new departure and appointed an organising secre- tary to visit and help these schools. We all know Miss Parish, and some may regret that she gives to the College what was meant, not for the State, but for the whole work of the Union . Let me reassure them ; her work here is just as inestimable, and will perhaps prove as far-reaching as that she did from 'the Office.' Then followed Miss Wix, very able and enthusiastic, now one of H.M.'s Inspectors of Schools, and lastly, we all know and rejoice in Miss Penne- thorne whose brilliant powers and enthusiasm have already effected great things. Then, we have the band of distin- guished women, members of the Executive, who have held up Mrs. Franklin's hands for a generation, half a dozen of whom we have with us to-day : the race of chair- men, treasurers, etc., of the Executive, men of distinction; the last and not the least honourable of whom, the Head Master of Westminster, is with us now at the cost of much inconvenience. There are the families with home school- rooms, so largely and delightfully represented to-day; the

2

heads and teachers of a great many schools primary and secondary, also well represented; that large and touchingly interesting contingent of families, some of whom are to be found ii, every one of our Dominions and Colonies : the four to five hundred old students labouring for the cause ; our fellow -labourers in College, School and Office, who are doing great and original work ; perhaps I may make special mention of Miss E . Kitching, my oldest (in service) and not least honourable colleague; in fact, I feel like a drone in a hive of workers, especially when I look at our present Chairman, who comes amongst us like a comet with a tail of some seventy schools, great and small, in the single country of Gloucestershire! Let us all praise famous men, and one more I am sure you will allow me to name who is prevented by illness from being with us, — Mr. Willingham Rawnsley, an ever welcome visitor in the schools of York- shire, Gloucestershire and elsewhere, who has served us, as have many other friends , by means of many addresses and articles in the Press including the Parents' Review.

What after all are those principles which we all labour to advance? Let me first show a tangible result or two, inviting you to look at many such specimens in St . George's room, mostly Christmas examination papers ; you notice the bulk of each set , but these are only specimens of what each child could do. The children read many books, probably one question is set on each book ; a question which the clever- est crammer could not forecast . Whether they have read 50 or 250 pp ., the answers are equally full, clear, accurate and to the point ; and what is more, all are touched with emo- tion- Now, if life were long enough, the children could answer 10 or 20 questions on each book or section of a book, and each child would send in a volume of 200 — 300 pp. of vitalised knowledge all and evermore his own.

As regards the lessons you have listened to with sym- pathetic pleasure, may I let you into the secret. The children always pay absolute attention, nothing need ever be repeated, no former work is revised; they are always progressing, never retracing their steps, never going round and round like a horse in a mill.

This infinite power of attention in every child (and grown-up), our discovery, is one P.N.E.U. principle which puts education on a new footing, and promises the latter-day Renaissance we all long to see. People are becoming in love with knowledge, children and grownups, for of course parents and teachers share the delights of their children. No secondary motive, marks, prizes, place or the like, is required; children work with joy for the pure love of knowledge .

But what then is knowledge ? That is a question which as yet nobody has been able to answer. Our approach to a solution is to adapt Matthew Arnold's rather inadequate definition of religion'* Knowledge is information touched with emotion: feeling must be stirred, imagination must picture, reason must consider, nay, conscience must pro- nounce on the information we offer before it becomes mind- stuff. Therefore the current text -books of the schoolroom must needs be scrapped and replaced by literature, that is, by books into the writing of which the writer has put his heart, as well as a highly trained mind. That is another P .N .E .U . principle ; we try to use none but living books .

Then, a healthy mind is as hungry as a healthy body, and wants a large quantity of fit pabulum; also, the mind, too, hates 'everlasting tapioca,' and must have a very various diet, selected not at random, but according to its natural requirements. Matthew Arnold gives us, again, if not a definition, a rough classification of knowledge : Know- ledge of God, of man, of the universe, or, as we might put it , Divinity, the Humanities and Science ; these three are the natural requirements of every child of man ; so his syllabus must needs be wide, well-proportioned, well-balanced. Here is another P.N.E.U. principle which we act upon with courage and decision because we know of that inexhaustible fund of attention, that hunger and thirst after knowledge and that discriminating taste which can feed only upon literature and art, which are inherent in every child.

For the knowledge of God, the chief knowledge, we

•"Religion is morality , touched with emotion.

4

use the Bible, Prayer Book, and certain devout and up to date commentaries. We avoid what school-boys used to call 'pi-jaw.' We do not exhort much, nor appeal to feeling, nor shew pictures, nor introduce models or handi- crafts; but the sincere piety of P.U.S. children is remark- able, and is perhaps partly due to the fact that they are never bored but always interested.

From the age of twelve or so , they read a Life of Christ in verse; they seem to recognise that the poetic point of view helps them to realise the Divine life, in itself the epic of the ages . A girl of thirteen and a half in her Easter examination tackled the question: "The people sat in darkness " . . . "Z am the Light of the world . ' ' Shew as far as you can the meaning of these statements . She was not asked to write in verse, and was she not taught by a beautiful instinct to recognise that the phrases she had to deal with were essential poetry and that she could best sxpress htxself in verse?

" The people sat in darkness — all was dim, No light had yet come unto them from Him, No hope as yet of Heaven after life, A peaceful haven far from war and strife. Some warriors to Valhalla's halls might go And fight all day, and die. At evening, lo! They'd wake again, and drink in the great Hall. Some men would sleep for ever at their fall ; Or with their fickle Gods for ever be : So all was dark and dim. Poor heathens, see! The Light ahead, the clouds that roll away, The golden, glorious, dawning of the Day: And in the birds, the flowers, the sunshine, see The might of Him who calls "come unto Me."

The Humanities cover a wide field : poetry, the drama, listory, literature, biography, languages, essays, in fact vhere is the line to be drawn ?

You have heard in the lessons some instances of the :hildren's quick apprehension, complete comprehension and iccurate reproduction of passages, not chosen because they vere interesting, but because they followed in each case last veek's lesson on the same subject. Many parents and eachers here felt no doubt that their children would have

'narrated' in an even more miraculous way; they were right ; there seems to be no limit to what these ' 'incredible children"* can do.

But I should like to call your attention to one point which \ou will see fully illustrated later: this method of narration lends itself amazingly to the teaching of foreign languages, and promises to make of us tongue-tied folk a nation of linguists with copious vocabularies .

The children will read later (once only) a scene or two from Le Bourgeois Gentilhcmme and will narrate it in fluent French, grammatically used. The students will listen to a rather long lecture on Moliere, from Mdlle. Pierson, and when it is finished will narrate it practically without fault or ommission. Of course they have never heard this lec- ture before (though it was delivered to another division of the Senior Class at the Students ' Conference a month ago) .

Miss Gardner, our Lecturer in Classics, will hear a class construe a passage from Cicero , and they will narrate the passage, acquiring a Latin vocabulary and knowledge of construction in the act . Miss Parish is obtaining results even more remarkable in Italian, and until this year German has been studied to as good purpose .

In Science, too, we have perhaps our peculiar methods ; we do a great deal of field work, in geology, geography, botany, natural history, but we also use many living books. French scientists have perceived the poetry of science, and France owns a splendid library of scientific work of the nature of poetry though by no means written in verse ; some of these have been translated and we gladly use them, but, also, we have a few volumes of our own, written by our great men of science which fall under the heading of 'the Humanities,' because they are literature of the best; these our children use and they are helped to see what they look at and learn to wonder and admire. Also they narrate what they have read, and as a child in a Council School remarked, "We narrate, and then, we know."

We have, too, quite a code of 'principles' affecting character and conduct, aesthetic development and so on,

* Mr. Rawnsley on certain P .N .E .U . elementary schools .

6

but the few I have dwelt on, regulating our dealings with mind, are enough for the moment.

Let me add that what Wordsworth calls "The grand elemental principle of pleasure," is not with us con- fined to joyous occasions ; joy reigns in all our schoolrooms, every lesson satisfies the mind-hunger proper to children; they are quite happy and content, and Satan finds less mischief there for idle minds to think .

II. P.N.E.U., A SERVICE TO THE STATE. By C. M. Mason.

Yesterday we spoke of some of our guiding principles and how they should influence us individually. But these are days when we feel that we are all due to the country, if only for the sake of our men who have fallen. Many schemes are being tried for the bettering of the nation; we hardly begin to see results yet, and some of us are painfully anxious to do something for which the State will be the better if only in gratitude for all we have received.

What is wanted is a democratic education to include not only the fit, the aristocracy of mind, high and low, rich and poor, but everybody. And now we of the P.N.E.U. are in a position to state that while an academic education will of necessity reach only the fit and few, the humanities in English meet a general appeal . We ceased to count after the first 10,000 children in elementary schools who shewed themselves capable of doing happy and excellent humanistic work, but we know now that history, drama, tale, poems of the best, appeal to every one.

Mind, capable of dealing with knowledge in its three kinds, knowledge of God, knowledge of man, knowledge of the natural world, science ; mind in this sense appears to be a universal possession, and every one should have the joy and the manifold interests that such knowledge affords. Only a few on the other hand, some dozen, say, in a big school, will excel in academic knowledge, whether mathematical, linguistic or scientific. By all means let these have their

7

opportunity. We shall always want mathematicians and grammarians, but the rest put in their claims too. The stability proper to persons who have read wisely if not very widely should belong to us all. At the present time it does belong to the professional and upper classes, to public school men, for example, who, whatever may be their shortcom- ings, make themselves felt wherever they are, and do a good deal of the world's work. Home influences, the playing fields of Eton, anything but their school work gets credit for this admirable stability. But suppose that after all their humani tic studies have a tendency to make things seem worth doing even when they are done with little credit or profit; suppose that a sense of duty impels 'the educated classes, ' and that, however insistent personal claim ; may bo, they are subordinated to the claims of service; why, here is the very spirit we want to see in all classes of our country- men; and the direct and very possible way to such a temper of mind is through a liberal education.

We have all heard rumours of educational reconstruc- tion, which possibly affect us as does the rumble of London traffic — we do not analyse the roar, nor consider what it all means . Let me invite you to give your earnest attention to the question of education en bloc, because the P.N.E.U. is now being called upon to play a distinguished part in the upbringing of the coming generation: I am not speaking to members now of their own children but of the education of the country , in which we are required to give a lead . We may say with the prince in 'Rasselas' "How the world is to be, not 'peopled,' but educated, is not my concern and needs not to be yours . ' ' That has been our attitude in the past , even ours as a Society ; but great things have happened to us : it has been found that our P .N .E .U . way of educating our children is capable of being used with incredible effect on children of all sorts and conditions . Things that have not been done before since the world was are now done through the movement which we are 'in.' Our Hon. Sec. could tell a marvellous tale of children of the slums of a big northern town; so could members of our executive com- mittees ; our Org. Secretary could unfold tales which should

8

hold us for days on end. We need not be afraid that such tales would leave us cold; no, education is a vital thing whose pulse we feel , and we can no more listen coldly to a tale of real education than we can to the story of Florence Nightingale or Shackleton, or any other of our benefactors, for we are all one body.

How is it then that only a philanthropist or a philoso- pher here and there has given much thought to the matter ? For the same reason that though the machinery of a great cotton mill is wonderful past all whooping, the wonder stales on us in half an hour and we are chiefly aware of intolerable noise and dust. Our education in all classes of society has become mechanical with only little interludes of interest ; the results are remarkable but not interesting ; examinations are worked for and candidates pass with distinction; a servant applies (or would apply in the good old days) for a place in as good a letter as any one need write; people, all the people, are educated up to a certain point, but are not as they would say themselves "the better of it!" Educa- tion has failed to bring to any class of society, as a class, new interests, keen mental enjoyment, aesthetic pleasure, elevation of character, principles of conduct. A few here and there try to make up for the defects of their education in these respects, but not always with much success. I once dined at the house of a young man who had built a reputation on Keats. We looked up favourite poems to be ready for a feast of enlightened talk. But our host was a mere collector; he had each edition and every com- mentary and was blank to any remark about the poems themselves. Apparently he has not read Keats at all, but only collected . The education we give makes such an atti- tude of mind possible.

Let us think of our Society as one of the "Services," that is , to the State ; an idea we are all feeling after . ' 'Save the country ' ' appeals to all . What can we do ? Absolutely the first service to the State is to present it with good citizens, and all sorts of schools, nearly all families, are in intention at any rate labouring towards that end.

What are the qualities that go to make a good citizen

9

and how far does a P.N.E.U. child exhibit them? We may for convenience think of the children here, for P.N.E.U. children besides their family traits, exhibit a certain hall mark by which they may be known, a mark composed of many markings: One of the audience sug- gested 'Integrity ' as one of these ; you all know how straight your children are about their examinations ; how free they are from shifty ways , they know or they don 't know , and are quite simple about it. These children do not <«ca 'canny" or crib or transgress in any of the venial genial ways common among school children. Is not this attitude which we sum up roughly as integrity what we want in our citizens of all classes ?

Again, the absence of self-consciousness, self-conceit, vanity, display, has been noticed in these, who are simply average P.N.E.U. children. These are qualities that should make a citizen put his duties before his rights; and, once more, should not such citizens be an asset to any nation ?

This audience has been struck by the children's uncon- scious obedience, and again, what could a State desire more than citizens who obey its laws without knowing it, as indeed most of us do .

There is a singleness of purpose and motive about them which augurs well for their future as citizens, and promises another kind of purity about which we are all a little anxious , which is best ensured by a well nourished and active mind, for Satan finds some mischief still for idle minds to do .

Another asset offered by our P.N.E.U. children is the practice of instant absolute attention, what is called con- centration. Think what it would be to the head of a house or a factory, a ship or a department, to be sure of fixed intelli- gent attention being given to every instruction! We all serve in one way or another, but the capacity to serve is dependent on the habit of concentration.

We claim that all these and many more of the pro- perties of a good citizen depend on due nourishment with fitting knowledge. Let me repeat knowledge (to offer a

10

stumbling definition) is information touched with Emotion For this reason it is that only literature and art offer children the pabulum they require. Who can feel emotion over a compendium, however praiseworthy? But literature, whether in the form of history, poetry, drama, scientific treatise, nourishes the soul; and with all the world in one scale and a single soul in the other, the scale holding the world kicks the beam.

A good citizen must know about the laws of his country, the means of administration, how the constitution has developed; these things he must learn from a pretty wide reading of history — English, European, French, Ancient, — the stirring tales of services rendered to their several countries by great citizens throughout the ages. No boy reads "How Horatius kept the bridge in the brave days of old , ' ' without secret resolves and dreamy eyes .

Perhaps the first business of a citizen is to be self- supporting ; we all recognise that boys and girls too should be brought up to earn their living, it may be by administer- ing their own estates or by more direct service, and here we are content to let his self-supporting duty end! But indeed this is only the beginning ; think of the people who bore us by the inanimity , vex us by their flippancy, and the trivial nature of their pursuits , who use us as pegs on which to hang an idle hour, — and we shall see there are other ways of supporting himself which a citizen must practice besides that of providing his own bread and butter.

The mind is inexorable throughout life in its demand for daily bread; we do not recognise this fully, and there- fore so many old and middle-aged persons become inane, tiresome and incapable of sharing the intellectual interests of their children. The citizen in whose bringing - up P.N.E.U. has had a part has had many of his innumer- able emotions stirred by his "lovely books," "glorious books," and the emotion of the moment has translated the facts of history, travel, science, the themes of poetry or tragedy, into vital knowledge. That is the raison d'etre of narrating ; the reader recovers as it were what he has read and looks at it, and in this looking his emotion becomes

11

fired. The Greeks recognised two emotions by the stirring of which tragedy should educate the people ; but we try not only to purge but to invigorate the soul , by pity , tenderness , awe, reverence, delight in beauty, noble emulation in heroic action — the hundred impulses that play on the mind (or soul) and by this play, transform the information we receive in literary form into the knowledge by which we live .

In seeing that children know good books and plenty of them , we secure delightful fields of thought and reservoirs of interest for their after life; the child of the Hall and the hamlet grow up with common possessions, and their good fellowship is secured. The high moral standard, the concentrated attention, of school days are brought to bear on labour for a livelihood, and master and man are alike blessed .

We have tried to show how pictures and music, birds and flowers and trees, geography, local history and geology, the atmosphere of great men (and what village is there which has not bred one great man ?) public readings like that we have listened to on "George Borrow," the drama, useful and beautiful handiciafts and physical exercises, dances and songs, may become, some home delights, others the joys of the village community . A village Hall or public room and the Carnegie Library are all that citizens brought up in our schools require to make them in every sense, mental, moral and physical, self-supporting.

We have seen how our teachers appear to take a back place while teaching and let children 's minds have free play ; so, if I may make the suggestion, it is better to indicate to these educated villagers or townsfolk what is open to them in the way of intellectual life than to use leading strings, get up plays for them, lay ourselves out to amuse them in many kind ways ; the hamlet may invite the Hall to take part, to sing at a concert, present a character in a play, or the like, but the village community should organise its own pleasures on the sort of healthy lines, perhaps, that we have tried to indicate here for indoor and our-door life.

You will not say, this is working for posterity, and 4 'What has posterity done for me ? " As a matter of fact

12

we all live for posterity and have no other business in the world. But we shall not have to wait for 'posterity' to grow up ; what the children know the parents learn also and delight in; so the field is already white to the harvest. An apt nucleus for such work is the village P.U. School; already in two or three cases has a Parents' Association been set up in connection with a school (owing to Mrs. Franklin 's initiative) . But Welfare Clubs , Village Institutes and the like are already widely spread and perhaps we may be allowed to introduce a more intellectual element into their working, eschewing lectures, providing concerts and such aids to amusements, and encouraging the people to be their own purveyors — perhaps on P.N.E.U. lines.

