For years the County Institute in Indiana has been the final word of inspiration to the experienced teacher and the final word of instruction to the inexperienced teacher as they started on the work of the new school year. It has varied in the subject-matter and character of instruction, until it has included every phase of academic and every phase of professional training. instructor has sought his materials and methods in the dry and dusty archives of the philosopher and the witticism and humor that mark the incidents of modern life.

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The teachers have hung upon the words of these instructors as upon the

words of an oracle and have attempted either consciously or unconsciously to make them a part of their daily school work. Indeed it is possible, because of the nearness in time to the opening of the school year and the nature of the work to be presented, that the county institute has contributed more directly than any other educational factor toward fashioning the methods adopted by many a pedagogue, as he outlines his work for the year. When we stop to consider this, we are confronted with the possibilities in a County Institute and the great work for the betterment of the schools that can be accomplished there.

The instructor standing as an authority on educational matters, must realize his privilege and his responsibility and weigh well every idea that he attempts to present. If he is in the field of academic work, he must be a master of his subject, yet so familiar with child life that he can adapt his instruction to the teachers of little children. If he stands as one skilled in the psychological aspects of education, he must know how to make these abstruse ideas concrete and simple that the district school teacher may be assisted in an intelligent observation of the mental aptitude of the children she teaches.

But the instructor-important as he is with his fund of knowledge and methods, is by no means the sole force in the institute. The teacher, too, is largely responsible for the success or failure of the county institute. Her attitude toward the instructor, the readiness with which she allows her long continued methods to be attacked, modified or perchance destroyed, will contribute also to the general success or failure of the week. No matter how conscientious and scholarly the instructor may be, he can not make a success of his work without the hearty

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co-operation of his listeners and a consciousness of a sympathetic attitude on their part toward the work he is endeavoring to present.

But a third important factor in the success of a county institute is the county superintendent. He must know how and when to talk, that he neither oversteps nor understeps the bounds. He must be an attentive listener and in full sympathy with the lines of work his instructors are attempting to follow out. His attitude will enlist a following of the teachers and will make the week a wholesome helpful one.

The county institute has been an integral part of the school system of Indiana, and those who participate in any way toward its success must become alive to its value and possibilities.

Not the instructor, not the county superintendent, not the teachers alone can make the institute, but all three factors in harmonious, happy, conscientious co-operation can make the week what it purports to be, the final inspiring message for the school year, one that will have a future bearing on every school and every teacher in the county.

Any conscientious institute instructor must, in the preparation of his work, know from past or imagined experiences something of the purposes of the county institute before he can bring his material to bear effectively on the duties at hand. For the aim and scope of this paper four purposes might be considered: Entertainment, Professional Training, Imparting Knowledge, and Creating Cultural Values. But neither time nor proportion will permit this thoroughness of treatment, so we dismiss Imparting Knowledge and Creating Cultural Values: the first, because it must be selfevident that the instructor should bring new facts and organization to the institute in the most concrete form possible; the second, because Cultural Values are intangible developments, acquired chiefly at unexpected moments. and not by any conscious effort to attain them. The instructor can not give culture by illustrations as he can a mathematical equation, but he must trust to the influences of the suggestions that should rise from his efforts as messages of heart to heart. This paper, then, limits its application of illustrations for the purposes of concreteness to the two ideas-Entertainment and Professional Training.

To the scholar, who for many years has not heard the clatter of the machinery of actualities and has devoted himself entirely to the muses or the silent voices of nature, it must be highly sacrilegious to hear entertainment nominated in the bond. At the other

extreme the "born-orator" glories in his power, studies the psychology of "tickling of the ear," lies awake at nights planning new campaigns in the hope of greater victories on the morrow, and in the heat of his appeals permits himself to be borne by an unthinking audience into strange exaggerations. Distasteful as this type of institute work is it should not drive us to agree immediately with the puritanical ascetic that all entertainment should be tabooed.

The lighter veins of life should be tapped in the institute for various reasons. Many of the teachers have been in the open air for five or six months and have been accustomed to vigorous physical exertion. The institute brings them to an indoors-usually sultry, sometimes poorly ventilated, and often provided with very uncomfortable seats. To this class of teachers the spice of humor compensates in a measure for physical discomforts. Another significant class of teachers in the audience is young and prone to be giddy on occasions. The county superintendent's organization and personality do most in disciplining these thoughtless. and sometimes irrepressible individuals, but there are times in the instructor's work that a judicious sense of humor saves the day for the speaker and audience. A third division is composed of conscientious men and women who teach during the teach during the winter and attend summer sessions at a normal or college. They come to the institute fagged physically and surfeited mentally.

Many times in their eagerness to acquire materials and methods they outrun the instructor's suggestions and arrive at a wholly unwarranted conclusion. They need the pepsin of comedy to aid in the mental digestion of accumulated pedantic pabulum. Another class is that group of teachers who have been a long time in the service and have heard of so many deluding hobbies that they have grown mildly indifferent. They are willing to grant that what the instructor is saying sounds well and might work as well but they always end this concession with the conjunction "but" and an interminable pause that tells better than words that no such result need be hoped for. This group of teachers requires a tonic of humor diluted with love to arouse lethargic livers and make plastic hardening brain cells.

With these various classes demanding to be interested the instructor labors to appease their wishes that he may bring them the message he holds. most sacred. Three concrete means seem to predominate in the use of humor in institute work. The first is that of the appearance and action of the instructor before his audience. Now and then there appears before the teachers a Creatore who lashes himself into a frenzy over some supposedly new method. Again some dispassionate soul comes to his auditors as a vessel set apart for some high service in the Lord's court. The bubbling enthusiasm of the first and the fastidious affectation of the second are concrete appeals to the humor of the practicalminded school teacher. This leads directly to our first conclusion in the matter of using illustrations to make an

institute concrete. If the instructor is to be of the best service before the teachers he should in every way be a real unassuming teacher himself. Sincerity, simplicity and thoroughness should be concrete in every line and lineament of his being, and his every action should breathe assurance to his audience that he, too, is a fellow teacher, knowing their griefs and discontents and hopefully laboring to rise to a plane where teaching is a thing of joy and beauty.

The instructor's second and very frequent method employed in inciting humor is that of the funny story. He is willing to have his audience laugh at him, if only they will laugh. So he compares his embarrassing plight with that of the theological student who was called on for an impromptu sermon. Then follows the well-known and threadbare Zaccheus story. This type of story is meant wholly for the pleasure of the audience and deserves very little time and consideration here or in the institute.

Many times the speaker uses a humorous story in an irrelevant manner. He hears a good story and then fits his material to the story. This of course, is inexcusable and should be discouraged by both speaker and audience. A few years ago an instructor speaking on Apperception and its Practical Applications told the story of two Irishmen who saw a train come sweeping round a curve and glide swiftly into a hole in the side of the mountain. One of the men had been in this country for a number of years and knew of tunnels, but his companion was totally ignorant on this subject. Upon the first inquiring of the latter what he thought of the train's action he said that he