Evening capital journal. (Salem, Or.) 1888-1893, 1888-05-23
Ienized Account Of DOngs in City and
Country.
NORTH SALEM SCHOOL.
A Shabby, Inadequate Building, but
Excellent Work Done There.

a column W uCSCAlDAhS OAA0
of school affairs in North Salem.
The building is pleasantly situated,
with ample ground around it, and
when the naples, that were set out
in the spring, shall have attained
rroner growth, there will be refresh
inc shade on all sides. But the
bnilding is incommodious and in
a sad state of disrepair. Since twas
built. some fifteen or twenty years
AGO, the population has grown be-
vond the accommodation afforded.
and the dilapidated, untidy appear
once within and without, does vio-
lence to the sense of the becoming.
The taxpayers naturally feel dissa-
tisfied at the neglect of their wants,
when so handsome and expensive
building has been put up in East
Salem. During the summer recess
A thorough renovation should be
made, and room added to meet the
reouirement of that section.
Joseph A. Sellwood is the princi-
nal of this school, and his sole as
sistant Miss Maggie COsper. In the
professors room we found thirty-tive
scholars present, although the aver
age attendance is given at forty.
Glass A of the third grade were busy
with review lesson in reading, and
answered with edifying promptitude
and readiness a series of questions
growing out of this study. Mono
syllables, dissyllables and TOlysyl-
lables were defined the character
of the various accents used described,
diphthongs and other photographic
peculiarities explained.
B class of the same grade was
then examined in geography, Idaho
and Arizona being the subjects of
review. The boundaries, rivers and
mountains; chief towns and princi-
pal products were given with read
mess that showed the lesson had
been well learned.
Glasses A and b, grade 2were also
successfully put through a review
lesson in the same branch of study,
class A devoting its attention to Ar
iona and Alaska, and B class tell
ing what it knew about the New
England states. These exercises
were convincing to the visitor that
the lessons are thoroughly taught
in the North Salem school, and the
faculties of the scholars so stimula-
ted as to profit by what they learn.
B class, grade one, was then called
up for a grammar lesson. The
noun was the object of inquiry, and
its eight forms ofconstruction given.
1t is complained by some philologi-
cal writer's that the English is a
grammarless tongue. We have not
cases enough for our nouns to eX-
press the various relations in which
they are placed, andthe indeclinable
form of our adiectives, pronouns,
and indeed all classes of words, de
prives our expression of many
shades of mode and tense. This was
shown in the exercise under con-
sideration. This example was given,
John strikes Robert with a stick. "
John is nominative, Robert objec-
tive, and in what case is stick? In
the Latin it would be ablative, the
object by which a thing is done
We could hardly follow Prof. Sell
woods class in the conventional
rules supplied by the text book, but
We noticed that subjective mood"
was invented to help them out of a
dialectic difficulty. The proper use
Of the apOstrophe, as mark of the
pOssessive case, was the subject of a
short exercise, and its correct use
was pretty clearly understood.
MISS MAGGIE COsPER
has an average attendance of 81
scholars, a decrease of ten during
the last month. Severe colds keep a
number of her scholars at home, and
she reports some few cases of pneu-
monia. Her classes are b class,
grade 3 A and b grade 4,
and b class, grade 5. On
entering this room we found A class
grade 4, busy with mental arithme-
tic. Simple problems in addition
and subtraction were worked out by
prescribed formula, the little tyrOs
evolving the numerical facts from a
garniture of eggs, marbles, apples
and such like, and giving the result
with unanswerable precision. This
is the earliest formative process q
which the mental powers are sub
iected. the immense rangeOf fact con
tanned in themultiplicatiOn table CIV
aim and direction to the early pow
ers Of absorption.