A full life makes for content and happiness and these stand for the stability of which the nation is in sore need. All very well, say you, in Utopia! but what of our unhappy country where industry is continually interrupted by strikes , called often enough for whimsical reasons? Education as we interpret it is the only remedy .

We have but to read of the bitter wrongs issuing in the Chartist Riots in Disraeli's 'Sybil' for example, to be assured that the people must hold in their own hands an instrument of redress; but education should ensure that this terrific implement shall not be handled impulsively and hastily. What the League of Nations should do to hinder or regulate wars, that I believe we of this one insignificant society may do to hinder strikes. Educate the nation and if strikes come, they will be first well considered by balanced minds; no strike will be called without long and general deliberation; we shall have secured that pause in relation to social upheavals that the League of Nations aims at in the prospect of war .

But educate, educate, educate, is the watchword of the day. In what do we of the P.N.E.U. differ from others? Chiefly in two ways . Equal opportunity for all, is the offer of the State ; this is no new thing ; in countries where there is no hereditary aristocracy, like China and Turkey, it has been the rule for many ages. The Roman Church which is before all things democratic (and socialistic), has always offered unlimited opportunities for the fit, according to

13

"The good old rule, the simple plan, — Let him take who has the power And let him keep who can," —

a rule as applicable to stores of the mind as of the pocket . The demagogue, the Socialist, the Bolshevist are the out- come of an education snatched as it were by mind -force. We spread education, not for the fit only, but for all; all partake, even to the backward child; and we claim to send out contented citizens, capable of a right judgment in all things, religiously, morally, socially, physically, fit to take their due part in a happy ordered state. Again, the manner of our education differs; schools in general send forth scholars who have learnt 'how to learn'; (they rarely show that they have learned this art!) We send out scholars who have learned and do know and find know- ledge so delightful that it becomes a pursuit and source of happiness for a lifetime.

Two thousand years ago it was said to a dozen undistinguished men, "Go ye out unto all the world and preach the gospel to every creature"; and they did. We too have, by the Grace of God, a fragment of this gospel to preach; we who are here and who represent thousands of P.N.E.U. members, are vastly better provided as far as numbers go to spread this new Renaissance. Let us be up and doing; the en- thusiasm perceptible in this room alone is enough to convert a world; how much more, to make our own people able to prefer (and to act) Shakespeare's plays rather than the trivialities of the Music Hall. Let us do battle with the schools for "a liberal education" for the boys we send to them. We cannot make or find a substitute for the Public Schools — a great national achievement ; but we can urge the willing minds of Masters and Heads to afford at least the six or eight hours a week devoted to English and History, to the studies and conditions we have found mar- vellously effective. For our P.U.S. girls, I do not know that life offers compensation for the loss of the work in the Fifth and Sixth Forms ; let them work out their scheme of liberal education to the full, if only that they may be pre-

14

pared to take up the crusade which I am tempted to urge on listeners so responsive and encouraging. We know the way, we have the means, we see opportunities everywhere — elementary and secondary, private and public schools are open to attack!

Let us part with the pledge. —

*'I will not cease from mortal strife

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand Till I have built Jerusalem

In England's green and pleasant land."

and may God be with us in our labours!

'The writer must apologise if these notes contain more of what she meant to say than of what she really said . The friendly attitude of the audience tempted her into informal talk.)

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PART II. (1).

Official Tributes. I. .

Board of Education.

Whitehall, S.W.I.

12th February, 1923. Dear Madam,

I do not think it is right that I should allow the death of Miss Charlotte Mason to pass without recording officially the deep regret of the Board of Educat ion at the term inat ion of her long and fruitful labours in the field of education, and their high appreciation of the great public services which she has rendered.

We know that Miss Mason started her work very early in life, and she carried it on with unremitting diligence and enthusiasm for over half a century. The fundamental principle of her teaching — a belief in the child's natural powers of appreciation — was unfamiliar in England when she was young . It is far otherwise to-day, and that perhaps is in itself the best evidence of what we owe to her and the most lasting memorial of her labours. Her influence, diffused through her books and the Union which she founded , was a source of strength to many hundreds of teachers , and though she did not come into direct relations with the public system of education as administered by the Board and the Local Education Authorities , there can be no question of

16

the profound and permanent benefit accruing to that system from her life and example, and from her efforts to establish and diffuse the principles which she followed. She was a high-minded, disinterested and sincere worker for the advancement of education, who combined a generous vision and a good practical judgment, and on behalf of the President and my colleagues I join with the Parents' National Educational Union in deploring her loss and pay- ing tribute to her memory .

Yours very truly,

(Signed) L. A. Selby-Bigge,

Permanent Secretary. The Hon. Mrs. Franklin,

Parents' National Educational Union, 26, Victoria Street, S.W.I.

II.

Miss Mason was grande dame, grande ame. Her thoughts and her tastes had lineage. To be with her, to come under the spell of her courteous and considerate self-possession, was to know what it must have been like to meet Madame de Genlis or some other of those great ladies of the ancien regime who won fine culture through teaching children and through sharing with them the love of things which are beautiful and true . Miss Mason had a genius for education . She had an inbred good sense and an unfatigued sensibility. Her mind was tempered by great literature. She loved the humanities . She had a very distinguished gift of leadership in co-operation. There was a tenderness, a humility in her self-confidence which recalled Vauvenargues ' saying that 'great thoughts come from the heart . ' And the greatness of the thoughts she lived with made her greater -hearted as her experience deepened and as the circle of her pupils grew nation-wide.

It was fortunate for England to have the guidance which Charlotte Mason gave with patriotic and unselfish tenacity and with gracious largesse of heart and mind. What she did, no one else attempted on the same scale. Others who like her were national figures worked through another

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medium. Lady Stanley of Alder ley and Mary Frances Buss were steeped in the same tradition but became preoccupied with the problems of the public secondary day school for girls . Charlotte Mason represented the culture of the home- school at its best . The writers of her generation had shown themselves a little blind to the beauties of the best home- teaching and forgetful of what had been achieved in good private schools, especially for girls. There were not a few private schools in which an attempt was made to reproduce the stimulus and restraining influence of a cultivated home. Charlotte Mason was a witness to their excellence. More than this, she disengaged from her knowledge of their work a reasoned statement of the educational theory of their practice. This, I think, was her great contribution to the thought of her time . But she gave something more precious than this. She gave herself.

As our grateful memories of her fall into perspective, we see what rank she takes in the succession of illustrious educators. Like Thring of Uppingham she realised that education is the transmission of life, of the life of the mind, kindled by the fiery particles which lie unquenched in noble literature. Like Thring she longed to give new opportuni- ties to the rank and file, though she was not oblivious of the claims of the elite or unmindful of the value of their gifts . Her's was an unselfish, unexclusive humanism, tolerant of variety, never jealous of superiorities and eager to share in wide commonalty the precious consolations of culture. Born in an age of historical discovery, when the records of the past were being revealed with some assuagement of outworn controversies, history (not least in its appeal to the imagination) was the centre of her intellectual interest. But her standards of judgment were ethical. Plutarch and Sir Walter Scott stood high in her educational canon. Greatness in goodness was her ideal, and her ideal of good- ness had in it, like Plato's, a place for beauty of pattern, colour and tune.

Through Ruskin and Thomas Arnold of Rugby', she was in direct succession from Wordsworth . In the luminous summary of principles which she prefixed to her series on

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Home Education , there is much that might be illustrated by passages from The Prelude. "Children are born persons.*' "They are not born either good or bad, but with possibili- ties for good or evil . " ' 'The principles of authority on the one hand and of obedience on the other, are natural, neces- sary, and fundamental; but these principles are limited by the respect due to the personality of children." "By the saying Education is an Atmosphere, it is not meant that a child should be isolated in what may be called a child's environment, especially adapted and prepared: but that we should take into account the educational value of his natural home-atmosphere, both as regards persons and things, and should let him live freely among his proper conditions. It stultifies a child to bring down his world to what has been disparagingly called the child 's level " . ' 'In the saying that Education is a Life, the need for intellectual and moral, as well as physical, sustenance is implied. The mind feeds on ideas and therefore children should have a generous curriculum." Like Comenius, she believed in a course of reading which is massive and many-sided . Like Comenius she had to guard against the dangers of super- ficiality.

The liberal movement which broke upon education through Rousseau found expression in Miss Mason's work as in that of her predecessors . But it had lost its neurotic excitement. Charlotte Mason was a woman of temperate judgment as well as of eager charity. She was steadied by a deep religious conviction, by the reverence for human personality which has in it the quiet awe of faith in Divine guidance .

The Lake School of Poetry and her own Lake School of Education are not unconnected. She was in the tradition of Wordsworth and the Arnolds. And the gratitude felt for her teaching and example will be extended to those who worked with her and by their loyal activities helped in the diffusion of her ideas .

M. E. Sadler, C.B. The University,

Leeds, February, 1923.

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III.

St. Radegunds,

Cambridge,

Feb. 16th, 1923.

What a wonderful thing personal influence is, or may be! From an invalid couch in a remote part of England, Charlotte Mason reanimated and reformed a large part of education in Great Britain. It needed no long visit to her at Ambleside to understand how this influence made itself felt. In her conversation, even on trivial matters, but still more on the greater issues of life and policy, one became vividly aware in her of a lucid view of affairs, and an intellectual grasp of principles, animated by the inward warmth of sympathy and hope. Surrounded by a group of faithful disciples, she directed the course of many a ship on the education ocean which personally she never saw; and like many supreme organisers of great industries, while apparently at leisure herself, was exactly aware of what was doing in all the provinces of education where her principles were in action. Yet she was no bureaucrat; her practice was as various and elastic as her principles were constant; there was the method and even the letter, but above all the spirit. I hope and think that the chief secret of Miss Mason's ascendancy was the fine ethical quality of her teaching. From Ambleside there issued many an earnest missionary imbued not only with a sense of order, a lover of learning and an insight into rudimentary and growing minds, but above all sanctified by a lofty ethical spirit, a spirit not merely added to her system of education, not merely supplied in parcels of so many hours a week, but penetrating the whole and carrying it into a higher sphere where it was enlarged, warmed, and enlight- ened. We lament Miss Mason's death, because of our peronsal loss, and our sense of what might have still have been done had a longer life been given to her; but, on the other hand, we may rejoice to know that she lived at a time of change, just when her hand upon the helm was most needed, and that her frail life was spared long enough to

20

make her mark upon England's education and to build up her own people for many generations to come.

Clifford Allbutt (Regius Professor of Physics, Cambridge.)

IV.

Through having common interests in education, litera- ture and religion, I was made acquainted with Miss Mason, and more than once had the pleasure of visiting her at Ambleside. To do so was to be made quickly aware of a mind and spirit that triumphed over difficulties which in many other people daunt their ambition and activity in work. Miss Mason reigned from her couch. And her dominating influence was as much an inspiration as a gov- erning force. She planned and schemed her courses of education, yet never once made more of the scheme than of the spirit of her lessons.

I had good ground for knowing also that to her, more than literature, more even than poetry was Religion itself. This was proved in that work to which she gave much time and effort — the verse paraphrase and comment of much of the Gospel record, and to which she gave the title, 'The Saviour of the World.' Others will write upon and com- memorate her system of education. To me let it fall to mention the work dearer to her heart, perhaps, than all the rest.

W. H. Draper,

Master of the Temple.

V.

The Girl Guides, 25, Buckingham Palace Road, London, S.W.I.

February 21st, 1928. It is a very great pleasure to me to write something about Miss Mason and her wonderful work.

Never shall I forget the memorable day in May 1922, when I was at last able to pay my first visit to the House of Education. Its name and fame is so well known in the Girl

21

Guide world, and as a humble worker in the educational field I had long wanted to meet the Founder of the P. N. E. U.

The County Commissioner for Westmorland and I were met on arrival by the kindest welcome from Miss Mason, and her ready interest and willing discussion made me feel at once that, though actually somewhat outside her province, the Guides had her true sympathy and warm approval.

I remember so well one remark she made. After having luncheon amongst the students she took me to sit on the verandah and then leaning gently towards me from her wheeled chair, she said, ' 'You know I am a little afraid of you" ! No! not she personally of me personally! — but she meant that the special appeal and romance of the Guides were sometimes apt to tug away enthusiasts from some of their urgent and more matter of fact work and studies.

It was an extreme pleasure to me to have had that time in the company of one to whom parents and children will always owe so much. In my mind's eye as I write I can see her sitting with folded hands on the verandah at Scale How watching her students at play, as keenly interested in the game as in everything that makes for the happiness and well being of youth.

VI.

We have received the following from General Sir Robert Baden -Powell : —

A FIELD MARSHALL'S GOVERNESS.

How did the Boys Scouts start ?

Oh well! I believe it was largely due to — whom shall we say ? — a Field Marshal 's governess.

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It was this way; the Brigadier General, as he was at that time, was riding to his home after a field day when from the branches of a tree over-head his little son called to him * 'Father, you are shot ; I am in ambush and you have passed under me without seeing me. Remember you should always look upwards as well as around you."

So the general looked upward and saw not only his small son above him but also, near the top of the tree, the new governess lately imported from Miss Charlotte Mason's training College at Ambleside.

Her explanation of the situation was that a vital point in up to date education was the inculcation of observation and deduction and that the practical steps to this were given in the little handbook for soldiers of "Aids to Scouting." The present incident was merely one among the various field stunts from that book which might be put into practice by her pupils and herself.

For example, they might as another exercise creep about unseen but seeing all the time, and noting down everything that the general did ; they might lead him off on some wild chase while they purloined some tangible proof of their hav- ing invaded his sanctum. Taken as a warning of what he might expect I daresay the governess's explanation opened the general's eye pretty widely, if only in regard to his own future security against ambuscades and false alarms.

But it certainly opened mine to the fact that there could be an educative value underlying the principles of scout training; and since it had been thought worthy of utilisation by such an authority as Miss Mason I realised that there might be something in it.

This encouraged me in the direction of adapting the training for the use of boys and girls.

From this acorn grew the tree which is now spreading its branches across the world.

The Boy Scout of yesterday — (reduced alas by some ten thousand who gave their young lives in the war) — is already becoming the citizen of to-day — (and none too soon) — largely thanks to the Field Marshal's governess.

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VII. FROM THE TIMES, JANUARY 17th. CHARLOTTE MASON.*

A PIONEER OF SANE EDUCATION.

Many hundreds of pari nts and teachers in all part* of the world will joi 1 in mourning Miss Charlotte Mason, who died ia her sleep at the "House of Education, " Ambleside, at noon yesterday. She founded the Parents' National Educational Union so long ago as 1887, and strove steadily for more than half a century to create a system of education that should form a balanced union of religious belief and literary and scientific thoroughness .

Her personal influence was probably more widespread than that of any educationist of her time. The loyalty which she inspired was more than could be accounted for by the mere weight and force of her educational philosophy. The "House of Education" founded by her rapidly ac- quired a tradition and a spirit radiating throughout the great system which she evolved of "home schools," with many hundreds of children and governesses widely separated in space but one in endeavour, working through the same syllabuses with the same books, and passing by means of test-papers, sent to Ambleside for correction, through the same series of grades . Until almost the last it was the pride of Miss Mason's many disciples that she knew all the children in the "Parents' Union School," looked through their work, and followed their progress. The "House of Education" has been, incidentally, the only institution that has offered special professional training to the private governess .

Charlotte Maria Shaw Mason was born on January 1st , 1842, the daughter of Joshua Mason, a Liverpool merchant. After a home education she was drawn to teaching work , and after some experience in various schools and in a training college, at Chichester she began her work as an educational reformer, and eventually founded the Union associated with

* By kind permission of the Editor of The Time? . 24

her name. The principles which she preached and which she lived to see widely adopted, both in the schools that confessedly carried out her ideas and in schools that tacitly adopted them, were the hunger for knowledge, the use of school life as a deliberate preparation for the larger interests of life, and the cultivation of a natural and earnest interest in nature and art . She continually preached the one-ness of education and the universal necessity of knowledge: ' 'Without knowledge Reason carries a man into the wilder- ness and Rebellion joins company . ' ' That is a quotation from a remarkable series of letters on ' 'The Basis of National Strength" contributed to The Times in 1921. Knowledge well balanced was her panacea for the dangers of revolution ; and such knowledge must be universal. It was the due balance on different sides of education which in her view made for national sanity.

The Parents' Union School was founded in 1891 to press forward these principles, and by 1918 Miss Mason's ideas had permeated some forty elementary schools,* A number of preparatory schools adopted the syllabuses in greater or less degree and became known as "P.N.E.U. Schools," a guarantee to parents that the home point of view would at least not be disregarded . Great praise of the method came from various parts of the country — Bradford, Gloucestershire — and Miss Mason was satisfied to the last that her scheme of education was making considerable pro- gress in elementary as well as secondary schools and in private teaching. Miss Mason's publications include "Home Education," "Parents and Children," "School Education, ' ' ' 'Ourselves, ' ' ' 'Some Studies in the Formation of Character," "The Ambleside Geography Books," "The Saviour of the World ' ' (a life of Christ , an issue running into six volumes), "The Basis of National Strength," and "A Liberal Education for All." Miss Mason's work was not dethroned by the various modern developments in the direc- tion of freedom of education. Together with other educa- tional reformers of to-day she saw children not as little un- willing receptacles for information, but growing creatures

* Now over 200 .

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struggling towards the light, eager to learn, eager to work, and too often starved of the means of doing so.

VIII.

FROM THE TIMES EDUCATIONAL SUPPLEMENT,

JANUARY 20th.

