The text or topic method is the procedure of choice for use with students of advanced conversational powers, but it is wrong in principle if employed with beginners in conversation, because it is not graded or attuned to any definite degree of progress; it presupposes, therefore, the very faculty which it endeavors to develop. Whoever has had the misfortune of facing a class in such work will have realized, we believe, how little even the best intentions can accomplish. It would actually be of greater benefit to the student if the same task were prepared in writing and read in class, because this would better protect his ear against the constant mistakes in the disposition of the predicate parts, the greatest stumbling-block in German. The student who has from the beginning been taught in what is called the "sentence method" has of course a great advantage at this stage, and especially so if he has been made to recite his sentences approximately as fast as he would say their English equivalents, because he has received both aural and oral training to a degree that no other method can furnish, and this gain has not been attained at the expense of his education in composition.

Since a beginner is certainly for the time of his practice in bondage to his text, not possessing the balancing-power of any control. doubt might also be expressed as to whether the diction of such story texts as are naturally chosen for translation courses is sufficiently idiomatic to fulfil the demands of an ordinary life. The pronouncedly conversational stories of the modern school of realists such as Hauptmann, Sudermann, and Ibsen do not as a rule offer acceptable patterns for exercises either in the substance, which is not wholesome, or in the form, which is very often disconnected and abrupt. Not that a bookish style of expression is objectionable in itself; it is rather too high an ideal, and its acquisition requires a ripening process extending beyond college life and college help; and it is, moreover, the graceful possession only of a mind which is bent that way. It does not seem to lie at the level which we must seek for the benefit of the great majority of beginners. We cannot overlook the essential difference between John as he writes and John as he speaks. Just as a student is dependent on his text, so is a writer unconsciously dependent on forms of expression, which during his whole development have stood out to him as the only creditable means of conveying thoughts in print; he cannot disassociate these forms from paper, as long as he writes in the book language of the country. That it is possible, on the other hand, to overcome such an influence, when the conventional atmosphere is changed to dialect-writing, is shown by our own Western and Southern- stories, by Kipling, and by Reuter, the Dickens of Germany.

PROF

PROFESSOR GEORGE ENOS GARDNER.

Merrill Boyd, LL.B.

ROFESSOR GEORGE ENOS GARDNER, of the Boston University Law School, died Tuesday morning, Dec. 17, 1907, at his home, 10 Schussler Road, Worcester, after an illness of several months, at the age of forty-three years.

Professor Gardner was born in East Brookfield in 1864. He was the son of Enos and Caroline (Porter) Gardner. His parents removed to Worcester when he was but a boy. He received his early education in the public schools, and was graduated from the Classical High School of that city. After receiving his degree from Amherst College in 1885, he taught in the schools of Gouverneur, N. Y., for about a year. Then he went to Elgin, Ill., and took up the study of law. He was admitted to the bar in the fall of 1887. He returned to Worcester and began to practise his profession. He gave up his practice, however, after a short time, to accept a position as teacher in the Worcester Classical High School. He remained there ten years, and then went to Champaign, Ill., where he taught law for a year. He left Champaign to accept a call to the Deanship of the University of Maine Law School, and for four years he held that position. In 1901 he came to the Boston University Law School.

In 1888 Professor Gardner married Mary Knowles, of New York. She died shortly before him. They leave three children, two boys and a girl.

Nature had generously endowed Professor Gardner with strength of body, and his erect, rugged frame was peculiarly typical of his mental and moral growth. His capacity for work seemed never to be hampered by lack of physical energy. He was ever the personification of the worker who never tires at his task. And always he worked with splendid enthusiasm, carrying a heavy schedule of lectures with the utmost ease. Indeed, were one to sum up in a word the most evident impression his work produced, the word "power" would come immediately to mind. Perhaps the very ruggedness of his physical being was the reason why at first so many went to him with their difficulties,- never in vain,- to find that the spirit within was equally fine and strong.

As a friend he was a tremendous influence for good. Reserved in a manner as to his own problems in life, he was in the gentlest and most unobtrusive way the finest type of a friendly man. As far as was in his power he fulfilled the duties of friendship, freely and joyously, and thereby he

made beautiful the word "friend." Always he was the helper, the burden-bearer, the speaker of the courageous word and of good cheer. His sympathy was so broad and genuine, his patience so great, his courtesy so unfailing, that it seemed as natural as breathing to go to him when in trouble. Many a man will forever be his debtor for a kind deed, for a moral uplift, for a renewed grip upon the verities of life. Yet in it all he was so simple, so sincere, so natural, that he seemed never to preach, but merely to suggest.

As a teacher his personality went straight to the hearts of his classes, and they loved him greatly. No student was too mean in ability to receive the same patient courtesy that was shown to the most gifted. Making no attempt to win favor, but always simply himself, he was in the best sense of the word the most popular of teachers. By that unerring judgment with which a student body recognizes the true, he was early approved as a man worthy of sincere respect and abiding affection. He combined a comprehensive grasp and broad knowledge of law with such a power to impart it that he was recognized immediately as a teacher of the rarest ability. Under the influence of his lectures the deepest of legal problems and the most knotty of legal difficulties were made clear and simple.

A man of positive beliefs, he saw with clear vision his duty as a citizen, and with superb zeal he performed it. An optimist of the right sort, he trusted strongly in democratic government; and although he never underestimated the power of greed and corruption and lawlessness, he believed with his whole being that eventually the clean and decent and right in government would prevail. Never in word or deed did he spare himself in the task of uniting all good citizens in the best movements for good gov. ernment. In public speech, in private conversation, in the classroom,— wherever he came in contact with men.- he impressed all deeply with his own high sense of civic righteousness and taught, "precept upon precept, line upon line," the responsibility of the individual citizen.

And as he lived he died. With dauntless courage he faced what he knew must be the end. No word of weakness, no word of complaint was uttered, but always his thoughts were of those whom he loved best. With unshrinking faith he met Death, calmly, as one who hears "a deeper voice across the storm." Now all is well with him, and to him no longer is the toil of the march but rather the glory of a life well spent and a task well done. It is hard to keep a brave heart when such a man falls from the ranks, but yet we would offer as our last poor tribute to him our sense of a loss that can never be fully met, for he has added strength and dignity and sweetness to life.