In short, the race of endorsers, produced by the eugenics of advertising, is not subject to the ills that ordinary flesh is heir to. They are the heroes of the present age, deified, like Greek Orion, in the realms of "space"--long-legged, serene, divinely handsome. We, poor mortals, humbly try to imitate them, and lay our wealth at their shrines, as did the Ancients at the altars of their gods. Our Ceres is Aunt Jemima; our Mercury is Phoebe Snow; our Adonis is the Arrow Collar youth; our Venus is the Physical Culture lady; and our Romulus and Remus are the Gold Dust Twins.
[Illustration: _Le plus grand tournoyeur sud-patte._]
New and better ideas of child education are steadily making their way. Nearly every one now acknowledges that the school room should be primarily a place of entertainment, that the true vocation of the teacher is to amuse in an instructive manner, and that study is really a scientific form of play. Also, it is quite generally admitted that methods which involve mental effort on the part of the child are not to be tolerated.
So much progress has already been made. But now there has just appeared a book which bids fair to carry the educational advance as far ahead again. This book, entitled "A Baseball Primer of French," substitutes for the conventional pedantry of conjugations, syntax, etc., a vivid account in French of an imaginary world's series. Any boy who studies it will understand it instinctively; for if the foreign text prove obscure, he has only to read the English translation underneath.
The author, Speed Stevens--who, it may be remembered, was captain of his college nine,--shows a profound knowledge of baseball. Indeed, it is on account of his ability as athletic coach that he holds his position of instructor in French at Croton.
The following extract gives an inkling of the rare pedagogical value of the book:
sur bases et un sorti, Harburg éventa. Alors
on bases and one out, Harburg fanned. Then
Bill le Rosseur ramassa sa chauve-souris et
Harrigan, vrai à ses lauriers de plus grand
Harrigan, true to his laurels as the greatest
vivant tournoyeur sud-patte, partit avec un
living southpaw twirler, started off with a
tirer-dedans qui faisait zip-zip, entaillant une