A PERSONAL TRIBUTE.

A correspondent writes: — Charlotte Mason was that rare combination, an original thinker and philosopher and at the same time a wonderful organiser and business woman. She was wise and witty, keenly interested in the things of the world, birds, and flowers, books and people, but with an inner vision for the beyond, and the graciousness of manner and selfless consideration for others which marked the grande dame of a passing age. She treated the smallest child with courtesy. She was gracious to the youngest member of her household just as she was to the great of the land who were among her disciples. Her students and all who came under her influence caught the fire of her en- thusiasm for her educational principles together with her singlemindedness and humility.

She never allowed her methods of teaching and philoso- phy of education to be called by her name, but by that of the society she founded to spread them. Thus her work will continue and be ably carried on by those she has trained and appointed for the task. She was at work up to four days before her death, and personally superintended the many arrangements for accommodating the ever- increasing num- ber of students wishing to enter her college . Her end was the passing of a great spirit. With all her powers of mind and heart fresh and keen, memory and apprehension unim- paired, she fell asleep after many days spent for the good of humanity. Her teaching has spread to almost every part of the globe ; the pupils of her correspondence school are to be found in home schoolrooms, in private and council schools, and many generations of happy children filled with the joy of living and of learning will rise up and call her blessed.

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FROM OTHER PAPERS. IX.

"There is ample reason for supposing that a great educational effort for the improvement of our methods of teaching our native language and literature will meet with its reward. We are in truth an artistic people, though we are shy of acknowledging it. . . . And that great educator, Miss Charlotte Mason, whose death we are now deploring, has shown us how readily English children respond to the appeal of the masterpieces of English litera- ture."

H. A. L. Fisher.

X.

"Miss Mason and her gospel had a curiously conspicu- ous way of arousing enthusiasm. The present writer recol- lects, at a distance of thirty -six years, the sight of the first issue of the ' 'Parents ' Educational Review ' ' and the interest awakened among those parents whom Frances Mary Buss summoned together in 1887 or thereabouts to start the first London branch of the P.N.E.U. Frequently since then one has come across in some remote country vicarage a struggling and not very well-equipped governess who would — on the showing of some sympathy — open out as a glowing adherent of Miss Mason's methods, testifying that, through her influence, teaching had been literally turned from dark- ness into light ; while to meet a student from the House of Education, Ambleside, was most assuredly to meet an enthusiast for education and, as a rule, a lover of children. It is characteristic of the fine spirit of the woman that P.N.E.U. methods and ideals have never advertised her own name; yet to many her death will come with a sense of personal loss . ' '

XI.

4 'Of Miss Mason it is difficult for us to speak when there are so many much better qualified to do so . Out of the love in her heart she gave up a long life to the betterment and well-being of her fellowmen, and of late years her influence, her writings and her teaching have spread far and wide

27

throughout the world ; very high rank will she take amongst the educationists of this or any other age. But standing out above all this — that which so greatly endeared her to her students, to her staff and to her friends — was her humble, loving, Christian faith and character, the secret which won for her the love of all with whom she came in contact.

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PART II. (2.)

The Union and Its Founder.

"HAUD IMMEMOR."

It was in the autumn of 1886 that I first came into personal touch with Miss Charlotte Mason, through reading her book "Home Education." I was then a young mother, with four children, the eldest of whom was seven, and Miss Mason's exposition of her ideas of what Home Education might be, and should be, was an inspiration to me. A most delightful and interesting correspondence ensued, in which Miss Mason outlined her plans and projects for organ- ising the Parents' National Educational Union, and into these Lord Aberdeen and I entered with zest . This accounts for the honour done us by Miss Mason, when she invited us to become joint Presidents of the new Association when framed in 1887. We accepted that invitation with con- siderable diffidence, being conscious of our own lack of training, and our absorption in public affairs, but at the same time highly prizing the mark of confidence thus shown, and the privilege of being connected with a scheme so full of opportunity and potentiality. Miss Mason assured us that a Chairman of Committee and an Hon. Organising Secretary and other Officers would be appointed to take charge of the practical work of the Union, and that therefore our regular attendance at Committees would not be required . Her persistence overcame our scruples, and we deeply value

29

the association of our names with hers all through the period of her great life work; and her patience with such truant Presidents as we have been, whilst resident in other coun- tries during many years .

We have had personal experience of the benefits of Miss Mason's beneficent transformation of home education, not only in connection with our own children, but more especi- ally as it has affected our grand children, and our grand nephews and nieces . In particular has this been true in the case of two of our grandchildren, who were faithful pupils of the Parents' Union School under teachers trained at Ambleside, during seven years residence in India, and who certainly do the utmost credit to the system, to the joy of their proud grand -parents.

There will be others, who lived in close fellowship with Miss Mason , who will tell of the miracle of the far -spreading influence of that frail life, and how she, invalid as she was, directed and watched over every item of the work and the many developments of the P.N.E.U., of the Parents' Union School, the Parents' Review, and of the House of Education at Ambleside.

But we yield to none in our thankfulness and apprecia- tion of the magical effects which her genius, devotion and foresight-coupled with her reverence for, and marvellous understanding of child life, have wrought for thousands and thousands of children, to whom the treasures of life have thus been revealed. They will send their tributes of affec- tion and gratitude from all over the world, and be in very truth a ' 'choir invisible ' ' testifying to the

"Immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence ■, live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn For miserable aims that end with self, In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge man's search To vaster issues."

Ishbel Aberdeen and Temair. February 12th, 1923.

30

I take the privilege of identifying myself, whole- heartedly, with this tribute.

Aberdeen and Temair,

Joint President, P.N.E.U.

CM .M.— THE FRIEND.

When one writes at the end of a close friendship which has lasted thirty years, there is much that one feels to be too sacred to put into words . At the most it is of things of the surface that one dares to speak, of the love and kindness and sympathy which Miss Mason gave me during all these years one cannot speak . I hope that one day some of the wonder- ful letters which are among my most precious possessions may be published .

It is perhaps as her 'chela, ' as she sometimes called me, that I may be allowed to add my note to the chorus of praise and gratitude that we are raising to her. When as a young mother of 26 I first read a number of the Parents ' Review and became a member, I at once felt that the P.N.E.U. was the one 'cause' which appealed to me. Though still a young woman I had married so early that I already had quite big children, and I felt sorry that I had known of this rather late.

I was determined to learn all I could and to help others to avoid those first mistakes which so often mean tears and sorrow. Circumstances made it possible for me to make a pilgrimage to Ambleside and Miss Mason at once admitted me to her friendship and taught me so much . It was she who told me to read aloud daily to my children; and how possible a daily half -hour is even in a busy life I proved for over 20 years . She introduced me to the delights of open windows and fresh air and of the country even when it rains . She shared with me, as through her work and writing with thousands of others, her own love of the beautiful in literature, poetry, art and nature and many owe her some of their greatest happiness because of this.

The first Natural History Club was started in London and those rambles of parents with their children have given

31

a new joy in life to hundreds of homes. Incidentally, Mrs. Perrin's wonderful book of wild flower illustrations is due to these rambles.

We started the first Parents' Union School Class in 1894, taught by two of her teachers, and thus through the idea of the combination of families, Secondary and, later, Elementary Schools asked to be enrolled . She inspired and helped all the efforts and always in that wonderful imper- sonal way .

Her visits to our home every year up to 1914 were the annual festival for all the household; former maids have written saying how her gracious personality filled them with loving memories . The many distinguished people who used the opportunity of her being in London to sit at her feet and learn, from Board of Education officials to teachers of every kind, have shown the result of such talks in the whole trend of modern educational movements from the Report on the Teaching of English, down to small reforms in private schools. It was her humility of mind together with the power of her educational philosophy which won for her the triumphs that we so rejoice she lived to see. It was when she was visiting in the home of the present poet laureate that she encouraged Mrs . Bridges to produce her copy book and thus give to the world the method of teaching beautiful writing, which she was adopting in her P .U .S . home School- room for her own children . Of this Miss Mason wrote in the Parents' Review in 1899: "Five years ago, we heard of a lady who was elaborating by means of the study of old Italian and other manuscripts, a 'system of beautiful handwriting ' which could be taught to children . We have waited patiently, though not without some urgency, for the production of this new kind of 'copy book.' We have felt that the need for such an effort was very great, for the dis- tinctly commonplace writing taught from existing copy- books, however painstaking and legible, cannot but have a rather vulgarising effect both on the writer and the reader of such manuscript. At last the lady, Mrs. Robert Bridges, has succeeded in her tedious and difficult undertaking, and this book for teachers will enable them to teach their pupils

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a style of writing which is pleasant to acquire because it is beautiful to behold. It is surprising how quickly young children, even those already confirmed in 'ugly' writing, take to this 'new handwriting.' We shall welcome Mrs. Bridges ' efforts in proportion as we feel, with her, that ' the average hands, which are the outcome of the old -copy -book writing, degraded by haste, seem to owe their common ugliness to the mean type from which they sprang. ' '

It was on one of her visits to London that she met the 'musical baby' in 1895, and persuaded Mrs. Howard Glover to give to the Union her ideas on musical apprecia- tion and to set the terminal programme of music to be heard and understood. Miss Mason had the wonderful gift of revealing to parents, student, teacher and child their own innate powers and of helping them to use these to the full. She trusted and believed in us and so we dared not fail her.

But it was 'for the children' that she lived and worked and thus through her, generations of children have learnt the joy of a liberal education , the joy of learning and of serving . To the end our dear teacher was herself learning and serving . She read daily for several hours and was always taking in new ideas which stimulated her thought and helped her to help us.

Her wit and her wisdom, her beauty of spirit and graciousness , are with us always, her philosophy and teach- ing will live and bear fruit. We thank God for His gift to the world of one of His most beautiful spirits — Charlotte M. Mason.

H.F.

PUBLIC ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS.

The death of Charlotte Mason, who finished a long life of great intellectual activity by just closing her eyes to wake in another world, has left a void in many a household in which for more than a generation she had been the polestar to which hundreds of eager children and grateful parents looked each day of their lives for direction in their studies, and never looked in vain.

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She was a great teacher, and had the genius to think out new methods, and the fruitful ingenuity to set the methods going, and the unfaltering industry to keep them going and growing in spite of the fact that she had to lead an invalid's life for many years, so that by her magic influence she has made a large section of society able to choose the right path in the all-important matter of education, directed to the formation of character and the widening of intelligence as befits those who aim at being useful citizens and Godfearing men and women.

It was in the autumn of 1915 that Miss Mason, to talk with whom as she lay on her couch on the verandah at ' 'Scale How ' ' was always a real treat , asked me to listen as she unfolded a scheme which she had very much at heart for bringing a new atmosphere into the lives of the children in our elementary schools, and she begged me to go and see for myself the really wonderful work which her method had in quite a short time effected in some of the schools in Bradford, Yorkshire.

She told me that the principle was to teach " by the humanities , ' ' that is to say by supplying the children from quite the earliest teachable age with plenty of really good English literature : and she was ready to stake her reputation on the fact that they would understand and assimilate what they read to themselves, and would love to feel that they were getting of themselves daily new knowledge.

I found that Miss Mason had been under no deception. All that she had expected had come to pass and the experi- ment was already a perfect success.

Now these children were not picked specimens — they were mostly miners' children from the Yorkshire coalfield, but their bright, happy faces showed that Miss Mason's idea that a child was naturally anxious to know, and would be intensely interested in feeling that he was getting fresh knowledge by his own endeavours, through quite a new way of looking at the teaching problem, was a real incontro- vertible fact . The treating the child as a pitcher into whom so many facts were to be poured was to be discontinued entirely, and the laborious task of the teacher in lecturing

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to a class who never tried to give their attention was to be exchanged, to the great comfort both of teacher and pupil, for a system by which the child was the labourer, and pleased to be so , whilst the teacher guided , and explained difficulties and was at hand to help if required ; thus putting an end to the ingrained idea of so many, indeed the vast majority, of teachers of the old method , that for both master and pupil a terrible amount of "drudgery" was inevitable.

I have visited these Bradford Schools more than once, and also a very fine group of Gloucestershire Schools , in and about Stroud, and a notable and very large School at Brixton in the London Area .

All show similar results , and the results are astonishing- ly good, and in all of them the teachers declare their indebt- edness to Miss Mason's guidance and say that nothing could induce any of them to go back to the old methods .

Miss Mason started with the conviction that the brains of all normal children are of the same calibre, and only require a constant supply of food, which children of all classes, if the supply is good and sufficient, readily assimi- late.

Further, that each child was a person, and had its own points of view and its own ways of dealing with the matters that interested it, and was to be treated by the teachers as an individual, not simply as one of a class. Some were quicker than others, but all in time — and there was to be no hurry — would arrive; and each term would bring them increased intelligence and power.

The method was being used throughout each school I visited , beginning with the youngest : and the very first steps were, I think, the most interesting. All school teach- ers will agree that the great difficulty in teaching a class is to get and keep their attention.

This is the first thing our new method sets itself to do ; and this, once obtained in the lowest class, is never lost; the children being eager to listen and to prove that they have done so .

The way this habit of close attention is acquired is really very simple. The teacher takes a subject which

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interests the children and reads part of a page in a clear and interesting manner. All listen, for they know that the next step will be that one of them will be called on to stand up and narrate to the others what all have just heard read. Everyone follows the narration, keen to correct if the narrator goes wrong, and with their help but with none from the teacher, the class gets through the piece and begins on another . But herein is the secret , all know that the teacher will only read the bit once, so if they don't give their close attention they will have no chance to join in the game.

In the next class the bit read is longer, and the accuracy and spirit with which a child of 8 or 10 remembers and repeats a whole page almost word for word is only less astonishing than the power the children show of retaining for weeks and months, again almost word for word, what they have once assimilated . And the powers thus derived from a habit of attention extends to all their work and they are found to have mastered and retained the subjects they have read to themselves .

This reading to themselves is their education . The books have always been chosen for each term by Miss Mason her- self and the child is expected to labour and will in the course of a term have read two or three thousand pages of really good literature, gaining thereby not only information but a keen interest in many subjects, and imperceptibly a greatly enlarged vocabulary and a power of clear expression which raises them at once to a level they could under the old methods never even have dreamt of.

The first essential for working this wonderful new mode of education is a plentiful supply of the right sort of litera- ture. It is books and more books that the children must have, both prose and poetry by good authors who have the power of writing clearly and in good English and have some- thing interesting to say .

When once the children are well on their way they find a real delight in their work as is testified by the universal look of brightness on the faces of a whole class; and the increased intelligence, which is a marked consequence of their reading, shows itself in the quick way in which they

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master all the subjects put before them including, as one of the Head teachers told me, even their needlework.

From Literature we pass to the Arts .

Music has long been acknowledged as an elevating and refining power and a graceful handmaid of education. Miss Mason saw that besides music and poetry there was a potency in painting.

That great headmaster, Edward Thring, made drawing a necessary part of education, something to teach boys to observe and to assist the imagination . Miss Mason had good photographs of the work of the best painters both ancient and modern exhibited to her elementary school children, who were quick to follow the details and to notice the essential beauties and the means by which the painter had got his effects, and they could write an account, after studying these reproductions of famous pictures, which almost always showed what a hold a fine work of art is able to get on a child's imagination. Now here is, I cannot but think, a powerful aid to the educating of children to see what is beautiful in nature and to give them a proper feeling of disgust at the defacement and want of sympathy with those natural beauties which is everywhere to-day exhibited by the papers, tins and bottles left littering the ground after a picnic in any lovely spot which English men, women and children visit in their summer excursions.

We shall not get rid of these horrors until education has brought to our people a proper love of beauty and reverence for Nature; and this process must begin as Miss Mason wisely saw , in our elementary schools .

I have spoken of only the latest development of Miss Mason's Method; all children interested her, and she had the real lake-dweller's love of the beauties of natural scenery, and the greatest reverence for the Lake poets and for all the eminent Victorians, and her enthusiastic nature communicated an impetus to her friends for all that was best worth living for, so that one felt how, from that invalid couch we all knew so well, a benign influence radiated from her gracious presence, which will light the way for many hundreds of her friends and pupils in the future, and cause

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all the present generation to keep her for ever in their most affectionate remembrance .

I should like to add a word about the Parents' Review, which Miss Mason edited and in which she from time to time expounded her views, whilst others who witnessed the result of her work often bore testimony in its pages; the frequent papers on Natural History were a very pleasant feature which we all looked forward to and followed with enjoyment. But what is perhaps most remarkable is that the Review has had so long a life — it began in 1890 — and except at the first starting it has been maintained entirely by voluntary contributions. May its life be still prolonged!

WlLLINGHAM F . RAWNSLE Y .

MEMORIES.

It was in the year 1887 that the nucleus of the P.N.E.U. Avas formed by a small committee of members who had known Miss Mason's work in Bradford. It is now nearly thirty years ago that I attended my first meeting in London at a house in Grosvenor Square and there decided to join at once. I hardly know what it was that attracted me so strongly to the movement ; whether the honoured names of educational pioneers included in the list of officers of the Council, or the Programme with its offer of the best classics on the subject in the lending library, the lectures, discus- sions, co-operation in securing teachers, and forming classes; or was it the Parents' Review — a magazine of Home Training and "Culture," magic word! Anyhow I resolved to seek the earliest opportunity of making Miss Mason 's acquaintance and this fortunately happened in the autumn of the same year. She was staying at Highfield, Ilkley, a house which was a favourite resort for intellectual and poetic natures in holiday time, high up on the edge of the moor, and as I was in the neighbourhood I ventured to write and ask her to allow me to go over one afternoon, and met with her usual kind response. Accordingly I climbed up from the station at Ben Rhydding one hot August day

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and there in the sunshine and the heather I spent a happy and memorable hour with the sweet and gentle person for whom I had acquired such an inward respect and veneration.

