2. REPORT OF VILLAGE SUPERINTENDENTS.

ALBION.

FREEMAN A. GREENE, Superintendent.

Change of Teachers.

There have been several changes in the corps of teachers in our bigh school. Mrs. H. L. McChesney, preceptress for the past 12 years, resigned to spend a year abroad. Miss K. M. Cochrane is employed in the Teachers' College, New York city. Miss Hamet C. Paul, our teacher of physical culture, vocal music and elocution, has accepted a position in the school at her home. We were fortunate in securing Miss Anna F. Barrett, a graduate of Cornell; Miss Grace Fisher, of Vassar; and Miss Elvira Cousins, of Emerson College, Boston, to fill their places.

We have had a very successful year. A course in general literature for all the grades below the high school has been arranged since my last report, which I give at this time.

Course in Literature for all Grades.

Hamilton Mabie, in his "Studies in Literature," says: "At the first glance nothing seems so heterogeneous as a great library; no creations of human skill and industry seem so entirely unrelated to each other as books. They come together from the ends of the earth; they wear garments of different cut and hue; thousands of years divide them. Have they anything in common? They have so many things in common that we can not get at the heart of any one of them until the things that unite them are far more clear and impressive to us than the things which divide them. When the masterpieces of the great writers stand side by side, the thought of literature as an art practiced by all the great races, as a revelation of the individual soul and of the common life of men unified by certain common qualities, and bound together by deep' and vital relationships, dawns upon us.

"It is the opportunity of most people to read many books; it might be the good fortune of many to study literature; to read books; that is, not as unrelated fragments, but as the illustrations of the greatest of the arts; the art through which the soul of man reveals itself under all historic conditions."

It is the aim of the following outline of reading to awaken an interest in the children's minds for good books. The list is merely suggestive rather than exhaustive, to be carried out in this manner.

We are indebted to Miss Mary E. Burt for suggestions. Every Friday afternoon is devoted to this work in each school.

First Year.

Story telling; reading to the pupils; before Christ; story of Daniel in the Lion's Den; Scudder's Book of Fables; Cinderella; Scudder's Folk Stories; Red Riding Hood (present); Story of the Prodigal Son; Three Bears; Rainbows for Children, Lydia Childs: Puss in Boots; The New Year's Bargain, Coolidge; Ugly Duckling.

Second Grade.

Noah's Ark; Scudder's Book of Fables; Story of Jonah (present); Queer Little People, Mrs. Stowe; Fairy Stories; Adventures of a Brownie, Mrs. Craik; Story of the Loaves and Fishes.

Third Grade.

Myths (present); Cats and Dogs; Hercules; Robinson Crusoe; Sampson; Stories from American History, Praht; Virgil's Story of the Wooden Horse; Black Beauty; Bible stories; Memory Gems, North End and others.

Fourth Grade.

King Midas (present); Firelight Stories, L. C. Moulton; Stories from Scudder; Fanciful Tales, Stockton; Pygmalion and Galatea; Wonder Brook, Hawthorne; Claws and Hoofs; Memory Gems from Longfellow and others.

Fifth Grade.

Reading at school.- Wonder Book, Hawthorne; Homer, Hanson; Arabian Nights, Eliot (present); Wings and Fins; Story of Patsy, Wiggin.

Home reading.- Little Lord Fauntleroy; Cricket on the Hearth, Dickens; Prince and the Pauper, Clemens; Fairy Tales, Grimm's; Tales from Shakespeare, Pratt; Memorize, Barefoot Boy; Brook; Tennyson.

Sixth Grade.

Myths; Stories of the Golden Age, Baldwin; Jupiter, Mercury; Tales of Ancient Greece, Cox; Virgil, Hanson (present); Tales