The Richmond palladium. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1855-1875, 1875-01-13

elastic.
"The sun is very flexible. Did you
go to soluble? Did you swallow elias
tic? Did you come bustible?"
Il am going to draw a figure and it
must be soluble"
The dog is combustively. Horses
legs are elastic"
Soluble, that bursts. Flexible,
that you can see through"
"The man is elastic; he is in the
combustible; he is going to be fexi-
ble."
1.-The soluble girl sits at home. The
combustible little boy walks. l have
flexible thoughts.
Soluble little bells are ringing.
The ever elastic boy is not done. The
soluble girl is naughty"
''She is flexible about her flowers.
She looks very combustible. The SOL
uble girl is dead"
''The elastic man is dead. The
combustible bird is singing"
There was soluble horse in the
yard yesterday. That cow was a very
combustible thing
What a combustible face that il"
One pupil, in despair OF framing an
original sentence containing the word
soluble, thus wrung it in Mary's lamb:
Mary had a little lamb; its fleece was
white as snow, and every place wear
Mary went the lamb soluble to CO."
The use of coral and sandstone be-
ing asked. one little fellow of a CON-
mercial turn answered, ITO sell or to
buy Most of the pupils wrote that
coral is to make into 'jewelry or
"gulery.' Some of the other replies
were:
Coral is usel to make diamonds
and pearls. Sandstone is to put on
graves"
Coral is to put into the stove The
use of coral and sandstone is parallel. y
Coral is to make lace; sandstone to
make hour glass
In answer to "Give the names of
two domestic animals and their uses"
one child replied, 'The Geraph and
Hippotamus," but did not give their
uses.
Another said, Dogs and wild cats.
Some wild cats are good to catch rats.
and dogs are two
Another replied, "Chickens-their
uses are eggs. The cow-its uses is to
give milk, and those two animals
nurse their young ones
Being required to give five parts
of tree one boy wrote, "Top, bot
tom, middle, and two sides"
''WHY DO ANIMALS sLEEP?'
was one of the questions. Nearly all
one replied, ITO rest their mind,
when they have any and third,
The sleep 60 animals is when they
<1,n .,
in trouble and wants to open the door,
the door and runs after the animal"
Various answers were given to the
direction to name three common and
rare fruit plants, among which were
Corn, corn starch, and POPCORN"
Green corn, corn for chickens, and
corn to make candy"
Some curious answers were given
by the pupils in the higher grades.
"Philanthropist' was defined by one
pupil in the first grade as "a fighter"
and "unsullied' as rolling A Sec
ond grade scholar defined "dilatory"
as ''a sacred place" A second grade
pupil bounded Maine as follows:
North by Oregon. east by the Pacific
Ocean, south by Michigan, and west
by New Orleans"
The pupils of the second grade were
required to write for dictation exer-
cise a short account of
ALEXANDER sELKIRK.
The biography was read to them
three times, and then they were to
write what they remembered of it.
One pupil penned the following:
Alexander Selkirk started on a
voyage about century ago. His
.hief things were commerce and pirat-
ical. lie went out with Captain
Staadburg to the Juan Fernandez
Islands on a voyage to the sea. The
ship they sailed was about fourteen
miles long, six feet broad. and about
four hundred miles from any point of
land. His chief food was some meat
and ocean fish. When they returned
to land he built house of some
pinento wood, using goat-skin for the
outside part, and had green grass all
around it.
Is it any wonder, with such a coll
lection of errors to correct, teacher
should say, as one did yesterday,
Sometimes, when l sec the nonsense
in these papers, wonder what we are
ali doing. And yet we are working
like slaves, all OF us.
Too much is required of the pupils,
and the examining system necessitated
produces only a confusion of ideas.
Look at the musical catechism taught
in the schools. The first 100 ques-
tions and answers are to be taught
orally to the fifth grade. The first
question is, What is toner and
the answer is, "A sound produced by
the even and uninterrupted vibrations
of some sonorous or elastic body in
the air. In singing, tone is breath
made vocal.
judging from the definitions given
Of soluble, elastic, and ''combus-
tible," how much of this sentence can
the pupils comprehend?
In the examination for spelling the
first and second grades, the former
had sixteen words, the latter thirty,
and the latter we're by far the more
difficult.
Lawyears' fees have reached
rate which, when compared with
the past, seem almost fabulous. In
1S45 Ogden Hoffman charged the
city $1,000 for attending in an i'm
portant case. It was considered
extortionate, but now not ten times
that amount would be small. Beach
demands $4,000 for an important
case, and has enough to keep him
busy all the time. Our present Gov.
Tilden was attorney in one case in
which his fees were, as is carefully
calculated, 100000. The fees in
the Parish will case are estimated
at an equal sum Half as much was