Her encouraging manner and quiet simple talk dis- armed all nervousness and made me entirely at ease; her understanding and sympathy, her love of children and con- fidence in the good in them, her ideas of developing their tastes and talents, of avoiding the stumbling blocks put in their way by injudicious elders, her respect for the efforts of well-meaning parents ignorant of their own inefficiency, and her earnest desire to help them , her estimate of the value of early environment, example and training, the formation of habits, the love of Nature, the freedom of leisure, the atmosphere of truth that should surround these tender little ones whom none may despise, the ultimate goal of character, all these and many other ideals inspired me with noble ambitions, though with a despairing sense of shortcoming; for what mother could suffice for these things? Later glimpses, all too short, but always a privilege, came in meetings at Bad Nauheim, where the grave heart trouble that affected her for so many years, caused her to spend several weeks each summer following the cure, which happily brought invariable benefit . The wonderful patience and cheerfulness with which she bore her physical frailty and limitations were a living testimony to that Faith which was her 'sure foundation' and inspired the optimism and calm- ness of spirit, the wise and steadfast philosophy that made her such an unfailing counsellor to others in difficult ways, and gave pause to realise she tapped the Source that makes "quietness and confidence your strength."

I have often thought that the initials which form the familiar title of the Union are a fortuitous combination for a work which the Founder so ardently yet humbly re- garded as a channel for the manifestation of the Spirit to "Ayioa IlveOfut. The House of Education was to those who knew its true inwardness, a dedicated Temple of the Holy Ghost and surely no one ever more adequately expresses the sevenfold gifts in her sphere of influence than Charlotte Mason, the spirit of Wisdom and Understanding,

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of Counsel and Might, of Knowledge and true Godliness and of Holy Fear ; none more truly illustrated the charge of St . Paul ' 'If ye live in the Spirit walk in the Spirit . ' ' May we not apply to her the 'Old Lament of Ephraem Syrus' in the Times of February 8th:

From her home is borne a Woman

Whose dear Presence was its guide ; Those now left there mourn in common, As men wept when Rachel died.

Strong Upholder In that House do Thou abide.

I . B . S . Whitaker Thompson .

A FEW RECOLLECTIONS,

It was at a drawing-room meeting at the London house of the Duchess of Portland, in the year 1892, that I first met Miss Mason and heard her speak. I have always remem- bered the impression then made upon me by her gracious personality, and great charm of voice and manner.

The title of the address is forgotten, but it concerned her gospel of education and from that day others, besides myself, must have realised that they had seen a new vision. That was the beginning too of a friendship which has been for 30 years one of the greatest privileges and pleasures of my life.

A little later in Florence I came upon Miss Mason and her friend, Mrs. Firth, standing by Giotto's Tower, and together we studied his beautiful medallions. I shall always especially associate with them that of the woman weaving on the loom which Ruskin copied when he revived hand -weaving in the Lake country.

In September 1894 I paid my first never-to-be-forgotten visit to Miss Mason at Ambleside. At that time she and Miss Kitching lived at Springfield, down in the valley, which was one branch of the House of Education in the early days. The day after my arrival Miss Mason took me across the road to view the big house on the hill which she

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thought of moving into, so as to have all her students under one roof, and make a worthy home for the House of Educa- tion. As we walked up the drive the sun shone brightly, and in front of the house we stopped and turned round to gaze on Loughrigg and Wansfell, with Windermere be- tween and said to each other, "Just think, Wordsworth stood here and looked at all that!" for his niece Mrs. Harrison (nee Wordsworth) had lived at Scale How in his life-time and till 1892. We went all over the house, up and down and into every corner, and decided with Mr. Curwen, the architect, who met us there, about the few alterations and improvements which would be needed. Altogether we planned for a beautiful future, nearly 29 years of which, with its fine record, now belong to the past.

Another day Miss Mason took me to Keswick on the top of the mail coach . It was a good old fashioned coach with four horses, a leisurely vehicle from which one had plenty of time to see everything. That day I had a wonderful lesson in "sight-seeing," as Miss Mason understood it. And what delightful fun we had, and how much enjoyment out of all kinds of little everyday trifles!

Shortly after this time when Miss Mason had to realise the physical limitations due to ill-health, she had the great wisdom to order her life in such a way that every available grain of energy could be given to the work which was so dear to her, so that in the many future visits which I paid to her our excursions did not go beyond the beautiful daily drives in the near neighbourhood. : ;■■•• These were taken in her little Victoria, driven by her faithful man Barrow. Here we looked for red -starts, and there to see if the daffodils were in flower, and some days we went round by Grasmere and bought ginger -bread from old Sarah Nelson.

I wish I could give a clearer picture of it all. Those who were at that delightful Conference at Ambleside last May will always carry with them some idea of the charm of Scale How under its dear Mistress .

Helen Webb.

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OUR LEADER STILL.

Our teacher and leader is gone from us . For a moment we look back to gather up the memories that are to be our inspiration for the future. But she would not have us look back for long, nor at all with purposeless regret. Our work , her work , is before us . And the loss of the leader is a stage that must be passed in the progress of the cause . She sows the seed, but she cannot reap the harvest. For its ripening there must be time, and many suns : for its garner- ing a multitude of helpers .

We have leaned upon her hitherto : noAv we must take up the mission she has left us. There is no room for any loss of heart or vain regret. Rather, it is the time for a great thankfulness — thankfulness that the long rich years of that full life have been lived fully to the end, that to the end she worked with mind undimmed ; her last book lately finished, still to publish. She has taught us what to do. The rest is our task . We shall go forward , for she leads us still .

I never saw her until the summer of 1919. Not until the end of 1917 (I say it to my shame) had I knowledge of her work. There were three short visits to Ambleside, one of them most brief for the memorable Conference last sum- mer, and an hour one afternoon at Gloucester, when she had come down to meet the teachers who were working with her (they always felt that it was with her) in the Gloucestershire Schools. Those schools were very dear to her. She loved all children, and all teachers were her fellow -workers ; but these had shown the world how truly she had gauged the powers of the child's mind (the mind of the worker's child doe not differ from the mind of the rich man's), and had divined and provided for its needs in those generous pro- grammes that ask so much of it, and in asking, give.

When you first saw her, knowing that she had been an invalid for many years, and must have suffered much, you looked perhaps for marks of pain and weariness and weak- ness. But there were none. After an hour you never thought of that again. Years had written many lines upon her face , but they were not those lines . They spoke perhaps of the passage of time, but not of age; unless age is what

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gives and does not take away. You no more felt that she was old than that she was frail and weak of body . She had quietly (for she was always quiet) put pain and weakness and age away from her, and you were conscious only of what she had — of her surpassing gifts; it did not seem to you that she lacked anything. Her face was full of light, of wide sympathy and understanding, of delicate humour and gentleness and love. She always knew. From the first moment, the first word, the first letter, you had no doubt. She knew ; she always would know ; you could put your whole trust there.

When she talked with you she brought out the best that was in you, something that you did not know was there. That is a rare gift . The learned and the wise are seldom so endowed . We admire from afar — and remain afar. I have known only her and one other, who had that generous and princely way with their rich store. She and Sidney Irwin of Clifton College were alike in this. They would both of them take it for granted, or appear to do so (but I think it was natural and unaffected in them) that you had read and thought what they had read and thought; that you knew what they knew , and could do what they did . They caught you up to their level , and for the time you stayed there ; and you never quite fell back again. They had given you new light, new power.

She expected much of you, more sometimes than you knew that you had to give . But , as always , she was right ; you had it and you gave, and of course gained by giving, for exercise gives strength.

Her gift for inspiring deep personal affection in the hearts of many who never saw her was rare, if not unique.

Though she taught a new thing, a new way, and in teaching had to show the old things and the old ways for what they really are, her criticism left no sting. She could not be anything but generous , and the ways of her mind were wide. So she did not make you feel small and foolish. You did not bite your lip or flush with vexation . She lifted and inspired. She did not drive: she led, and you went with her by happy choice.

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In any difficulty she always saw the right way. With few words, always perfectly chosen, yet coming naturally and without trace of effort , she said what you knew at once to be the right thing, though you had groped long and had not found it. The right thought and the right word were always there.

It is not yet the time to measure up her whole achieve- ment . The full harvest is not yet . But there is enough to justify the confidence that posterity will see in her a great reformer, who led the children of the nation out of a barren wilderness into a rich inheritance. The old bidding prayers of our homes of learning rise to our lips . The chil- dren of many generations will thank God for Charlotte Mason and her work .

H . W . Household .

A FATHER'S PART IN THE HOME SCHOOL-ROOM.

I feel it is a great privilege , as the father of children brought up in a Parents' Union Schoolroom, to bear testimony to the joy which this training brings to both parents and children .

In following Miss Mason's method the early work of the children is full of interest ; every faculty has the oppor- tunity of development, and the powers of observation and appreciation are stimulated, so that in later life the mind is prepared to receive intelligently fresh impressions as they present themselves .

In the days of our home schoolroom there was great pleasure at the end of each term in hearing the oral examina- tion, and noting with keen interest the progress that had been made and the intelligent appreciation of the various subjects shewn by the children . Then there were the coun- try walks, which for me, owing to my professional engage- ments, were few and far between; but when they could be indulged in, were a source of great delight, as the children showed their knowledge of the surrounding villages , of every lane and turning, of every field-path leading to some well known meadow, wood, or stream, and were able to point out

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where the earliest primrose or wild daffodil was to be found, to tell me when the herons had returned to their nests in the lofty trees above the lake, or note the scent of the fox that had passed that morning.

As time went on and new interests developed, a real appreciation of architecture shewed itself, and I Mras struck with the way in which the children were able to compare the details of a church which I explained to them with others about which they had read or which they had visited . When I took them to the National Gallery there was great pleasure in picking out the original pictures, the copies of which they had studied in their schoolroom .

One remembers so well the Winchester gathering of 1912, when on reaching the city the children knew their way about the town, having mapped it out aforetime, and when they met their fellow pupils in the school to note, how, though having come from places far apart and never having met before, they fell into their classes at once, so that on- lookers would think they must have worked together for many weeks, so harmonious was the atmosphere. At the same gathering also, one was impressed with the intelligent way in which all the children showed their appreciation of the Cathedral, St. Cross, and other places of interest about which they had read during the previous term .

The work of the P.U. School led up naturally, and without any real break, to the larger life of the public school, for which the children by their early training were well fitted, as it seemed merely the stepping from one class- room to another, so comprehensive and intelligent had been the previous preparation.

The whole training seems to invite a close companion- ship between parents and children through common interests and opportunities for nature study and the discussion of the problems of their own life history; thus the interest which parents and children take in each other 's lives is largely due to Miss Mason's influence in teaching us as parents to realize that our children, from earliest babyhood, are persons with an individuality of their own, and are to be treated as such, not looked upon as mere playthings .

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One cannot but feel what an enormous influence for good Miss Mason has bestowed upon the children of the country, now that not only home schoolrooms , but also large numbers of elementary and secondary schools have adopted her teaching and ideas, and that the work commenced at Ambleside has spread throughout the English-speaking world, and how helpful it has been to our colonial brethren, my own knowledge of the work done in New Zealand testi- fies.

Though the Founder has gone her influence remains and her work will continue.

J. W. Walker, O.B.E., F.S.A.

THE P. U.S. FROM A MOTHER'S POINT OF VIEW.

The obituary account of Miss Mason's work in the Times took me back to the days when, as a young mother, I started to teach my small boys with the help of the P.N.E.U. school. Now I am asked to write a short appreciation from the mother's point of view. I will try and put the clock back 18 or 19 years to the days when I first started to teach our children, two boys who began their school life in 1a and 1b. The years went on and I went on teaching, the family increased, five boys and one girl; gradually the elder boys went off to school, but the younger ones took their places; my one girl I taught till she went to school at 16 and then at last, when the two youngest boys went to school about three years ago, my teaching days came to an end. How little I thought when the first P. U.S. papers came, for how many years I should go on with the work — I who knew nothing of teaching and who had forgotten much of what I had learnt at school; how could I accomplish such an im- possible task ? Only by the arrival of the P. U.S. syllabus term by term .

As I look at some of the old books the intervening years are forgotten . I am back once more in thought to the days gone by when the children and I were learning together. History was a fascinating subject when taught by Arnold Forster. Magna Charta meant something with the story of

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the sewing machine . Elizabeth became a real person as one read Kenilworth and Westward Ho; French History, and later on as they grew older, European History added different points of view. Geography — such a dull subject in my day — lists of capes and bays, imports and exports — quite another thing, as one wandered through Northern Italy or took part in lion hunting in Africa ; so too Nature Study by the help of Mrs . Brightwen and her delightful pets or Gilbert White, or that old friend 'Life and Her children' . Arithmetic was certainly the hardest subject when one had forgotten all but the four rules ; however , by means of keeping just a little ahead, teaching myself by means of the examples, even this difficulty was negotiated . Housekeeping had to be done by 10 o'clock, for my bell rang then and my small people had to leave the garden for their work till one, with a short break in the middle of the morning. Scripture was always taken first and my mind goes back with gratitude to Dr. Paterson Smyth's books which helped to make the Bible stories so vivid — one could almost see Joshua and his men starting off for the long night march from Gilgal to the relief of Gibeon . Literature we generally took after lunch, I had old fashioned ideas of the value of a rest then for the children, and I wish I had kept a list of books that I read aloud to them then. How many subjects we took and what a good library we gathered together and how exciting it was to see the new books that arrived each term. Picture talks, with the reproductions of artists of bygone days or modern times, Tales of St. Paul's Cathedral, and Westminster Abbey, Shakespeare plays that we read together — what a wide world we lived in, though we worked in the depths of the country! Then the end of the term with the examination, I as secretary taking down what my small people happened to remember (as days went on it was rather a comfort when they were able to write down their own answers), at the end of the week the big envelope went off — what excitement when the report came back, always with the kindly and encouraging criticisms, how interesting to see what marks were given and what fortunate person could take a step up into another form! Much water has flowed under the bridge

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since those days , and the scholars are scattered far and wide ; some of the picture reproductions went to an Indian College where one of them is now teaching .

I have been living in the past as I write, realising how much happiness I owe to the vision of one woman. My case no doubt is similar to many others, scattered all over the world. Others will write of Miss Mason's work from the point of view of the trained teacher, but how much greater is the debt of the mother who without any training at all, could teach her children through the method that Miss Mason had worked out. It was she who made the im- possible possible, who shewed us term by term what books to use and how to use them, who taught us to take the children straight to the fountain head and let them learn from the books themselves. It was she who realised what home education might become, who changed the whole atmosphere of the home schoolroom, who inspired us for our work and gave us the power to carry it out ; a pioneer who blazed the trail that many of us followed with keen enjoy- ment and grateful hearts.

Gone are the school room days — I am back again in the present, — the Indian mail is just in ; for the two long letters, both so different yet telling so much of lives lived in that far off land ; for that power of expression which means so much to those at home, how much we owe again to the lessons learnt long ago in P .U .S . days .

E. M. Capbon.

A MOTHER'S TRIBUTE.

Would it not be true to say of Mothers that ' 'some are born mothers ; some achieve motherhood ; and some have mother- hood thrust upon them?" There are some women who although they are not called to marriage and human mother- hood, have yet begotten spiritual children who "rise up and call them blessed." And of such surely was Charlotte Mason . Endured with powers of vision , of love , of courage , and of patience, such as are given to few, she has been the designer, the chief engineer and the foremost labourer of a

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road which now is trodden by many feet — both young and older — with hope and joyfulness.

The task God has given to mothers must always be the most responsible committed to any human being. It is nothing less than the training for His Service of His own children — children whose bodies must be sound and healthy, whose minds must be disciplined and alert, whose souls must learn to grow in the knowledge and love of their Father, if they are to fulfil the purpose for which He has sent them here. It was this vision which Miss Mason saw and which she gave her life to make real , this ideal which she ever held before the eyes of those who in the dusty ways of daily life were apt to rest content with a lower, a more material standard.

And so we mothers owe her a debt of gratitude which it is hard to put into words , for her wonderful help and inspira- tion in this great work of child training . As one who during the past eight years has had five members of her family in the P. U.S. I am grateful for the privilege of being allowed to try — ever so feebly — to voice this gratitude. It is difficult to single out special points, but I shall always remember with thankfulness how the Principal of one of our best known and largest girls' schools commented on my daughters' "power of concentration," and this I consider they owe almost entirely to their P. U.S. training. I have been asked whether this education was a good preparation for public schools run on somewhat different lines and I have no hesitation is answering "yes," an opinion which is amply justified by personal experience. The habit of concentration already mentioned, the love of good books for their own sake, the encouragement of wide and varied interests, all these are to my mind the best possible equip- ment for a boy or girl not only in public school life but in the wider life which follows, whatever its particular channel may be. One other point stands out clearly — the unvary- ing personal interest taken by Miss Mason in all her work ; the little note in her own handwriting on every examination mark sheet was an eagerly looked -for joy even to those of us who had never been privileged to see or know her more intimately.

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We parents then would offer our tribute of gratitude to a loved and honoured name in firm faith that the road so nobly planned shall lead many travellers "on to the City of God." For though our leader has passed into the fuller light , her work lives and grows .

1 'No work begun shall ever pause for death! . . . . Through such souls alone God stooping shows sufficient of His light For us i ' the dark to rise by . "

M. H. SWINGLER.

SECONDARY SCHOOLS.

It is no easy task to attempt to estimate the work and influence of Miss Mason in Secondary Schools. The great- ness of that influence must be felt and acknowledged by all those who have watched with interest the development and progress of education during the last thirty years, and who have at the same time followed the teaching and studied the methods of one who by her entire lack of self-advertisement, her steady adherence to principles now acknowledged to be sound by the best thinkers, must surely take a leading place among the educational pioneers of our generation.

It is a comparatively easy task to recognise and appraise her work in those schools which profess to follow the princi- ples of the Union which she founded, but her influence has been far-reaching and it is in schools that have "tacitly adopted ' ' her ideals without recognition or even realisation of her leadership that the greatest progress has been made , the most striking triumphs won . So great is the leavening power of a noble and forceful personality.

It is hardly an exaggeration to say that there is scarcely a Girls' School in the country that has not been directly or indirectly affected by her teaching, and it is interesting to find some of her firmly held principles embodied in the recently published Report of the Committee appointed to inquire into the Differentiation of Curricula between the sexes in Secondary Schools .

First and foremost of the gifts which Miss Mason 50

brought to secondary schools is the gift of Freedom, — the taking of the child back to nature and reality and leading him into the realms of knowledge not only through the glories of our great literature, but by showing him his heritage in the world around him .

Let us go back to the year 1890 when Miss Mason came forward publicly as an educationist .

There are many of us who remember well the conditions in the great High Schools in the early eighteen nineties. We realise as we look back how much gratitude we owe to the Headmistresses of those days for the firm stand they made in their demand for equal opportunities in education for boys and for girls. But we realise, too, the mistake that was then made by the majority of teachers. They aimed at fitting the girl to compete in all points with the boy, with too little regard for her social well-being and physical fitness. The pressure of home-work came heavily upon the girl after her strenuous work at school, too seldom relieved by games, drill or any form of hand -work. The approaching shadow of Public Examinations in which Art, Music, and other aesthetic subjects had no place cut her off from all pleasure in these subjects. Time would not permit her indulging in them.

The study of English Literature, apart from the books -and periods set for examination purposes in the higher forms, was in some well-known High Schools excluded from the curriculum. I, myself, remember being introduced to some of the glories of English poetry by a mathematical teacher who snatched moments in the intervals between examinations to fire the amagination of her pupils and to make them realise the beauties of their own langauge.

To how rich a heritage of books has Miss Mason intro- duced her children; — with what abundance of intellectual food she has supplied them to their lasting benefit ! Shakes- peare is now read by children of ten years with enjoyment and intelligence, and annotated texts are becoming the exception and not the rule.

Again, in those early days the History lesson with its dry text -book, and short question and answer test gave

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little opportunity for training in thought and judgment. The affairs of the mother country were studied with little or no attention to the contemporary history of Europe, and for World History no time could be allowed. The teacher who realised a better way would seize moments to read short extracts from the great historical writers. One remembers being introduced in this way to Lecky, Tolstoi and others, and those moments remain fresh in the mind when much besides is forgotten.

For the giving to the child a wider knowledge of history — a subject which she believed was the most important in the training of good citizens — Miss Mason makes ample provision, and there are few schools to be found now where some teaching in World History as well as in European and English History is not given.

In quite recent years similar conditions might have been found prevailing in many of our large Boarding Schools, and even in the Government Training Colleges, — the same imprisonment of spirit — and sometimes of body, too — the same starvation diet, the same narrowly academic outlook.

But, thanks to the work of Miss Mason and others zealous in the cause of education, light has come into many dark places. The Girl Guide movement has been most helpful in this respect. The Heads of many schools now realise that the movement is a valuable aid, not a hindrance to the ordinary work, and are giving Guiding an honourable place in the Time Table. It must not be forgotten in this connection that the Scout movement may be said to owe its origin to Miss Mason .

But though progress in the schools has been steady much still remains to be done, and this no one realised better than Miss Mason herself. Those who were privileged to attend the P.N.E.U. Conference held last May at Amble- side will remember well the inspiring words with which she closed her second address — "Let us be up and doing. Let us do battle with the schools for 'a liberal education. ' ' '

P. S. Goode, B.A.

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ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS.

Every member of the Parents ' National Educational Union is realising the burden of a great loss in the death of its founder, Miss Mason. Each has the knowledge that a great organiser and leader has been lost . Each feels that a dear friend has gone ; one whose friendship was sweet because of its understanding, its sympathy, its largeness. Her spirit went abroad in her letters and books . And when one met her for the first time, it seemed like the renewal of an old friendship, and one picked up the conversation of yesterday without the poignant reminder of a break which "yester- day ' ' often conveys .

One was conscious of the strength and urge of her spirit, of her enthusiasm for the cause of education, her faith in it, her will to pursue it. She expressed herself completely in the motto of all P.U. Schools : "I am, I can, I ought, I will."

In forming the P.N.E.U. and establishing P.U. Schools, Miss Mason did the supposedly impossible. She blended the democratic and the aristocratic. By a seeming paradox she demonstrated a great truth. The "demos" were to be the "aristos." All were to have liberal opportunities of development, full and complete, so that the State she contemplated should not contain the self-destruct ive elements of a blind democracy and a selfish aristocracy. The best for all, that from the all would come , by Nature '- logic , the best . Miss Mason promised no pre-natal change in the nature of the inhabitants of her "Utopia." The change would come as the fruit from the culture and care of the growing child. Humanity was not to be shipwrecked before it could reach her "New Atlantis . ' '

Miss Mason had all the qualities of a great reformer; clear thinking, intelligent continued effort, high ideals, and faith. Faith she had abundantly. None who had the honour and privilege of meeting her in the Shire Hall, Gloucester, and the pleasure of listening to her address to the Heads of Schools in Gloucestershire working as P.U. Schools, will doubt her abundant faith. Its rays shone

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through all her words. She began by a confession of her own faith in children, in human nature, in the work of education. She ended by exhorting her audience to hold fast by faith .

The founding of the Parents' Union School in 1891 was followed by a steady growth of its influence on education in the home countries and the colonies, a growth springing from healthy root principles .

But if the extension of the Union's sphere was gratify- ing, it satisfied neither Miss Mason nor the helpers she had trained and imbued with her enthusiasm. The millions of children attending the State Primary Schools were not touched, the hunger of their "perfect but immature" minds unsatisfied because the rich and ample fare of mental food provided in the programmes of the P.U.S. was not given them.

The opportunity to extend the operations of the Union to the field of state education came in the wonderful years between 1916 and 1919. The times were favourable. The world witnessed the rebirth of spiritual interest in education and a demand from civilised peoples for the best that could be obtained from education. There was divine discontent with the character and amount of education given in all types of school .

The success which followed the experiment at Drigh- lington proved the practicability of the system in a new type of school; and the pamphlet written by Miss Ambler, the head of the school and the pioneer of the P.U.S. in State primary schools, made available to all interested in educa- tion the results of the experiment .

The growth in the number of State schools which adopted P.U.S. syllabuses and methods became rapid. Interest was awakened, and inquiries from education authorities came from many and widely separated areas. Miss Mason was happily spared to live long enough to see a wonderful fruition to her labours.

Thousands of children are to-day receiving the educa- tion urged by the Union, in schools provided and main- tained by the State, and local education authorities, and

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the name of Miss Mason must surely be one heard in hun- dreds of homes where a few years ago she was unknown .

The county of Gloucester has more schools affiliated to the P .N .E .U . than any other county .* The pity is that the rest of England is not so conscious of its loss as Glou- cestershire is awake to its gain.

The number is increasing, every term marking an addition to the roll of names of those schools joined to the P.N.E.U.

It is as the Head of a P.U. School (elementary), that I would pay a due but inadequate tribute to the genius of a great educational reformer and organiser; would try to express a measure of thanks, which must always fall short, for the example of a life-long devotion and sacrifice to education of the nation's childhood, here and throughout the English-speaking world . And I know that what is said here will have willing assent from my colleagues, who will feel, like myself, that ' 'the half has not been told . ' '

We remember Miss Mason because she taught us to regard the children as "perfect but immature"; that their minds were each an indivisible whole, with the dignity of a personality we must not outrage. She saved us from the growing belief that man might be greater than his Maker.

We remember Miss Mason because she showed us how practice in school might be natural and simple, natural because it used the inherent element of interest which the child brought to our schools. We knew this, but she showed us how to use and retain it. Natural, too, because those conditions of attention and concentration were always present with interest, and could not be cultivated from adventitious roots. Simple, because their application did not involve a peculiar or elaborate training. The educated mother, fortunate in having the leisure, may well and successfully educate her child at home.

We reverence the memory of Miss Mason because she showed us how happiness might permeate our classrooms; how there might be joy in learning, joy which grew from the "team" spirit in the class room. She made it possible for

* Over 100 now . — Ed .

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sympathy to be a constant bond between teacher and taught .

We are thankful to Miss Mason for the wisdom and choice with which she built up her programmes. By them our scholars were led from a land of locusts and wild honey to a fertile plain of rich and varied food . By them she made it no longer possible to describe our schools as "elementary."

For these few reasons only we pay this valedictory tribute to Miss Mason who did so much for the scholars and teachers in the nation's schools .

We mourn her death, but in our mourning we remember she lived .

G. H. Smith (a Gloucestershire Headmaster).

SOME REMINISCENCES.

I think that it may interest some readers of the Parents ' Review to know something about dear Miss Mason's early professional life, but I must state at the outset that the following account is necessarily fragmentary. I have no memoranda to guide me and my memory (at 73|) fails me sometimes. Moreover, dear Miss Mason was so much absorbed in her work that she spoke but little of her own life . For many years before her death those who lived with her tried to save her as much as possible from the fatigue of conversation ; we always read to her in her few leisure hours . Both Miss Mason's parents died when she was comparatively young, and as her father was ruined by the American Civil War it was necessary for her to work. She seems to have made up her mind at once to devote herself to the cause of education. There were no High Schools, or Secondary Schools for girls in those days, and no women's colleges; it was only the teachers in Elementary Schools who were sup- posed to need training for their work . Training Colleges in those days were not generally very well managed, but Miss Mason was determined to avail herself of any advantage that was to be had and took a short course of training at the Home and Colonial Training College in order to qualify herself for teaching in an Elementary School. Then, as in later life, she thoroughly believed in children; she respected

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them and was always confident that in every class of life children would respond to proper treatment. In fact she took up the profession of teaching as work for God and for the country , and as she says in the preface to her books , 1 'each article of the educational faith I offer has been arrived at by inductive processes ; and has, I think, been verified by a long and wide series of experiments . ' '

If I mistake not, it waj about this time in her life that Miss Mason made the acquaintance of two ladies, teachers like herself with high aims who became dear and life-long friends. I am not sure whether Miss Mason took more than one school after finishing the short course of training, but I know that about this time she became Headmistress of a Church School at Worthing, and held this post for some years. Under her management the school became quite famous in the neighbourhood ; perfect order was maintained without any severity and the pupils worked with intellig- ence and eagerness . It was not surprising that Miss Mason made many friends in Worthing and was recognised as an authority on education . At that time there was a movement among earnsst people to induce educated women of the pro- fessional classes to take up teaching in elementary schools, and in order to further the cause The Bishop Otter Memorial College at Chichester was set apart for training such women as mistresses for Elementary Schools. Miss Trevor was appointed Lady Principal, and Miss Mason had become so well known in the neighbourhood that she was appointed Lecturer on Education and Teacher of Human Physiology. In 1876 I went to Otter College as a student and thus came under dear Miss Mason 's influence . Unlike her, I was not a born teacher, I was simply anxious to do some useful work and help my family (my father was a clergyman and an invalid and I wished to help him to retire.) Under dear Miss Mason 's teaching , my views of life changed ; I saw that teaching might be a noble profession instead of a mere trade, and I too longed to put her theories into practice . I am sure that many old ' 'Otters ' would gladly testify to the help and enlightenment they received from Miss Mason's lectures on Education. I remember she told us that the true teacher

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must be prepared to lay down her life for her pupils. At the end of my two years' training Miss Mason left the College and I remained for two years on the staff to qualify myself for my certificate. Miss Mason went to Bradford to teach in a school kept by one of the friends I have men- tioned, and also to get some time for writing on education. It was at Bradford that she gave a course of lectures to ladies on "Home Education"; these lectures were after- wards published under the title of the book we know so well. I decided not to remain at Otter College after I had gained my certificate as I wished to teach in a school, and through Miss Mason's influence I was appointed Head- mistress of a Higher Grade Board School in Bradford. I did not succeed very well in this position; the little success I did achieve was due to Miss Mason's advice. She wished me to remain and work for complete success, but I was comparatively young and thought I should do better else- where and left .

Then a little later Miss Mason went to Ambleside to be with the other of the old friends I have mentioned. Miss Mason taught in her school and then gradually evolved and carried out the scheme of the House of Education which has been such a wonderful success. Miss Mason began with four students in a small house . I need scarcely say that it was with great joy and gratitude that I accepted dear Miss Mason's invitation to join her in 1898 as Vice-Principal of the House of Education. The 22 years I spent there were the happiest years of my life and I can only thank God for His goodness in allowing me to be there.

F. C. A. Williams.

MISS MASON'S MESSAGE.

As we think of Miss Mason's long and beautiful life spent in ceaseless happy toil "for the children's sake" we ask our- selves what it was she strove to win for them, why it was that she was always happy no matter how weary. Was it a method of education all summed up in one word, narration ? Was it the use of books ? Was it love of Nature ? Was it

58

the power of self-expression in words , in material , in music ? Was it happiness ? Was it goodness ? Was it worldly success? One may say that the good which Miss Mason sought included all these, but it went beyond, it reached out till it became fulness of living. One of life's problems is to see people whose learning is a byword and whose compan- ionship is so dull, no joy issues to them from their fountain of knowledge, rather it seems that these learned people carry a heavy burden. This problem has yet to be solved and may be considered later ; we are more tempted to rest our thoughts upon the sun-bathed path of those who, following Miss Mason's teaching, know less but understand more, understanding because of the fulness of life that is theirs .

Our beloved teacher has passed away from us. We may no longer take to her our every perplexity ; we may no longer look for her next article in the Parents' Review which will clear up some fresh difficulty for us; we may no longer hope for the talk that will give us fresh insight into that lull life which she lived and which her disciples recog- nised without necessarily being conscious of its source.

Longing as we do for comfort let us hear her speaking to us from the book she prized more than any of her works, basing on it all her teaching philosophy .

' 'Day by day we are taught to pray, by way of summing up all our requirements in this life, for "knowledge of Thy truth" — the prayer in the Liturgy which seems to sum- marise most fully our Lord's teaching. But our practice hardly keeps pace with our prayer ; we are apt to put two or three legitimate desires before what should be our primary inspiration; to have good — the cult of prosperity — is the prayer and effort of the natural man ; to be good — the cult of sanctity — is the desire of the spiritually minded ; to do good — the cult of philanthrophy — sums up the religion of humanity : these things we should have, be and do, but we are becoming aware that there is a further duty which we may not leave undone. Our Lord 's promise concerning the teaching of the Holy Spirit implies this further obligation : ' 'He shall bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you . ' '

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"All," "whatsoever," double superlative, lays upon us the duty of detailed devout study of each one ol the divine sayings; for, how can we remember that which we have not fully known." (Vol. V.)*

"Nor knowledge good for man can mankind know, But He vouchsafes it ; He is all our light . (Vol. I.)

Accordingly Miss Mason pondered on the words and the life of our Lord and as the light came to her she used it as she used all she had, in the service of others.

Think ye that knowledge is a little thing

A man may hide in casket sure,

Certain its worth a beauty shall endure,

Nor, like a timid bird, take sudden wing?

Think ye that none against you count may bring

For that ye know, for 'tis your very own ?

I tell you that your knowledge is a loan

For all men's use; ye shall not hide, nor fling

Into the dustbin of your memory,

That knowledge ye with pains have got of me ;

Who knows and teaches not shall feel the sting

Of guilt intolerable when before

The Judge he stands : for him, hath little love,

A lighter chastisement decrees the King .

He that hath much must needs impart the more, And each shall give according to his store. (Vol. I.)

Six precious volumes of this work remain for us to study, rather should we say, for us to use in our endeavour to achieve the fulness of life. Miss Mason's intention was to produce eight volumes . The first appeared at Christmas- tide, 1908. Afterwards a volume appeared regularly every Christmas till 1914. None of them were very generally appreciated, chiefly because many of us would have pre- ferred the thought expressed in prose as we had heard her

* All the extracts given here are from "The Saviour of the World."

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speak, but that was because we did not find all at once how closely packed with thought is every page of the verses, nor see that no other form was possible. In the summer of 1915 Miss Mason saw the beginning of the movement in the Elementary Schools which was from that time onward to engross all her time and strength, and in 1917 she told us that the last two volumes of the Saviour of the World would never be written. The six existing volumes are in constant use in the Parents' Union School where the work of the children proves their worth. The passage to be studied is read in the Gospels and then narrated . The children then set to work to understand the passage more fully by com- paring the different accounts and by bringing all they know to bear upon it; sometimes the teacher asks questions or points out some new aspect but more often she learns a great deal from the children. When the teacher and the children have found out all they can, the verses referring to it in the "Saviour of the World" are read by the teacher and narrated by the children — "The intellectual labour we have given makes the conception our own, and we have gained some fragment of that knowledge which is eternal life." (Vol.V.)

Searching for the source of Miss Mason's teaching let us begin with the P.N.E.U. Motto and see how far the adoption of it is warranted by the study of the Life of Jesus. We must read carefully and take time to give the intellectual labour necessary to show us how Miss Mason's teaching philosophy grew and by the few examples given we shall see how those of us who did not know our Founder personally, may get into closest touch with her thought and teaching :

Education is an atmosphere.

"How fair thou art, O soul! how still a grace

Mantles thy face! What pure cool chambers do thine eyes reveal! Sure dwells in thee some luminous mystery ? ' ' "As you dull orb that yet so shines to thee, I do but stand

In the Light." 61

* 'What seest thou, O soul, where thou dost stand ?"

"A shifting sand Where vile things stir and live — pride, envy, strife, Malice and anger, all that prey on love — Lo, these within me doth the Light reprove! Yet fain I stand

In the light."

"This the whole cheer, poor soul, light brings to Thee?

"Nay, One I see In heaven, in earth, but One: none may rehearse, Nor any comprehend save them who see , The healing of the Vision: He shines on me; — Wherefore I stand

In the Light!"

(Vol.V)..

Education is a discipline.

Only those valiant souls who choose To take the good, the ill refuse,

Nor pleasures seek, nor pains evade, Are worthy to follow where He leads, By waters cool, through flowery meads

Where innocent voices fill the glade.

Thou cri'st that "nature fixes fate, No man becomes or good or great ,

Save as his nature makes him strong" : To will is all God asks of thee ; Impulse, strength, scope, He granteth free;

But man must choose, or right, or wrong!

Else men were puppets in a play Moved hither, thither, every way,

Without or strength to strive, or choice; Perchance for this , the Accuser 's hour To test the souls of men with power : —

For good or evil, is thy voice ? (Vol.1).

62

Education is a life .

So God hath made us, that for every man Are many chances of being born anew Into a life still higher than the first : What if were one great chance for every soul Of highest birth creature of dust may know ? What if were some amazing thought, compelling, That no man could pass by were it once brought Within the focus of his narrowed vision ; A thought for wise and foolish vile and pure, That sudden, certain, should transform a man, Give him new birth, within an air unbreathed In all his grovelling days! Why, here, a lever, With arm to lift the world to higher plane! To make this weary, travel -stained, poor Earth A place for angels to go to and fro, A paradise of God!

(Vol.1).

Next in order of dearness to us comes the children's. Motto .

I am

In the Kingdom are the children ;

You may read it in their eyes ; All the freedom of the Kingdom

In their careless humour lies .

What do they to take the Kingdom ?

Only this leave they undone — Suffering Christ the King within them, —

They in nought invade His throne :

On the children's brows no witness That themselves do fill their thought ;

In the children's hearts no strivings That to them be honour brought .

Therefore finds the King an entrance ;

Freely goes He out and in ; Sheds the gladness of His presence ; Doth for babes great victories win!

(Vol. IV), 63

I can.

The Lord beheld the Seventy, simple men To whom He had discoursed of mighty themes; And, lifting up His eyes, to praise was fain The righteous Father, Who th' unlearned deems

Worthy to know; the simple heart sincere, The little child who few things apprehends But brings discriminating vision clear, — To such as these the Father condescends .

The Lord, discerning, lifted thankful heart, Loving the Seventy, that it was God's will To shew His mysteries where is no art To darken counsel with man's subtle skill.

So is it still; The Lord's mind who should know, With a child's heart shall wait for Him to show.

(Vol. VI.)

I ought.

To each man I say, — A task is set for thee, none else can do ; A task , not of set labour with thy hands , But of true thinking with the mind thou hast.

(Vol. V).

I will.

Working the Work, willing the Will! — Thou art A Teacher of mysteries! 'tis of Thy might We're able, O our Lord, to get by heart These lessons of thy setting, in despite

Of all that heavy dulness 'tis Thy task To lighten with Thy glorious countenance ; Till th 'inert will drop from us as a mask, And, quickened, wake we, as man out of trance .

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For what the secret then, of willing well ?

To keep the single eye, to think on Thee —

Till seeing Christ, our lightened heart shall swell

To that vast measure, His Humility! —

Then of Thy doctrine we in truth shall know When all our will is — in Thy way to go .

(Vol. V).

There is no space to quote at greater length , but the source of that principle which brings such joy to every P.N.E.U. schoolroom, Education is the Science of Rela- tions , is to be found in Vol . V . , p . 120 , and IV . , p . 84 .

When we come to P .N .E .U . method of which one of the outstanding features is the use of Narration, we find our authority for it in Vol . I . , pp . 61 and 62 ; pp . 84 and 85 ; p . 808 . Again the fallacy of explaining every difficulty is exposed in Vol . Ill . , p . 47 and Vol . Ill . , p . 85 .

Scale How students feel this work to be their special treasure, for all the thought it contains was given first to them during the precious hour on Sunday afternoons when they gathered round Miss Mason to hear her speak. Those who know Scale How can picture the drawing room packed with students eagerly listening to the wonderful woman who from her couch, with gentle voice and quiet smile and loving eyes that read every face, would seem to have the word that each one needed , inconveniently so sometimes, for many of us who came in feeling something of saints would go out feeling sinners, so had she bared us to ourselves. Yet not despairing sinners , for the keynote of all her teaching was the ever readiness of divine love and forgiveness .

How vast the firmament! We lift our gaze And search the heavens for a boundary line ; Stars upon stars confound us ; we divine Numerous orbs within the glorious maze!

So, would we track th' illimitable rays Of the Divine Perfections, baffled we; Outgazing further than weak eyes may see, Efforts to focus too much glory daze

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Our giddy sense! With what relief we rest

On one great star that dominates the sky!

A three-mooned planet, bright, diffusing light,

Divine Forgiveness glorifies our night —

For wilful souls, for those, neglected, lie,

For them who knew and loved, yet— left the Best!

E. A. Parish.

THE DAY'S WORK.

" A sweet attractive kind of grace A full assurance given by looks Continual comfort in a face, The lineaments of Gospel books . ' '

Did ever any spirit pass who could be claimed as a personal friend by so many people of all ages! The many letters that have come since Jan. 16th, all testify to a sense of personal loss. Letters from her "Bairns," as Miss Mason always called them, were the first to come, brought by the happy thought of Miss Parish in sending from Ambleside notice of the "passing" to each of her "Bairns" before a press notice could reach them. Then came letters from friends, grateful parents, Heads of schools, Secondary and Elemen- tary, expressing, so many of them, a curious sense of near- ness to the beloved spirit that has ' 'passed . " A letter from an Elementary school begs for more personal details, and so these few lines are written for those who never met Miss Mason except in spirit.

Up to the end of last term Miss Mason was living the College life as usual. She took her Sunday class, was present for the Criticism Lessons on Thursday mornings and at the "Scale How Tuesday" Evenings. During the Inspector's visit in October she was down at 9-30 a.m. each day for three days and spent the day with the Inspec- tor. She was present at the students' farewell party and at the Senior's last talk in December and drove out as usual on December 16th, Even on January 11th, she listened to and decided about two articles offered for the Review and on the 12th she heard the most important letters and

06

approved, or not, of the answers suggested. Weary days and nights of pain were never referred to and she continued to enjoy reading aloud to the end and then she "fell on sleep . ' '

In spite of frail health and much suffering for thirty years, Miss Mason led the life of a fully occupied woman. Only a week before she passed she said — "It is so difficult to get into invalid ways." She never thought of herself as an invalid and planned her life and work without thought of any personal handicap but that of physical inactivity. Her days passed with a regularity of employment, a fulness of joy in life and work that left no room for thoughts of self, no word of regret that she was unable to exercise the hospi- tality which she would so dearly have loved to do or to meet the many friends and acquaintances who would have been only too glad to come to see her. She had a genius for hospitality and for good talk, and during the summer holidays when she was less occupied, she often met distin- guished men and women of affairs and the talk was brilliant . But the physical effort of talking was always a difficulty and many a time has she had to decline the visit of a distin- guished visitor lest the strain should incapacitate her for work that never ceased its claims upon her .

Every day brought a heavy post, editorial duties, housekeeping details, College business, the constant work of the Parents' Union School, and it was only by the utmost regularity of hours of work and times of leisure that work could be carried on.

But how to help anyone to realise the way in which Miss Mason answered the claims upon her! The details may sound so little . The output was so great .

The lines at the head of this paper give some idea of the aspect of our beloved Chief at all times, and especially when the day 's work began . It might have been a sleepless night, or a night of pain, but always after her morning preparation for the day there was a radiance of countenance, that grew as the years passed , that made one hesitate in awe , a radiance that only 'gospel books' could bring. The day's work began with the post at 9-30. Every letter, every

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card, that came was considered, answers discussed, some- times a letter dictated, though of late years Miss Mason wrote many letters herself. The letters were vary varied, a mother wanting help with a difficult child, one student wanting advice, another changing her post, a father sending thanks for his son's successes at school, "due entirely to his preparation in the P .U .S . , " a postcard asking for some special consideration in the date of sending in papers, letters asking for advice as to a school from parents returning from China or Madagascar, for example, with children who had up till then worked in the P.U. School. These and many others were dealt with and always from the point of view that a child, or a grown-up, is a person.

Letters sometimes required thinking over and Miss Mason would say, — **I will give you the answer to that to-morrow"; and to-morrow the answer would be ready without any reminder, and the letter would be answered in detail and without any further reference to its pages. She constantly said, — "Always remember that persons matter more than things. Don't say anything that will leave a sting."

Letters done, perhaps the house -mistress would come for a short talk over household details, accounts, some repairs, a new maid, the students' meals. Then would come the work of the morning. If it was the first week of month it would be the "Parents' Review" that must be considered, articles submitted, read and accepted or not, articles wanted — many — where, indeed, could they be got from ? "We want a paper on this subject ? Who shall be asked to do it ? " Miss Mason treated any paper as she would its author, with unbounded respect. She would not alter or re-arrange ; she had too much respect for the writer. She would often refuse a paper which needed omissions on account of some of its teaching lest she should spoil the author's creation, a living product of his mind. Perhaps the work of two or three mornings would be the reviewing of books . She dictated the reviews without pause to a type- writer, having read the books in her leisure hours. Con- ference papers were always dictated in the same way and

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sent to the printer with hardly a correction. At eleven, she would on bad days be sometimes too tired to go on, "Give me 'Punch' ," she would say, if it were Wednesday, or 'a Trollope,' "and come back in twenty minutes," and she would start again rested and refreshed at the end of that time.

Perhaps the work for a fortnight or more would be the children's written examination papers, each of which she would consider before she signed the report, sometimes modifying or adding to the report herself. How she loved the papers ! ' 'I am always happy when I am reading these , ' * she would say, ' 'Just see how these children take pleasure in their work! ' ' The preparation of the new programmes and the examination questions was the morning work for weeks. The choice of new books took much time. Miss Mason tested them herself for narration, considered them, rejected them, sent for more — for she followed all new book lists — and asked for all books she thought likely to yield what she wanted. At 12-15 she stopped work . Then would follow ten minutes of some favourite classic author and she would be ready at 1 p .m . for dinner with the students . After dinner came occasional interviews and the reading aloud of some book of travel or biography. At 2-15 whatever the weather (unless it was raining heavily or there was a high wind) Miss Mason drove out in her little victoria till 4-0. Her life was a constant evidence of the joy of ' 'the science of relations," her relations with earth, with man, with bird, with beast and flower , and with God . She never came back without some 'find , ' some fresh flower out , some new sound she had heard , some new aspect of the beauty in the sky or on the fell . And she was ready with expectancy to hear of what others had to tell. After tea, at four, came an hour with the Vice-Principal considering posts, letters from ladies wanting students, letters from students wanting posts, all considered from the point of view of each side, the lady whose needs were so and so and the student who best could meet those needs and go to the post as to the ' 'very place God meant for her." Then would come reading, or proof - correcting, till 6 p.m. and then some old favourite novel,

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Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Thackeray, Meredith, Jane Austen, till supper at seven. After supper came reading aloud, "The Times," and books of travel, literary essays, memoirs. At 8-45 came Miss Mason's carrying chair and , last of all , her evening reading and a Scott novel . She always had "some Scott" the last thing, and as one novel was finished another took its place and had done for 30 years .

How Miss Mason would enjoy any bit of humour or good story that came her way , how she loved to hear about the children 's joy in their work , how she was always touched to tears by any bit of real understanding shown by anyone of the principles she was labouring to make known, or by any evidence of that wonderful insight a child will show when his mind has got what it needs to feed upon — these things would take pages to tell. Miss Mason had no personal "feelings," she could not be 'hurt' by want of understanding; but, oh, how she was cheered and helped by any recognition of what she was trying to do in the face of so many vested interests! She did not care for possessions, she rarely permitted gifts, but any tribute of understanding, any recognition of the philosophy that was so dear to her was a gift to be treasured. She never hesitated as to the value of this philosophy. It had come to her much of it at 25, or even earlier, and she often said how strange it was that she could only repeat what she had said so often. Her answers dictated to letters were the same in thought as pages in "Home Education." Tiresome letters she answered with gentle graciousness , and she would say, "Remember, no one is made up of one fault, everyone is much greater than all his faults ;" and then she would add with a smile, "I find it much easier to put up with people's faults than with their virtues! ' '

Miss Mason rarely touched upon controversial subjects, she read very little controversial matter, she steadily refused to enter the lists in condemnation of theories with which she had no sympathy . She prayed ' 'Lead us not into temptation" in thought as in other things and she would not enter in and let her thoughts dwell in the many byways

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of modern thought when so much work was needed on the highways.

Miss Mason disliked any form of red tape or apparatus, and she dreaded organisation . ' 'In proportion as a piece of work needs organisation it lacks life," she would often say. 4 'Don't make schemes for arranging the school work ahead . It must be fresh term by term or it will get stale . " ' 'Things must be judged on their own merits, not by rule." "Don't waste time copying." Miss Mason would take a book out of the school if it was not doing good work for the children.

She never worked out of hours nor let herself think of problems at night . Hasty decisions were never made even when she was pressed to make them. She took time to consider the many problems that inevitably connected themselves with the vast work for which she alone was responsible. She had a wonderful power of estimating the value of any thing, from a psychological problem in a book, a scientific discovery, a person's character, a builder's estimate, to a child's work, on paper or in handicrafts. She always saw the essential details, the trend of a line of thought, the fallacy in an argument, the weak place in an estimate , the testing place in a person 's character . She did not talk of these things though she betrayed her knowledge of them when necessary. She never discussed the students or one member of the staff with another, or one person's work with another ; she bore to the farthest limit her own responsibilities and tenderly shielded those who worked for her from any anxiety as to ways and means ; and such times of difficulty were not infrequent for she bore the financial responsibility entirely alone and went on with faith and courage when many a lesser spirit with a life so frail would have quailed. She would never let herself be "anxious." She avoided expressions of personal opinion lest they should act likv. "suggestion" on those who loved her. She distrusted personal influence as limiting and belittling the person influenced and she steadily set her face against any form of personal influence over any with whom she came in contact. She laid down principles and waited for others to think along her lines of

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thought and find the right solution. She would not deliver those she loved from the growing pains of thinking for themselves, and sometimes those who did not understand took her silence for consent when they suggested things she did not wish. They little knew that she was only waiting for them to think clearly for themselves . Life was too full, she was too frail, it is true, to talk much and also she did not think it wise to do so. She thought and acted and she wished others to think too. Her "masterly in- activity" was a thing to wonder at when she could so easily have set things, or thought, going in the way that she thought was right. A word from her, beloved as she was, would have done it : but, no, her work had to be done with the mind and heart of a person who must not be weakened by personal influence if the work was to be done by a main- spring and not a lever .

Her power of attention was equal to that which she laid claim to in the children. She gave her whole attention to whatever demanded it, — a book, a conversation, household details . Her perception of 'the way of the will ' and of 'the way of reason made her watchful lest the managing student or child should lose her way in wilfulness or in crooked think- ing. It is surely a rare thing that a philosopher should translate his philosophy into practical life as Miss Mason did. Many philosophers are content with the supreme joy of intellectual effort, others are content with making experiments as well, but Miss Mason had put each dictum of her philosophy to the test of daily life and its needs . It lay behind all her actions, for she ever said that right thinking was the most important act in a man 's life . If he thought right he would act right. She guarded the philosophy which was her Trust with a jealous care that made people sometimes wonder, even criticise, but it was a Trust so entirely apart from herself and from any personal considera- tions that she could speak of it, consider it, uphold it, main- tain it . It is this that makes her disciples feel it also is a sacred Trust that they too must needs guard for the sake of the world .

E.K.

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MISS MASON OF HOUSE OF EDUCATION.

It is an amazing thought when now it has pleased God to take from us our Head, full of years and honour, that when first I came to the House of Education and fell under her influence, she was not more than five years older that I find myself to-day . She seemed to us then ageless and immortal, a completed being, because she had self-command and a power of standing aside and leaving the young to be young, which is the rarest of all gifts at any age.

Though of course we students did not realize it then, the training of teachers for home schoolrooms was still some- thing new and experimental, and we were unconsciously taking part in a great movement which was to raise the status of the teacher, because behind us there was a central authority and control which could uphold our interests on the one hand, and give sage advice on the other, when foolish youth had not yet mastered "the art of living in other people 's houses . ' '

When I went as a student to Ambleside it was from experiences of many different worlds. I had been dragged up by the worst types of governesses at home , I had spent a few years in what was then considered an excellent high school, and one year in a typical old-fashioned boarding- school where English did not matter and French and Music did . I had had glimpses into the great world of people who mattered and who had every earthly advantage which might lead to culture and knowledge of the world, and all through my childhood I had had the constant companionship of an old godfather who knew every building of note and every person of distinction, and I had had glimpses into the merely frivolous narrow life of a social residential town, and into the poverty and restrictions and sheer vacuity of a small country commercial town . All this is detailed not from the biographical point of view but to show the standards of judgment and of living which I, as one type of student, brought with me to be revolutionized by that great influence . The first thing which struck me was Miss Mason 's marvellous courtesy — she knew only the bare outlines of our previous lives , but she spoke to us all as 'persons , ' and helped us to be

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dignified by treating us with dignity. Such varied experi- ences had given me the rather ugly cynicism of observant youth, and yet when in Psychology lectures our opinions were asked for and freely expressed and I rapped out some bitter half-truth, far from snubbing the distorted vision Miss Mason would always enlarge our perceptions by some word of wisdom or charity while not denying the half-truths which were all that we could see. Once, and once only in my student days, was she confronted with one of those examples of youth's foolish rebellion which were common- places of school life in those days — her method of dealing with the situation gave me a marvellous insight into what she meant by discipline — nothing was 'done to' the offenders — we were all simply left to talk over the situation and find a solution; the offenders having time to 'come to them- selves' bitterly repented, and found, I think greatly to their surprise, that public opinion had been entirely against them.

The whole atmosphere of the house was so extraordin- arily good — nothing ignoble seemed natural within its doors , and moreover the actual surroundings, the books, the pic- tures (reproductions of old masters) the simple furniture and the wild flowers for decoration everywhere were a revelation in themselves in those days when the world either lived in a crowd of ancestral treasures or in the unutterable hideous - ness of the Victorian Age when prosperity had to be ap- parent .

No one, I am afraid, will ever enshrine Miss Mason's 'Table Talk' in a book, but it was a marvellous training for young minds, her wit was so quick and her brain so trained and well-stored that ours had to take kangaroo leaps to keep up with her at all, and she had mastered the difficult art of eating and talking — in those days when heavy dinner-parties were still frequent, most people either ate or talked and neither made for true enjoyment of any meal. She would often at meals repeat once some fragment of great poetry and ask us to say it to her on the following day at luncheon, and in that way we learnt more than one treasure such as Trench 's Sonnet on Prayer . In those days too , we students

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received from her on Sunday afternoons the thoughts on the Gospels afterwards given a permanent form in verse in The Saviour of the World. These too were a revelation of the mental side of our faith — young people are often dog- matic, often merely narrowly pious, more often one fears conventional and indifferent, but that hour in the crowded drawing-room was an hour of thought in which we were brought suddenly to the point of asking ourselves 'What do I think ? ' 'How do I understand ? ' And very wise and helpful were the suggestions laid before us .

Life at the college with its many interests, in which she so marvellously shared, included, in those days, when the shadow of ill-health was not lying so heavily upon Miss Mason, the constant joy and stimulus of guests. Then we would see what the play of mind upon mind really meant, then we would be made to realize that however distinguished and clever these personages might be, they were our guests as well as hers , and sudden calls would come upon us to whip up some souffle' of an entertainment for them on the spur of the moment!

It was that training in readiness and courage for which we could never be grateful enough in after years — again and again we would be asked to do something we had never dreamt of doing and be told to say ' 'Oh , what a joke ' ' and do it! Thus we learnt the humility which never thinks of self or fears to make a fool of 'self when the call comes in the path of duty .

But for all the lofty heights pointed out to us it was the little human touches of understanding with our weaknesses which won our hearts — no scolding when there had been some wild ebullition of noise and high spirits at one of our revels, only the next morning "My dears, weren't you a little wild last night ? ' ' No ignoring our natural love of pretty clothes (in which she always set us a delightfully good example) but ' 'Don 't try to have the hat in Church , my dears , but remem- ber the neatness and care of Him who left the graves clothes 'folded together at the head ' on Easter Morning . ' ' And I remember one of her very few personal anecdotes was a poignant little story of how she felt when one of her mother 's

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■white trousseau petticoats was made into a frock for her in childhood and she somehow felt that it was not 'new' and not 'right . ' But it was the outlook on our future life which she gave us both by precept and example which was so marvellous — many of us came to our training as a profes- sional necessity, anxious to teach, to use our own brains and good education, and to learn because we must, and because in those days the professions were not open to women but I think none of us left without the sense of a vocation, "I have a life to give." Teaching was to be a mission carrying the breath of life to God's children, going out 'two and two ' with the mothers of our children to labour in God 's vineyard — not looking for results or rewards or the praise of men but praying for our children that they < 'might increase ' ' even as we ' 'decreased . ' '

Many times since those long past years have I revisited the old scenes, and always found the same wonderful wel- come and recollection of circumstances and people which made her interest so real and so living. She always looked ahead and so never belonged merely to any one 'present day , ' for it is only the people whose opinions can be dated who ever really grow old .

We shall rejoice in later days to think that she was to the last living the ordered life of good habits which we so loved to remember and find still going on, working always, but having the self-control to rest at regular times (which few ardent workers have), reading enormously, and with extraordinary relish and width of selection, enjoying the marvellous country around her and loving her horse and her dog and her daily outi g with them, which made it possible for her still to see the heron in the pool or the Globe Flower on the bank .

Only her 'bairns,' as she called her students, can piece together as in a precious mosaic her life of little personal kindnesses, of sage advice or admonition, of charity, and clarity of judgment — some lives are better written in the lives of those who come after them than in the pages of a biography — let us make it so with hers .

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4 4 Let us now praise famous men Men of little shewing For their work continueth Broad and deep continueth Greater than their knowing . ' '

R.A.P.

A TRIBUTE FROM AN EX-STUDENT.

It has always seemed to me that the two years spent as a student in that beautiful spot among the mountains of Westmoreland, under the influence of that wonderful personality, whose passing has left us all to mourn, have been in my life , as in that of so great a number of students , as a mount of transfiguration, charging our common everyday life with a fulness of meaning and beauty unknown before . Perhaps the secret of Miss Mason's great influence — apart from the intellectual appeal of her genius — over those who, as students, came into daily contact with her was, firstly, her extraordinary power of seeing, and appealing to, the best in every individual. Somehow, in her presence, meanness and pettiness fell away, and one believed in and strove to reach the highest of which one was capable . And not only this — one learnt to believe in the goodness and joy of life. One felt that, at the back of all Miss Mason's teaching, was a philosophy of life based on an intense con- viction of the personal relationship of every individual soul with God — a relationship that was the basis of all joy in living. One realised the power and joy of knowledge — the knowledge that is enshrined in all great literature, art and music, the knowledge of living creatures, of the goodness of sky and sea, of wind and cloud and of all the "green things upon the earth." Next to this power of vision — of seeing the essential goodness in everyone and everything — I would place her largeness of heart — a heart that was ready to em- brace and make the most of whatever type came beneath her influence and care — a heart so full of understanding of human nature that, however greatly one's mind was im- pressed by her genius, one felt that no phase of human life —

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no joy, no difficulty, no weariness, no struggle — would be outside the pale of her sympathy. In that large heart she found room for hundreds of students — her "Bairns" as she called us — and knew them with all their individual peculiari- ties, followed them as they went down from the mountain and "forth into the tumult and the shout," and was ever ready in after years to give counsel and sympathy in times of need or difficulty.

But perhaps it is only since one has become "a joyful mother of children" that one has fully realised what Miss Mason's life-work has done for the lives of thousands of children, not only in this country, but all over the world. It would be impossible, having been present at that gather- ing, ever to forget the Children's Conference at Whitby in May, 1920, with its extraordinary sense of uplifting power.

To see those eager children, from all parts of the coun- try, hitherto unknown to each other, bound together by the joy of common interests and the enthusiasm of a common knowledge, was to realise what an extraordinary power lies in those educational principles to which Miss Mason gave all her life and brilliant powers of mind, and to make one long to see them spread among those who, though less blessed hitherto with opportunities than our own children, have the same thirst for knowledge which is the common heritage of our human and divine nature.

In those elementary schools where Miss Mason's edu- cational principles and methods have been adopted the response of the children has been remarkable. Along this avenue it seems that a solution might come of many of those difficulties and troubles which beset the body politic, and cause such unhappy divisions among us .

In Miss Mason's philosophy, every child is a personality endowed with infinite possibilities, and to her vision — the true vision of the seer — the trail of the "clouds of glory" is ever visible even when the shades of the prison-house seem darkest .

The power of knowledge has been recognised through the ages, but to her it was given to tell of its joy and unify- ing power. For her life and work amongst us let us sing a

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glad Te Deum, and pray for wisdom and patience to carry on that work to the blessing of future generations.

E. Hughes -Jones.

MISS MASON'S LOVE OF THE COUNTRY DRIVES.

Having served my late dear Mistress for 24 years, I should like to make known her love of, and interest in, all that moved or grew along the lanes or moos, for it was Miss Mason's delight to seek the quiet lanes and bits of moor away from the noisy motors, and only quite recently, using her OAvn words , have they begun ' 'to poach on our private drives . ' '

From 1898 for a good many years Miss Mason would take the tea-basket on her drive, when with the late Miss Armitt , or the Hon . Mrs . Franklin or others . If the weather was hot , in the woods by the lake towards the Ferry ; if cool , Miss Mason enjoyed the hillside between Chapel Stile and High Close, where unrivalled views could be obtained of river, lake and mountain.

We could take at least twenty different drives, or circles, very rarely covering the same road on return except for a little distance from home. Each drive had its own peculiar charm . In September , the autumn tints were best on one. In October, another would be more brilliant . Then November brought the bracken on the mountains to the warm russet colour, Miss Mason's delight. A cold blast in December brought the Redwing to their favourite haunts for shelter, and then we knew a storm was brew- ing. In December, January and February, we usually saw the different species of wild duck on Elterwater, Loughrigg Tarn, or Rydal Water. The end of February and early March saw the Wild Goose going back to the breeding ground on the Scottish coast, Barngates being a favourite crossing place for them. It' was on this drive in 1920 Miss Mason saw a pair of Waxwings quite close at hand and on a former occasion three Redpolls. Towards the latter end of March we saw the Curlew by Barngates come to look up his nesting ground. April brought Redstart and Wheat -

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ear. Though small birds, Miss Mason's watchful eye seldom missed them even in 1922.

Each drive seemed to yield something of its own. One snug corner produced Hazel Blossom, another Colts- foot flowers; some drives were profuse in Wild Roses and Honeysuckle ; another in Bog Bean and Bog Myrtle ; another in Grass of Parnassus; and even the small Milkwort did not escape Miss Mason 's keen eye .

Very often did we follow nature's ways in evading the storm. Sometimes, when quite calm at 'The House of Education,' (sheltered from North and East winds) on reaching the open we found a boisterous wind and it was then we had to follow the cunning of the fox and hug the sheltered side of Loughrigg to Skelwith Bridge, thence to Barngates , and with back to wind could get our little circular drive without discomfort .

Miss Mason was fond of her horse , which was a great help in getting close to birds as they don't fear animals so much as persons . And it was always her first enquiry when stay- ing at hotels during Easter Holidays, — Had I and her favourite little mare Duchess, been made comfortable and well fed ? To her friends who asked why she did not have a motor, her answer was, — "I can talk to a horse but not to a motor . " To illustrate her contention that it was so , I very well remember when once by Skelwith Falls on a stormy day, Miss Mason wished to return, not feeling well, and she had given me the word to turn again for home. Through the rush of water I had not heard Miss Mason's words, but Duchess had, and when I attempted to restrain her from turning, Miss Mason said it was quite right, Duchess had heard and knew all about it .

Miss Mason's nerve during these later years was mar- vellous, for we encountered all kinds of motorists, reckless and otherwise . We have even had horse 's feet on the motor bonnet. Still she kept calm where many a younger person would have been panic-stricken, and probably by leaping out would have caused serious harm to herself.

Miss Mason was always punctual, never kept man and horse waiting and never left her carriage without the kindly,

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'Good afternoon ' and 'Thank you , Barrow . ' And (had our drive been prolific in birds, &c.,) "We've had a splendid bag . ' ' And I am proud of having had the honour and plea- sure, for it was a pleasure, of driving such a kind and noble lady whose like none can excel. And her end was Peace .

T. H. Barrow (Coachman).

A PERSONAL TRIBUTE.

From a Rydal Neighbour .

By the death of Miss Charlotte Mason, Ambleside has lost a great though unassuming personalty . I do not speak of her works, which do, indeed, live after her, but of the character which produced them .

When I first had the privilege of knowing her — perhaps seven and twenty years ago — I was astonished, having regard to the position she already held, at the quietness of her manner, the gentleness of her speech, the absence of self-assertion in any form . She seemed rather like one who sought to know than one who was born to instruct. But presently, beneath all the courtesy and kindness that invited self-expression in others, one felt the strength of individual personality, of power, of knowledge, of purpose, and especially of patient persistence. To her the way she meant to go was plain before her ; there was no need to hurry or struggle.

I think she dwells (in one of her works) on the theory that a child is a "person," an individual having a separate entity, not merely one of a crowd ; and this theory pervaded the whole of her life and helped her to success. To her nobody was one of a crowd ; and everybody was a person, re- quiring separate understanding and inviting individual treatment . ' 'Big or little , ' ' she seemed to say, ' 'you and I are each one . Let us treat each other as such . ' '

Naturally, with this theory and practice, she became an expert in understanding character, in picking out at a glance the capabilities of those surrounding her, and

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putting him or her to the most appropriate task . She knew what to expect from each, made the opportunities, and reaped the results. She chose her friends in the same way, with her quick and far-seeing glance perceiving qualities and possibilities hidden from the casual eye. This parti- cular power must have been of enormous use to her in the creation of her great organisation . It also was of service to everyone working with or under her. She expected from them the best they could do , and (so far as I know) she got it.

Seeing the best and expecting the best was not the least of her special gifts . We hear much of suggestion nowadays . The quiet suggestion of good made constantly by her own life and thought must have brought incalculable benefit to those working with her. It broke down the expectation of evil in those afflicted by difficult temperaments, and let in the sunshine of hope and of joy in many dark places .

Her great work (including the books she wrote) was, of course, directly educational. She introduced new ideals and methods of teaching, and these methods and ideals have spread far and wide. They have probed deep into the foundations of English institutions, and stretched over the ocean to take root in other lands . The wonderful statistics are recorded elsewhere.

I should like to add a word as to the generosity of her present dealings, her readiness to take the heavier share of financial transactions in which she was concerned with any other. Also her faithful friendship, which did not allow her own physical disabilities or the disabilities of a friend to make a barrier between them if there was any way out ; her ingenuity in contriving meetings, her persistent kindness in keeping up private correspondence in spite of the almost impossible claims on her pen and time ; her sense of humour which made hard things easy and dark things bright.

A great loss, indeed, to many people and places, but most of all to the House which she founded and the com- munity among which she dwelt . She lived and worked at her fullest to the very end of a long life, and hers was a happy going away .

A. M. Harris. 82

AN IMPRESSION.

I have been asked to try and recall any memories I may have of Miss Mason and I have attempted once or twice to write something adequate but have failed miserably. Time and events from the outside seem to have made a long leap from the days when I first worked for the P.N.E.U.

But a picture of a certain Sunday in Advent, though it must be twenty odd years ago, rises to my mind and is as fresh as if it had occurred yesterday. It was my first visit to Ambleside as appointed, or provisionally appointed Secretary to the London Office. I was horribly frightened (I had only arrived the night before) the students knew so much more than I did — I had no training — nothing but a hope that I might possibly be the right person for the job. Miss Mason I was told had talks with her students on Sunday afternoons. We assembled in the drawing room, it looked so countrified to my London eyes, and the trunk and branches of a cherry tree outside the window held my attention — as well as a portrait of Matthew Arnold on the wall. Trees and Arnold might help me I thought to keep my nervousness within bounds. I remember Miss Mason and her gentle smile and voice as she explained my presence to the others there. The actual words of her talk I have forgotten, but I hope not the spirit. "That thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed" was the stone upon which she built a complete "house of education" for us that afternoon — explaining how thoughts could be trans- lated into action when revealed, and like young plants bear fruit in due season in the lives of the young children who were to carry on the work.

I have since looked up this text on which the little sermon was built and find I had underlined the words follow- ing "There was one Anna a prophetess." Surely some- thing then had moved me to connect the two ideas. Had I realised dimly at this first meeting, that a prophetess was speaking, and that slowly and surely her prophecies would be fulfilled ? That she was then revealing to a little hand- ful of her followers something of that wealth of thought which she was depending upon us to translate into action ?

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I know I hoped sincerely that I might bear my part in the good cause.

Miss Mason was gifted in many ways, but in none I think more than in her power of inspiring others with ideas, and ideas fundamentally so sound, that those who were able to work them out, felt that they must originate in truth — so often ideas are inspiring for a time, but having little actuality, little relation with facts — they do not live to bear fruit. We can all say of Miss Mason's work for children and true education, that it dealt with those primary conceptions of the intense value of every human soul that nothing of God's gitfs given direct by God Himself, or through the instrument of his creatures could be too good for it. I think I had the impression that this was the thought in her heart that Sunday that she was revealing to us, and that we on our part were earnestly desiring that it might be the spirit in which the work could be accomplished and the only way in which it could ever be accomplished. This must have been so for I find marked with the same date, ' 'Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings. ' ' Whether I elaborated the idea for myself, or whether Miss Mason did for me, I am after this long stretch of years unable to tell. The train of thought was continued somehow to its conclu- sion. If we were able to reveal the thoughts in our hearts to the children, they would so express themselves that we could not fail to recognise the source from which all inspira- tion and good thoughts come, that are only truly revealed in ' 'that perfected praise' ' which is the inherited gift of the children of God. '

This little sermon, if I may call it so, has recurred to my mind over and over again and I have written it out as best I may — as a very small tribute to the memory of one for whom I had and have a very profound admiration.

Frances Chesterton. Top Meadow,

Beaconsfield.

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"FOR THE CHILDREN'S SAKE."

In Memoriam.

Her children shall rise up and bless her name.

Oh, glorious epitaphl — and meet indeed

For such a soul . These laurels ne 'er shall fade,

Nor vanish as the fame of some short hour.

Hers was the living sympathy and love

Truly to see and feel her brethren's needs ;

With vision clear behold the childlike soul

And know it greatest in the eyes of God,

Secure in this her faith, that from above

Was given her Trust, she guarded it with care ;

And gave her life that thus might be supplied

Her children 's many wants . Nay , all the world

Hath share in her great love : and we who work, —

Though small, or great our part, — may surely feel

That the Spirit by the Greatest Teacher given

To comfort those, who, mourning, and abashed

At thought of the great tasks were theirs to do ,

Will be our Strength and Guide. Thus may we all,

With childlike trust, and purity of aim, •

Fulfil the trust bequeathed and work with her,

"Our Leader still."

D.J. (Ex-Student, H.O.E.)

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PART III.

The Children's Tribute. i.

I suppose the thoughts uppermost in our minds are of gratitude for the great and loving friend who has left us — ■ for a serene and joyous spirit, a wonderful intellect, her effectiveness and great achievements, the beauty of her soul and the gracious beauty of her person.

Miss Mason had been ill a few weeks and, on her birthday, her bed was brought down to the drawing room where, surrounded by books and beautiful pictures, she had been wont to see friends and students at work, lying on a couch near French windows that looked on to the garden with its lawns and tress and birds and mountain views. There was always a cocoa-nut hanging from the window for the tits.

She was 81 on New Year's Day, but, in spite of a frail body — which, indeed, had grown a little stronger of late years — she seemed to have perennial youth, and the keen- ness and vigour of her mind were unimpaired. She was at work on Friday and had lately drawn up the term's programmes for the P.U.S. Early Saturday morning, after speaking of the beauty of the starlit sky, with a jesting word to the nurse, she fell into a quiet sleep which lasted until she died, very peacefully, at noon on Tuesday, Jan-

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uary 16th. She was buried yesterday (January 19th) in the quiet churchyard at Ambleside. The Rev. H. Cost ley- White, chairman of the P.N.E.U. Executive, read the ser- vice, and was assisted by her friend, the Rev. F. Lewis and the Rev. J. Bolland, the vicar of Ambleside. The sky was leaden and it rained during the funeral — some think the Lake District looks its best under a grey sky. The coffin was covered with flowers, and flowers (including those sent by the Students' Association) were carried in procession by her friends and colleagues, the staff at Scale How, past and present students and the children of the practising school. One felt that thousands, all over the world, were thinking of her that day, and tributes of love and gratitude were sent by hundreds, including many who had never een her but whom she had helped and inspired — such as child- ren of an elementary school, a preparatory school for boys "in the name of all who have passed through the school," pupils of girls secondary and private schools and home schoolrooms .

Miss Mason achieved great fame. Her writings and the P.N.E.U. which she founded 36 years ago have spread far and wide, she trained some 400 students, and (including those in about 200 elementary and 100 secondary schools) there are some 40,000 children — many of them living in distant lands — actually working in the P.U.S. at the present time, her pupils, whose work she followed with the greatest interest.

Besides her own organisations she inspired the work of others . Even where her work - is not known the influence of her ideas has permeated modern education, and much that was new when she first taught it is now accepted everywhere. But in many things she is still far ahead and it is only when used as a balanced whole that P.N.E.U. methods give their best results.

Miss Mason was loved by all who saw her and had many dear and intimate friends. She had the power of seeing and bringing out the good in everyone, but I think she loved little children best of all. "For the Children's Sake" is the motto of the House of Education, and it was

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for the children's sake that she lived and worked. She provided them with an education which is 'an atmosphere. ' a discipline, a life," she reverenced them as "persons" and recognised their need for mental food in order that they might grow. She gave them living books, a love of literature, art, nature, craftsmanship, joy in learning and full lives. She never allowed the methods which she evolved or, as she preferred to say, ' 'chanced to find ' ' — to be called by her name; they were always "P.N.E.U." Her work will go on, not only because it is to be administed by those whom she has chosen and trained for this high respon- sibility, but because of its intrinsic vitality and truth.

By an Old Pupil.

II.

My first impression of Miss Mason was when I used to see her out driving. She had a smile and a wave for everyone whom she knew, and it was with a feeling of pleasure and exultation that one passed on after her greeting.

How wonderful to think that the great founder of the P.U.S. and P.N.E.U. had actually waved and smiled at an insignificant person like oneself. For nearly a year I used to see her in this way, as I was fortunate enough to have lessons in the P.N.E.U. system near Ambleside.

One summer I had the great privilege of being asked to a party at Scale How. All the guests were greeted by Miss Mason in her beautiful drawing-room. She made one feel at home straight away by her sweet and gentle welcome. She watched all the games and races which were part of the afternoon's entertainment, and when tea- time came she went to a table where the little ones were sitting and had her tea with them .

It had bee i arranged that I was to go to the Practising School of the H .0 .E . the following term .

That term began on a Saturday in late September. On the Sunday we went up to see Miss Mason. I can remem- ber how sweetly she kissed us all as one by one we filed into the drawing-room where she was lying on her couch .

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She then spoke to us about our work for the term and dismissed us with a nod and smile .

After that we saw her out constantly driving, at Criti- cism lessons or on our visits to College. One thing I shall always remember was when after the Members' Conference we were summoned to Miss Mason, who thanked us for our part in the Conference. Little had she to thank us for. It was our part to thank her for the liberal education and books she had put before us .

At our Drawing-room evening when we had to play to Miss Mason, there was always a charming smile and a few words to encourage us .

Whenever I think of Miss Mason I always see that same beautiful smile which made one love and respect her more each time one saw her.

E . da Fonseca .

III.

I am sensible of the honour of being asked to write a few of my personal remembrances of Miss Mason; and I know that what I wrke will have been the experiences of many others beside myself. When at the age of twelve, I first came to the Practising School and saw Miss Mason, I had had it carefully explained to me by the other girls that she was a very great and wonderful person: and I was very much awed at seeing e person of such great wis- dom and learning, and very surprised to find that she was the sweetest, kindest-looking old lady instead of the learned-looking person whom I had expected to see. And that, I think, was one of the chief charms of Miss Mason — she was so gentle, so quiet, so unassuming, and yet her personality was so dominating that everyone felt when they were with her that they were in the presence of a truly wonderful spirit.

Some of my happiest remembrances of Miss Mason are the almost daily pictures of her that we used to see as she came down the drive when going out in her carriage. One half of the gate was usually closed, and while Barrow

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got down to open it , we used to flock to the window to wave to Miss Mason, for she always waved and smiled at us whenever we saw her .

There were certain memorable occasions upon which we used to see Miss Mason, and these were the Musical Drawing room Evenings which we gave up at college once a term. Arrayed in our best frocks we used to go up to Scale How and play the piece we had practised for a whole term before Miss Mason, the staff, and a roomful of students , and it was to us a terrible ordeal .

But how much worse it might have been!

Miss Mason was the gentlest and kindest of critics to us poor nervous children, and she never failed to make some encouraging remark to each of us as we left the piano .

At the beginning of eviry term we used to go up to College to greet Miss Mason, and she would talk to us of the coming term, and ask about our holidays : she knew each of us by name, and very often would inquire after various relatives of ours whom she had met . At the end of every term we used to go up to say "Good-bye" to her, and she would ask us whether we had liked the exams, and if we thought we had done well, and what we were going to do in the holidays, and many other such questions .

I was specially privileged in being prepared for Con- firmation at Ambleside, and once a week the two other can- didates from the Practising School and myself used to go up to Miss Mason for a quiet talk. I doubt if we realised the extent of the honour done to us .

At the end of every summer and autumn term Miss Mason gave a party for us, at which, if her health per- mitted , she was always present . During the tea she would come round and sit for a while at each table, talking and smiling with us all, and presently there would be peals of laughter — Miss Mason had asked a new riddle' She was very fond of riddles and funny stories and always asked for some at the parties, and great was the joy of the girl who could ask Miss Mason a new riddle that she had never heard before .

During last year — my first year at College — I came

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into a much more personal touch with Miss Mason and I marvelled more and more at her wonderful mind, her wonderful personality , and her wonderful vitt lity . Every - body who knew her, loved her; and all who came in con- tact with her realised how &reat her influence was, and when they went from her presence they felt uplifted and inspired to nobler things .

When looking at that sweet, grey-haired old lady, it was strange to think that she held in her hands the work- ings of schools all over the world and that she had brought parents, teachers and children into one happy band of love, work and -ervice.

It has often been said by ex-students of the House of Education that the two years spent there were two of the happiest years of their lives, and it is true — I know I shall say it when I leave — and it is mainly because of the spirit of the place, everyone is happy and loves everybody else, and this will always be so because Miss Mason's spirit will always be there and her memory faithfully and lovingly cherished .

Olive Marchington.

IV.

Miss Mason was one of the great ones of this earth, and so I feel most unworthy to write about her, but as I have had the great privilege of having known her as a student, I think some of those who never saw her may like to hear a few personal recollections .

Miss Mason was not only the beloved Founder and benefactor but also the friend of every child brought up in the P.U.S. Those of us who came up to Ambleside as students after our P.U.S . training, had the honour of know- ing her in a very special way, but all those thousands of P.U.S. children she never saw were her friends. I shall never forget the first time I saw her and what she said to me. I went up to Ambleside a fortnight after term had begun, and felt most shy and forlorn, not knowing a single soul. When I went into the drawing-room, to see her, she held out both hands and said : ''Isn't it funny to think

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we are such old friends and yet this is the first time we have seen each other! ' '

We did not see very much of Miss Mason during the day, but her influence was felt in a most remarkable way throughout the house, whether she were actually in the room or not. That influence must have been entirely spiritual so we may assuredly believe and know that it still reigns throughout Scale How, perhaps in a more real way than it ever did before. And not only is it felt at Scale How, but throughout the world wherever her teach- ing has spread .

Miss Mason always used to have luncheon with us when she felt well enough, and it was one of the senior students' privileges to sit at her table — and it was a privi- lege to sit next her and talk with her. She always tried to get our thoughts and views on subjects before she gave us her own. If our views did not quite coincide with hers, she simply gently told us what she thought about it and left us to think it over. And after thinking it over some- how we always realised that she was right and we were wrong .

How she loved books! That is to say real living books . She used to talk to us about them in such a loving way as if they were personal friends. Often as not, I fear, we students had not read the particular books, but she always left us with a desire to read them .

What a sense of humour she had too! "Punch" was such a favourite with her, and at lunch time on Wednesdays she was generally full of choice little anecdotes from him .

At 4-15 on Sunday afternoons we used to go into the drawing room for "meditations" with Miss Mason. We used to read passages of the Bible to her and then she would discuss the passage, giving her thoughts and trying to get ours on the subject. The various volumes of "The Saviour of the World" were really the outcome of "medita- tions" with former students. It was during that hour that we saw more clearly than at any other time how closely she lived with God. Yet withal she was so human and humble, one of her favourite quotations being, "how

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very hard it is to be a Christian . " I think of all the ' 'Meds ' ' at which I was present, I appreciated her talks at Whitsun- tide most of all. She was so full of the Holy Ghost herself that her very words seemed to have been inspired .

Her parting present to leaving students was always "The Cloud of Witness," edited by Mrs. Gell. This makes one of the many bonds which bind all ex -students together. It is good to think of her now as one of the 4 'Cloud of Witness ' ' herself.

M.H. Ex-Student and P. U.S. Pupil.

V.

Miss Mason gave her whole life to children, both rich and poor, in fact she took for her motto ' 'For the Children's Sake," and this idea she kept before her through her whole life-time. Everyone loved her, especially the children, and no one could help being affected by her influence although they did not alway, realize it . Although she was so clever I don't think that anyone could feel uncomfort- able in her presence, and there was not one of us who would mind telling her anything if we were in tiouble of any kind .

She always took an interest in everyone and every- thing, however small or insignificant, and she took a great pride in knowing how all the children in the Parents ' Union School were progressing even when she was so very ill.

Many people knew her by correspondence, and others by reading her books, but whether one only saw her once or twice, or perhaps not at all, one could not help knowing and admiring her.

Although she was all this, she was very human and could sympathise and understand anybody, in fact I have never known anyone who could understand the feelings of everyone so thoroughly .

But I am quite sure that all who knew Miss Mason, although perhaps they never saw her, will continue and carry on her work in the way she would have wished .

Veronica Whitwell . 93

VI.

I have been asked to write something of my early recollec- tions of Miss Mason, because it has been my privilege to have known her since I was quite young. It is difficult to separate childhood memories from those of later life, and I recall a clear picture of her very vivid personality rather than outstanding incidents .

She used to stay at our home on her way to her annual journey to Nauheim, and her visits were delightful for us, although, as an invalid, she had to be spared fatigue and noise and we could only visit her bedroom separately and at special times. I can, however, recall one occasion when she was well enough to stay with us in the country and to take part in family life and country drives. It was here that Rudyard Kipling came to see her — probably to hear about her methods — and the "Jungle Book" was a great favourite with us. It must have been then, or soon after, that I read "Mowgli" to Miss Mason, most likely sitting by her bed , but that I cannot quite remember .

Reading to Miss Mason was a great pleasure, for she entered so genuinely into the spirit of the book, even if it was only a children's story, provided it had some literary value .

Once at school (not P.N.E.U.) a companion laid a challenge that she and I should each read the whole of Wordworth's "Prelude" during the week end. It took all one's spare time, but Miss Mason was staying in the house and in reading it to her and listening to her occasional comments, I soon forgot in enjoyment of the poem the urgency of the self-imposed "task." I felt quite sorry when my friend, who had to read to herself and had less time, confessed that she felt too hurried to appreciate it.

Miss Mason had a nice sense of precision in the use of words and did not like them to be applied loosely or in- correctly or to be mispronounced . She seldom interrupted the child reader by criticism, but she had a keen sense of how a passage should be rendered, and gave us a most valuable course of reading lessons when I was a student . Her fine literary judgment has been diffused through her choice of books for the school .

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Miss Mason had, of course, great sympathy with children, and she always seemed genuinely pleased to see one and never pre-occupied. She radiated affection and gaiety and showed a quick interest in many things ; such as nature, plants and flowers, people, books, household and school affairs, and (I nearly said most of all!) in anything amusing. She had a splendid sense of fun and loved to hear or tell a good story . She often invented special names for her friends and liked to chaff the "dear people" around her , but never in a way that left the least sting .

I think children appreciated the serene happiness of her temperament. She never seemed to have "moods" and, although her cares and responsibilities must have been great, one never saw her in the least depressed.

I am afraid I have said very little — there is much that cannot be written down and other things that seem trivial on paper when separated from the atmosphere in which they occurred . Like thousands of others I owe a great debt to Miss Mason's teaching, although I was but a few years in the P.U.S.

Miss Mason has shown her love, respect and under- standing of children in her work. The seclusion which her health exacted prevented her from seeing them as much as she would have liked but she always took pleasure in con- tact with a child and read the children's examination papers with real enjoyment. The spread of her pupils from the home schoolrooms to private and secondary schools and especially to the public elementary schools brought her great happiness . She took a warm interest in the recently formed Association of old pupils, and herself set the syllabus for the reading course and gave a cordial welcome to the magazine the Association has started for the children of the school.

VII.

4 'Iw as much , as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my children, ye have done it unto Me. ' '

A great heart has ceased to beat, a great spirit has gone on, the memory remains.

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I have been privileged to know Miss Mason . All of us in the P. U.S. were her "friends," yet I enjoyed the thing I account one of the greatest of my possessions , the special joy of being personally known to her. Every year nearly, she used to send me a book — "From his Ambleside Friend, C.M.M." Even this last Christmas, when her health was declining, she remembered and ordered a Wordsworth to be sent to me. Therefore anything I can add to the beautiful words that have been said about her must be of a very per- sonal nature.

She was always so thoughtful of everyone near her. When I last had the joy of staying under her roof, she saw me a boy, just in for his Oxford examination, and said 4 'Now would not he like to dance, all young men like dancing, ' ' and in a few minutes she was able to see her stu- dents dancing in the class-room with desks pushed back, and she was glad we were amusing ourselves. How many elderly people are annoyed by noise of any kind, especially when they are ill!

She was such a perfect hostess. On the same occasion she had arranged for us to drive to see the Langdale Pikes, and as we went she stopped the carriage at good view- points, pointed out gardens, showed us birds, asking Barrow's opinion of their names. Arrived beneath the Pikes, she made Barrow and me climb up to look at the falls, and when we came back there was tea waiting in a private room at an inn, and the window was wide open, ' 'So that we can think we are outside . ' '

My mother read to her I remember, but, what remains fixed is her shining face, lit up by the sun from within and the sun from without, and the joy of nature in her and the kindness of soul. Like Henley, her infirmity counted as so little; her personality, the poetry of her mind, for so much.

She seemed to me always to be smiling. Just as when one looks at the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, perhaps the great- est picture of a smile ever painted , one begins to smile oneself, one felt in her presence constrained to smile — her smile was indeed infectious . She had a huge sense of humour -and fun. I had made a few verses upon the P.N.E.U. at a

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Students' Conference in London. Miss Mason had heard about it, and made me repeat them to her, and she laughed right merrily at the jokes . Truly she might be called * 'La Joconde . ' '

One <